THE ARMY OF THE KING--TO 1701
Two important results affecting the composition and growth of the
army which, after the Restoration, was to replace that of the
“Commonwealth,” were apparent when Cromwell died. The number of well
and continuously trained soldiers in Great Britain was far larger
than at any previous period, and therefore formed a large nucleus
from which a fresh, freely enlisted body could be recruited. It is
difficult otherwise to account for the brilliant fighting power of the
men who again began to make the name of the English army respected on
the Continent, as in the days of Crecy and Poitiers. Many of those who
fought under William were probably old soldiers of the latter part of
the Civil War; while even those who had not taken an active share in
the campaign of King and Cromwell, must have heard much of the bravery
of their fathers, and of the glory--a feeling rightly common to both
factions--won by the fighting power of those who had so recently passed
away.
Armies, especially during long years of peace, live much upon past
honours and tradition; and that which had now to be formed could not,
if it tried, dissociate itself from the widespread military spirit
that prolonged hostilities had aroused and permanently created. As in
our days the memory of Peninsular victories lives to fan the flame
of military ardour and national courage, so doubtless the “old man
eloquent,” whether Cavalier or Roundhead, was listened to by his
children, or grandchildren, at his knee with interest and wonder, when
he descanted on how Rupert charged at Naseby, or how the trained bands
stood the shock at Newbury.
It is curious to note how rapidly, as far as time goes, active
hostility between the late antagonists died out or simmered down. Nor
is the reason far to seek. The war was unquestionably conscientious
on both sides. Who can think otherwise when the death of Hampden on
the one hand, or of Falkland on the other, is taken into account? The
disease of political disagreement had to be cured by the stern tonic of
cold shot and sharp steel, and both antagonists in their several ways
must have sorrowed over the painful need. Certainly Falkland did. That
the antagonism so speedily ceased to be active, is strongly typical of
the English character. Fight out the battle of opinion if you will,
but when the contest is decided, then let the old friendships resume
their pleasant sway. Thus it was that within one generation many a
reconciliation had been effected, many an old sore healed; and as time
went on, the flowers of a more kindly appreciation of the good that lay
on both sides sprang up over the re-cemented factions, as the flowers
of the summer days had sprung up over the graves of Roundhead and
Cavalier.
Though Parliament had decreed that the army should be entirely
disbanded, and the operation was actually begun, it had calculated
without its host. There were many stern fanatics who viewed their loss
of power with anything but favour. Crack-brained Thomas Venner created
a rising in London of the extremest sect of religious enthusiasts, the
fifth-monarchy men, and proclaimed the reign of “King Jesus.” This
menace to the public peace arrested the total abolition of the army.
Some form of military police was evidently necessary, and therefore a
reluctant permission was given for the formation of a small force for
the “guards and garrisons” of the king. They were to be raised by him,
and paid by him out of the State allowance for the support of the royal
estate, and were not to exceed three thousand men. They consisted of
the Yeomen of the Guard, the Gentlemen-at-Arms (founded by Henry VII.
and Henry VIII. respectively), the Life and Horse Guards or “Oxford
Blues” (so called from its commanding officer, the Earl of Oxford, and
to distinguish them from a Dutch regiment of horse, which was also clad
in blue), and the Coldstream Guards, raised from Monk’s own regiment of
foot. Their duties were to hold the Tower, Portsmouth, etc., and guard
the king’s person; but in addition the “Guard” especially was “employed
as police or thief-takers, patrolling the high roads, suppressing
conventicles, and at the London playhouses keeping the peace.” The
Household Cavalry were at first called “Troops of Life Guards of
Horse,” and the 2nd, or “Queen’s Troop,” wore green facings in honour
of Queen Catherine. But the dread of an army was very slow in dying,
even with so small a force as the king could now command. As soon after
this as 1673, the Commons resolved to grant no more supplies until
secured against Popery, and in 1674 the Commons voted “that any armed
force in the kingdom, excepting the militia, was a grievance.”[16]
In case of foreign war, therefore, armies were hastily levied for
a campaign, and as hastily disbanded when hostilities ceased, and
peace was declared. Thus, after a war, the country was overrun with
discharged soldiers, who were little better than bandits. Roads were
not safe to travel, for highwaymen abounded; and a fresh war was a
relief to both robber and robbed in more ways than one. The licence
of the camp in the days of the later Stuarts (unlike the sobriety of
the “Army of the Saints”) was also not likely to furnish a peaceful
population.
