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

Amphibious operations were a feature of the age. Some were triumphant, like Wolfe’s attack on Quebec in 1759. James Wolfe had blockaded the Marquis de Montcalm in Quebec, but could see no way of achieving a decisive result before winter set in. He summoned his brigadiers to ask for their views, and they resolved on an amphibious attack on the Anse du Foulon, west of the city, where a narrow track led up to the Plains of Abraham. On the night of 12–13 September Captain McDonald, a French-speaking Scots officer, bluffed the French sentry on the track, and by dawn Wolfe’s ten battalions were drawn up on the plain. Montcalm’s men came on in three columns, and were met by an opening volley at a mere 40 yards, one of the most destructive in military history, which stopped them in their tracks. The British fired one more volley and charged, unaware that their youthful commander – he was only 32 – was dying. Montcalm, too, was mortally wounded, and Quebec surrendered on 18 September.

But some other amphibious operations were disastrous. In August 1809 a fleet of 235 armed vessels, 58 of them men-of-war, under Admiral Sir Richard Strachan, escorted 44,000 troops under Major General Lord Chatham to the low-lying malarial Dutch island of Walcheren. The expedition had two aims: first, to capture Antwerp, described by Napoleon as ‘a pistol pointed at the heart of England’, and second, to provide a diversion by an offensive on the Danube by Britain’s Austrian allies. Chatham’s army, stuck fast on the island, lost 218 men in action, but 4,000 died of sickness and another 11,000 were ill when they were evacuated: many suffered from recurring fever for years. Ensign William Thornton Keep of the 77

Regiment told his father that Flushing, the island’s capital, was ‘a most diabolical place’. On 11 September 1809 he reported that ‘the increase of sick is beyond all precedent’: his regiment alone had 22 officers ill.

We hear of a change of the Ministry. It is to be expected after so disastrous a result of things…had the Ministers been informed of the unhealthiness of this place, different measures would doubtless have been adopted. It seems extraordinary that they were not, as it is proverbially the place of transport for the Military Delinquents of France, and they sent us here at the very time of year in which the fever prevails.

Keep became so ill that he had to resign from the army, though he recovered sufficiently to rejoin, becoming an ensign in the 28

Regiment in 1811.

Without sea power the American War of Independence simply could not have been fought at all, and at its close the Royal Navy’s strong grip weakened. It is a measure of the army’s understanding of the fundamental importance of seapower that Captain John Peebles of the 42

Regiment, although only a junior regimental officer, clearly recognised how things stood on 6 October 1781.

The Fleet are busy making the necessary repairs, and completing their water and provisions, and are expected to be ready about the 12

inst., when the Troops will embark upon board the Ships of War agreeable to a distribution given out for that purpose, in order to make a Spirited exertion for the relief of Lord Cornwallis and on which probably depends the fate of America and the superiority of the Sea.

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His men boarded HMS London from their transports with the easy familiarity that came from having done the same thing half a dozen times before and with an unswerving Georgian regard for seniority: ‘the troops went on board by seniority of Companies, and were disposed on the middle and lower decks, six to a mess between the guns.’

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they took on board a Negro pilot who had escaped from Yorktown on the 18

. He reported that there had been an armistice that day, for Cornwallis had asked for terms. Peebles was to be proved right. Although the war rumbled on, the loss of Yorktown marked the end of major operations, and the Royal Navy’s loss of superiority off the Chesapeake that autumn was just as conclusive as Peebles had predicted.

Seapower underpinned the Peninsular War in the middle of the period and the Crimean at its end. In India it was decisive in enabling the British to seize the coastal bases upon which their future success was to depend: it was no accident that the three Presidencies comprising British India were governed from the ports of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. Well might George Thomas write in 1756 that: ‘A fine harbour…in the hands of Europeans might defy the force of Asia.’

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Finally, the Royal Navy made its own distinctive contribution to war on land. Early in the Indian Mutiny, Lieutenant Arthur Moffat Lang of the Bengal Engineers welcomed the arrival of:

100 sailors of the Shannon with four 24-pounders. It was grand to see Jack Tars again, with their loose large-collared blue shirts, loose blue trousers, straw hats with white covers, black ribbons and ‘Shannon’ on the bands; they carry musket and bayonet. They seem strangely out of place. Rolling about up here, using their sea-language, cursing the niggers, driving bullock gharis and swearing because ‘she tacks about and backs and fills so.’

