DISCIPLINE AND COURT-MARTIALS
In the chapters that dealt with the officers and the men of the
Peninsular Army, we have had occasion to speak of the percentage of
undesirables that were to be found in every rank, and of their special
weaknesses and crimes. It is necessary to explain the way in which the
British military code of the day dealt with them.
For the officers there was a long gradation of punishments, ranging
down from a simple reprimand to discharge from the service with
ignominy. For the non-commissioned officers reduction to the ranks
was the most usual chastisement inflicted; but in cases of a
particularly disgraceful sort, the lash was not infrequently allotted
as an additional penalty. For the rank and file flogging was the
universal panacea; the amount of strokes might range up from a
minimum twenty-five strokes—which was a mere nothing to the habitual
offender, but a serious thing for the good soldier who lost much of
his _morale_ when once he had “gone to the halberds,” even for such a
light punishment. The maximum, a very unusual one, was 1200 strokes,
an amount calculated to kill many men, and to permanently disable many
more. But this awful tale of lashes was not very frequently awarded,
being reserved for bad cases of desertion to the enemy, robbery with
violence, or striking an officer, all of them offences which might have
had death as their punishment. As far as I can count, 1200 lashes were
only awarded nine or ten times by general court-martial during the
whole six years of the war. The hardly less severe sentence of 1000
lashes was given more frequently—over 50 cases may be reckoned up—the
offences were the same as those which earned the still heavier maximum
amount. During the latter years of the war, from 1811 onward, two
additional forms of punishment for very serious crimes were invented.
The first, mainly reserved for deserters who had not gone over to the
enemy, but had simply left the colours and hidden themselves in the
Peninsula, was long service in a colonial corps, such as the African or
the New South Wales Regiment. The other, a much more severe sentence,
was that of penal servitude, either for a term of years (seven was the
usual period), or for life. The penal settlement to which the convict
was sent is generally stated, and is almost invariably New South Wales.
This sentence was generally awarded for cases of repeated desertion
(not to the enemy) and habitual theft without violence. The moment that
violence was added to robbery, the offender came within a near distance
of the gallows or of the much-dreaded 1000 lashes—which often had the
same meaning in the end.
[Sidenote: Cashiering of Officers]
It may be interesting to give some account of the various causes for
which an officer might incur the heaviest penalty that could be laid
on him—to be cashiered. This sentence was awarded some thirty times
during the war. Twice only was it the reward of shirking or cowardice.
In three or four cases it was inflicted for swindling merchants; in
as many more for embezzling public money or stores. Five or six were
instances of insulting or openly disobeying a commanding officer. Three
or four cashierings were the direct result of drink—the offender having
been found intoxicated and incapable while on duty in a responsible
position. The most repulsive case of the whole list was one where
drunkenness was the indirect, but not the actual, cause of disgrace.
Three young officers, at the break up of a debauch, found the corpse
of a priest lying in state in a room in the quarters where two of
them were lodged. They mishandled it, and cast it forth, stripping
off the vestments, and breaking the candles, etc., with which it was
laid out.[246] This disgusting freak, apparently caused by drunken
resentment at finding a corpse in close proximity to their bedroom,
drew down a commentary from Wellington as to the noxious effects of
drink—which not only makes men incapable of performing their duty, but
renders them “unaware of the nature or effect of their actions.”
The remaining cases of cashiering were for such offences as public
and disgraceful brawling, violently resisting arrest, and flagrant
immorality.[247] There is just one case of dismissal from the service
for tyranny—that of a colonel who habitually bullied his officers and
inflicted arbitrary and illegal punishments on his men.[248] Of this I
shall have to say more in its place.
All the thirty cashierings cited above are those of combatant
officers. There are about an equal number of cases in which persons
employed under the civil departments of the army were dismissed the
service—commissaries, purveyors, surgeons, hospital mates, etc. In the
commissariat department (as might have been foreseen) embezzlement
was the snare to unscrupulous men, often far from the eye of their
superior—it was too easy to issue false vouchers as to the number of
men or horses rationed, or to make corrupt agreements with contractors
or local authorities, certifying that a larger amount of food or forage
had been supplied than had really been given in. Selling public mules
or horses, and returning them as dead, was another profitable fraud.
