at the close of 1793, though not yet criticised in Parliament, were
still more questionable than its military policy. In the first place,
from blind assurance of an easy triumph, no sufficient provision had
been made in time for raising additional men; and the result was
that in October 1793 it was a matter of the greatest difficulty to
furnish a draft of one hundred men to stop the gaps in Abercromby’s
brigade in Flanders.[190] In August, however, Alan Cameron of Erracht
after much importunity had received permission to raise a regiment of
Highlanders without levy-money, and with a special stipulation that the
men should not be drafted; and thus was created the Seventy-ninth or
Cameron Highlanders. In September 1793, new regiments began to follow
each other more rapidly. First came a battalion formed by Lord Paget,
whom we shall know better as a leader of cavalry under the successive
titles of Lord Uxbridge and Marquis of Anglesey. The commission
which he received to command it was the first that he ever held in
the Army; and the regiment took, and still keeps, the number of the
Eightieth. Then came in succession Colonel John Doyle’s regiment, now
the Eighty-seventh; Colonel Albemarle Bertie’s, now the Eighty-first;
Colonel Thomas De Burgh’s, recruited chiefly in Connaught and still
known as the Eighty-eighth Connaught Rangers; Major-general Leigh’s,
now the Eighty-second; and finally three Scottish battalions raised
by Colonels Ferrier, Halkett, and Cunninghame, who had left the Scots
Brigade of Holland during the American War and now tried to make a
new brigade for their own land. Thus after a separation of over a
century the old comrades of the Buffs rejoined them in Great Britain.
In November other regiments were added, namely, General Bernard’s,
now the Eighty-fourth; General Cuyler’s, now the Eighty-sixth;
Colonel Nugent’s, recruited by Lord Buckingham among his tenants
at Stowe, now the Eighty-fifth; Colonel Fitch’s, formed chiefly of
recruits from Dublin, now the Eighty-third; and Colonel Crosbie’s,
now the Eighty-ninth.[191] From January to October 1794, there was a
deluge of new battalions, of which it must suffice to mention here a
second battalion of the Seventy-eighth, and three which began life
in February, namely, that raised by Mr. Thomas Graham, the volunteer
of Toulon, which was and still is the Ninetieth, and two Highland
corps formed by Colonel Duncan Campbell and Lord Huntly, which though
originally distinguished by other numbers[192] are known to us as the
Ninety-first and Ninety-second Highlanders. Five regiments of Light
Dragoons raised in February and March must also be mentioned, since we
shall meet with them not unfrequently, namely, Beaumont’s, Fielding’s,
Fullarton’s, Loftus’s, and Gwyn’s, which were raised without expense to
the Government, and bore the numbers Twenty-one to Twenty-five. Lastly,
attention must be called to ◆March 7.◆ a notable new departure in the
formation of a Corps of Waggoners in five companies, with a total
strength of six hundred non-commissioned officers and men, one-tenth of
them artificers. This was the first attempt at a military organisation
of the transport-service.
It was reckoned that, in one way and another, at least thirty thousand
men were enlisted for the regular Army between November 1793 and March
1794,[193] and the number was the more astonishing since Fencibles and
substitutes for the Militia had absorbed a large number of recruits.
It would, however, be a fallacy to suppose that Ministers had yet
thought out any regular plan for continual filling of the ranks; on
the contrary, they had resorted to a variety of hasty expedients
founded upon no fixed principle, and therefore unfitted to meet more
than a temporary emergency. Such procedure is invariably wasteful
and extravagant in the highest degree; but Yonge and Dundas honestly
believed themselves to have found true economy in a clever and specious
scheme put forward by one of the Generals in Ireland, for defraying
the cost of new levies by the sale of commissions.[194] The experiment
was tried on a grand scale and with high hopes, not unmingled with
misgiving, on the part of officers; and indeed the prospect of raising
a large number of men without charge to the country was sufficiently
alluring. None the less the scheme failed completely,[195] as is the
common fate of all projects which aspire to obtain a costly article at
a trifling outlay.
