THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY: THE REGIMENTS
In the year 1809, when Wellington assumed command in Portugal, the
infantry of the British Army consisted of 3 regiments of Foot Guards
and 103 regiments of the line, beside 10 battalions of the King’s
German Legion, the 8 West India regiments, the 8 Veteran Battalions,
and some ten more miscellaneous foreign and colonial corps. Of the
103 regiments of the line the majority, 61, had 2 battalions. Of the
remainder one (the 60th or Royal Americans) had 7 battalions, one (the
1st Royal Scots) 4, three (the 14th, 27th, and 95th) 3 each, while the
remaining 37 were single-battalion regiments.[162] As the 1st Foot
Guards had 3 battalions, and the Coldstream and Scots Fusiliers 2 each,
the total number of British battalions embodied was 186.
The reason for the curious discrepancy between the number of battalions
in the various regiments was that (putting aside the Guards, the Royal
Scots, and the Royal Americans, who had always more battalions than
one, even in the eighteenth century) the British Army at the time
of the rupture of the Peace of Amiens in 1803 had been composed of
single-battalion regiments. On the outbreak of war fifty regiments in
the British Isles and other home stations were ordered to raise second
battalions,[163] and a little later the same directions were given
to a few more. Two corps (the 14th and 27th) succeeded in raising two
fresh battalions, as did also the Royal Scots, which was already a
double battalion corps. But few of the regiments serving beyond seas
were ordered to carry out the same expansion, owing to their remoteness
from recruiting centres; they remained single-battalion regiments, save
that the 35th, 47th, and 78th, though they were quartered respectively
in Malta, Bermuda, and India, provided themselves with a second
battalion. Seven new regiments raised in or after 1804 (these numbered
97 to 103) remained from the first to the last single-battalion corps.
A considerable number of the corps which were on foreign or colonial
service in 1803–4 had returned to Great Britain since that time. But
they were never, save in a very few cases, able to raise additional
battalions, the number of such created after 1805 being only eight[164]
in all. Hence the regiments from which Wellington’s Peninsular Army
was drawn must be divided with care into one-battalion corps and those
which owned more than one battalion.
[Sidenote: Establishment of the Line]
The Estimates presented to the House of Commons in 1809 show that there
were several “establishments” of varying strength for regiments in
Great Britain and other European stations. For corps absent in the East
Indies there was a wholly different set.[165]
A regiment of two battalions, with both of them on active service,
stands on the higher establishment at either 2250 or 2031, or
thereabouts. When the senior battalion was sent on active service it
was generally completed to 1000 rank and file, which, with sergeants,
officers, and musicians, should have made up a total of over 1100. Its
less effective men were drafted into the second battalion, which, if
the establishment was full (which was by no means always the case),
would have left somewhat over 900 for the second battalion. And,
indeed, we find such figures as 906, 929, 916, etc., given for the
strength of several second battalions whose senior sister-unit had gone
overseas.
[Sidenote: Weakness of Second Battalions]
But these 900 and odd men of all ranks now included not only the weak
and ineffective men of the second battalion, but also those of the
first. Therefore if a second battalion was sent out to the war, it
had to leave behind a disproportionately large number of men unfit
for active service, and would be lucky if it sailed for Portugal with
700 bayonets. Many cases are on record where a far smaller number
disembarked at Lisbon or elsewhere. More than 200 would often have to
be left behind to form the depôt, wherefore second battalions were
usually much weaker than first battalions when at the front.
For single-battalion regiments, such as the 2nd, 29th, 51st or 97th, we
find very various “establishments” given in the Army Estimates of 1809.
They vary down from 1151 to 696; one or two exceptional corps are even
smaller. As a rule, it may be taken that the ideal would be to recruit
such a corps, when it was sent on active service, up to the higher
figure: but having to leave 200 men or so at home—the inefficients who
were drafted off for the depôt—it would be lucky if it landed 800 in
the Peninsula. And to keep up the battalion the depôt could not always
suffice; it was full of unserviceable men, and could only send out
recruits newly gathered.
Single-battalion regiments not on active service are those which are
found with the smaller establishments—of such figures as 716, 696, etc.