Two non-combatant employés of the army (a paymaster and a conductor of
stores) were “broken” for absconding from the army during the battle of
Talavera, and spreading false reports of disaster in the rear.
The medical staff, not nearly such frequent offenders as the
commissariat staff, are occasionally dismissed the service for brawling
and drunkenness, which last inevitably resulted in the neglect of the
wounded on the march or in hospital.
After cashiering, the next most serious punishment inflicted on an
officer was suspension from pay and rank for a term of months, six and
three were the usual periods named. This might be inflicted for any
one of a great variety of offences. By far the most frequent fault was
neglect of details of duty, such as quitting the regiment or detachment
for many hours without leave, allowing a convoy or a draft to straggle,
permitting the rank and file to pull down cottages for firewood, or to
waste crops, or to fell fruit trees. Sleeping away from the company, in
a rather distant house or village, was another frequent misdemeanour.
We may place second in the category of offences the one that may be
called quarrelling with native authorities. Owing to high-handed
action on the one side, and provocative sulkiness on the other, these
wrangles were very common. Officers in charge of detachments fell
out with a _juiz de fora_ or a _corregidor_, or the governor of some
petty garrison, about billets or payments due, and ended by insulting,
occasionally by assaulting, him. This generally cost the offender six
months’ suspension, for Wellington was resolved that the officers of
his army must not override lawful local authority, and sometimes, in
his comments on a court-martial sentence, asks what would be thought of
a lieutenant who should treat in such a fashion the mayor of an English
borough, or the commandant of an English fort.
[Sidenote: Wellington and Petty Quarrels]
The third list of offences which were usually visited with shorter
or longer “suspension” may be put together under the general head of
relations of officers to each other. This includes equally oppressive
or insulting acts of superiors to inferiors, and insubordinate conduct
of inferiors to superiors. The latter was far the more common failing,
if the statistics of court-martials may be trusted. But no doubt
allowance must be made for many cases in which a bullied subaltern
preferred to hold his tongue, rather than to appeal against the
acts or language of his captain or colonel—the failure of his case
would leave him in a very dangerous and unpleasant position for the
future. Intemperate language, or “improper” letters from inferiors to
superiors, are a not uncommon cause of court-martials. Even colonels
occasionally wrote or spoke in insubordinate terms to generals.[249]
But “answering back” on the part of subalterns to captains or majors
was of course far more frequent. Wellington grew, on occasion,
exceedingly wrath at reading the reports of court-martials on petty
cases of this kind. We may give a typical comment.
“I cannot but consider the transaction which has been the subject
of this court-martial as simply a private quarrel, it has as little
connection with the public service or the discipline and subordination
of the army, as any that has ever come under my notice. It is certainly
true that the private quarrels of officers may be proper subjects for
the investigation of a court-martial. But the complainant, in order
to obtain a decision in his favour, must come with a fair case. He
must not himself have been guilty of any breach of the general order
of the army, or of discipline. His authority as a superior must not
have been exerted over his inferior (of whom he complains) in order
to enjoy the advantage of his own improper conduct. Above all, he
must have refrained from the use of abusive or improper language and
gestures.”[250]
Another comment is—
“The Commander of the Forces cannot but feel that both his time, and
that of the officers composing court-martials, is occupied very little
to the advantage of the public service, in considering the unbecoming
and ungentlemanlike behaviour of officers to each other.”[251]
The mildest form of punishment for officers was the reprimand, which
varied much in shape. It might amount to no more than the publication
of the fact that an officer _was_ reprimanded in the General Orders,
without any further publicity. Or, on the other hand, the sentence of
the court-martial might be directed to be read out to his regiment,
or even to his division, in the most public fashion. And to the
sentence there might be added a caustic and scathing postscript by the
Commander-in-Chief. Take, for example, “This person may think himself
very fortunate that the sentence of the court has been so lenient. A
different view of the evidence on the charge would have rendered his
dismissal from the service necessary under the Articles of War. The
Commander of the Forces hopes that he will take warning by what has
occurred, and will in future conduct himself on all occasions as a
gentleman should. This reprimand is to be read to him by the commanding
officer at the station where he may happen to be, in presence of the
officers and troops, paraded for that purpose.”[252]
Reprimands were generally the punishment for the smaller derelictions
of duty, such as failing to report arrival at a station, striking a
soldier who was insolent instead of arresting him, brawling with a
civilian or a Portuguese militia officer, or boisterous and unseemly
conduct in the streets when off duty.
