THE PENINSULAR ARMY: (_a_) ITS MAKING--1793-1808
Peace--general peace at all events--had reigned from 1783 to 1789,
when the French Revolution broke out. With the merits or demerits of
that great struggle this story has nothing to do; but none the less
the overthrow of the monarchy of France not only created an almost
continuous condition of war for a quarter of a century, but helped most
materially to raise to the highest pitch the Continental opinion as
to the military value of Great Britain. Its naval strength throughout
that quarter of a century was most fully proved. It remained for the
stubborn fighting power of the land forces to be displayed during the
same eventful period. French anger, English panic, had dragged the
latter into open war with France, and that not without allies. All the
world began by being against the new Republic: small wonder, then, that
in her new-born freedom she turned bitterly against her world-wide
antagonists, and fought them all. That she did not fully conquer
them was largely due to one small State--England. The wealth of the
latter, even then comparatively greater than the Continent, her naval
preponderance, infinitely greater, as events proved, than that of her
antagonist, though her numerical fighting strength as compared with the
Continental powers was but small, and her insular position, made her
eventually almost the arbiter of Europe, when the great struggle drew
to an end.
As usual, the actual number of the army throughout the years from 1793
to 1808 constantly varied. The 150,000 men under arms in 1780 was
reduced to 40,000 the next year, was increased the year after to about
55,000 in Great Britain, and fell in 1784 to 18,000 at home, 12,000 in
the “Plantations,” and some 6000 in India. The provision for the latter
force was made by a new and special vote. The importance of the growing
empire in the East was being at last recognised.
The system of levying troops continued much the same. Men were enlisted
voluntarily by heavy bounties, and when that attraction failed, the
pressgang, or even the prisons, was then employed to raise recruits.
Unless disbanded at the end of a campaign, they served for life, or
till worn out; but the dawn of a short-service system appeared in 1805,
when the period of service was fixed at seventeen years.[32]
But the continued necessity for an increased army, and the dread of
serious invasion that obtained, and not without reason, during the
closing days of the eighteenth and the early days of the nineteenth
centuries, was fast wearing down the old civil dislike. Officers on
half-pay were rendered liable to trial by court martial. The militia
system was introduced into Scotland, and the Shropshire Regiment
was the first of the English militia to serve in that country,
while greater care was taken as regards home defence. France was
not content with a mere defensive rôle; but attempted, though with
extreme feebleness, to carry the war into her enemy’s territory. She
had threatened to land at Ilfracombe and then in Pembrokeshire; and
actually did so at Castlebar during the Irish insurrection of 1797-98,
though with no result save that of having to surrender. Ireland in that
year had required, as she has before and since, a large garrison, and
seven regiments of cavalry and four of infantry had been necessary to
put down the rising that was practically crushed at Vinegar Hill.
The pay of the rank and file remained much the same, 1s. a day for a
private; but the stoppage for the food ration out of it amounted to
6½d. Still the army was everywhere growing in esteem and in popularity.
Decorations and brevets were largely bestowed in 1795, after the return
of the army from foreign service. Frequent reviews, at which George
III. and the Prince of Wales attended, were held. The Duke of York was
a popular Commander-in-Chief, and did much to improve the discipline
of the army. He was so well liked by the men as to win the name of the
“Soldier’s Friend,” a title which his founding the “Royal Military
Asylum” for the education of soldiers’ children emphasised. Under his
auspices, too, and helped by Sir David Dundas, the somewhat varied and
irregular systems of drill were made uniform by the introduction of the
first real drill-book, the _Rules and Regulations for the Formations,
Field Exercise, and Movements of His Majesty’s Forces_, in 1792.
At that time Prussia was looked on as the great schoolmaster in the
art-military, as France was later, and as Germany is now. The English
army has been mainly a copyist of other people’s methods since the
century began. If, after the Crimea or the Italian campaign of 1859,
we adopted kepi-shaped hats, baggy “pegtop” trousers, and “booted
overalls” for riding, so, when Germany became successful, we copied her
“Blucher boots,” flat-topped forage-caps, infantry helmet, and rank
distinctions!
In this case, too, the Prussian system was the basis of our drill
instruction, and, with but slight modifications, so remained until
1870, when linear formations gave place to extended order.