Foreign wars and the constant dread of domestic broils were therefore
gradually wearing down the Parliamentary reluctance to the professional
soldier. The marriage of Charles added the 2nd Queen’s Tangier
Regiment, with its badge of the Paschal Lamb (the badge of the Royal
House of Portugal), the 3rd Buffs (or Holland Regiment, originally
the 4th in order, and so called from its facings), and the 1st Royals
(or Dumbarton’s Regiment), to the permanent Army List; while the
troops recalled from Dunkirk in 1662 became the Grenadier Guards. The
Admiral’s Regiment (so called from the Duke of York, its colonel, the
Lord High Admiral of England, and really the first force of marines)
was created before the Buffs, but soon after was incorporated in the
Guards. The occupation of Tangier had also strengthened the army by
the troop of horse that was the forerunner of the 1st Royal Dragoons,
and by a regiment that, transferred to the East India Company, became
eventually the 103rd Bombay Fusiliers. Thus, by the Peace of Nimeguen,
there had been some twenty thousand men under arms. Finally the militia
had been placed under the lords-lieutenants of counties, to whom was
granted the appointment of the officers.
In these early days, the regiments first paid nominally by the
sovereign were, as time went on, borne on the strength of three
“establishments,” Irish, Scotch, and English, a method of distributing
their cost over the sum granted for the administration respectively
of each of these sections of the State. The first of these appears in
the reign of Edward IV., the second after the union of the Scotch and
English crowns,--before which time officers of the Scottish army had
to take an oath of fealty to the Estates of Scotland, and not to the
sovereign,[17]--and the cost of each establishment slightly varied
in detail. Hence we find in the list of the Scotch Establishment of
1678, the Earl of Mar’s Fusiliers, afterwards the 21st Foot, which was
brought on the English Establishment in 1689, and dates its seniority,
therefore, from that year. The seniority of regiments was ordered by
the royal will, and depended on the date on which they came on the
English Establishment; and thus, though the Coldstream Guards had been
among the first to welcome the Restoration of the king, on the return
of the Grenadiers from Dunkirk, it was decreed that “our own Regiment
of Foot Guards shall be held and esteemed the oldest regiment.”[18]
Each company had at that time a colour, and, in the Guards only, a
company badge, but the Grenadiers seem never to have been wholly armed
with the “grenade,” and the name was only given after Waterloo, where
they had defeated the French Grenadiers. Similarly the “Royal Scots,”
constituted as a regiment in 1633, dates its seniority by order from
1661. Its nickname of “Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard” is said to have
arisen from a dispute with a French officer, who declared that _his_
regiment had been on duty the night before the Crucifixion; to which
his opponent replied, “Had _we_ been on duty, we should not have
slept on our post.” It is probably the oldest organised regiment in
existence, and is descended lineally from the Scottish Archer-Guard of
the French kings, first raised by Charles III. in the ninth century.
Naturally also the “Irish Establishment” ceased with the Union. Some of
these early regiments were possibly recruited from the London trained
bands, and it is because of this that the Royal Marines, the 3rd
Battalion Grenadier Guards, the Royal London Militia, and the 3rd Buffs
claim the right, shared by no other foot regiment, of marching through
the city with fixed bayonets, drums beating, and colours flying.
At first, too, regiments were known by the name of their colonel; and
the numbers and definite regulations as to the colour and clothing of
regiments were not issued until 1751. Territorial designations were
added to the numbers in 1782, and the present titles were given in 1881.
So that when Charles II. died, the fear of Puritan risings and the
beginning of a foreign policy which the occupation of Tangier had
initiated, and which the war with the Dutch in 1665, and that with
the French three years later, emphasised, led to the permanent
organisation, as regiments, of the Grenadier, Coldstream, and Scots
Fusilier Guards, the 1st Royals, the 2nd Queen’s, and the 3rd Buffs,
with the 1st and 2nd Life Guards and the Horse Guards. The standing
army had thus increased from three thousand to about eight thousand
men. The cavalry regiments were formed of from three to eight troops,
and the foot regiments had twelve companies. Though dressed in
scarlet, the relics of body armour were long retained in the cuirass,
and, with the men, the pot helmet in addition; but the officers wore
plumed hats. The arms of the mounted troops were sword and carbine,
with pistols having barrels fourteen inches long, and throwing a ball
of fourteen to the pound. The infantry carried, some the sixteen-foot
pike, and others a musket of a calibre similar to the pistol, the
cartridges of which were carried in a bandolier. The bandolier was a
leather belt worn over the shoulder, from which depended a series of
small wooden boxes, each containing a charge: the bullets were carried
in a bag, whence the present name of “ball-bag” for the soldier’s
ammunition pouch is derived. Before beginning to load, the bullet was
frequently placed in the mouth.