Not being expected to take the field, they have not been brought up
to the higher establishment, either by drafts from the militia or by
specially vigorous recruiting.
The three regiments of Foot Guards had much higher establishments than
any line battalion. The three battalions of the 1st Guards mustered no
less than 4619 of all ranks, the Coldstream and Scots Fusiliers each
2887. Thus the former could easily send abroad two strong battalions
of 1100 or 1200 men apiece, and the two latter one each, while leaving
behind a battalion and a big depôt on which to draw for recruits for
the active service units. Therefore a Guards battalion in the Peninsula
seldom fell under 800 men, and was sometimes up to 1000. The Cadiz
detachment of the Guards, which fought at Barrosa, was made up from the
home battalions as a sort of extra contribution. It consisted of six
companies of the 1st Guards, two of the Coldstream, and three of the
Scots Fusiliers. They are sometimes called a brigade—for which they
were too small in reality—sometimes a provisional regiment. Their total
force was about 1200 or 1300 of all ranks.
With these figures before us, we begin to see why individual battalions
came and went in the Peninsular Army. A regiment which had two
battalions, one at home and one in Portugal, was always able to keep
up the strength of the service unit by regular and copious drafts from
the home unit. Or if the original one serving in the Peninsula was a
_second_ battalion, the first could be sent out to relieve it. Second
battalions were never sent out to replace first battalions, it being
always the rule that the senior unit had a right to preference for
active service. But occasionally both battalions of a regiment were
absent from Great Britain, and in a few cases they were both in the
Peninsula.[166] When this happened the second battalion was invariably
sent home after a time, discharging its effective rank and file into
the sister battalion, and returning to Great Britain as a _cadre_
of officers and sergeants, with a few old, unserviceable, or nearly
time-expired rank and file.
Having laid down these general rules, we shall see how it came to pass
that of Wellington’s original army of 1809 some battalions stopped with
him for the whole war, while others were successively sent away and
replaced by fresh units.
The greater part of the British Army which had been in the Peninsula
in 1808 went home from Corunna at the end of Sir John Moore’s retreat.
Of these units some never came back at all to share in Wellington’s
triumphs;[167] others returned only in time to see the end of the
war in 1812, 1813, and 1814.[168] Only Craufurd’s three famous light
infantry battalions, the 1/43rd, 1/52nd, and 1/95th came back, after an
absence of no more than a few months, in the summer of 1809.
[Sidenote: The Original Peninsular Regiments]
The real nucleus of the permanent Peninsular Army was composed, not
of the regiments which had operated under Moore, but of that small
fragment of the original landing force of 1808 which had not followed
Moore to Salamanca, Sahagun, and Corunna, but remained behind in the
Peninsula.[169] To this mere remnant of eleven battalions and one
cavalry regiment there were added the reinforcements which preceded or
accompanied Sir Arthur Wellesley when he came to take up the command
in April, 1809, which amounted to twelve battalions more, with four
regiments of cavalry.[170] The whole, when first divided into brigades
and organized as an operating force at Coimbra on May 4, 1809, only
amounted to 23,000 men—a modest nucleus for the army which was destined
not only to save Portugal, but ultimately to thrust out of Spain a
body of invaders which at this moment amounted to over 200,000 men,
and which in 1810–11 was brought up to 300,000, a figure which it
maintained till drafts began to be made upon it for the Russian War in
1812.[171]
Moore’s host had been, as he himself wrote to Castlereagh in a
noteworthy dispatch, not so much _a_ British army as the _only_ British
army fit for the field. Since no more than an infinitesimal fraction
of this picked force was able to return to the Peninsula at once, it
followed that Wellesley’s army of 1809 was composed, for its greater
part, of troops that had been considered of secondary quality, and less
fit for service than the battalions which had been put _hors de combat_
for a long space by the exhaustion which they had suffered in the
terrible retreat to Corunna. Excluding the Guards and the King’s German
Legion units, Wellesley’s Field Army in July contained eighteen British
battalions, of which only six were first battalions of regiments of
full strength, two (the 29th and 97th) were single-battalion corps,
and the remaining ten were junior battalions, _i.e._ were the usually
depleted home-service units of regiments which already had one
battalion abroad, or of which the first battalion had just returned
from Corunna unfit for immediate use.[172] It was an army whose quality
was notably inferior to that of the force which had marched into
Spain under Moore six months before. And the second battalions were
invariably under strength, because they had, until their unexpected
embarkation for the front, been engaged in supplying their sister units
abroad with the necessary drafts for foreign service. Many of them
were woefully weak in numbers, showing, instead of the theoretical 900
bayonets, such figures as 638, 680, 749, 776, which, after deducting
sick and men on command, meant under 600 for the field. Indeed, a few
months later, at Talavera,[173] six of the second battalions and both
the single-battalion corps showed less than that number present, all
ranks included.
