CHAPTER XI

INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE REGIMENT: THE OFFICERS

Hitherto we have been dealing with the regiment considered as a whole, and mainly with its place in the brigade and division to which it had been allotted. We must now pass on to consider it not as a whole, but as an assemblage of parts—officers, staff, sergeants, rank and file, and musicians.

To understand the mechanism of a regiment it is first necessary to say something about the establishment of officers. Battalions and cavalry regiments were normally commanded by a lieutenant-colonel: there were very few full colonels with the army, and almost the only ones who commanded a unit were those of the brigades of Guards, where owing to the “double rank” which made all lieutenants “captains in the army,” all captains lieutenant-colonels, and all majors and lieutenant-colonels _full_ colonels, it resulted that the battalion commander always held a colonelcy.

[Sidenote: Devolution of Command]

When the lieutenant-colonel in a battalion was dead, wounded, or sick, the unit was often commanded by the senior major—there were normally two of them—sometimes for many months at a time, till the absent officer returned, or his place was filled by promotion. Cases were known where, owing to great mortality or invaliding in the senior ranks, a captain might be found in command of the battalion for a certain space. I note that about the time of Bussaco the “morning state” of the army shows two units (both of the Guards) commanded by colonels, 30 by lieutenant-colonels, 16 by majors, one by a captain, and this, I think, was a fairly normal proportion.

In addition to the colonel and the two majors, an infantry battalion at full strength would possess ten captains and twenty subalterns, or a trifle more, giving the allowance of three officers per company, with a few over. How many of the subalterns would be lieutenants and how many ensigns (called 2nd lieutenants in the rifle regiments) was a matter of mere chance, but the lieutenants were nearly always in a majority.[195] A glance down the morning state of the Bussaco army of September, 1811, shows that one battalion (1/45th) had no more than one ensign, another (the 74th) as many as eleven. It was very rare for a regiment to have its full establishment of ten captains present; there were nearly always one or two companies commanded by their senior lieutenants. In addition to its company officers every battalion had its “staff,” composed of the adjutant, paymaster, quartermaster, and the surgeon, with his two assistant surgeons. The adjutant was usually a lieutenant, but occasionally an ensign; in the Guards (where most ranks counted a step higher than in the line), he was usually a “lieutenant and captain.” In addition to the officers regularly commissioned, a battalion had often with it one or two “volunteers”—young men who were practically probationers; they were allowed to come out to an active-service battalion on the chance of being gazetted to it without purchase, on their own responsibility. They carried muskets and served in the ranks, but were allowed to wear uniforms of a better cloth than that given to the rank and file, and messed with the officers.

The most astonishing case of devolution of acting rank through the death or wounding of many seniors was at the battle of Albuera. On the morning after that action the wrecks of the second brigade of the 2nd Division, temporarily united into one battalion because of the dreadful losses which had fallen on every one of the three units of which it consisted, were commanded by the senior captain of the 1/48th regiment—and he (as it chanced) was a French _emigré_, with the somewhat lugubrious name of Cimitière. The brigade had been reduced (it may be remarked) from a strength of 1651 to 597 in the battle, no less than 1054 officers and men being killed, wounded, or missing, and the brigadier, with five lieutenant-colonels and majors senior to Cimitière having been killed or wounded.[196] But the Albuera losses were, of course, the record in the way of heavy casualties; there is nothing that can be compared to them in the annals of Wellington’s army for general slaughter extending all through an army, though certain individual regiments in particular engagements suffered almost as heavily—_e.g._ in the storm of Badajoz and at Waterloo.

The chances of temporary command were sometimes curious. The gallant Colborne, whom I have already had occasion to mention, though only a lieutenant-colonel, commanded a brigade at Albuera, owing to the absence of the brigadier—he being the senior of four battalion commanders. He then commanded his own regiment only during 1811–13, but succeeded as senior lieutenant-colonel to the charge of a brigade of the Light Division for the last six months of the war. Though he had thus twice commanded a brigade with distinction in the Peninsula, we find him in the Waterloo campaign once more at the head of his own 52nd Foot, in Adam’s brigade. It is true that with his single battalion he there did more than most of the generals, by giving the decisive stroke which wrecked the attack of the French Guard.

