CHAPTER XII

INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE REGIMENT: THE RANK AND FILE

He who would make himself acquainted in detail with the many experiments by which British Governments, from the rupture of the Peace of Amiens onward, strove to keep on foot in full numbers the very large army that it had raised, must satisfy his curiosity by studying the admirable volumes of Mr. Fortescue. Here we are concerned only with the methods which prevailed from 1809 till 1814, and gave Wellington the invincible, though often attenuated, battalions which conquered at Talavera and Bussaco, at Salamanca and Toulouse.

[Sidenote: Volunteers from the Militia]

In the Peninsular Army the system of territorial names prevailed for nearly all the regiments of the line, but in most cases the local designation had no very close relation with the actual _provenance_ of the men. There were a certain number of regiments that were practically national, _e.g._ most of the Highland battalions, and nearly all of the Irish ones, were very predominantly Highland and Irish as to their rank and file: but even in the 79th or the 88th there was a certain sprinkling of English recruits. And in some nominally Scottish regiments like the 71st Highland Light Infantry, or the 90th Perthshire Volunteers,[213] the proportion of English and Irish was very large. Similarly in almost all the nominally English regiments there was a large sprinkling of Irish, and a few Scots. This came partly from the fact that, though the corps recruited in their own districts, yet they were often allowed to send recruiting parties to great centres like London, Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow, or Dublin. But still more was it due to the fact that the larger half of the recruits were raised not in the old normal fashion, but by volunteering from the embodied militia, and that in this system practically no attempt was made to confine the choice of militiamen wishing to join the regular army to their territorial regiment. Nothing, for example, was more usual than to find such things as 100 of the King’s County Militia joining the 31st or Huntingdonshire Regiment. When the 77th or East Middlesex Regiment returned from India in 1808, it was completed, before going out to the Peninsula, from the 1st West York, North and South Mayo, Northampton, and South Lincoln Militia, but did not get a single man from the Middlesex Militia.[214] The Shropshire Regiment (53rd) when allowed in a similar case to call for volunteers, did get 99 from its own county militia, but 144 more from the Dorset, East York, and Montgomery local corps.[215] The 81st or Loyal Lincoln was filled up in 1808, before sailing for Portugal, from the Dublin, King’s County, South Devon, and Montgomery Militia. Instances might be multiplied _ad nauseam_. It was quite exceptional for any English corps to contain a preponderance of men from its own nominal district, and nearly all of them had from a fifth to a fourth of Irish.

It is impossible to exaggerate the advantage to the Peninsular Army of the system, the invention of Castlereagh when War Minister, which enabled it to draw in such a heavy proportion on the militia for recruits.[216] The men thus obtained had all had at least twelve months’ drill and discipline, in a corps which had been under arms for many years: they were trained soldiers of some little experience, much superior in fact to the recruits who had been procured in other ways. The permanent militia represented the force raised by the counties by ballot, though substitutes rather than principals were procured by that device. Being forced to serve at home for a period of years, the militiamen freely volunteered into the line, from love of adventure, dislike of dull country quarters in England or Ireland,[217] and, it must be added, the temptation of the enormous bounty, running at various times from £16 up to £40, which was given to those changing their service.[218]

It is a mistake to make a point, as some writers have done, of the fact that many regiments appeared in Spain with their ranks “full of raw militiamen, who sometimes still bore their old militia badges on their knapsacks.” So far from their being ineligible recruits, they were the very best, for the militia of 1808–14 was not a body called out for short service during one month of the year, but a permanent institution which practically formed a second line to the field army. And no man was allowed to volunteer into the regulars till he had served a full year in the local corps in which he had enlisted. A regiment must get drafts on active service, and these were the very best sort that could be obtained. Of course a corps filled up hastily with a great number of them, would want a little time to shake down, but it would take far longer to assimilate a corresponding number of ordinary recruits, hurried out from its regimental depôt—for these men would neither have had a whole year’s drill, nor would they have been accustomed to the daily economy of a full regiment—depôts seem to have been slackly administered, in many cases by officers and sergeants invalided and past service, or who had of their own desire shirked the service at the front.