Beyond this experiment the Government could think of no better plan
for augmenting the Army than to encourage young men of means to raise
men for rank, or in other words to offer them rank in the Army in
proportion to the number of recruits that they could produce. This
was an old system which hitherto had been confined chiefly to the
raising of independent companies, and had therefore led to no higher
rank than that of Captain. Even then it had been vicious and had been
repeatedly condemned; and it was no good sign that in 1793 a Lieutenant
had advertised in the London papers, offering two thousand guineas
to any one who could raise him one hundred recruits in six weeks,
and get them passed at Chatham.[196] But it was now extended to the
raising of a multitude of battalions, which, for the most part, were
no sooner formed than they were disbanded, and drafted into other
corps. Thereby of course the men were easily absorbed, but not so the
officers, to whom the Government had pledged itself to give half-pay;
and thus it was possible for a young man to obtain a pension for life
from his country on investing a sufficient sum to raise a few score of
recruits.[197] But this was the least of the evils of the system. There
was instantly a rush to obtain letters of service; and commissions
became a drug in the market. It was said that over one hundred
commissions were signed in a single day,[198] while the Gazette could
not keep pace with the incessant promotions. The Army-brokers, who in
the days of purchase negotiated for officers the sale of commissions,
exchanges, and the like, carried on openly a most scandalous traffic.
“In a few weeks,” to use the indignant language of an officer of the
Guards, “they would dance any beardless youth, who would come up to
their price, from one newly raised corps to another, and for a greater
douceur, by an exchange into an old regiment, would procure him a
permanent situation in the standing Army.” The evils that flowed from
this system were incredible. Officers who had been driven to sell out
of the Army by their debts or their misconduct, were able after a
lucky turn at play to purchase reinstatement for themselves with the
rank of Lieutenant-colonel. Undesirable characters, such as keepers
of gambling-houses, contrived to buy for their sons the command of
regiments; and mere children were exalted in the course of a few weeks
to the dignity of field-officers. One proud parent, indeed, requested
leave of absence for one of these infant Lieutenant-colonels, on the
ground that he was not yet fit to be taken from school. It must be
noted, too, that, thanks to the Army-brokers, these evils were not
confined to the new regiments, but were spread, by means of exchange,
all over the Army; and, since the great majority of the regiments were
abroad on active service, the old officers, who were daily facing
danger and death, suddenly found themselves inferior in rank to men
undistinguished by birth or intellect, and without the smallest
pretension to military ability.
Little less dangerous was the enormous encouragement given to crimping
by the sudden demand from all quarters for recruits. The Navy, as has
been seen, was unable to find its complement of men for the fleet,
despite the fact that the Common Council of London in January 1793
had offered an additional bounty of two pounds to seamen;[199] and
now there was thrown into competition with the press-gang a race of
greedy, unscrupulous scoundrels, some of them holding and disgracing
the King’s commission, who made profit out of every boy or man that
they could lay hold of by fair means or foul. Thus the ranks were
filled, as Tarleton phrased it, with infancy and dotage; recruiting
became a mere matter of gambling; and the price of men rose to thirty
pounds a head.[200] So large a sum set a premium on every description
of rascality in the trepanning of recruits by violence or by guile;
and the ordinary Englishman does not lightly bear with oppression of
this kind. At length, on one day in August, an unfortunate lunatic, who
had been enlisted by a sergeant and locked up in a brothel—the synonym
for a recruiting-house—in London, hurled himself out of a window in
the third story, into the street. Instantly a mob assembled, which
delivered a succession of riotous attacks upon all houses of this
description, and was only suppressed, after several days of disorder,
by the calling out of the Guards and six regiments of cavalry.[201]
Pitt defended the system on the ground that the Navy as well as the
Army would be manned, by the turning over of soldiers to reinforce the
marines; but this is only another instance of Pitt’s callous ignorance
and self-deception. The truth is that while doing nothing, and probably
worse than nothing, for the Navy, it destroyed the efficiency of the
Army for a time, and but for the timely interposition of a capable
soldier would have destroyed it permanently. Who was responsible for
the introduction of the system it is not easy to say, for there were