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In the same conflict Lieutenant William Alexander-Gordon of the 93

Highlanders saw one of these 24-pounders breaching the walls of the Secunderbagh at Lucknow ‘with a fine fellow of a negro AB [able seaman]…doing the duty of two or three of the regulation number of gunners.’ The gun was manhandled forward under heavy fire, bullets hitting it ‘with a noise like that which a crowd of school boys might make throwing stones at an empty saucepan.’

(#litres_trial_promo) The soldiers who painted the globe the colour of their coats did so under the navy’s protecting wing.

TO FLANDERS, PORTUGAL AND SPAIN (#ulink_ea94bdbb-cdf9-558a-b584-b7a2f35b92af)

DURING THE AGE OF BROWN BESS the British army took part in five major wars: the Seven Years’ War (1756-63), the American War of Independence (1775-83), the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802), the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) and the Crimean War (1853-56). It fought the Seven Years’ War as an ally of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Operations against the French and their Indian allies in North America began in 1754, absorbed much of Britain’s military effort and helped initiate far-reaching tactical change. French possessions in Canada were snapped up, with Wolfe’s capture of Quebec in 1759 as the brightest star in a year of victories still remembered in the naval march ‘Heart of Oak,’ first heard in David Garrick’s play Harlequin’s Invasion

Come cheer up my boys ‘tis to glory we steer

to add something more to this wonderful year…

In India, too, there were successes, with Robert Clive’s defeat of the pro-French ruler of Bengal at Plassey in 1757 and Lieutenant General Sir Eyre Coote’s victory at Wandeswash in 1759 bringing much of India under the control of the British East India Company. On the continent of Europe, where the British always fought as part of a coalition force, their fortunes were more mixed. The Duke of Cumberland, George II’s son, was badly beaten at Hastenbeck in 1757, but a British force played a notable part in the victory at Minden in the annus mirabilis of 1759.

It is worth pausing to consider just what these battles were like for the men who fought in them. At Minden, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick with 41,000 Anglo-German soldiers faced Marshal Contades with 51,000 Frenchmen. What made the battle unusual was that it was decided by an attack on a vastly superior force of French cavalry by six British regiments, launched as the result of a linguistic misunderstanding. Hospital Assistant William Fellowes of the 37

Foot wrote that:

The soldiers and others, this morning, who were not employed at the moment, began to strip off and wash their shirts, and I as eagerly as the rest. But while we were in this state, suddenly the drums began to beat to arms: and so insistent was the summons that without more ado we slip’t on the wet linen and buttoned the jackets over the soaking shirts, hurrying to form line lest our comrades should depart without us. There was a keen wind blowing at the time, and with my wet shirt and soaking coat, it was an hour or more before I could find any warmth in me. But the French warmed us up in good time; tho’ not, you may be sure, as much as we warmed them!

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Lieutenant Montgomery of the 12

Foot described the advance, with the redcoats stepping out to the rub-a-dub-dub-dub of the drums, and through:

a most furious fire from a most infernal Battery of 18 18-pounders…It might be imagined that this cannonade would render the Regt incapable of bearing the shock of unhurt troops drawn up long before on ground of their own choosing, but firmness and resolution will surmount any difficulty. When we got within about 100 yards of the enemy, a large body of French cavalry galloped boldly down upon us; these our Men by reserving their fire immediately ruined…These visitants being thus dismissed…down came upon us like lightning the glory of France in the Persons of the Gens d’Armes. These were almost immediately dispersed…we now discovered a large body of Infantry…moving directly on our flank in Column…We engaged this Corps for about 10 minutes, kill’d them a good many, and as the Song says, the rest then ran away.

The next who made their appearance were some Regt’s of the Grenadiers of France, and as fine and terrible looking fellows as I ever saw. They stood us a tug notwithstanding we beat them to a distance…we advanced, they took the hint and run away.

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Montgomery added a postscript. The noise of battle frightened the regimental sutler’s pregnant wife into premature labour: ‘She was brought to bed of A Son, and we have christened him by the name of Ferdinand.’

