WELLINGTON’S ARMY
[Illustration: _PLATE I._
ARTHUR WELLESLEY, DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
_From a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence._]
WELLINGTON’S
ARMY
1809–1814
BY
C. W. C. OMAN
M.A. OXON., HON. LL.D. EDIN.
CHICHELE PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
_SECOND IMPRESSION_
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1913
[_All rights reserved_]
PREFACE
Much has been written concerning Wellington and his famous Peninsular
Army in the way of formal history: this volume, however, will I
think contain somewhat that is new to most students concerning its
organization, its day by day life, and its psychology. To understand
the exploits of Wellington’s men, it does not suffice to read a mere
chronicle of their marches and battles. I have endeavoured to collect
in these pages notices of those aspects of their life with which no
strategical or tactical work can deal, though tactics and even strategy
will not be found unnoticed.
My special thanks are due to my friend Mr. C. T. Atkinson, Fellow of
Exeter College, Oxford, for allowing me to use the admirable list of
the brigade and divisional organization of the Peninsular Army which
forms Appendix II. It is largely expanded from the article on the same
topic which he printed eight years ago in the _Historical Review_, and
enables the reader to find out the precise composition of every one of
Wellington’s units at any moment between April, 1808 and April, 1814.
I have also to express my gratitude to the Hon. John Fortescue, the
author of the great _History of the British Army_, for answering a good
many queries which I should have found hard to solve without his aid.
The index is by the same loving hand which has worked on so many of my
earlier volumes.
C. OMAN.
OXFORD,
_September, 1912_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY—THE OLD PENINSULAR ARMY 1
II. SOURCES OF INFORMATION—THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAR
WAR 9
III. THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON—THE MAN AND THE STRATEGIST 39
IV. WELLINGTON’S INFANTRY TACTICS—LINE _VERSUS_ COLUMN 61
V. WELLINGTON’S TACTICS—THE CAVALRY AND ARTILLERY 94
VI. WELLINGTON’S LIEUTENANTS—HILL, BERESFORD, GRAHAM 115
VII. WELLINGTON’S LIEUTENANTS—PICTON, CRAUFURD, AND OTHERS 129
VIII. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY: HEADQUARTERS 153
IX. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY: BRIGADES AND DIVISIONS 163
X. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY: THE REGIMENTS 178
XI. INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE REGIMENT: THE OFFICERS 195
XII. INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE REGIMENT: THE RANK AND FILE 208
XIII. THE AUXILIARIES: THE GERMANS AND THE PORTUGUESE 220
XIV. DISCIPLINE AND COURT-MARTIALS 237
XV. THE ARMY ON THE MARCH 255
XVI. IMPEDIMENTA: THE BAGGAGE: LADIES AT THE FRONT 268
XVII. A NOTE ON SIEGES 279
XVIII. UNIFORMS AND WEAPONS 292
XIX. THE COMMISSARIAT 307
XX. A NOTE ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 320
APPENDIX I. ESTABLISHMENT AND STATIONS OF THE BRITISH ARMY IN
1809 333
APPENDIX II. THE DIVISIONS AND BRIGADES OF THE PENINSULAR ARMY,
1809–1814, BY C. T. ATKINSON, M.A., FELLOW OF
EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD 343
APPENDIX III. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ENGLISH DIARIES, JOURNALS AND
MEMOIRS OF THE PENINSULAR WAR 375
INDEX 385
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE
I. ARTHUR WELLESLEY, DUKE OF WELLINGTON _Frontispiece_
_From a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence_
FACING PAGE
II. LORD HILL, G.C.B. 118
III. GENERAL THOMAS GRAHAM, BARON LYNEDOCH, G.C.B., G.C.M.G. 126
_From the picture by Sir George Hayter_
IV. GENERAL SIR THOMAS PICTON, K.C.B. 138
V. OFFICER OF RIFLES, 1809 188
PRIVATE, INFANTRY OF THE LINE, 1809 188
VI. OFFICER OF LIGHT DRAGOONS, UNIFORM OF 1809 194
OFFICER OF LIGHT DRAGOONS, UNIFORM OF 1813 194
VII. PRIVATE OF HEAVY DRAGOONS, 1809 284
OFFICER OF FIELD ARTILLERY, 1809 284
VIII. SERGEANT AND PRIVATE OF INFANTRY IN WINTER MARCHING
ORDER, 1813 296
WELLINGTON’S ARMY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY—THE OLD PENINSULAR ARMY
While working for the last nine years at the History of the Peninsular
War, I have (as was inevitable) been compelled to accumulate many
notes, and much miscellaneous information which does not bear upon the
actual chronicle of events in the various campaigns that lie between
1808 and 1814, but yet possesses high interest in itself, and throws
many a side-light on the general course of the war. Roughly speaking,
these notes relate either to the personal characteristics of that
famous old army of Wellington, which, as he himself said, “could go
anywhere and do anything,” or to its inner mechanism—the details of its
management. I purpose to speak in these pages of the leaders and the
led; of the daily life, manners, and customs of the Peninsular Army,
as much as of its composition and its organization. I shall be dealing
with the rank and file no less than with the officers, and must even
find space for a few pages on that curious and polyglot horde of camp
followers which trailed at the heels of the army, and frequently raised
problems which worried not only colonels and adjutants, but even the
Great Duke himself.