[Sidenote: The Normal Recruit]

The other moiety of the recruits who came out to the Peninsula, to fill up the never-ending gaps in the ranks of a battalion at the front, were on the whole worse material than the militiamen. They were the usual raw stuff swept in by the recruiting sergeant—all those restless spirits who were caught by the attraction of the red coat, country lads tired of the plough, or town lads who lived on the edge of unemployment, and to whom a full stomach had been for some time a rarity. We have autobiographies of runaway apprentices who had bolted from a hard master,[219] and of village Lotharios who had evaded an entanglement by a timely evasion.[220] Sons of hard fathers, and stepsons of intolerable stepmothers drifted in, and still more frequently the rowdy spirits who were “wanted” by the constable for assault and battery, or for some rural practical joke which had set the parish in an uproar. The oddest cause of enlisting that I have come upon is that of a son of a respectable Edinburgh tradesman’s family, whose account of the fortunes of the 71st in 1808–15 is one of the best written of all the soldier-biographies. A stage-struck youth with a little money in his pocket, he had often gone on (no doubt as a super) at the Theatre Royal, carrying a banner or a five-word message. At last the summit of his ambition came—a friendly manager gave him a short part, where he had actually some share in the action. He invited all his friends to the performance to see his glory, came on the boards, and was suddenly struck with stage fright, so that he stood gaping and silent before the audience, and heard the laughter and hooting begin. The poor wretch bolted straight away from the stage in his costume and paint, ran down to Leith, and enlisted with a sergeant of the 71st, whose party was sailing that night for the South. Anything was preferable to him rather than to face next morning the jeers of the friends to whom he had boasted of his histrionic powers, and who had come to see his début.[221]

[Sidenote: Undesirable Recruits]

But these were the better spirits. There was a much lower stratum among the recruits, drawn from the criminal or semi-criminal classes, whom the enormous bounty offered for volunteers had tempted into the service—generally with the purpose of getting out of it again as soon as possible. Not only were there poachers, smugglers, and street-corner roughs, who had been offered by the local authorities the choice between enlistment and the jail, but pickpockets, coiners, and footpads, who had made London or some other great town too hot for them, often enlisted as a _pis aller_, intending to desert and “jump another bounty” when they could. But sergeants were lynx-eyed when they found that they had enlisted a slippery customer, and the evasive recruit often found himself kept under lock and key in a fort, and shipped off to Spain before he got his opportunity to abscond. The number of these “King’s hard bargains” varied much between different regiments, but Colborne, a good authority, says that the battalion was lucky which had not its fifty irreclaimable bad characters, drunkards, plunderers, stragglers, would-be deserters, actual criminals “whom neither punishment nor any kind of discipline could restrain; for the system of recruiting was defective and radically bad.”[222] It was this scum, a small proportion of the whole, but always swimming to the top when there was mischief to be done—peasants to be plundered or churches to be pillaged—that provided the subject-matter for court-martials, and engrossed the majority of the attention of the Provost Marshal. Officers of undoubted humanity, and men in the ranks who knew what they were talking about, unite in stating that there was a residuum in the Peninsular Army which could only be governed by the lash.