so many disgraceful circumstances attending it that the whole subject
was hushed up, and is now extremely obscure; but assuredly it was not
Lord Amherst, nor is it credible that it can have been any soldier. It
is safe to assert that it was the work of civilians; and if we seek
among the civilians at the War Office for the two men of tried conceit,
unwisdom, and incapacity, we can find them at once in Sir George Yonge
and Henry Dundas.[202]
Meanwhile new levies, even when raised under these false conditions,
were not to be produced in a moment; and thirty thousand recruits
were not to be reckoned, even by the most sanguine of Ministers,
as equivalent to the same number of old soldiers. The Government,
therefore, renewed its contract for the hire of Hanoverians and
Hessians on a greater scale, raising the total number of them to
close upon thirty-four thousand men. To these were added five foreign
corps, which were intended to supplement the dearth of light troops
from which the British contingent had suffered so much during the
campaign of 1793. As early as in May of that year, one Captain George
Ramsay had offered to raise a small body of foreign riflemen, and had
after some delay been permitted to enlist also a corps of Uhlans. Thus
originated three corps which, in honour of the Commander-in-Chief in
Flanders, were called by the name of York Chasseurs, York Rangers,
and York Hussars. The formation of the remaining two, the Prince of
Salm’s Hussars and Hompesch’s Hussars, was only authorised in February
1794, and consequently they were not ready for service at the opening
of the campaign. No effort had been made to provide British soldiers
for the work of light infantry, except by raising eight additional
light companies for the Brigade of Guards, the men of which were
distinguished by round hats with large green feathers, trousers instead
of breeches and gaiters, and fusils instead of muskets. But with these
details of dress their qualifications as light troops were exhausted;
for they received no sufficient instruction in their peculiar duty.[203]
The Light Dragoons likewise continued to belie their name, being
trained in reality simply as cavalry of the line of battle; but for
this, probably, the civil rather than the military authorities of the
Army were responsible, for at this period it was literally impossible
to obtain officers for the mounted troops. It will be remembered that
before the outbreak of the war the Adjutant-general had constantly, but
in vain, endeavoured to obtain an increase of the wholly inadequate
pittance of pay meted out to subalterns of dragoons. Even in peace
the burdens laid upon them were too heavy to be borne, and to these
were now added inadequate compensation for losses in the field, only
eighteen pounds being granted to replace a charger which had cost
thirty-five. The consequences became immediately apparent. The Duke of
York was obliged to beg that the cornetcies of regiments serving in the
Low Countries might be given away, since purchasers for them could not
be found.[204] Thus the Light Dragoons were untaught, because there
were no officers to teach them; patrols and advanced detachments lacked
the daring and adventurous leading of youth; and one of the highest
schools for the training of subalterns was wholly neglected. It is
hardly possible to estimate the evil consequences of Pitt’s misdirected
parsimony, in devoting to the hire of mercenaries the money which
should have been spent in the improvement of the British Army.
So much must be said of the regular forces; but the year 1794 was not
less remarkable for an enormous increase in the number of the Fencible
regiments, Militia and Volunteers, all due to Carnot’s menace of
invasion. The estimate for the Fencible Cavalry provided in March 1794
for forty troops; by May this figure had already risen to ninety-two
troops, and was still rising. Next, the number of the embodied Militia
for England was augmented to thirty-six thousand; while by an Act of the
Irish Parliament, passed in 1793, sixteen thousand additional Militia
were levied in Ireland. This latter was an entirely new departure; and
it need hardly be said that the first ballots drawn on the west of St.
George’s Channel led to serious rioting.[205] Provision was also made in
the estimates, and a Bill was introduced for the raising of six thousand
Militia in Scotland; but this measure was for the moment deferred, in
order that familiarity might ultimately facilitate its passing. The
formation of the Scottish Militia, however, appears to have been begun
in anticipation,[206] and men were enlisted who, later in the year,
◆Oct. 15–Nov. 20.◆ were formed into over twenty battalions of Fencible
infantry. The extension of the ballot throughout the three kingdoms,
though not actually completed until the passing of the Scottish Militia
Act in 1797, must be regarded as the most important military step taken
since the passing of the Militia Act of 1757 by the elder Pitt; and due
credit should be allowed to the Government for it.