There is an immense amount of interesting material to be collected,
concerning the inner life of the Peninsular Army, from public
documents, such as despatches, general orders, and regimental reports,
and records of courts martial. But I shall be utilizing to a much
greater extent non-official information, collected from the countless
diaries, memoirs, and series of contemporary letters, which have come
down to us from the men who took part in the great war. Nor are the
controversial pamphlets to be neglected, which kept appearing for
many a year, when one survivor of the old army found, in the writings
of another, statements which he considered injurious to himself, his
friends, his regiment, or his division. The best known and most copious
of these discussions is that which centres round the publication of
Napier’s _Peninsular War_; the successive appearance of its volumes led
to the printing of many protests, in which some of the most prominent
officers of Wellington’s army took part—not only Lord Beresford,
who was Napier’s especial butt and _bête noir_, and replied to the
historian in terms sometimes not too dignified—but Cole, Hardinge,
D’Urban, and many more. This set of “strictures”, as they were called,
mainly relate to the Albuera campaign. But there are smaller, but not
less interesting, series of controversial pamphlets relating to the
Convention of Cintra, to Moore’s retreat, to the campaign of 1810
(Bussaco), the storm of Badajoz, and other topics.
The memoirs and autobiographies, of course, possess the greatest share
of interest. And it may be noted as a remarkable fact that those
coming from the rank and file are not very much less numerous than
those which come from the commissioned ranks. If there are scores
of diaries and reminiscences of colonels, captains, and subalterns,
there are at least dozens of little books by sergeants, corporals, and
privates. Many of these are very quaint productions indeed, printed
at local presses—at Perth, Coventry, Cirencester, Louth, Ashford—even
at Corfu. Very frequently some knot of military or civilian friends
induced a much-travelled veteran to commit to paper the tales which had
been the delight of the canteen, or of the fireside of some village
inn. They are generally very good reading, but often give rather the
spirit of the time and the regiment than an accurate record of its
long-past exploits. One or two of these veterans’ artless tales show
all the characteristics of the memoirs of the prince of their tribe—the
delightful but autolatrous Marbot. I have thought it worth while to
give in an appendix the names and titles of the best of them. One
or two, above all the little book of “Rifleman Harris” of the 95th,
well deserve to be republished, but still await that honour. Perhaps
regimental patriotism may some day provide us with a series of reprints
of the best Soldiers’ Tales.[1]
[Sidenote: Memoirs of the Rank and File]
It is a very notable fact, which requires (but has never hitherto
received) an explanation, that it is precisely with the coming in of
the nineteenth century that British soldiers and officers alike began
to write diaries and reminiscences on a large scale, and in great
numbers. I do not, of course, mean to say that there were none such
produced in the eighteenth century. Besides serious military histories
like those of Kane, Stedman, or Tarleton, there do exist a certain
number of narratives of personal adventure written by officers, such
as Major Rogers the Scout, or the garrulous and often amusing diarist
(unfortunately anonymous) who made the campaign of Culloden with
the Duke of Cumberland—not to speak of the semi-apochryphal Captain
Carleton. But they are few, and the writings from the ranks are fewer
still, though there are certain soldiers’ letters which go back as far
as Marlborough’s time, and one or two small books like Bristow’s and
Scurry’s Indian reminiscences, and Sergeant Lamb’s _Journal_ in the
American War of Independence, which are worth mentioning. But it is
quite certain that there was more writing going on in the army during
the ten years 1805–1815 than in the whole eighteenth century.
What was the explanation of the phenomenon? There are, I think, two
main causes to be borne in mind: the first was the glorious and
inspiring character of Wellington’s campaigns, which made both officers
and men justifiably proud of themselves, and more anxious than any
previous generation had been to put on paper the tale of their own
exploits. It must have been a man of particularly cheerful disposition
who cared to compile the personal narrative of his adventures during
the Old American War, which was largely a record of disaster, or
even in the ups and downs of the Seven Years’ War, when for every
Minden or Quebec there had been an evil memory like Ticonderoga
or Kloster-Kampen. It is to this instinctive dislike to open up
old memories of misfortune that we may attribute the fact that the
first British campaigns of the French Revolutionary War, the unhappy
marches and battles of the Duke of York’s army in 1793, 1794, 1795 are
recorded in singularly few books of reminiscences—there are only (to my
knowledge) the doggerel verse of the “Officer of the Guards,” with its
valuable foot-notes, and the simple memoirs of Sergeant Stevenson of
the Scots Fusilier Guards, and Corporal Brown of the Coldstream. This
is an extraordinarily small output for a long series of campaigns, in
which some 30,000 British troops were in the field, and where gallant
exploits like those of Famars and Villers-en-Cauchies took place. But
the general tale was not one on which any participant could look back
with pleasure. Hence, no doubt, the want of books of reminiscences.