During this period, too, the bayonet was introduced, but at first was a
simple dagger screwed or stuck in the muzzle of the firelock, and known
as a “plug-bayonet.” It took its name from Bayonne, where it was first
made, and is first mentioned in a British Royal Warrant of 1672 in the
armament of a regiment of dragoons who were to have “the matchlock
musket, a collar of bandoliers, and a bayonet or great knife.”
But perhaps the most noteworthy reminiscence of those days is the
foundation of Chelsea Hospital for old and disabled soldiers, for which
the army has to thank that somewhat notorious lady, Nell Gwynne.
Tradition has it that, struck by the appeal of a beggar who had been
wounded in war, she persuaded her royal lover to found this beneficent
institution, and proved again to the army that women are at the bottom
of most things, whether they be good or bad. As a set-off to this,
the normal impecuniosity of Charles II. had led to the sale of army
commissions, and to the institution of the system of promotion by
purchase, which lasted until 1872.
The accession of James II., and the consequent rebellion of Monmouth
in the interest, nominally, of Protestantism, led to the first serious
increase of the standing army; but again it is curious to note that
Monmouth’s own manifesto at Lyme Regis, where he landed, brings
prominently forward the proposal to have no standing army at all, but
only the militia. This is proof positive, if such were needed, that a
permanent military force, such as it then was, was still unpopular in
England.
There was no fighting worth mentioning in James’s reign save at
Sedgmoor, and there the only noteworthy points are the failure of
the night attack, through faulty and imperfect reconnaissance; and
the fact that Sergeant Weems of the 1st Royals received a gratuity
of £40 for serving the “great guns in an emergency.” The true use of
artillery was not understood, evidently, and the guns were attached
to infantry regiments (as they were later, and singly, to cavalry
squadrons), and James organised an “ordnance regiment” armed with
fusils, for the protection of his artillery, which finally became the
Royal Fusiliers. The only point of interest in the dreary slaughter of
the vanquished after the battle of Sedgmoor, in which the Somersetshire
clown, ill-armed and wounded, showed the greatest gallantry, is the
stern repression exercised by Colonel Kirke of the 2nd Queen’s, whose
regimental badge of the Paschal Lamb acquired an ominous significance
when applied to the cruelties inflicted by his men after the rebels
were defeated. “Kirke’s Lambs,” they were named, in derision, from
their regimental badge. Sedgmoor was the last serious battle fought on
English soil.
But the army had largely increased none the less. The troops at
Tangiers had been recalled. The king dreamed of using the army as a
means of overawing the country, and formed at Hounslow the first camp
of exercise for field manœuvres. But this effort to gain the army’s
support was made in vain. The 12th Regiment grounded its arms _en
masse_ rather than agree to support the repeal of the Test Penal Law;
the cheering of the soldiery at the acquittal of the Seven Bishops was
an unpleasant reminder that they were not with him in sympathy; and
the effort to introduce Irish Catholics in numbers into the purely
Protestant regiments met with the strongest opposition. “No man of
English blood,” says Macaulay, “then regarded the aboriginal Irish as
his countrymen; the very language spoken by the Irish was different
from their own.” No wonder, therefore, that there was friction, such as
found its full expression in the resignation of their commissions by
the colonel and five captains of the 8th Foot--resignations which were
not accepted, the offenders being tried by court martial and cashiered.
It is curious to note that Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough,
thought the sentence inadequate.
So the army as a whole proved but a rotten reed to the second James.