This small percentage of irreclaimables provided the nucleus around which misconduct sometimes grew to a great scale, in moments of special privation or temptation. In abominable orgies like the sack of Badajoz, or the lesser but still disgraceful riots at Ciudad Rodrigo and San Sebastian, it was the criminals who started the game, but the drunkards—a far more numerous class—who took it up. When the drink was in them, the mob was capable of any freak of wanton mischief or cruelty. Wellington more than once complained that the most reckless and ungovernable of his rowdies were the newly-joined Irish recruits. It seems that when in liquor they became irresponsible madmen, and had not undergone enough of discipline to get them into a habit of obedience, which might serve as a substitute for moral sense. And I can well believe this from casual evidence picked up in the diaries of his obscure subordinates. The account of the difficulties of officers and sergeants in getting a large draft of Irish recruits from Cashel to Deal, which I met in one soldier-diary reads like a nightmare[223]—or a glimpse of some primitive pagan heaven, in which all was objectless fighting in the intervals between frequent and limitless potations. As a side-light on the national failing, I may quote the fact that going through the complete record of general court-martials for the whole period 1809–14, I found that after putting aside all trials of officers, non-combatants, and foreign auxiliaries (the last almost always for desertion) there was an unmistakable over-percentage of men with Irish names, just as there was an under-percentage of Scots. The offences for which the former were tried were generally desertion and crimes of violence, plundering or maltreating the peasantry.[224]

The way in which the habitually criminal element makes itself visible in this list of court-martials is in the not infrequent cases of scientific and habitual burglary, robbery of the convoys going to the military chest, or of the private property of officers, and the stealing of church plate—all offences often punished with death, for Wellington rarely pardoned the professional thief, though he sometimes let off a deserter with a sound flogging. But the queerest glimpse into the lowest stratum of the army is the curious anecdote recorded in Napier’s fifth volume. Nonplussed in the winter of 1813–14 by the refusal of the French peasantry to accept the dollars or the guineas which were all that he could offer, Wellington determined to set up a mint of his own, which should melt down Spanish and Portuguese silver and recoin it in the form of five franc pieces. He sent private appeals to the colonels to find him all the professional coiners that they could discover in the ranks, collected as many as forty at St. Jean de Luz, and with their aid struck a large quantity of money, of which he was careful to see that the weight and the purity were both correct.[225]

[Sidenote: The Gentleman-Ranker]

Occasionally the gentleman-ranker was to be found in a Peninsular regiment. He was generally an “undesirable,” who had enlisted in consequence of some disgraceful quarrel with a family who had refused to do anything more for him. Persistent drink, gambling, or dishonesty were the usual causes that had broken him—not undeserved misfortune or dire poverty. Occasionally he pulled himself together, became a good soldier, and was ultimately promoted to a commission. More often he sank into a persistent drunkard or a criminal. Surtees of the 95th, in an interesting chapter, gives the biographies of the four privates of this class that he had known.[226] One conducted himself well for some years, became a paymaster-sergeant, and then broke out into a wild fit of dissipation, embezzled the company’s money, and committed suicide on detection. The second was always in scrapes: finally he was caught deserting to the French, and was lucky to get off with penal servitude for life instead of death. The third, “always excessively wild,” was once made a corporal, but was not fit for that or any other rank. The fourth was one of the exceptional cases—being a retired lieutenant without friends or means, who had enlisted as a private in sheer poverty. He was an exemplary and deserving man, who was soon made secretary, or private clerk, to his colonel, behaved excellently, and was in the end restored to his former rank in the army by interest made in his behalf.

A regiment on Peninsular service depended for its strength on the regularity with which it was fed from its home-battalion or its depôt. Whenever a convoy sailed from Spithead, it contained an immense number of small detachments, varying from a few scores to over a hundred men, under charge of officers newly gazetted to the service battalion, or returning from sick leave. There was often much wrangling on shipboard (unless the weather reduced every one to the same level of nausea and helplessness), not only between the men but between the young officers in charge of them. After an angry comparison of the exact date of commissions, which settled seniority in the choice of berths, and in dealing with the transport-captain, two ensigns in charge of detachments would often settle down to a feud destined to last for the whole voyage to Lisbon. Their men gleefully joined in the wrangle. There are some absurd sidelights, in court-martials, on these frequent shipboard quarrels, which sometimes ended in affrays and “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.”