The Seven Years’ War was ended by the Treaty of Paris, a triumph for Britain, who gained territory at French expense. But France was soon to have her revenge. A constitutional dispute, focusing on the right to tax, led to war between Britain and her North American colonies in 1775. Although the British won a costly victory that year at Bunker Hill, just outside Boston, and, indeed, won the majority of the war’s pitched battles, they were unable to inflict a decisive defeat on George Washington’s Continental army, and their strength was eroded by repeated small actions in a landscape that was often decidedly hostile. France, heartened by the surrender of an army under Lieutenant General John Burgoyne at Saratoga in October 1777, joined the war. In 1781 Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis, commanding British forces in the southern states, was besieged at Yorktown by Washington and his French allies. Admiral de Grasse’s fleet prevented the Royal Navy from intervening, and in October Cornwallis surrendered in what was the greatest British military humiliation until the fall of Singapore in 1942. The Peace of Versailles ended the conflict, depriving Britain of many of the gains achieved in the Seven Years’ War.

France’s victory was dearly bought, for her finances collapsed under the strain of the war. Her government’s attempt at reform led to the summoning of the Estates General in 1789 and began the slide into revolution. War broke out between revolutionary France and old monarchical Europe in 1792, and Britain was drawn in the following year. The French Revolutionary Wars saw Britain’s Prime Minister, William Pitt, assemble two successive anti-French coalitions, but with little success. Overall the war’s pattern was clear enough. There was little to check the French on land, and they overran the Low Countries, scarcely inconvenienced by the intervention in 1793-95 of a British force under the Duke of York, although a French expedition to Egypt ended in failure. At sea, however, the Royal Navy was supreme, and by 1801 the war had run its course, with neither side able to do serious damage to the other, and peace was ratified at Amiens in 1802.

It did not endure for long, and war broke out again the following year. Napoleon Bonaparte, an artillery officer who had risen to eminence by a mixture of stunning military success and deft political opportunism, had become ruler of France, and in May 1804 he assumed the imperial title, gaining popular approval for a new constitution by a plebiscite. By 1812 he had defeated all the major continental powers save Britain, imposing the ‘Continental System’ designed to prevent British commerce with Europe. But that year he over-reached himself by invading Russia. His former enemies, sensing that the tide had turned, took the field against him, and in 1814 was beaten and forced to abdicate. The following year he staged the dramatic revival of the Hundred Days, but was decisively defeated by the British and Prussians at Waterloo, and abdicated once more, this time for good.

During the Napoleonic Wars Britain’s principal theatre of operations was the Iberian Peninsula where a British force, from 1809 under the command of General Sir Arthur Wellesley, later created Duke of Wellington, operated from its base in Portugal against French armies which always outnumbered the British but were constrained by a broader conflict against a hostile population. The British army fought a dozen major battles and endured several painful sieges. The battle of Albuera, on 16 May 1811, came about when a British, Spanish and Portuguese army under Lieutenant General Sir William Beresford blocked Marshal Nicolas Soult’s attempt to disrupt his siege of the French-held fortress of Badajoz.

It was one of the hardest infantry contests of the entire period. Soult fixed Beresford’s attention by feinting at the village of Albuera, in the Allied centre. He then unleashed a massive attack against Beresford’s right flank, where a Spanish division swung round to face the threat and fought gallantly, buying valuable time. A British infantry brigade under Lieutenant Colonel John Colborne – one of the stars of the age, who was to become a field marshal and a peer – moved up to support the Spaniards. It was locked in a firefight with enemy infantry when French hussars and Polish lancers fell on its open flank, at the very moment that a sudden cloudburst drenched the mens’ muskets so that they would not fire. Lieutenant George Crompton of the 66

Regiment told his mother of the catastrophe that ensued. It was:

the first time (and God knows I hope the last) I saw the backs of English soldiers turned upon the French…Oh, what a day was that. The worst of the story I have not related. Our Colours were taken. I told you before that the 2 Ensigns were shot under them; 2 Sergeants shared the same fate. A Lieutenant seized a musket to defend them, and he was shot to the heart: what could be done against Cavalry?

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Two fresh British brigades then came into line, and Captain Moyle Sherer of the 34

Regiment relates how the powder smoke, so utterly characteristic of these battles, was snatched away for a moment to reveal:

the French grenadier caps, their arms, and the whole aspect of their frowning masses. It was a momentary, but a grand sight: a heavy atmosphere of smoke again enveloped us, and few objects could be discerned at all, none distinctly…This murderous contest of musketry lasted long. We were the whole time progressively advancing and shaking the enemy. At a distance of about twenty yards from them, we received orders to charge; we had ceased firing, cheered, and had our bayonets in the charging position, when a body of the enemy’s horse was discovered under the rising ground, ready to take advantage of our impetuosity. Already, however, the French infantry, alarmed by our preparatory cheers, which always indicate the charge, had broke and fled.

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