The pace was increased from 75 to 80 per minute for the ordinary march
or movement, but one of 120 (our present quick march) was permitted
for wheeling and such minor manœuvres! The ranks were, when the book
first appeared, three deep, as obtained in Germany, until the death
of the late Emperor; but light infantry were allowed to form two deep
before skirmishing. The battalion had ten companies, including the
flank or “Light” and “Grenadier” companies. The absolute rigidity of
the line was insisted on. To be able to form line from open column
without either making gaps or causing crowding was the essence of good
drill; and hence, the “march past,” if well executed, was really then
a true test of the efficiency of a battalion. Other editions of this
drill-book were published in 1809, 1815, and 1817, but in 1808, the
three-rank formation was abolished for active service. It has been
surmised that the necessity, with the small armies we despatched in
these days, of this reduction in depth was made in order that a wider
front might be offered to the frequently numerical superiority of our
adversaries.[33]
In all our early campaigns, notoriously those of the Marlborough
period, the British infantry had shone in the offensive. From the
steady advance against Blenheim to the vigorous dash at Lincelles, it
had shown how capable it was of attacking even against enormous odds.
And yet from 1800 almost until now there has been an impression that
our army is better on the defensive than in the attack. Even after
Waterloo, Müffling writes: “I felt a strong conviction that if fortune
so far favoured us in a battle that the English army could act on the
defensive, while the Prussians acted simultaneously on the offensive,
we should obtain a brilliant victory over Napoleon.” Unfounded as such
an idea was, if the military history of the past be examined, there is
no doubt it remained a tradition for long after the battle that proved
once again the undaunted steadiness of the British line.
But the main change was in the extension of the principle of
skirmishing which the American war had introduced. For a long time the
“light companies” of battalions were designed to cover the front of
the line during its advance and protect it while manœuvring. Built up
for specific purpose into battalions, they formulated a drill of their
own; which General Dundas in his _Principles of Military Movements_
condemns. The rapid movements adopted met with little favour from an
officer imbued with the stiff rigidity of Prussian drill-sergeants.
“The importance of light infantry has more particularly tended to
establish this practice. During the late war their service was
conspicuous, and their gallantry and exertions have met with merited
applause. But instead of being considered as an accessory to the
battalion, they have become the principal feature of our army, and have
almost put grenadiers out of fashion. The showy exercise, the airy
dress, the independent modes which they have adopted, have caught the
minds of young officers, and made them imagine that these ought to be
general and exclusive.”
All this the drill-book of 1792 was designed to remedy, but though
it produced uniformity, which was valuable, it failed to check the
development of permanent light infantry battalions, such as composed
the magnificent Light Brigade of the Peninsular days.
But when, in 1804, a Camp of Instruction was formed at Shorncliffe
under General John Moore, a new era to some extent began. Moore did
not favour the rigid drill of Dundas’s drill-book of 1792. He “d--d
the Eighteen Manœuvres,” which were looked on as essential for a
well-trained regiment to undergo. He introduced the system of light
infantry drill which was the basis of all such work in our army and
in our drill-books up to 1870; and the regiments he trained, the
4th, 52nd, 57th, 59th, and 95th, came nobly to the front when the
time arrived. The general was knighted a year later, and the 52nd
presented him with a diamond star, valued at 350 guineas, in token
of their appreciation of his services; while as colonel of the first
regiment named officially “Light Infantry,” he chose for one of the
supporters of his coat of arms a light infantry soldier. The other was
a Highlander, in remembrance of the help one of the 92nd had given him
when wounded at Egmont-op-Zee.
Abroad, the formations were generally columnar, more or less, and the
movements of these dense bodies was covered, as was the line elsewhere,
by skirmishers from the light (flank) companies or light infantry
battalions. The French also had foreshadowed two modern improvements in
the use of balloons at Fleurus and the introduction of telegraphy by
means of semaphores. In England, on the other hand, General Congreve
had invented the war-rocket in 1805, and two years before, Sir Henry
Shrapnell the “spherical case,” which afterwards took his name and
which was first used with effect at Vimiera.