Not only did lieutenant-colonels practically become brigadiers, in an interim fashion, pretty frequently, but once at least an officer with no higher rank commanded a whole division for some months. This was Colonel Andrew Barnard, who after Craufurd fell at Ciudad Rodrigo, and the only other general with the division (Vandeleur) was wounded, had charge of the most precious unit of Wellington’s whole army for nearly five months, and headed it at the storm of Badajoz. There seems to have been a similar, but a shorter phenomenon of this sort with the 3rd Division, after the fall of Badajoz, when, Generals Picton and Kempt being both disabled, Colonel Wallace of the Connaught Rangers commanded the division for a week or two—till Wellington drafted in his brother-in-law, General Pakenham, to lead it, which he did with great distinction at Salamanca.[197]

[Sidenote: The Purchase System]

Promotion in the British Army at this period was working in the most irregular and spasmodic fashion, there being two separate influences operating in diametrically opposite ways. The one was the purchase system, the other the frequent, but not by any means sufficiently frequent, promotion for merit and good service in the field. The practice at the Horse Guards was that casualties by deaths in action were filled up inside the regiment, without money passing, but that for all other vacancies the purchase system worked. When a lieutenant-colonelcy, majority, or captaincy was vacant, the senior in the next lower rank had a moral right to be offered the vacancy at the regulation price. But there were many cases in which more than the regulation could be got. The officer retiring handed over the affair to a “commission broker,” and bidding was invited. A poor officer at the head of those of his own rank could not afford to pay the often very heavy price, and might see three or four of his juniors buy their way over his head, while he vainly waited for a vacancy by death, by which he would obtain his step without having to pay cash. The system of exchanges, which prevailed on the largest scale, also pressed very hardly on the impecunious; officers from other corps, where there was a block in promotion, managed for themselves a transference into battalions where there seemed to be a likelihood of a more rapid change of rank, by paying large differences for an exchange to those who stood at the head of the list. But there was also a good deal of exchanging for other reasons—officers whose regiments were ordered to unhealthy or unpopular stations, such as the West Indies or New South Wales, offered considerable sums to others who were ready to accept the ineligible destination in return for hard cash. By careful management of this sort, a wealthy officer could procure himself very rapid promotion—_e.g._ a lieutenant might buy a captaincy in a West India regiment for a comparatively modest sum, and then, as a captain in such a corps, exchange on a second payment with a broken or needy captain in some other regiment on a European station, to whom money was all-important, and so get well established in his new rank, without ever really having quitted home, or served in the corps into and out of which he had rapidly come and gone—on paper only. It is said that one young officer, who had the advantages of being wealthy, a peer, and possessed of great family influence in Parliament, was worked up from a lieutenancy to a lieutenant-colonelcy in a single year. This, of course, was a very exceptional case, and happened long ere the Peninsular War began; but it may be remembered that Wellington himself, was, through similar advantages on a smaller scale, enabled to move up from ensign on March 7, 1787, to lieutenant-colonel in September, 1793—five steps in seven years, during which he had been moved through as many regiments—two of horse and five of foot. He was only nineteen months a captain and six months a major, and he had seen no war service whatever when he sailed for Flanders in command of the 33rd at the age of twenty-three! The Duke of York later insisted on a certain minimum service in each rank before promotion could be obtained.

Contrast with such promotion that of the poor and friendless officer who, after twenty-five years of service, six Peninsular campaigns, and two wounds, found himself still a captain at the age of 43![198] But there were plenty of unlucky men who at the end of the war were still only lieutenants after six campaigns, and were placed on half-pay as such, at the great disbandment of the second battalions which took place in 1816–17. The juxtaposition of rapid promotion obtainable by influence and the purchase of steps, with absolute stagnation in a low rank, which often fell on the impecunious officer, whose regiment did not chance to have many casualties in action, was appalling and monstrous.

I take it that the most pernicious of all the disturbing causes which told against the right distribution of promotion was political influence. As a contemporary pamphleteer wrote: “Instances are very few indeed of preferment being obtained by other corrupt means[199] compared to the omnipotence of Parliamentary interest. Thence originates the shameful practice of thrusting boys into a company over the heads of all the lieutenants and ensigns of the regiment. The Duke of York has done something to check it, but he can never remove the Colossus of Parliamentary interest, an interest that disdains solicitation, and imperiously _demands_ from the minister of the day that which no minister ever found it convenient to deny. To this species of influence the commander-in-chief must give way—for it is capable, when slighted, of removing both commander-in-chief and minister.”[200]

[Sidenote: The King’s Hard Bargains]

