Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket

In contrast to continental practice, where the different battalions of a single regiment usually served together, it was uncommon for the battalions of a British regiment to find themselves side by side, and they were generally treated as if they were separate units. There were of course exceptions. The practice of keeping Guards units together on active service meant that at Waterloo, for instance, 2/1

and 3/1

Guards fought side by side in Maitland’s Brigade. Both battalions of the 42

served together in North America during the Seven Years War. Two battalions of 7

Royal Fusiliers and two of the 48

fought at Albuera in 1811. At the end of that dreadful day Houghton’s brigade was commanded by Captain Cimtière of the 48

, a French émigré commissioned from the ranks in 1794, and 1/48

was commanded by a lieutenant.

A regiment was headed by its colonel, and until 1751, when the official numbering of regiments was introduced, bore his name as its title and might carry a badge from his armorial bearings on his colours, harking back to the days of the English Civil War when, for example, Sir Bevil Grenvile’s fine regiment of Cornish foot wore the blue and silver of the family livery and carried his griffin badge on its colours. The colonel of the regiment, perversely, was usually not a colonel at all, but a general officer for whom the colonelcy represented not simply a personal honour but the opportunity to wield patronage and make money into the bargain. However, for most of the period, despite the occasional nod to political interest, officers appointed to colonelcies were men of experience and probity.

(#litres_trial_promo)

George III himself told General William Picton, brother of the better-known Sir Thomas, and entirely lacking in influence or powerful friends, that for his appointment as colonel of the 12

Foot ‘you are entirely obliged to Captain Picton, who commanded the grenadier company of the 12

Regiment in Germany [during the Seven Years’ War].’

(#litres_trial_promo) Picton held the post for 32 years, but still fell short of the record set by the 1

Marquess of Drogheda, colonel of the 18

Light Dragoons from 1759 until its disbandment, as part of the post-Waterloo reductions, in 1821. It was unusual for a colonel to resign voluntarily, but the 2

Duke of Northumberland gave up the colonelcy of the Royal Horse Guards in 1812 when the Duke of York refused to give him a free hand in the appointment and promotion of its officers. Only one colonel was dismissed, the unlucky John Whitelocke of the 89

Regiment, because his sentence of cashiering, imposed when he was court-martialled after the Buenos Aires fiasco, debarred him from serving in any military capacity whatever.