Fighting was tolerably general in Europe from 1793 to the Peace of
Amiens in 1802. We had been fighting at sea with the French in Lord
Howe’s victory of the 1st June and at the Nile, with the Spanish at
Cape St. Vincent, and the Danes at Copenhagen. We had occupied Toulon
at the request of French Royalists, and been compelled to abandon it,
very largely through the action of a young officer of artillery named
Bonaparte. There had been practically three campaigns in Flanders. The
Duke of York, with the 14th, 37th, 53rd, etc., and a brigade of Guards,
had been despatched to Holland, where the latter, but three battalions
strong, routed an entrenched force of 5000 men, so that “The French,
who had been accustomed to the cold, lifeless attacks of the Dutch,
were amazed at the spirit and intrepidity of the British.” For this the
brigade bears the name of Lincelles on their colours. The 14th also
displayed the greatest coolness at Famars, young soldiers though they
were; for, attacking with too much impetuosity, their colonel made them
halt and re-form, and when thus steadied, took them into action again,
the band playing them to victory with the French Revolutionary tune of
_Ça ira_. Ever afterwards the tune is played after dinner at mess, and
is the regimental march. The attack on Dunkirk, however, failed, and
the duke returned home.
The next year he returned, and the campaign, embittered by an order
of Republican France to give no quarter to wounded or prisoners,
re-opened. In the brilliant little cavalry action at Villers en Couche
the 15th Light Dragoons especially distinguished themselves, and
for their gallantry, as well as for saving the life of the Emperor
of Germany, eight of the officers were decorated with the cross of
the order of Maria Theresa; while at Cateau the Royals fought so
brilliantly that £500 was given to the regiment by the Duke of York’s
orders.
The success was but temporary. The French concentrated overwhelming
numbers, and the army fell back on Antwerp, and then to Holland,
and suffered terribly in the dreadful winter of 1794. The stubborn
resistance of the rearguard, composed of the 14th, 37th, and 53rd,
supported on the flanks by the skilful and bold work of the 7th, 15th,
and 16th cavalry regiments, prevented a disaster which the indifference
or probable disaffection of the Dutch troops did not tend to lessen;
and finally, the dispirited but unbeaten force, abandoning its stores
and spiking the guns it could not take with it, reached Bremen. The
horrors of that dreadful march, begun on the 6th January 1795, are
only equalled by the retreat from Moscow of a French army later; but
the discipline and endurance of the troops was beyond all praise. The
contemporary records especially mention the Guards, the 27th, 33rd,
42nd, 44th, and 78th Regiments for their splendid discipline. The 28th,
too, were notorious for their strong regimental feeling. “Hospitals
were their aversion. Their home was the battalion, and they were
never happy away from it.” Of all the regiments, the hardy Scotsmen
of the 42nd fared best; and in this disastrous campaign, honourable
in all its details save that of mere success, another young officer,
Arthur Wellesley of the 33rd, first saw fire at Boxtel. Thus the end
of the last century was to give the early war-training to two great
antagonists--Napoleon at Toulon and Wellington at Boxtel. This alone
would render the military history of 1794-95 interesting to all who
read.
But the eighteenth century was to see yet another campaign in the
Netherlandic area. It had not been, on the whole, peculiarly favourable
to British arms, and the last campaign there was to be no exception to
the rule.
For, notwithstanding that the duke had the active co-operation of such
men as Ralph Abercromby and John Moore, not much came of it. The allied
Russians and British made little headway against the French with the
“Batavian Republic,” and a check at Alkmaar, followed by a victory at
Egmont-op-Zee on the 2nd October 1799 where, according to the duke,
“under Divine Providence,” the French were entirely defeated, and where
the Royals, the 20th, 25th, 49th, 63rd, 79th, and 92nd did their duty,
practically terminated the Helder campaign. For, after an armistice,
the British troops left the Netherlands, never to fight seriously in
that district until the final victory of 1815, when Wellington, who
first saw battle there, was to terminate a series of wars for which the
Low Countries had for more than a century been the “cockpit.”
The landing of the army in Walcheren ten years later may be
disregarded. Except in the capture of Flushing, there was practically
no fighting. The real enemy was fever, and out of the forty thousand
men who had been disembarked, thirty-five thousand had been in
hospital. The plan of operation was initially bad, the carrying out
worse. Between Chatham on shore and Strachan at sea there was so little
intelligent co-operation that each abused the other for what was
clearly the fact, that
“The Earl of Chatham, with his sword drawn,
Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan;
Sir Richard, longing to be at ’em,
Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham.”