Bearing in mind the fact that a British regiment, owing to the
difficulties of recruiting, in a time when men were scarce and bounties
high, could not as a rule provide drafts to keep up to strength more
than one battalion on active service, we can already foresee the fates
that were destined to attend the battalions of Wellington’s original
Peninsular Army. Nearly all the second battalions in time were worn
down by the exhaustion of war to a figure so low that they could no
longer be worked as regular battalion units. When they had reached this
stage one of two things happened to them. If their first battalions
were available, being on home service and fit for the field, they came
out to the Peninsula and replaced the depleted second battalions. But
if the first battalion of any corps was already abroad in India or
elsewhere, the Peninsular battalion was, during the earlier years of
the war, sent home to recruit, and its regimental number disappeared
from Wellington’s muster-rolls. In the later years of the war this was
not so regularly done: for reasons which will be explained, several of
the veteran second battalions, which had survived at the front till
1812, were retained with the army, but cut down to four companies each,
and worked together in pairs to make a unit of serviceable size. Of the
eight original second battalions of 1809, two were drafted into their
first battalion, which had come out to the Peninsula;[174] one (2/87th)
was sent away for a time to Cadiz, though it returned to the field
army in 1812; four were cut down in 1811–12 to half battalions.[175]
Only one, the 2/83rd, remained continuously in the Peninsula as a full
battalion till the end of the war.
The same fate attended the single-battalion regiments, which had no
sister battalion at home to draw upon, but only a depôt. Both the 29th
and the 97th went home, reduced to skeletons, in 1811.
But the six first-battalions present with the field army in May, 1809,
were still at the front in fair strength at the termination of the
war in 1814, and this, though two of them had been among the worst
sufferers in the bloody field of Albuera. Indeed, there is throughout
the war, I believe, only one case in which the first battalion of a
complete regiment went out to the front, and was sent away before the
end of the campaigning in 1814.
[Sidenote: Reinforcements from Home]
The reinforcements which were sent out to Wellington from 1810 to 1812
may be divided into two sections, of which the larger was composed of
the reorganized and recruited battalions of Moore’s Corunna army. Of
these, six battalions came out in 1810, nine in 1811, eight in 1812,
and three in 1813–14. The greater number of them were first battalions,
or putting aside the Guards and German Legion units, fifteen out of
twenty-three: of these all save one (the 1/26th) fought out the rest
of the war. Of single-battalion regiments there were four (2nd, 51st,
20th, 76th); of junior battalions belonging to corps which already
had one battalion abroad, there were also only three (3/1st, 2/52nd,
2/59th). Of these two last classes the 2/52nd was soon sent home, after
drafting its men into the 1/52nd. The 2nd got so depleted that it
was cut down to four companies, and put into a provisional battalion
in 1812 till the end of the war. The 76th on its return was only in
the field for a few months in 1813–14, so that it had no time to get
worked down. The 3/1st, though a junior battalion, belonged to a large
regiment of four battalions, and for that reason never shrank below
its proper size, there being a sister unit at home to send it drafts.
We may therefore say that, of the eight battalions which were not
first battalions of full regiments, only three saw long service, yet
survived unimpaired to the peace of 1814 (20th, 51st, 2/59th); and of
these three two only came out in 1812, and were less than two years
in the Peninsula. It is clear, then, that the same rule prevailed in
the reinforcements as in the original 1809 army; only first battalions
could be relied upon not to melt.