There was no court-martial on an officer for desertion during the
whole war, and only one case of the sort in the commissioned ranks.
This was that of an Irish lieutenant who passed over to the French
outposts while Masséna’s army was lying behind the lines of Santarem
in February, 1811. He was discovered to be insane or suffering from
delusions, being captured during Masséna’s retreat, while wandering in
an objectless way in the rear of the enemy’s march: he was sent to a
mad-house.[253]
[Sidenote: Executions for Desertion]
As to the punishments of the soldier, the heaviest was death, either
by the bullets of a firing party, or by the Provost Marshal’s gallows.
Shooting was almost exclusively reserved for the military offence of
desertion to the enemy; but it was two or three times awarded for
mutiny and striking an officer or sergeant, and once only (as far as
I can make out) to a non-commissioned officer for robbing valuable
stores which he had been set to guard.[254] It would have been more
usual to hang for the latter offence, and I do not know why this
particular case was punished with shooting. There seem to have been
78 men shot in all during the war, of whom 52 were British, and 26
foreigners. The disproportion, of course, is enormous, as there were
some fifty or sixty British battalions in the army, and only ten
foreign battalions.[255] Among the last the main body of deserters
were supplied by two battalions only, the _Chasseurs Britanniques_ and
Brunswick Oels Jägers, both of which corps were largely recruited, as
has been already explained, from Germans, Italians, Poles, and other
aliens from prison camps at home. They had volunteered into the British
service in order to get the chance of escape, and took it at the first
opportunity. The deserters from the King’s German Legion were in
proportion very few. During the last two years of the war many of these
foreign deserters were not shot, but given life service in a colonial
corps, in places such as New South Wales, from which they could not
desert again. Some others got off with a heavy sentence of flogging.
[Sidenote: The Punishment of Hanging]
Hanging was the penalty for practically all capital offences except
desertion to the enemy. It was not so frequent as shooting. The records
of the General Court-Martials show a total of about forty executions,
and a few more were apparently carried out by the Provost Marshal on
criminals caught _flagrante delicto_ murdering or wounding peasants.
The punishment of hanging covered many offences. It is rather
surprising to find that two men who killed their officers (one in the
Buffs, one in the 42nd) were hanged rather than shot—but apparently
each case was ruled to be one of private spite, and not of mutiny, and
was treated as simple murder. There were six or eight instances of men
who slew a comrade in the ranks, by deliberate assassination, not in
a quarrel, and were hanged for it. It may be noted, however, that one
private who stabbed an unfaithful wife, at the moment of detection,
was found guilty of manslaughter and given one year’s imprisonment
only. Far the most frequent cause for the use of the gallows, however,
was the killing or wounding of peasants who attempted to defend their
houses or cattle from plunder. This was a crime for which Wellington
seldom if ever gave pardon; he was as inflexible on the point in the
hostile land of France as in the friendly Spain and Portugal. It did
not matter whether the peasants were killed or not—the use of musket or
bayonet against them in pursuit of plunder was the thing that mattered.
There are certainly some most atrocious cases in the list, where a
whole family had been murdered or left for dead. But in others, where
the violence had been no more than a blow with a butt-end, or a bayonet
prod in the shoulder, the offenders seem to have been unlucky in not
getting off with a sound flogging. But in Wellington’s code petty
stealing without violence was punished with the lash, but armed robbery
with death.
In an age when in England theft to the value of over forty shillings
was still punishable in theory with death, (though the penalty was
more often evaded than not), it is not surprising to find that some
of the cases of hanging in Wellington’s army were for mere stealing.