It was to the unscrupulous use by great men of their parliamentary influence upon the ministry of the day that the army owed a great proportion of its “King’s hard bargains” in the commissioned ranks. The obscure but necessary instruments of one of the great borough-mongers—Whig no less than Tory—were often paid by the nomination of their sons or other young relatives to a commission, by the influence of their patron: and the families that did the dirty work of a great politician were not likely to be distinguished for high morals or uprightness. Sometimes the nominations were absolutely shameful—it is said that the son of the keeper of a fashionable gaming-house in St. James’ was slid into the list of ensigns on one occasion, by a politician whom his father had obliged. Whether this be true or not, it is certain that there was a sprinkling of officers who were not gentlemen in any sense of the term serving throughout the war.[201] Others about whose gentle blood there was no doubt, were undesirable in other ways—prominent among them a section of young Irish squireens with the bullying and duelling habits, as well as the hard-drinking, which were notoriously prevalent among the less civilized strata of society beyond St. George’s Channel. I find in one memoir a note of a newly-joined ensign after mess addressing the assembled officers as follows: “By Jasus, gentlemen, I am conscious you must have the meanest opinion of my courage. Here have I been no less than six weeks with the regiment, and the divil of a duel have I fought yet. Now, Captain C., you are the senior captain, and if you please I will begin with you first: so name your time and place.” As the diarist very wisely writes, “one could not be too guarded in one’s conduct with such heroes.”[202]

Duels, I may remark in passing, were much less frequent in the Peninsular Army than might have been expected. Wellington (though long after he most foolishly “went out” with Lord Winchelsea in 1829) set his face against them on active service, because he could not afford to lose good officers on account of personal quarrels. There certainly were much fewer duels proportionately in the Peninsula than in England at the time—not to speak of Ireland and India, where they were beyond all reason common. I have only found records of four fatal duels in the records of court-martials, and though non-fatal ones could have been (and were) hushed up, they cannot have been very numerous, for one may read through scores of memoirs and diaries without running upon the mention of one. It is curious to note that when they did occur, and a court-martial followed, that body invariably found that though there was no doubt that Captain A. or Lieutenant B. was dead, yet there was no conclusive proof that he had been killed by C. or D.—the mouths of the seconds being sealed by the fact that they were also on their trial for having acted in such a capacity.[203] The whole matter was clearly a solemn farce. But the fact remains that duels were not frequent, and that duellists had a bad mark against them. Good commanding officers took immense trouble to prevent a duel from arising over silly mess-table quarrels, exerting every influence to make one party, or both, apologize for words spoken in anger, or in liquor.[204]

The body of officers of a Peninsular regiment was often a very odd party—there might be a lieutenant-colonel of twenty-six, who had risen rapidly by purchase or interest, and captains of fifty or even sixty; I found a note of one who had attained that age in the 73rd. At the head of each rank there might be several impecunious and disappointed men, waiting for the promotion that could only come by casualties in action, since they could never hope to purchase their step. Nevertheless, the feuds that might have been expected to follow such a situation do not seem to have been so many, or so bitter, as might have been expected. The grudge was set against the system rather than the individual, in most cases, and the sight of a mess cut up into cliques and coteries of enemies, though it can be found recorded occasionally, was quite exceptional.[205] The saving fact was that there was always the chance of promotion for merit, in reward of some specially gallant deed, and it often came—though the Duke was occasionally incomprehensible in the way in which he mentioned or did not mention officers in dispatches. The lieutenant who brought down the French flag from the castle of Badajoz, and who was sent with it by Picton to the commander-in-chief, was thanked and asked to dinner, but was still a lieutenant years after, in spite of his general’s vehement remonstrances.[206] Dozens of such instances could be quoted.

[Sidenote: Professional Training]

Professional training for officers had perforce been non-existent in the early years of the French war. There was no institution which supplied it, and all military knowledge had to be acquired by rule of thumb at regimental headquarters. An improvement of the greatest importance was made by the establishment in December, 1801, of the “Royal Military College” at High Wycombe for the use of young officers, followed by the creation of its “Junior Department” in May, 1802, “for the instruction of those who from early life are intended for the military profession.” The latter, the origin of the college at Sandhurst, to which the department was removed in 1811, accepted boys as early as thirteen. Its first inspector-general was the French _emigré_ Jarry, to whom we owe the “Instructions for Light Infantry in the Field” of 1804, while Colonel John Gaspard Le Marchant was “Lieutenant-governor and Superintendant General.” This was the accomplished cavalry officer who fell in 1812, at the head of his brigade, in the crisis of the battle of Salamanca, when he had just delivered a decisive charge. The military college men were already numerous when the Peninsular War began.