The battalions sent out as reinforcements to Wellington which had not
formed part of Moore’s Corunna army, were decidedly less numerous
than the other class, amounting to only nineteen. Of these six were
first battalions,[176] eight second battalions,[177] and five single
battalion corps.[178] All of the first-named category fought out the
whole war: but several of the other two were sent home, either when
they had been depleted to reinforce their first battalions, or for
other reasons. The proportion would have been larger but for the fact
that several of them were among the last arrivals in the Peninsula, who
only joined in the later autumn and winter campaigns of 1813–14, and
had not time to get worn down.[179] One second battalion (2/58th) was
worked as a four-company unit during the last two years of the war.
The net result of all the interchange of battalions, and of the sending
home of weak units, was that in 1814, when the struggle with Napoleon
had come to its end, out of fifty-six British line battalions present
at the front, only thirteen were second battalions, and of these last
five[180] were (as has been already mentioned) so depleted in numbers
that they were being worked in pairs, being each only four companies
strong, and not mustering more than 250 or 300 men.
[Sidenote: The Walcheren Regiments]
That such weak half-units were detained in the Peninsula was due to a
resolve of Wellington’s, made after the campaign of 1811. During the
latter part of that year the chief of his worries was that he had been
sent out among his reinforcements a number of corps which had served
in the Walcheren expedition, where almost every man had the seeds of
ague in him, from a sojourn in the marshes of Holland. The heat of
the Portuguese summer and the torrential rains of the autumn at once
brought out the latent weakness in the constitution of men who were
little more than convalescents, and regiments which had landed at
Lisbon in July 850 strong showed only 550 in the ranks in October.[181]
So appalling was the accumulation of fever and ague cases in the
hospitals[182] that Wellington wrote home to beg that not another unit
which had been at Walcheren might be sent out to him. He now made up
his mind to keep old regiments, even when they had dwindled rather low
in numbers, rather than to send them home to recruit, and to receive
new battalions in their stead. The reason was that it took a corps many
months before it learnt to shift for itself, and to grow acclimatized.
During their first few months in the Peninsula, newly arrived units
always showed too many sick and too many stragglers. For men fresh
from barrack life in England were at first prostrated by the heat of
the climate and the length of the marches. They had still to pick up
the old campaigner’s tricks, and were very helpless. Veteran troops
were so superior in endurance to new regiments from England, most of
whom had been on the pestilential Walcheren expedition, and were still
full of rickety convalescents, that Wellington determined to keep
even remnants of old corps accustomed to the air of the Peninsula,
rather than to ask for more unacclimatized battalions from home. Hence
came the institution, in the end of 1812, of two of the “provisional
battalions” already mentioned.[183] At an earlier period of the war
they would undoubtedly have been sent back to England.[184] But now
these fractions of depleted veteran corps were taken, with excellent
results, all through the campaign of 1812–13–14.
[Sidenote: Fate of Second Battalions]
It is perhaps worth while to make a note how curious was Wellington’s
attitude in face of that rather exceptional occurrence the appearance
of two strong battalions of the same regiment in his army. If the
second battalion was weak, he soon drafted it into the first and sent
it home. But when, from some chance, both had full ranks, it did not
by any means always strike him as necessary to brigade them together.
For example, the 1/7th and 2/7th were both at the front from October,
1810, to July, 1811; but for several months of the time one was in the
4th Division, the other in the 1st. A still more striking instance
is that of the 48th. Its two battalions were both from their first
arrival placed in the 2nd Division, but they served from June, 1809,
to May, 1811, in different brigades of it.[185] The occasions when
the two battalions of the same regiment served for any time in one
brigade were very rare—I only know of the cases of the 1st and 3rd
battalions of the Foot Guards in 1813–14, of the two battalions of the
52nd between March, 1811, and March, 1812, and of those of the 7th
Fusiliers, who (after some service apart) had been brigaded together
in the 4th Division six months before Albuera. In the last two cases
the first battalion presently absorbed the second, which was sent home
as a skeleton _cadre_ when its strength at last began to run low. All
other cases of juxtaposition were so short that it would seem that
Wellington only brought the two battalions together for the purpose of
drafting the second into the first at the earliest convenient moment.