But it was always for stealing on a large scale, or under aggravated
circumstances. Mere petty larceny led to the lash only. The most
notable achievement in this line was that of two foreigners who
succeeded in breaking open the commissary-general’s chest and stole no
less than £2000 from it; others were those of a soldier-servant who
absconded with his master’s mule, baggage, and purse; of a sentry over
the tent of a brigadier, who took the opportunity of making off with
the general’s silver camp-equipage and plate; and of a man who being
on treasure-escort, succeeded in opening a barrel and stealing some
hundreds of dollars from it. In two or three instances large sums of
£40 or £60, burglariously stolen from the house or tent of an officer,
a commissary, or a sutler, brought men to the gallows. Finally, there
was one case of hanging for the crime of sodomy—which was still a
capital offence in English law for more than thirty years after the
Peninsular War ended.
There are one or two instances on record of rather surprising leniency
in the sentences inflicted by court-martial for crimes which in most
other cases entailed the death-penalty—_e.g._ plundering and wounding
a peasant was on two occasions in 1814 punished with 900 and 1000
lashes only, and three artillerymen, who stole the watch, purse, and
papers of the Spanish General Giron, got off with transportation to New
South Wales, instead of suffering the hanging that was usual for such
a serious offence. A dragoon convicted of rape in 1814 was lucky also
in receiving no more than a heavy flogging. No doubt there was in such
light sentences some consideration of previous good conduct and steady
service on the part of the offenders.
We have already spoken of the penalties which came next after death
in the list—the terrible 1200 and 1000 lash awards, and of the crimes
which usually earned them. Much more frequent were the 700, 500, and
300 lash sentences, which are to be numbered by the hundred, and
were awarded, as a rule, for casual theft without violence, making
away with necessaries (_e.g._ selling blankets or ball-cartridge to
peasants), or “embargoing” carts and oxen, _i.e._ pressing transport
from the countryside without leave, to carry baggage or knapsacks
when a small party, without an officer in charge, was on the move.
Purloining shoes or food from a convoy was another frequent offence,
worth about 500 lashes to the detected culprit. The bee-hive stealers
of the retreat from Talavera got 700 lashes each—a heavy sentence for
such a crime. The tale concerning them is too good to be omitted.
After the general order against plundering from the peasantry was
issued at Jaraicejo to the half-starved army, Sir Arthur Wellesley, in
a cross-country ride, saw a man of the Connaught Rangers posting along
as fast as his legs could carry him, with his great coat wrapped around
his head, and a bee-hive balanced upon it, with a swarm of furious bees
buzzing around. Furious at such a flagrant breach of orders issued
only on the previous day, the Commander-in-Chief called out to him,
“Hullo, sir, where did you get that bee-hive?” Pat could not see his
interlocutor, having completely shrouded his face to keep off stings:
he did not pay sufficient heed to the _tone_ of the question, which
should have warned him, and answered in a fine Milesian brogue, “Just
over the hill there, and, by Jasus, if ye don’t make haste they’ll be
all gone.”[256] The blind good-nature of the reply stayed the General’s
anger; he let Pat pass, and told the story at dinner with a laugh. But
the order was no joke to the men of the 53rd caught at the same game a
few days after.[257] They got the nickname of the “honeysuckers” along
with their flogging.
[Sidenote: Charles Reilly’s Excuse]
There is another tale of “embargoing” belonging to the regimental
history of the Connaught Rangers, which may serve as a pendant to that
about the bee-hives.
Early in 1812 a commissary had pressed country carts to go to the
Douro, to bring back pipes of wine for the troops. On such occasions,
with a hilly country and very tedious work, the men would often
contrive, in spite of the vigilance of the subaltern in charge of the
convoy, to let the driver escape with his bullocks for a pecuniary
consideration. Other carts were then illegally pressed as substitutes.