As Napoleon himself remarked at one time, “Before six weeks, of the
fifteen thousand troops which are in the Isle of Walcheren not fifteen
hundred will be left, the rest will be in hospital. The expedition has
been undertaken under false expectations and planned in ignorance.”
This is the grim and gruesome truth. With the above exception, then,
the theatre of war after the expedition to the Helder was, for many a
year, as far as the British army was concerned, changed. The increasing
importance of India was beginning to be felt. Napoleon, far seeing, had
recognised this, and first put into French minds the value of Egypt.
Though there was no canal, as there is now, it was still geographically
the shortest road to the East. Then, as now, Egypt was a station on
the line that united Great Britain with Eastern possessions that were
but embryos of what they are now. The one striking point in the vast
and ambitious intellect of the greatest soldier the world has seen,
Alexander and Cæsar not excepted, is his grasp of the political future
of the nations of Europe. Intuitively he saw the worth of Egypt to the
great dominant naval powers, England and France. His views were almost
prophetic, his ideas magnificent.
Notwithstanding the disaster to the French of Aboukir Bay, he decided
on contending in Africa for the possession of Asia. What a stupendous
genius the man had! How astounding the rise of the young officer of
artillery, who fought against his fellow-patriots of Corsica, who drove
the British out of Toulon, and who was soon to be the dominant soul in
all Europe! “Who could have believed that a simple sub-lieutenant of
artillery, a stranger to France by name and by birth, was destined to
govern that great Empire and to give the law in a manner to all the
Continent, in defiance of reason, justice, the hereditary rights of the
legitimate princes of the realm, and the combined efforts of so great a
number of loyalists in the interior of the kingdom, and all the Great
Powers of Europe.”
In 1799 he had gone to Egypt with a considerable force. It is strange
to think that such a thing was possible with British fleets on the
seas. But it was so, and it only shows how the element of surprise, how
the want of telegraph and the absence of steam, rendered the occupation
of Egypt possible at all. It could not be so now. But then, before the
danger was really grasped, the French had practically conquered Egypt,
and were in full occupation of both Cairo and Alexandria. And these
practically meant the country, and the closing of our highway to the
East.
He returned to France in 1800, when the conditions of Continental war
were, as far as England was concerned, desperate. The expeditions to
the Netherlands had been productive of but little, to say the least.
The only chance for England, and that was based merely on the striking
at the enemy’s armed strength and not with the view of protecting the
Eastern Empire which Napoleon had seen the importance of threatening,
was to try conclusions with the French in Egypt when their great chief
was absent in France. The expedition, consisting of the Guards, the
1st, 54th (two battalions), and 92nd, and the 8th, 13th, 19th, and
90th, the 2nd, 50th, and 79th, and the 18th, 30th, 44th, and 89th, and
others, with a reserve composed of some companies of the 23rd, the
28th, 42nd, and cavalry brigade of some companies of the 11th Dragoons,
the 12th and 26th Dragoons, and some mounted infantry, started. It was
under the guidance of the best and most experienced general of the
time, Sir Ralph Abercromby, whose leading spirit was Sir John Moore.
The force landed. The 23rd, 28th, and 42nd were the first to leap on
shore, though the casualties were numerous under the fire of fifteen
guns and many infantry, while the Royals, the 54th, and 58th did
equally good work farther along the beach. The marines shared in the
honours of the landing, and subsequent events gave them the title of
“Royal” from the Egyptian campaign of 1801. Of them there is a legend
of a curious speech made by a captain of the corps before his men
debarked. Looking out of a porthole at the sombre masses of the enemy
that were assembled to oppose the landing, he turned to his men and
said, “Look here! Those fellows on shore there are the French, and that
is the land of Egypt. If you don’t, therefore, help to give them a d--d
good thrashing, you will soon find yourself in the house of bondage!”
So, with sundry skirmishes, especially that at Mandora, where the 92nd
displayed conspicuous gallantry, the army pushed on to the battlefield
outside Alexandria, where they took up an entrenched position between
the dry bed of Lake Mareotis and the sea. Here, at daybreak on the 21st
March 1801, they were attacked by General Menou, who, making a feint
at the British left with the Dromedary Corps, vigorously attacked the
right, where the 28th, 42nd, and 23rd were posted. But every attack
was repulsed, even when ammunition failed, and the defence had to be
conducted with the bayonet alone. The 28th, assailed in front and rear
when in line by cavalry, fought back to back, and ever since have been
distinguished by having the regimental number or badge on the back as
well as the front of their headdress. The victory was dearly bought,
for Abercromby was mortally hurt, and 1306 men, with 70 officers, were
killed or wounded. Shortly after Cairo was occupied, and Alexandria,
first blockaded, soon surrendered.