[Sidenote: The “Belemites”]

The French General, Foy, a witness whose authority can hardly be called in question, for he is making grudging admissions, says that he considered the general mass of the British officers excellent.[207] The more we study detailed records, the more willingly do we acknowledge that his praise is well deserved. The weaker brethren were very few—so few that an enemy did not even notice them. Misconduct on the field was the rarest of offences; there are hardly half a dozen court-martials for suspected slackness, among the hundreds that were held for other offences. There were an appreciable number of officers “broke” for faults that came from hard drinking, “incapable when on duty,” and so forth, or brawling, and a very few for financial irregularities; but considering the unpromising material that was sometimes pitchforked into a regiment by the unscrupulous exercise of patronage at home, they were exceedingly few. The only class of failures who had any appreciable numbers, and earned a special name, were the “Belemites,” so called from the general depôt at the convent of Belem in the suburbs of Lisbon. This was the headquarters of all officers absent from the front as convalescents or on leave, and the limited proportion who stayed there over-long, and showed an insufficient eagerness to return to their regiments, were nicknamed from the spot where they lingered beyond the bounds of discretion. Wellington occasionally gave an order to Colonel Peacocke, the military governor of Lisbon, to rout up this coterie—there were always a sprinkling there who were not over-anxious to resume the hard life of campaigning, and loved too much the gambling-hells and other sordid delights of Lisbon.[208] Occasionally the notices which appear in General Orders about these gentry are rather surprising—one would not have thought that such men could even have obtained a commission. Take, for example, “The commanding officer at Lisbon (or the commanding officer of any station at which Captain —— of the 88th may happen to be found), will be pleased to place that officer under arrest, and send him to join his regiment, he having been absent for several months without leave, and having been in Portugal since October 20th last, without reporting himself to or communicating with his commanding officer.”[209]

Wellington in his moments of irritation sometimes wrote as if the majority of his officers were slack and disobedient. Such men existed; but, as one who knew the Duke well observed, “by long exercise of absolute power he had become intolerant of the slightest provocation, and every breach of discipline, no matter how limited its range, made him furious with the whole army. Hence frequent General Orders, as violent as they were essentially unjust, wherein, because of the misdeeds of a few, all who served under him were denounced—the officers as ignorant of their duty, the rank and file as little better than a rabble.”[210]

But the duty-shirking officer, and still more the disreputable officer was, after all, a very rare exception. The atmosphere of contempt which surrounded him in his regiment as a rule sufficed to make him send in his papers, after a longer or a shorter period of endurance, in proportion as his skin was tough or thin. Opinion was not so hard upon the man who was merely quarrelsome and ungentlemanly in his cups. But there were limits even to the boisterousness permitted to the tippler, and drunkenness when in face of the enemy, or in a position of military responsibility, was always fatal.

[Sidenote: Officers from the Ranks]

There was, throughout the war, a perceptible proportion of officers who had risen from the ranks. Meritorious service, showing good capacity as well as courage, not unfrequently led to the promotion of a sergeant to an ensigncy. A well-remembered case is that of the Sergeant Newman of the 43rd who rallied the stragglers during the march from Lugo to Betanzos, in the Corunna retreat, and beat off the pursuing French dragoons. Another is that of Sergeant Masterson of the 2/87th, who captured the eagle of the _8th Ligne_ at Barrosa. Many more might be quoted, though none of them is so striking as that of a man who did not serve in the Peninsula, but in contemporary campaigns in India, the celebrated John Shipp. He was _twice_ given a commission for deeds of exceptional daring. After winning his first ensigncy in the storming party at the Siege of Bhurtpoor in 1805, he was forced to “sell out” a little later by improvident living. He enlisted as a private in another regiment, and was again promoted from the ranks for a single combat with a Nepaulese chief during the first Goorkha War of 1815. Conducting himself with more wisdom on his second chance, he served long as an officer, and when he went on half-pay became chief-constable of Liverpool. His autobiography is an artless and interesting piece of work well worth perusal.

When a regiment had greatly distinguished itself in the field, Wellington not unfrequently directed its colonel to recommend a sergeant for a commission. This, for example, was done for all three battalions of the Light Division after their splendid exploit at Bussaco. Yet he did not approve of this system of promotion as anything but a very exceptional measure, and in his table-talk with Lord Stanhope we find some very harshly worded verdicts on old rankers, “their origin would come out, and you could never perfectly trust them,”[211] especially in the matter of drink. This seems to be a typical instance of the Duke’s aristocratic prejudices—but there was something in what he said. The position of the promoted sergeants was certainly difficult, and it required a man of exceptional character to make it good. As a rule, they drifted into the position of paymasters, recruiting officers, barrack masters, and such-like posts. But many of them made useful and efficient adjutants. In command they were not as a rule successful,[212] and I have only come on a single case of one who reached the rank of full colonel, and of two who were fortunate enough to obtain a majority. It is clear that the purchase system pressed very hardly upon them: with no private resources it was impossible for them ever to buy a step, and, after reaching the rank of captain, they almost invariably went upon half-pay or looked for employment in some civil or semi-civil capacity.

Concerning the equipment of the officer, his baggage, his horses and mules, and his servants, information will be found in another chapter. Here we are dealing with him as an item in the machinery of the regiment.