On one of these occasions a detachment of the 88th regiment was sent to
St. João da Pesqueira for some wine. On their return, the commissary
observed that the two fine white bullocks, which he had sent with one
cart, had been exchanged for two very inferior blacks. He made his
regular complaint, and the two men in charge, a corporal and private,
were brought to a court-martial. On the trial everything was proved,
save the act of receiving money from the driver to allow the white
bullocks to escape; and the president, on summing up the evidence of
the commissary, said to the prisoners, “It is quite useless denying
the fact; it is conclusive. You started from hence with a pair of fine
white bullocks, and you brought back a pair of lean blacks. What can
you have to say to that?” Private Charles Reilly, noways abashed at
this, which every one thought a poser, and ready with any excuse to
save himself from punishment, immediately exclaimed, “Och! plaise your
honour, and wasn’t the white beasts lazy, and didn’t we bate them until
they were black?” The court was not quite satisfied of the truth of
this wonderful metamorphosis, and they were condemned to be punished
(_see_ General Order, Freneda, January 22, 1812)—the corporal to be
broke and get 700 lashes, Reilly to get 500. But in consideration
of the great gallantry displayed by the 88th at the storm of Ciudad
Rodrigo a few days before, the culprits were in the end pardoned.
All these cases quoted are from records of general court-martials. But
of course the huge majority of floggings were inflicted by regimental
courts, which had jurisdiction over all minor offences, such as
drunkenness, disobedience, and petty breaches of discipline inside the
regiment, but could not give the heavier sentences such as death or
transportation, or the 1000 lashes.
A glance through the records of court-martials shows that some
battalions gave much more than their proper percentage of criminals,
some much less. Two main causes governed the divergence: the first was
that some corps got more than their share of bad recruits—wild Irish
or town scum; but I fancy that the character of the commanding officer
was even more important than the precise proportion of undesirables
drafted into the ranks. A colonel who could make himself loved as
well as feared could reclaim even very unpromising recruits: a tyrant
or an incapable could turn even well-disposed men into bad soldiers.
It is clear that an excessively easy-going and slack commanding
officer, who winked at irregularities, and discouraged zeal among his
officers, ruined a battalion as surely as the most inhuman martinet.
Among the court-martials of the Peninsular Army there are very few on
colonels—not half a dozen. But one chances to be on a tyrant, and the
other on a _fainéant_, and the evidence seems to show that the latter
got his corps into quite as wretched condition as the former. Though
he received over the regiment, as every one allowed, in excellent
order, in a few months of slack administration and relaxed discipline,
it became not only drunken and slovenly, but so slow on the march,
and at the rendezvous, that the other units in the brigade had always
to be waiting for it, and the brigadier complained that he could not
trust it at the outposts. The officers, gradually coming to despise
their colonel, treated him with contempt, and finally sent in a
round-robin to the Horse Guards, accusing him not only of incapacity
but of cowardice, which last, in the court-martial which followed, was
held to be an unfounded charge.[258] The colonel, as a result of the
investigation, was reprimanded, and put on half-pay; his subordinates,
for grave breach of discipline, were all drafted into other regiments,
and a new body of picked officers was brought together, to reorganize
a corps which was evidently in a thoroughly demoralized condition; the
new-comers got the nickname of the “Elegant Extracts.”
[Sidenote: A Tyrannical Colonel]
The reverse-picture, of a regiment ruined by arbitrary strictness and
inhuman exaggeration of punishments, may be studied in the records
of a court-martial held in the spring of 1813.[259] In this case a
commanding officer was found guilty not only of “violent conduct”
and “using intemperate and improper language to his officers, being
in breach of good discipline, and unbecoming the character of an
officer and a gentleman,” but of inflicting corporal punishment at
large without any form of trial, when there were sufficient officers
present to form a proper regimental court-martial; of disobeying the
direction of the Commander-in-Chief by piling up sentences of flogging
passed on men on different occasions, so as to inflict several separate
punishments at the same time, and of releasing men sentenced to
punishment in order to send them into action, and then returning them
to arrest after the battle in order to receive their lashes. This last
was specially in conflict with Wellington’s orders, for he held that
good conduct in action ought to work out a sentence, pronounced but not
inflicted, and that no man convicted of a disgraceful offence ought to
be put into line till he had expiated it by undergoing his punishment.