The employment of a camel corps was a forecast of what would be done
when next an English army fought on Egyptian soil, but there is even
another point of resemblance. For as an Indian brigade co-operated
with the home army at Tel-el-Kebir, so in this campaign a force under
General Baird, consisting of the 8th Light Dragoons, and the 10th,
61st, 86th, and 88th, from India, with some two thousand Sepoys, landed
at Kosseir and made a gallant march of a hundred and fifty miles across
the desert to Kenneh, and so down the Nile to Rosetta.
Foiled in seizing and holding one of the roads to the East, Napoleon
turned his thoughts to Great Britain herself. Though not a Continental
Power, she was his most dangerous adversary. Her naval strength and her
wealth enabled her to keep alive Continental antagonism, even if her
armies had, latterly at least, effected little but diversions of sorts.
Every preparation had been made for the invasion of hated England;
given only the even temporary command of the sea, and it was possible
then, as it is infinitely more possible now, in the days of steam.
The feeble efforts already referred to at the end of the last century
showed the entire practicability of the idea. All that was wanted
was the organisation of the effort on a large scale, and what better
military organiser was there than Napoleon, aided by his staff? So much
so that Soult, no mean authority, reported that a hundred thousand men
could be embarked in the flotilla in seven or eight minutes. Corps were
assembled at Amiens, Ostend, about Dunkirk, and at Boulogne. Flotillas
for the transport and debarkation of troops were massed in large
numbers. The bulk of the British army, too, was abroad, and matters
looked serious. There were in England, at least, but the Life and Horse
Guards, eighteen cavalry regiments, and five of regular infantry.
There were militia, of course, and volunteer corps sprang up as rapidly
and as readily as they did later, when a similar provocation arose.
Serious instructions were issued, both to these and to the people, as
to how the enemy, if he landed, should be met and harassed.
In an undated MS., the paper of which bears the watermark of a crown,
G. R., and 1801, the following instructions are issued. It is called
“Advice to the inhabitants of those districts of England through which
the French army may march in the course of its projected invasion.”
“As the enemy may effect a landing in many parts of the coast at one
and the same time, and as the _precise_ spots on which he may do so
cannot be previously ascertained, it follows, that _every_ order
which may become necessary cannot be previously given. In the actual
execution of those even which are so issued, some variation may be
required. Amid the numerous movements of the enemy either to effect his
intended junctions, or to possess himself of such cities and towns as
he may think fit to occupy, it is possible that the dispositions made
_beforehand_, may by subsequent occurrences be rendered unavailing,
and that, therefore, the inhabitants must often wait for fresh
instructions. During these intervals, it will not perhaps be useless to
point out to them in what manner they ought _provisionally_ to act.”
“If it be necessary that they should defend themselves, it is not less
so that they should do it in such a manner as to provide for their
escape. He whose dexterity preserves him may, in a quarter of an hour
afterwards, again be firing on the enemy. He who, without judgment and
without precaution, exposes himself, must inevitably run very great
risks; nor can the country be defended by prisoners or dead men.”
* * * * *
“Every particular hill, every wood thus occupied, must be considered as
a _separate_ post acting for itself. Consequently, whatever number of
men may arrive in _each_, should be immediately organised. They must
appoint a captain and three lieutenants. The captain must be aware
that every post should be defended in front and flank, and to this
effect he must form his people into three divisions.”
* * * * *
“On all occasions, an ambuscade in a wood or behind hedges must allow
the enemy to approach as near as possible before the firing commences,
and it should be well understood that, at even three hundred paces,
musquet shots are very uncertain, and only become destructive at
that distance where one body of troops fire together upon another
closely collected. It is different where people are dispersed and
act individually; in that case any degree of precision with a common
musquet is not to be reckoned on at a greater distance than from fifty
to sixty paces.”