Meanwhile, to augment the English Militia to the prescribed figure,
an Act was passed, after the model of that of 1778, empowering the
Lord-Lieutenants to enrol volunteers, to be added to the Militia,
and to be entitled to the same bounty, subsistence, and clothing.
Finally, in April, was passed an Act, limited to the duration of the
war, authorising the formation of district corps or companies of
Volunteers, to be entitled to pay and subject to military discipline
if called out for invasion or in aid of the civil power. This was the
first attempt to summon the manhood of the kingdom to arms; for though
Shelburne in the peril of 1782 had sent a circular to all the Mayors
and Lord-Lieutenants in England with the object of forming a levy _en
masse_, yet the hastening of the peace, by Rodney’s victory of the
Saints and by the relief of Gibraltar, had rendered any elaboration
of the plan unnecessary. Now, however, there sprang up an infinity
of Volunteer corps, infantry, artillery, and light horse or Yeomanry
Cavalry, first in single companies and troops, but very soon in
battalions and regiments. The first of the Volunteer corps appears
to have been the five Associated Companies of St. George’s, Hanover
Square, which was formed in anticipation of the Act;[207] the first
of the Yeomanry was Lord Winchelsea’s three troops of “Gentlemen and
Yeomanry,” raised by the County of Rutland.[208] The rapidity with
which these Volunteers were raised would be flattering to the national
vanity were it not susceptible of a commonplace explanation. By a
certain clause in the Act Volunteers were exempted from service in the
Militia, upon producing a certificate that they had attended exercise
punctually during six weeks previously to the hearing of appeals
against the Militia list. This dissociation of the Volunteers from
the Militia was a great and disastrous blunder, which has never yet
been thoroughly repaired. It is, however, sufficient to note for the
present that the Government had deliberately set up three different
descriptions of auxiliary forces, Militia, Fencibles, and Volunteers,
all competing with each other and with the regular Army. The number
of regular troops provided for in the estimates of 1794 (reckoning
the Irish establishment at fourteen thousand) was one hundred and
seventy-five thousand men, besides thirty-four thousand foreign
troops, four thousand Fencibles, and fifty-two thousand Militia; or,
say, two hundred and sixty-five thousand men in all.
Simultaneously with these efforts at home, Pitt worked strenuously
to restore unity and vigour to the Coalition. The relations of the
coalesced powers at the close of 1793 were in the highest degree
unsatisfactory. The Empress Catherine, still insatiable, despite
the deterioration of her forces and the exhaustion of her treasury,
had resumed her old designs upon Turkey, and had set a large force
in motion towards Constantinople. The Emperor Francis, still under
the guidance of Thugut and full of vague plans for increasing his
territory, was drawing closer to the Empress in the hope of obtaining
her countenance to the annexation of Venice by Austria, if indemnity in
France should fail, and of sharing with her the ultimate partition of
Turkey. Both were bitterly incensed against Prussia: Catherine because
King Frederick William had diverted his troops from the invasion of
France to the strengthening of his position in Poland; Francis from
jealousy that his rival should have enlarged his boundaries, when he
himself had not. Frederick William, as has been seen, had practically
withdrawn his forces from active operations on the Rhine; and
accordingly in December 1793 Pitt had sent Lord Malmesbury to Berlin to
ascertain (if, indeed, anything could be ascertained in such a centre
of intrigue and falsehood) what might be Prussia’s motive for retiring
from the struggle. In reply to Malmesbury, Frederick William, having
obtained his desire in Poland, declared himself eager to continue the
contest against the Jacobins, but absolutely prevented by lack of
money. ◆Feb. 5.◆ Thereupon Pitt proposed to give Prussia a subsidy of
two millions sterling, of which England should pay three-fifths, and
Holland and Austria each one-fifth. This was a liberal offer; and,
since it was certain that Holland would raise no objection, it lay
practically with Austria to give effect to it. It was well known that
Austria was in financial straits, that Hungary was full of unrest and
the Belgic Provinces much cooled in their loyalty, and that, apart
from these troubles at home, the Emperor had contrived to quarrel
with Sardinia abroad. Hence it was beyond question that Austria could
not carry on the war without Prussia’s assistance; and, forasmuch as
Francis had already despatched emissaries to Berlin to discuss the
operations to be undertaken in the spring, the natural presumption was
that he would gladly close with Pitt’s proposal.