An increase to the standing army, which all feared, an oppressive
use of the billeting law, and an evident desire to employ martial
law, cost him his crown. So that when the Prince of Orange landed in
Tor Bay there was little active opposition. The Dutch troops won the
admiration of the invaded by their discipline, admirable equipment, and
good behaviour; and so, to the tune of what at the time was a popular
air, “Lillibulero bullen a la,” William marched on through Windsor
to London, and became king. Still there was a considerable number of
men in the ranks who were but lukewarm adherents to the Dutch-born
sovereign, and all Ireland was still openly and avowedly hostile. The
army by this time had been increased by six regiments of horse (now
the 1st to the 6th Dragoon Guards): the 1st Royal Dragoons (brought
on the English Establishment in 1683); the 2nd Dragoons (at first on
the Scotch Establishment in 1681); the 3rd and 4th Light Dragoons (now
Hussars); the 4th to the 14th Regiments of the line; the 15th (on the
Scotch Establishment apparently), and the 16th, which was created,
disbanded and re-formed later. The 18th Regiment had been formed in
Ireland before this, out of a number of independent Irish companies,
and was on the Irish Establishment, but did not receive its numerical
seniority until later.
Peace, with such conflicting elements as Irish Romanists, English
Protestants, Scotch Jacobites, and the Dutch elements introduced into
the country, could not be of long duration. The smouldering embers
of civil war broke into a flame both in the West and North. For James
had, with French support, landed in Ireland, and was received with the
greatest enthusiasm; while in Scotland some thousands of Highlanders
were in arms, under Claverhouse, now Viscount Dundee. Against them,
Mackay, with the 21st, the King’s Own Borderers or Edinburgh Regiment,
and the 13th, with some irregulars, was despatched. He met them at
Killiecrankie, where the Highland charge broke the more disciplined
ranks, but the battle, which only lasted two minutes, says an old
writer with obvious exaggeration, was practically terminated by
the death of Dundee. The officers who had then been under arms for
their king retired to France, and, after undergoing the bitterest
privations, were formed into a company of ordinary soldiers under
their own officers. This “gentlemen company” behaved with the utmost
bravery whenever engaged. In 1697 they attacked an island in the Rhine
with such headlong bravery that it still bears the name of “Isle
d’Ecosse,” and the Marquis de Sella signed himself with the cross when
he personally thanked each officer for what he and his men had done.
In these isolated cases of determined courage, not confined to the
English, but displayed equally by the Irish Brigade or by Scottish
regiments serving in foreign armies, the true camaraderie of those who
serve under the “Union Jack” as soldiers, it may be hoped, will always
be found.
The troubles in Ireland were more prolonged and serious, and required a
further addition to the army of the 7th “Horse,” the 6th Dragoons, and
the 7th Dragoons. The 18th, weeded of the Roman Catholic recruits, was
reorganised; and also appeared the 17th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd (raised
by that staunch Protestant the Duke of Norfolk in Wiltshire); and the
23rd (formed by Lord Herbert of Cherbury in Wales with its badge of the
Black Prince, the rising sun, the red dragon, the three feathers, and
the motto _Ich Dien_; it is headed on parade even now by a white goat,
and its marching-past air is the “Men of Harlech”); the 25th (enlisted
eight hundred strong in two hours by Lord Leven for the defence of
Edinburgh, and having for its gallantry afterwards, at Killiecrankie,
the right of “beating up” the town of Edinburgh for recruits without
the “special permission of the provost”); while the 26th, or
Cameronians, was enrolled in one day two hundred strong without any
beat of drum, and was punctiliously careful that their officers should
be “men such as in conscience they could submit to,” and required
besides a chaplain “an elder to each of its twenty companies.” Finally,
the 27th and 28th Regiments were added to the gradually increasing
standing army. This was at the direct instigation and at the direct
appeal of William III.; but the Commons, in agreeing to the proposed
increase, only did so on the condition that it was to be paid by the
State, and not out of the royal purse. It was the beginning of the
Parliamentary recognition of a real standing army paid by taxation. The
24th was also raised in Ireland about the same time, and was therefore
borne on that establishment; as also was the 5th Dragoons.
Many of these regiments served in the Irish campaign in which the
sieges of Londonderry and Enniskillen by James stand out so prominently
on the one side, as do the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim on the
other.
The latter battle was not of long duration, and was decisive. The
combatants were distinguished on the one side by green boughs in
their hats, and the Irish by white paper. The 23rd behaved with great
gallantry, and the spurs of Major Toby Purcell, who led the regiment on
that day, are still preserved by the senior major for the time being.