But I fancy that there is another and a quite distinct cause for the
extraordinary outburst of interesting military literature with which
the nineteenth century begins, and we may note that this outburst
certainly commences a little before the Peninsular War. There exist
several very good personal narratives both of the Conquest of Egypt
in 1801, of the Indian Wars during the Viceroyalty of Lord Wellesley,
and of the short campaign of Maida. And this cause I take to be the
fact that the generation which grew up under the stress of the long
Revolutionary War with France was far more serious and intelligent
than that which saw it begin, and realized the supreme importance
of the ends for which Great Britain was contending, and the danger
which threatened her national existence. The empire had been in danger
before, both in the Seven Years’ War, and in the War of American
Independence, but the enemy had never been so terrifying and abhorrent
as the Jacobins of the Red Republic. The France of Robespierre was
loathed and feared as the France of Louis XV. or Louis XVI. had never
been. To the greater part of the British nation the war against the
Revolution soon became a kind of Crusade against the “triple-headed
monster of Republicanism, Atheism, and Sedition.” The feeling that
Great Britain had to fight not so much for empire as for national
existence, and for all that made life worth having—religion, morality,
constitution, laws, liberty—made men desperately keen for the fight, as
their ancestors had never been.
[Sidenote: The Sword and the Pen]
Among the many aspects which their keenness took, one was most
certainly the desire to record their own personal part in the great
strife. It is in some such way only that I can explain the fact that
the actually contemporary diaries and journals become so good as the
war wears on, compared to anything that had gone before. Memoirs and
reminiscences written later do not count in the argument, because they
were compiled and printed long after the French war was over, and its
greatness was understood. But the abundance of good material written
down (and often sent to the press) during the continuance of the war
is astounding. In some cases we can be sure that we owe the record
to the reason that I have just suggested. For example, we certainly
owe to it the long and interesting military diaries of Lord Lynedoch
(the Sir Thomas Graham of Barrosa), who most decidedly went into the
Revolutionary War as a Crusader and nothing less. As I shall explain
when dealing with his remarkable career, he started military life at
forty-four, mortgaging his estates to raise a battalion, and suddenly
from a Whig M.P. of the normal type developed into a persistent and
conscientious fighter against France and French ideas—whether they were
expressed (as when first he drew the sword) in the frenzied antics of
the Jacobins, or (as during his latter years) in the grinding despotism
of Bonaparte. His diary from first to last is the record of one who
feels that he is discharging the elementary duty of a good citizen, by
doing his best to beat the French wherever they may be found.
I take it that the same idea was at the bottom of the heart of many a
man of lesser note, who kept his pen busy during those twenty eventful
years. Some frankly say that they went into the service, contrary to
the original scheme of their life, because they saw the danger to the
state, and were ready to take their part in meeting it. “The threat of
invasion fired every loyal pair of shoulders for a red coat.”[2]
Of the men whose memoirs and letters I have read, some would have
been lawyers (like Sir Hussey Vivian), others politicians, others
doctors, others civil servants, others merchants, if the Great War
had not broken out. I should imagine that the proportion of officers
who had taken their commission for other reasons than that they had
an old family connection with the army, or loved adventure, was
infinitely higher during this period than it had ever been before. A
very appreciable number of them were men with a strong religious turn—a
thing I imagine to have been most unusual in the army of the eighteenth
century (though we must not forget Colonel Gardiner). One young diarist
heads the journal of his first campaign with a long prayer.[3] Another
starts for the front with a final letter to his relatives to the effect
that “while striving to discharge his military duties he will never
forget his religious ones: he who observes the former and disregards
the latter is no better than a civilized brute.”[4]
[Sidenote: The Men of Religion]
There were Peninsular officers who led prayer-meetings and founded
religious societies—not entirely to the delight of the Duke of
Wellington,[5] whose own very dry and official view of religion was as
intolerant of “enthusiasm” as that of any Whig bishop of Mid-Georgian
times. Some of the most interesting diaries of the war are those of
men who like Gleig, Dallas, and Boothby, took Holy Orders when the
strife came to an end. One or two of the authors from the ranks show
the same tendencies. Quartermaster Surtees was undergoing the agonies
of a very painful conversion, during the campaign of 1812, and found
that the memories of his spiritual experiences had blunted and dulled
his recollection of his regimental fortunes during that time.[6]
A very curious book by an Irish sergeant of the 43rd devotes many
more pages to religious reflections than to marches and bivouacs.[7]
Another writer of the same type describes himself on his title-page
as “Twenty-one years in the British Foot Guards, sixteen years a
non-commissioned officer, forty years a Wesleyan class leader, once
wounded, and two years a Prisoner.”[8]
On the whole I am inclined to attribute the great improvement alike
in the quantity and the quality of the information which we possess
as to the inner life of the army, during the second half of the great
struggle with France, not only to the fact that the danger to the
empire and the great interests at stake had fired the imagination of
many a participant, but still more to the other fact that the body of
officers contained a much larger proportion of thoughtful and serious
men than it had ever done before. And the same was the case _mutatis
mutandis_ with the rank and file also. Not but what—of course—some
of the most interesting information is supplied to us by cheerful and
garrulous rattlepates of a very different type, who had been attracted
into the service by the adventure of the soldier’s life, and record
mainly its picturesque or its humorous side.