This is a curious story, but it shows how exceedingly short the range
of firearms in those days, and even up to the Crimean War, was. General
Mercer, whose memoirs, apparently from fear of the duke, were not
published until after his death, gives in his account of Waterloo a
similar curious story. He says, that after a charge of the Grenadiers à
Cheval and Cuirassiers against his battery, “they prepared for a second
attempt, sending up a cloud of skirmishers who galled us terribly by a
fire of carbines and pistols at scarcely forty yards from our front.
We were obliged to stand with port-fires lighted, so that it was not
without a little difficulty that I succeeded in restraining the people
from firing, for they grew impatient under such fatal results. Seeing
some exertion beyond words necessary for this purpose, I leaped my
horse up the little bank and began a promenade (by no means agreeable),
up and down our front, without even drawing my sword, though these
fellows were within speaking distance of me. This quieted my men; but
the tall blue gentlemen, seeing me thus dare them, immediately made
a target of me, and commenced a very deliberate practice, to show us
what very bad shots they were, and verify the old artillery proverb,
‘The nearer the target, the safer you are.’ One fellow certainly made
me flinch, but it was a miss; so I shook my finger at him and called
him _coquin_. The rogue grinned as he reloaded and again took aim. I
certainly felt rather foolish at that moment, but was ashamed, after
such bravado, to let him see it, and therefore continued my promenade.
As if to prolong my torment, he was a terrible time about it. To me it
seemed an age. Whenever I turned, the muzzle of his infernal carbine
still followed me. At length bang it went, and whiz came the ball close
to the back of my neck and at the same instant down dropped the leading
driver of one of my guns (Miller), into whose forehead the cursed
missile had penetrated.”
This forgotten effect of the range of firearms, before rifles were,
is interesting to follow. In a drill-book, dated 1829, occurs the
following. It is a book of questions and answers, and in it occurs
Question 65, which asks, “When firing them (the men) at ball cartridge,
do you increase or decrease their distance in proportion to their
confidence?” To which the answer is, “I increase or decrease the
distance in proportion to their confidence, making the diffident
strike it at all events; as I find his or their confidence increase, I
increase the distance accordingly.” So in Question 66 occurs that of
“And how is this done?” to which the reply is, “If a man do not strike
the target at forty yards, I decrease the distance to thirty yards, and
so on till he hits it.”
This was in 1829; but it is still more remarkable to find in a
“Military Dictionary” of the year 1844, that even then “the first
target for the instruction of infantry recruits is made round and eight
feet in diameter, _the practice commencing at thirty yards_, so that
it is impossible for the recruit to miss it. This range is increased
to fifty, eighty, and a hundred yards at the same target”; while the
extreme range at this target practice was only two hundred yards!
Even later, in the “Manual of Field Operations” written by Lieutenant
Jervis-Whyte-Jervis, and dated 1852, it is stated that recruits are
placed into three squads in the French exercise which he admires, and
to which he attributes the accuracy of fire in their infantry. They
are thus classed: “1. Those who have struck the target three times
in 120 yards. 2. Those who have struck it more than three times. 3.
Those who have struck it less than three times”; and the instruction
goes on to say that while every recruit fires eighty ball cartridges
every year, the older soldiers are formed into three groups, of whom
the older soldiers fire nine times at the distance of 120 yards, and
six at 180 yards, and the successful marksmen are rewarded with silver
epaulets.”
This, then, was the value of musketry-fire for long after the beginning
of this century and before rifles were common. Until 1854 there had
been, as far as armament was concerned, little alteration.
When the Peninsular war broke out, England set quietly to work in her
wonted fashion, showing neither fear nor anger. Even when Portugal
was driven by France to close her country to us, we, though in what
looked like dire extremity, calmly took Madeira, just to express our
resentment at this treatment!
Then the peace of Amiens intervened, and the danger temporarily ceased.
England resigned all her conquests but Ceylon and Trinidad. She agreed
to resign Malta, but didn’t; and this was used by Napoleon as a pretext
for the resumption of hostilities a year later. But for the first time
since the army was created, peace and reduction were not synonymous
terms. The danger had been too menacing for even the most unwarlike
citizen to desire to lessen the nation’s defensive strength. More
drilling and an attempt at a better organisation took the place of the
old-time disbandment; and when war was once more declared, there was
less reason for dread than before the “scare” occurred. The volunteers,
especially, were full of enthusiasm. The king reviewed twenty-six
regiments of them in Hyde Park on the 26th of October 1803, and
thirty-five more two days later. The Prince of Wales in vain besought
his father’s permission for a command, but though refused, the effect
on the national enthusiasm was marked.