It is unnecessary to enter fully into the details of the campaign or
its battles; but it may be well to record that of existing regiments,
the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th of the line, the 1st, 6th, and 7th
among the cavalry, and the 8th, 9th, 12th, 13th, 18th, 20th, 22nd,
23rd, and 27th Regiments of foot fought in the Irish wars, though the
Dutch regiment claimed to have borne the brunt of battle at the Boyne
in 1690, where old Marshal Schomberg fell. But the battle of Aughrim
in 1691 practically completed the conquest of Ireland, and the fall
of Limerick led to the exile of thousands of brave Irishmen, who
preferred service in France to the English yoke, and who formed the
nucleus of that “Irish Brigade” whose gallantry is conspicuous in all
the battle history of that time. In no case is this more conspicuous
than in the defence of Cremona in 1702, where Burke’s and Dillon’s
regiments lost fully one-third of their strength, and by their own
desperate fighting forced Eugene to abandon an assault that at first
seemed likely to be successful. Well might the contemporary poet write
of them--
“News, news in Vienna! King Leopold’s sad.
News, news in St. James’s! King William is mad.
News, news in Versailles! Let the Irish Brigade
Be loyally honoured and royally paid.
News, news in old Ireland! High rises her pride,
And high sounds her wail for the brave who have died,
And deep is her prayer--‘God send I may see
Macdonell and Mahoney fighting for me!’”
So with the continental part of the war with France, in which William
had allied himself with the Netherlands, the Austrian empire, and
others, because of the aggressive and menacing aspect of Louis XIV.,
was resuscitated the renown of the English infantry. At Steinkirke
fought the predecessors of the Horse Guards, the 4th Hussars, the
3rd, 4th, and 6th Dragoons, the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards, the
4th, 6th, 7th, 10th, and 16th Foot, the 19th, 21st, the 1st Royals,
the 25th, and the 26th battalions of the line; and so close was the
action that “in the hedge fighting their fire was generally muzzle to
muzzle, the hedge only separating the combatants.” Ten battalions of
British troops held in check thirty of the French, and one battalion
alone “drove four battalions of the enemy from their cannon.” Here it
was that “Corporal Trim”--really Corporal James Butler--was ridden
down in the retreat, and where he blames Count Solmes: “‘He had saved
five battalions, an please your reverence, every soul of them. There
was Cutts’,’ continued the corporal, clapping the forefinger of his
right hand upon the thumb of his left, and counting round his hand,
‘there was Cutts’, Mackay’s, Angus’s, Graham’s, and Leven’s, all cut
to pieces; and so had the English Life Guards too, had it not been for
some regiments on the right, who marched up boldly to their relief,
and received the enemy’s fire in their faces before any one of their
platoons discharged a musket. They’ll go to heaven for it,’ added Trim.
‘Trim is right,’ said my Uncle Toby.” Landen, too, where were present
the Coldstreams, Scots Guards, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 16th Foot, etc.,
as well as much cavalry, and Neerwinden, showed the extraordinary
gallantry of the British troops, especially of the 6th Carabineers, and
on that field fell Count Solmes himself, as well as one of the most
gallant of the Irish leaders in the Boyne campaign--Sarsfield, who was
shot, though not at the head of the Irish Brigade he loved so well. It
was one of the bloodiest battles of the time, and the stubborn fighting
of both sides resulted in 20,000 dead being left on the field. The next
summer the soil so fertilised “broke forth into millions of poppies,”
and it seemed as if “the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet
was literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood and
refusing to cover the slain.”
Finally the siege of Namur stands out prominently as the marked success
in the campaign, and gives to one regiment, the 18th, the motto of
“_Virtutis Namurcensis Præmium_.” It lost 297 of all ranks in the final
attack. The regiments present in this famous siege were 1st, 5th,
6th, 7th Dragoon Guards, the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Dragoons, the 4th and
7th Light Dragoons, the 5th, 15th, 18th, and 19th Foot, forming one
division to keep in check the relieving force of Marshal Villeroy. The
other was composed of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 16th, and 17th Foot,
to carry out the actual siege operations. The greatest gallantry was
shown throughout by both sides; but the place finally fell, and it is
curious to note the punctiliousness of the soldiers of those days in
that Marshal Boufflers, though all the fortress had been captured save
only the castle, and though Villeroy was powerless to raise the siege,
would not capitulate without an assault. Unnecessary as it was, it was
undertaken, at the cost of 2000 men, and for the first time a great
fortress was surrendered by a French marshal to a British general.