This officer was dismissed the service, but, in consideration of a good
fighting record in the past, was allowed the value of his commission as
major.
One diary from the ranks, that of Donaldson of the 94th, gives a very
interesting and complete picture of the fate of a battalion which, by
the invaliding of its colonel, had fallen into the hands of a major who
had the soul of a tyrant. This was a case of an old ranker who knew
too much of soldiers’ tricks, and had a sort of system of espionage
through men who were prepared to act as his toadies and secret
informers. “By this eaves-dropping he knew all the little circumstances
which another commanding officer would have disdained to listen to,
and always made a bad use of his knowledge. When he got command of
the regiment he introduced flogging for every trivial offence, and in
addition invented disgraceful and torturing modes of inflicting the
lash. But this was not enough—he ordered that all defaulters should
have a patch of black and yellow cloth sewed on to the sleeve of their
jacket, and a hole cut in it for every time they were punished. The
effect was soon visible: as good men were liable to be punished for the
slightest fault, the barrier between them and hardened ill-doers was
broken down, and those who had lost respect in their own eyes became
broken-hearted and inefficient soldiers, or else grew reckless and
launched out into real crime. Those who were hardened and unprincipled
before, being brought by the prevalence of punishments nearer to a
level with the better men, seemed to glory in misconduct. In short,
all idea of honour and character was lost, and listless apathy and
bad conduct became the prevailing features of the corps. Reckless
punishment changed the individual’s conduct in two ways—he either
became broken-hearted and useless, or else shameless and hardened....
The real method of accomplishing the desired end of keeping good
discipline, is for the officers to make themselves acquainted with the
personal character and disposition of each man under their command.
A commanding officer has as good a right to make himself acquainted
with the disposition of his men, as the medical officer with their
constitutions.”[260] When the colonel came back from sick leave he was
shocked to find the men he had been so proud of treated in this manner.
His first act was to cut off the yellow badge; his second to do away
with the frequent punishments. But though the regiment was again on a
fair footing, it was long before the effect of a few months’ ill-usage
disappeared.
[Sidenote: Good-Conduct Medals]
What certain misguided officers tried to maintain by a reign of terror,
was sought in other ways by wiser men. It is to the Peninsular War
period that we owe the first of our “Long Service and Good Conduct”
medals—all at first regimental, and not given by the State. Honorary
distinctions for the well-conducted man are both a more humane and a
more rational form of differentiation between good and bad than the
black and yellow badge for every man punished for any cause, which the
detestable major quoted above tried to introduce.[261] In addition
some regiments instituted a division of the men into classes, of which
the best behaved had graduated privileges and benefits. Any man after
a certain period of certified good conduct could be moved up into a
higher class, and the emulation not to be left among the recognized
black-sheep had a very good effect.[262] But even without “classes” or
good-conduct medals, the best could be got out of any regiment by wise
and considerate conduct on the part of the officers. There were corps
where the lash was practically unknown,[263] and others where it had
only been felt by a very small minority of hopeless irreclaimables.
On the other hand, there is a record or two of punishments in a
unit, inflicted by officers who do not seem to have been regarded by
public opinion as specially tyrannical or heartless, which fills the
reader with astonishment. I have analysed the list of men noted for
chastisement in one battery of artillery, where on an effective of 4
sergeants and 136 rank and file, three of the former had been “broken,”
and 57 of the latter had received punishments varying downwards
from 500 lashes, in the space of twelve months (July, 1812, to July,
1813), over which the record extends. Though some of the offences were
serious enough, there were others for which the use of the cat appears
altogether misplaced and irrational. As an observer in another corps
wrote “the frequency of flogging at one time had the effect of blinding
the judgment of officers who possessed both feeling and discrimination.
I have known one who shed tears when his favourite horse was injured,
and next day exulted in seeing a poor wretch flogged whose offence was
being late in delivering an order.”
Floggings were inflicted by the drummers of the regiment, under the
superintendence of the drum-major and the adjutant. The culprit was
bound by his extended arms to two of three sergeants’ halberds,
planted in the ground in a triangle, and lashed together at the top.