The British Government thereupon bestirred itself to frame its projects
for the coming campaign. The Duke of York left Belgium for London on the
6th of February; ◆Feb. 12.◆ and a few days later Mack, now advanced to
the rank of Major-general, arrived there likewise to concert plans with
the Ministers. The Austrian genius had shortly before submitted[209] a
scheme calculated for a force of three hundred and forty thousand men,
which had been received with great satisfaction by the British Cabinet
and the Duke of York; but, since there was no earthly possibility that
the Coalition could put that number of men into the field, the whole of
this elaborate creation was valueless. Both Mack and Coburg, however,
pressed for a concentration of forces and a march on Paris, though
neither of them could conceive the feasibility of taking the offensive
without leaving one hundred and twenty thousand men behind them to guard
the frontier from the Meuse to the sea. The prime question, therefore,
was one of men, and Pitt on his side promised his utmost endeavour to
increase the British contingent to a figure which should ensure a
genuine total of forty thousand fighting soldiers. As to the means
whereby this force should be produced, Pitt was remarkably vague, being
clear only that he could not spare the few thousand men under Lord
Moira’s command, since he wished to hold them ready to sail to any part
of the British coast which might be threatened by a French invasion.
Moira, therefore, though one of the ablest officers in the Army and
adored by the men, was kept inactive, while his troops sickened and died
of gaol-fever in overcrowded transports at Jersey.[210] However, Pitt
made up his forty thousand men to his own satisfaction by naming various
reinforcements, which he hoped to pour into Flanders during the summer
and autumn; for it was one of the delusions of this gifted man, as also
of his friend Dundas, that an army of twenty thousand men, supplemented
by monthly driblets of two thousand men during ten months, is the same
thing as an army of forty thousand men ready for the field at the
opening of the campaign.
The next requisite was that the Austrian, Prussian, and British
contingents should each of them possess a siege-train, since, according
to Mack, it was essential for the Allies to master every fortress on
the French frontier from the Meuse to the sea. Pitt promised this also,
on behalf of the British; and then arose the question of commanders.
Though well aware that the King’s assent would be wrung from him only
by extreme pressure, the Ministers were for recalling the Duke of York
and appointing Lord Cornwallis, who had just returned from India, in
his place. Herein they were undoubtedly right, for, after all allowance
made for the extreme difficulty of his position, the Duke did not shine
in the field. The Ministers, however, blamed him especially for the
failure before Dunkirk, wherein they themselves were chiefly in fault;
and Mack, prompted apparently by the King, found little difficulty in
making excuses for the Duke, who from the first had condemned the idea
of attacking Dunkirk at all. It was finally arranged that he should
retain command of the British contingent, but that he should be kept
always in the neighbourhood of the principal army, with a few thousand
Austrians attached to his own corps, so as to subordinate him the more
completely to the Austrian Commander-in-Chief. This compromise bears
so clearly the mark of the British politician that its origin cannot
be doubtful. It is of a kind that may serve for the construction
of a Cabinet, but it is not suitable for war, and was particularly
ill-fitted to the projected campaign. For the rest, Pitt declared
himself satisfied that the command should remain with Coburg, who was
deservedly most popular among the Austrian troops; and Mack rejoiced
the heart of the British Cabinet by announcing that the Emperor would
direct the operations as Generalissimo in person. Altogether the
results of the conference were considered to be so satisfactory that
the King presented Mack with a jewelled sword as a reward for his good
service.[211]