Here it was that Sterne’s “Captain Shandy” was wounded in the groin
before the gate of St. Nicholas. Lord, formerly Colonel, Cutts, of the
regiment that bore his name, and to which another novelistic hero (this
time one of Thackeray’s), in the person of “Count Maximilian Gustavus
Adolphus von Galgenstein,” is presumed to have belonged, behaved with
his usual gallantry; and, says contemporaneous authority, “the bravery
of our infantry was very remarkable, for they forced the enemy from
several posts where they were very well lodged.”
Of this Cutts, the colonel of a regiment of old time, it is said that
“few considerable actions happened in the wars in which he was not,
and hath been wounded in all the actions in which he served”; and
again: “In that bull-dog courage which flinches from no danger, however
terrible, he was unrivalled.” There was no difficulty in finding hardy
volunteers, German, Dutch, and British, to go on a forlorn hope; but
Cutts was the only man who appeared to consider such an expedition as
a party of pleasure. He was so much at his ease in the hottest fire of
the French batteries that his soldiers gave him the honourable name of
“The Salamander.” He was a fighting man of the time; became baronet
first, and was then raised to the peerage, and of him it was written--
“The warlike Cutts the welcome tidings brings,
The true, brave servant of the best of kings--
Cutts, whose known worth no herald need proclaim,
His wounds and his own worth can speak his fame.”
Still, with all that, he had not enough science to make a general.
During this period armour was still gradually being abandoned, though
the cuirass was worn by mounted troops and to some extent by the
officers of the line regiments. The beaver hats of the cavalry were
lined with steel and the legs were protected by heavy jack-boots. The
ranks of the infantry had been reduced to six, and were still further
being lessened in depth. The companies, about 100 strong, still had,
in 1680, 30 pikemen, 60 matchlock men, and 10 men armed with a light
fusil to pick off conspicuous leaders; but three years later the
English Guards were furnished with “snaphaunce” muskets, with flint,
or pyrites, locks, and the bandoliers were replaced by pouches. In
1695, the king directed that the “cap” was to be worn by the Royal and
Scots Fusiliers and the Grenadiers of each regiment. The others wore
the three-cornered hat. The company was by then 60 strong, with only
14 pikemen, and the officers carried pikes, partisans, or half-pikes.
Pikes were not entirely abandoned until about 1705.
The pay of the cavalry soldier was 1s. 6d. per day, out of which he had
to keep his horse; that of the private was but 8d. per day. The cavalry
regiments were organised in four squadrons, much as they are now, and
were being armed with sword and pistol. The artillery alone were only
partly organised as an “arm” of battle, and had made little progress
save in construction from the time of the Civil War; but the necessity
for military engineers had arisen, and Captain Burgh and Lieutenant
Wallace remained “with the forces engaged in the siege of the castle
(of Namur) in the capacity of engineers.”
But the growth of the permanent army had been steady. By the time
Charles II. died, there were about 16,500 men enrolled, of whom about
one-half were now regulars; in 1697 the total home and field army
which has been variously estimated at from 80,000 to 65,000 men,
had been again reduced--this time to what was liberally supposed to
be the number on the English Establishment after Nimeguen, or about
10,000 men; but William’s proposal to permanently increase the army
to 20,000 met with the greatest opposition. An amendment that the
army in England should consist only of 7000 men, and those entirely
British, was carried, and thus the Dutch guards of the king were
disbanded, though apparently there were still some 12,000 men on the
Irish Establishment and about 4000 on the Scotch, while there had been
no objection to voting 15,000 men for the fleet. With this branch of
our national defence there has always been greater liberality and less
suspicion. This at least was mainly, if not entirely, defensive, was
the absolutely necessary protector of our commerce, and could never
have been a serious menace, so men seemed to think, to the peace or
liberties of the realm. The amalgamation of the English and Scotch
Establishments in 1707 had given precedence to the infantry in the case
of the Royal Scots, but had placed the cavalry second, in the case of
the Scots Greys, though they had been raised in 1681.