In this way the 2/88th (long in garrison at Lisbon) were brought up to
the front to be amalgamated in less than four months with the 1/88th
(March-July, 1811). The 1/5th, coming out in the summer of 1812, seems
to have served along with the 2/5th for about the same number of
months, the latter being sent home in October. The 1/38th similarly
arrived at about the same time, and served from June to November beside
the 2/38th, which then departed. These are very different cases from
those of the two battalions of the 7th, the 48th, and the 52nd, all of
which were present for a year or more together in the army.
[Illustration: _PLATE V._
OFFICER OF RIFLES.
1809.
PRIVATE, INFANTRY OF THE LINE.
1809.]
The working unit of the Peninsular Army was always the ten-company
battalion, commanded by a lieutenant-colonel. When, as in the
exceptional cases just named, it chanced that two battalions of a
regiment got together, the senior of the two commanding officers
had no authority over the other. Both were directly responsible to
the brigadier. The battalion theoretically had thirty-five officers
and 1000 rank and file, besides sergeants and drummers. A pestilent
practice prevailed in all British general returns, of giving in
statistics of the larger sort only the number of rank and file (_i.e._
corporals and privates), officers, sergeants, and musicians being all
omitted. To bring the figures up to the real general total in such a
case, an allowance of about one-eighth or one-ninth has to be added to
the number given. Fortunately detailed returns of all ranks are always
available, when absolute correctness is required, from the fortnightly
general states at the Record Office.
The theoretical establishment of about 1150 of all ranks for a first
battalion was, of course, hardly ever seen in the field. Regiments
which landed at Lisbon with a full complement soon dwindled, even
before they got to the front, and nothing was rarer than a battalion in
line of battle with a total strength in the four figures.[186] A good
well-managed corps which had not been in action of late, and had not
been stationed in an unhealthy cantonment, might keep up to 700 and
even 800 men throughout a campaign. The Guards battalions, which had a
decidedly larger establishment than those of the line, were frequently
up to 900 men or more.
On the other hand, a battalion which had seen much fighting, which had
not received its drafts regularly, and had long starved on the bleak
mountains of Beira, or sweltered in the pestilential valley of the
Guadiana, often worked down to 450 men or less, even if it were a first
battalion which had landed with its full 1000 rank and file. A second
battalion under similar circumstances might shrink to 250 or 300. At
the end of the very fatiguing campaign of 1811, which had included
the toilsome pursuit of Masséna, the Fuentes de Oñoro fighting, and
the long tarrying on the Caya during the unhealthy summer heats, of
forty-six battalions present with Wellington’s main army only nine (all
save one first-battalions, and two of them belonging to the Guards)
showed more than 700 of all ranks present. Sixteen more had between
500 and 700, ten between 400 and 500. No less than eleven were down to
the miserable figure of under 400 men, and it is to be noted that of
these nearly all were either second battalions or single-battalion
regiments; there were six of the former three of the latter among them.
The average of the whole, it may be seen, was about 550 men per unit;
the extreme variation was between 1005 for the strongest battalion and
263 for the weakest.[187] At this time, it should be noted, the army
was more sickly than it had ever been before, having over 14,000 men
in hospital to 29,300 present with the colours. Wellington was never
again so encumbered with sick, save for one period of a few weeks—that
which followed the end of the retreat from Burgos to Ciudad Rodrigo
in October-November, 1813. During the first months of this winter the
troops, tired by incessant marching in the rain, and low feeding, sent
into hospital a number of cases not less distressing than those which
had been seen in September, 1811. But a short period of rest served to
re-establish their health, and in 1813–14 the troops were very healthy,
even during the trying weeks when many of them were cantoned high among
the snows of the Pyrenean passes.
[Sidenote: The Cavalry Regiments]
So much for the infantry regiments. A few words as regards the cavalry
must be added to this chapter on organization. From first to last
Wellington had under him twenty-one regiments of British horse, besides
four more of the light and heavy cavalry of the King’s German Legion.
