Staff { Adjutants[172] 4
{ Sergeant-majors 4
{ Quartermaster-Sergeants 4
{ Drum-major 1
Sub-Lieutenants 32
Sergeants 160
Corporals 160
Second-Corporals 160
Drummers 96
Privates 2,240
——
Total 2,861
exclusive of the three companies of Maltese military artificers.
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Footnote 171:
A third of whom were to be gardeners, hedgers, or canal-diggers, but
only to be enlisted on special authority from head-quarters.
Footnote 172:
These appointments were never conferred. The whole business of the
corps was carried on by an Adjutant, who held his office independently
of the battalions.
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The annual expense of the corps, not including working pay and other
fluctuating contingencies, amounted to 87,736_l._ 14_s._ 3¼_d._ At this
period 5 sub-lieutenants, 1 sergeant-major, and 130 men were employed on
the recruiting service.
In all practicable cases, general and field-officers were deprived of
the command of companies, which now ceased to be stationary, but were
removed by rotation of relief from one station to another, the same as
the companies of the royal artillery. The employment of men on detached
duties was also discouraged, and companies were composed of a convenient
strength to enable them to move in bodies.
Upon the stationary condition of the corps a celebrated officer of the
royal engineers has made the subjoined correct remarks:—[173] “From the
close of the American war till the year 1811, all the companies of royal
military artificers were kept permanently fixed at their respective
stations, both at home and abroad, where they remained for life, in what
may, for military men, be styled a state of vegetation; so that they
were, at that period, a vast number of men who had actually grown grey
in the corps, who had never entered a transport, nor made a single day’s
march from the head-quarters of their company. To the men at Gibraltar
and other foreign stations the service of the corps was thus rendered
almost equivalent to transportation for life. Everywhere they intermixed
with civilians; they married in a proportion unknown in any other corps;
so much so, that the number of women and children belonging to one
company was often equal to that of a battalion of the line.”[174]
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Footnote 173:
Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ note a, p. iv., vol. i.
Footnote 174:
There was a William Painter at Gibraltar, whose affluence was
something extraordinary. He enlisted into the corps in July, 1798, and
though a man of very useful intelligence, only attained the rank of
second-corporal in 1807. He tried to procure his discharge to return
to his estate in Cornwall, but such was the pressure for men, his
desire was negatived. His humble position, however, did not prevent
his living in ease and luxury. He kept his servants, horses, and, it
is said, his carriage, and entertained and enjoyed very good society.
Well could he do all this, for, coupling with his own receipts his
wife’s settlement, he possessed an income of _eleven hundreds pounds
a-year_! He died at the Rock, August 13, 1811, aged 45 years. By his
Will he left 5000_l._ stock to his two sons—John, and William Grible;
300_l._ to Sub-Lieutenant Falconer and his family, and a few smaller
legacies to relatives and an attached servant, besides considerable
landed property, houses, and the usual legal addenda of “messuages,
tenements, and hereditaments” at Gwennap in Cornwall to his elder son
John, “and his heirs for ever.” The widow, under a jointure, was in
receipt of 550_l._ a-year.
As if to show how likely fortune is to be overtaken by calamity,
Sub-Lieutenant Falconer, five days after the death-bed remembrance of
the corporal, was fired at from an open window by private Samuel
Fraser. The ball luckily missed him, but whizzed sufficiently near to
be alarming. The ruffian was sent to a condemned regiment in
commutation for his sentence of one thousand lashes!
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