The strokes were inflicted at the tap of a drum beaten in slow time.
Each of the wielders of the cat retired after having given twenty-five
lashes. The surgeon was always present, to certify that the man’s
life was not in danger by the further continuance of the punishment,
and the prisoner was taken down the moment that the medical man
declared that he could stand no more. Often this interference saved
a culprit from the end of his punishment, as if the tale was fairly
complete he might never be called upon to undergo the balance. But in
grave cases the prisoner was merely sent into hospital till he was
sufficiently convalescent to endure the payment of the remainder of
his account. Inhuman commanding officers sometimes refused to allow of
any abatement, even when the crime had not been a very serious one,
and insisted that the whole sentence should be executed, even if the
culprit had to go twice into hospital before it was completed.
[Sidenote: A Memory of a Flogging]
The autobiographical record of a flogging is rather rare—the diarist in
the ranks was generally a steady sort of fellow, who did not get into
the worst trouble. The following may serve as an example, however. It
is that of William Lawrence of the 1/40th, who in 1809 was a private,
though he won his sergeant’s stripes in 1813.
“I absented myself without leave from guard for twenty-four hours, and
when I returned I found I was in a fine scrape, for I was immediately
put in the guard-room. It was my first offence, but that did not screen
me much, and I was sentenced to 400 lashes. I found the regiment
assembled all ready to witness my punishment: the place chosen for it
was the square of a convent. As soon as I had been brought up by the
guard, the sentence of the court-martial was read over to me by the
colonel, and I was told to strip, which I did firmly, and without using
the help that was offered me, as I had by that time got hardened to my
lot. I was then lashed to the halberds, and the colonel gave the order
for the drummers to commence, each one having to give me twenty-five
lashes in turn. I bore it very well until I had received 175, when I
got so enraged with the pain that I began pushing the halberds, which
did not stand at all firm (being planted on stones), right across the
square, amid the laughter of the regiment. The colonel, I suppose
thinking then that I had had sufficient, ‘ordered the sulky rascal
down’ in those very words. Perhaps a more true word could not have been
spoken, for indeed I was sulky. I did not give vent to a sound the
whole time, though the blood ran down my trousers from top to bottom. I
was unbound, and a corporal hove my shirt and jacket over my shoulder,
and convoyed me to hospital, presenting as miserable a picture as I
possibly could.
“Perhaps it was as good a thing for me as could then have happened, as
it prevented me from committing greater crimes, which might at last
have brought me to my ruin. But I think a good deal of that punishment
might have been abandoned, with more credit to those who then ruled
the army.”[264] Yet to be absent twenty-four hours when on guard was
certainly a serious crime.
Lawrence got off with 175 lashes out of 400 ordered, but was in
hospital nearly three weeks. But 300 or 400 lashes were often inflicted
at a time, and there were men who could take them without a groan.
“Corporal punishment was going on all the year round,” writes a veteran
officer of the 34th,[265] “men were flogged for the small offences, and
for the graver ones often flogged to death—the thousand lashes were
often awarded by court-martial. I have seen men suffer 500 and even 700
before being ‘taken down,’ the blood running down into their shoes,
and their backs flayed like raw red-chopped sausages. Some of them
bore this awful punishment without flinching for 200 or 300 lashes,
chewing a musket ball or a bit of leather to prevent or stifle the
cry of agony: after that they did not seem to feel the same torture.
Sometimes the head drooped over to one side, but the lashing still went
on, the surgeon in attendance examining the patient from time to time
to see what more he could bear. I _did_ see, with horror, one prisoner
receive the 700 before he was taken down. This was the sentence of
a court-martial, carried into effect in the presence of the whole
brigade, for an example.[266] We certainly had very bad characters sent
out to fill the gaps in our ranks, sweepings of prisons in England
and Ireland: but such punishments were inhuman, and I made up my mind
that, if ever I had the chance of commanding a regiment, I would act
on another principle. That time _did_ come. I _did_ command a gallant
corps for eleven years, and I abolished the lash.”
But enough of such horrors. The memory of them is a nightmare.