But at no time had he such a force as would be represented by this
total. He started in 1809 with eight regiments. Before he had been
many weeks in command one of his units (a fractional one, composed
of two squadrons of the 20th Light Dragoons) was taken from him and
shipped off to Sicily. Before the end of the year another (23rd Light
Dragoons), which had been badly cut up at Talavera, and lost half
its strength there, was sent home to recruit. Thus he had only six
regiments[188] on January 1, 1810, and as only one joined him that
year,[189] seven was his total force, till he at last received large
reinforcements in the late summer and autumn of 1811. But he started
the campaign of 1812 with sixteen regiments,[190] which was almost the
highest figure that he was to own. For although during the campaign of
1813 he was sent four new Hussar regiments, yet at the same time four
depleted corps were sent home to be recruited and reorganized. This
would have left his total at the same figure of sixteen units as in
1812, if he had not also received a large composite regiment (or weak
brigade) composed of two squadrons from each of the three units of the
Household Cavalry. By this addition alone did his cavalry force in
1813–14 exceed that which he had possessed in 1812. If we reckon the
Household squadrons as roughly equivalent to two units, the total at
the end of the war was eighteen regiments.
[Sidenote: Faults of Raw Cavalry]
Unlike the infantry, the cavalry of the British Army was organized
without exception in isolated units, as it is to-day. A corps sent
to the Peninsula left a depôt squadron behind it, and there was no
source except this depôt from which it could draw recruits. Nothing
resembling the sister-unit on which an infantry battalion depended was
in existence. Hence if a cavalry regiment sank low in numbers, and
exhausted the drafts which the depôt squadron could send out, it had
to return to England to recruit. During the whole war only one corps
(the 23rd Light Dragoons at Talavera) suffered a complete disaster,
corresponding to that which the 2nd Infantry Division incurred at
Albuera, and this unlucky regiment was sent home that autumn, when the
British Army had retreated to the Portuguese frontier. But four others
worked down so low in strength, and especially in horses, during the
campaign of 1812, that, although they had none of them been thinned
down in a single action like the 23rd, they had become ineffective,
and had to quit the Peninsula. It is most noteworthy that all of these
four corps were comparatively recent arrivals; they had come out in
1811, and in little over a single year had fallen into a state of
inefficiency far exceeding that of the regiments whose service dated
back to 1809, and who had seen two years more of hard campaigning.[191]
The moral to be drawn is the same that we have noted with the infantry:
the regiments which had served Wellington since his first arrival had
become acclimatized, and had learnt the tricks of the old soldier.
They could shift for themselves, and (what was no less important)
for their horses, far better than any newly-arrived corps. We find
bitter complaints of the defective scouting and outpost work of the
new-comers. After a petty disaster to the outlying pickets of two
of the lately-landed regiments Wellington wrote: “This disagreeable
circumstance tends to show the difference between old and new troops.
The old regiments of cavalry throughout all their service, with all
their losses put together, have not lost so many men as the 2nd Hussars
of the Legion and the 11th Light Dragoons in a few days. However, we
must try to make the new as good as the old.”[192] This was evidently
not too easy to accomplish; at any rate, at the end of the next year it
was four of the new corps[193] which were sent home as depleted units,
not any of the seven old ones. All these, without exception, endured
to the last campaign of 1814, though they nearly all[194] had to be
reduced from a four-squadron to a three-squadron establishment in
the autumn of 1811, owing to their shrunken effective. But they never
fell so low as the four corps condemned to return to England in the
next year. No more regiments went home after the winter of 1812–13;
the campaign of Vittoria and the Pyrenees did not bear heavily on the
cavalry, most of whom, during the mountain fighting in the autumn, were
comfortably cantoned in the Ebro Valley. They only moved forward again
in the spring of 1814 for that invasion of France which was brought to
such an abrupt end by the fall of Napoleon.
The theoretical establishment of the regiments of cavalry (putting
aside the Household Cavalry) was in 1809 fixed at 905 men in nearly
every case. But a large depôt was always left behind in England, and if
a regiment landed 600 sabres in Portugal, in four squadrons, it was up
to the average strength. At the front it would seldom show more than
450, as horses began to die off or go sick the moment that they felt
the Peninsular air and diet. A regiment which had been reduced from
four squadrons to three might show only 300 men on parade in the middle
of a campaign.
[Illustration: _PLATE VI._
OFFICER OF LIGHT DRAGOONS.
UNIFORM OF 1809.
OFFICER OF LIGHT DRAGOONS.
UNIFORM OF 1813.]