Still the army had much improved. The introduction of the first Mutiny
Act in 1689, giving Parliamentary authority for officers to punish
men for mutiny and desertion without reference to civil law, a power
hitherto denied to them in Great Britain during peace, still further
recognised the standing army as a constitutional force, besides the
militia, which had been up to that time theoretically the only one;
for it was not permanently paid or embodied. But before King William’s
time the “method of voting men and money for the army annually had been
introduced, to some extent.”
The distinguished gallantry of the men at Landen, Steinkirke, and
Namur had called forth the reluctant admiration of foreign powers,
and had converted this country into a power having Continental as
well as insular interests:--“the English subaltern was inferior to no
subaltern, and the English private soldier to no soldier in courage.”
This criticism speaks for itself.
It is curious to notice how the political centre of gravity had
changed. Before this time English armies had indeed fought Continental
battles, but they were largely those in which only our real or fancied
personal interests were concerned. Now, however, the English flag was
to fly in causes alien to her own personal interests, and valuable only
to the king and the country the king loved. For Holland first of all
was really at the bottom of the “soldier king’s” action in leading the
armies of Great Britain. His interests had always been Continental,
and his personal influence, as well as other less important factors,
was leading this country to assert herself and display her military
value in his own national interest That William had some military
skill is evident, but his action was rather that of a brave soldier
than that of a great commander. By his own often reckless exposure,
he aroused the spirits of his soldiery, and he did not fear to face
danger, as Landen, where his clothes were several times pierced with
bullets, proved. Yet, though apparently respected, he was little liked.
The “asthmatic skeleton” who at Neerwinden “covered the slow retreat
of England” had roused irritation among the officers. Dutch generals
had been forced into high commands for which they showed no special
capacity. Neither Schomberg nor Ginckel in Ireland had displayed marked
ability; and Solmes at Steinkirke had evidenced an incomprehensible
apathy in going to the help of Mackay’s British contingent; while,
after Aughrim, when Ginckel had been raised to the peerage as Earl
of Athlone, the veteran Mackay was left out in the cold. The British
officers felt the incompetency of these foreign leaders, and also in
the above battle that English soldiers had been sacrificed to save the
Dutch Blues. The defeat at Neerwinden cost the army sixty-nine cannon
and sixty standards. So often were Dutch and English colours captured
in these early wars, that the Prince of Condé called King William
the “Upholsterer of Nôtre Dame,” from the number of banners he had
surrendered for the decoration of that building! The two medals for
Landen, or Neerwinden, which the king struck, and which have the title
“Invictissimus Guillemus Mag.,” have little significance, therefore.
The men fought magnificently; the generalship was of no high order on
the Allied side; and the results were meagre.
But if the officers cared little for the Dutch prince, the rank and
file were not likely on their side to feel affection for a sovereign
who introduced flogging into the army and keel-hauling into the navy.
And, lastly, the cost of these wars, which were directly designed for
the defence of Holland, cost this country some £33,000,000 of money and
the establishment of a National Debt.
But Irish disturbance and foreign war had brought to the front the
greatest soldier that this country has produced, and who was to
carry the glory of the British army to the highest point. It was of
Marlborough that, with regard to Ireland, the popular remark was
made that “he had achieved more important results in one month, than
the king’s phlegmatic Dutch friend had done in two campaigns”; it
was of him that Prince Vaudemont, no mean judge, spoke, when he told
the king that “there is something in the Earl of Marlborough that is
inexpressible; for the fire of Kirke, the thought of Lanier, the skill
of Mackay, and the bravery of Colchester seem united in his person;
and I have lost my knowledge of physiognomy, if any subject you have
can ever attain to such military glory as this combination of sublime
perfections must advance him.”
He was not merely a fighting man, he was an educated soldier. His
apprenticeship in France had shown him the value of discipline, and
under William he was able and encouraged to enforce it. But he was
above all a student of the art of war, and so left little to chance,
for he recognised that “war is not a conjectural art,” but a science.
This was the man whom William, on his deathbed, commended to the coming
queen as the fittest man to “conduct her armies or preside over her
councils.” He was head and shoulders above the brave and hard-fighting
Anglo-Dutch king in military genius, without a doubt. But “the weak
point in his position was, that it depended on the personal favour of
a stupid woman. When his wife lost her influence over Queen Anne, his
political antagonists in England found no great difficulty in bringing
about his disgrace.”