Abroad, we captured St. Lucia, Tobago, Demerara, and Surinam, and the
French occupied Hanover, which mattered nothing. But the destruction by
Nelson of the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar mattered much. It
destroyed altogether the idea of a French invasion for more than fifty
years.
Hence the French idea of invasion was abandoned, and the military camp
on the Channel coast was broken up. Napoleon shivered the European
alliance against him at Ulm and Austerlitz, and contented himself with
abusing England in manifestoes. A British contingent, built up of the
Guards, and the 4th, 14th, 23rd, 28th, and 95th Foot, etc., went to
Bremen and came back again; but in 1806 a small British army did good
work on the coast of Calabria, and met the French at Maida, where the
20th, 27th, 58th, 78th, and 81st Regiments defeated Regnier, and where,
if tradition speaks truly, the 20th, who were bathing when the bugle
sounded, went into action with only their accoutrements and weapons on.
This battle is one of the recorded instances in which the French and
English actually crossed bayonets.
Almost the last event of interest before the Peninsular War is that
of the seizure of the Danish navy, and the military operations that
accompanied that probably necessary, but certainly violent, act. When
the population and the wealth of Great Britain were infinitely less
than they are now, and when, as regards the former, most European
nations surpassed us, there is no doubt of the determination of the
men of that time. There was no fear of anybody, and that very boldness
saved us. It may be well in some cases to be pacific; but Drake’s
method of singeing “the King of Spain’s beard,” on the broad principle
that there “are two ways of facing an enemy: the one to stand off and
cry, ‘Try that again and I will strike thee,’ the other to strike him
first and then, ‘Try that at all and I’ll strike thee again,’” has
its merits in time of grave peril, and is likely to bear more useful
fruit than the method adopted by Mr. Snodgrass at Ipswich, when he,
“in a truly Christian spirit, and in order that he might take no one
unawares, announced in a very loud tone that he was going to begin.”
For right or wrong it was done, and at Kioge Sir Arthur Wellesley met
the Danes with the 92nd and 95th, and drove them back on the capital.
Soon after the struggle terminated, the Danish fleet was taken away.
England for the second time had made an enemy of a State too weak to do
other than accept the conditions enforced by a stronger power. The only
excuse was the instinct of self-preservation. The only other resource
would have been to get Denmark to ally with us. But Denmark inclined to
what seemed the strongest, though not the most determined, power, and
so doing lost her fleet.
* * * * *
About this time was formed a foreign force that co-operated fully
and entirely with the British army in the stormy days that were to
come--“The King’s German Legion.” It was to be raised in Hanover and to
be trained in England, and eventually it was decided that it was to be
placed under the command of the Duke of Cambridge. When fully formed,
it was to consist of a cavalry brigade, a light infantry and two
ordinary infantry brigades, two horse and two foot batteries, with a
proportion of engineers; and when paraded at Weymouth, it gave promise
of the discipline that led to the bravery it displayed from Talavera to
Waterloo.
But the political condition of Europe had been changing in these days.
Foreigners were either allies of Napoleon, cowed by him, or worshippers
of his genius and success. Only two were weak, and either neutral or
indifferent, and these were Spain and Portugal. So thither was the
restless ambition of the great soldier directed. A doubtful State was
one to be suppressed, and Spain was Bourbon and necessarily doubtful.
Therefore the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was determined on.
How little did Napoleon foresee, when his magnificent genius failed
and induced him to think only as a soldier and not as a world-wide
politician! A country--two countries--with a wide coast-line, with
a population deadly hostile to the French, was not a wise base of
operations for the conquest of two capitals and two peoples. It was the
Spanish war that led as much as anything to the exhaustion of France,
and to Napoleon’s retirement to Elba. It was the unhealed sore that
sapped the military strength of the emperor, and which, neglected, was
one, if not the chief, cause of his political death.
With the first serious and connected invasion of the Spanish Peninsula
begins the story of the downfall of the conqueror of Austerlitz.
[Illustration: _OUTLINE MAP of SPAIN & PORTUGAL_]