When a detachment landed at Lisbon, the officer in charge, often a lad of sixteen, had to shepherd his flock to the front, perhaps over 200 miles of mountain roads. Neither officers nor men knew a word of Portuguese, or had the slightest notion of the manners, government, prejudices, or food of the peasantry. They went forward in a perpetual haze of mistakes and misunderstandings. Every draft had its percentage of undesirables, or even of criminals. Hence the young officer, responsible for their safe delivery at the front, found himself embroiled in constant disputes with the natives, often ending in his arrest on his final arrival at headquarters. We must feel nothing but sympathy for the unfortunate young man who delivered only twenty-nine out of a detachment of forty-one entrusted to him; or the other who found that fourteen men out of twenty had privately disposed of their new blankets.[227] The only way of managing the draft was by reliance on the sergeant or two who formed a part of it: and if the sergeant was himself a sluggard or a tippler, ill fared his superior. Imagine the feelings of the second-lieutenant who having left his one non-commissioned officer behind, to hunt up footsore stragglers, found no one arrive at the nightly billet, and returning for miles to seek the lost ones, discovered his sergeant dead drunk and snoring in the middle of the high-road.[228] Ability to conduct a draft to the battalion was one of the greatest tests of the character and capacity of a junior officer.

[Sidenote: Concerning Sergeants]

The responsibility of the non-commissioned officer cannot be exaggerated. It was easy to make sergeants, but not easy to secure them of the proper quality. Too often the man promoted for an act of courage or of quick cleverness had to be reduced to the ranks again, for some hopeless failing—he was prone to drink,[229] or he was an over-harsh or an over-slack administrator of discipline. One of the commoner types of court-martial was that of the non-commissioned officer who connived at and profited by the misdeeds of the men under his charge—whose silence was bought by a percentage, when peasants were plundered, or convoys lightened of food, shoes, or clothing. It was often difficult to get at him—to prove that he had known of what was going on, and had contrived to see nothing. But the numbers of reductions to the ranks were notable, and lashes were often added when part of the _corpus delicti_ was found in the sergeant’s pack.

However, the ideal sergeant was not unfrequently found, and when found he was invaluable; he had to be a steady man with a modicum of education and a sense of duty, who could be relied upon neither to connive at his men’s graver faults, nor, on the other hand, to be perpetually spying on them and reporting them to their captains for every minute breach of discipline. Tact was as necessary as the power to get orders carried out. The bullying sergeant would, in the end, get left in some quandary or dilemma by the men that he was always harrying, while the considerate sergeant would get the benefit of his popularity by receiving loyal and intelligent service instead of mere obedience.

Most important of all non-commissioned officers was the sergeant-major, concerning whose position I cannot do better than quote the homily of a Highland soldier more given to philosophical disquisitions than most of the diarists from the ranks.[230]

“The sergeant-major has an arduous duty to perform; in all the arrangements of regimental duty he takes, or ought to take, the most active concern. He has, of course, been considered by his colonel a meritorious man, before he appoints him to this highest step to which a non-commissioned officer can attain: and, as it is frequently found necessary to consult him on the interior economy of the regiment, if he is possessed of any talents they are sure to be seen and called forth. Fortunate is the regiment which possess a good sergeant-major. His rank is not such as to make him above associating with and advising the other non-commissioned officers: his own personal example is the means of swaying their actions: he cautions them against unjust oppression, yet shrinks not from pointing out the cases which require coercive measures. He recommends for promotion those who meritoriously aspire to rise from the ranks. His commanding officer is seldom troubled with complaints, for he settles them to the satisfaction of the accuser and accused. No mercenary motive actuates his conduct in reconciling differences, and his hands are never soiled with the gift of an inferior. To those who are unacquainted with the influence which sergeant-majors generally possess this may seem a hyperbole; but to me it appears a fact; I speak not of one regiment but of many. A sergeant-major, on the other hand, can be a little tyrant in the corps, without the knowledge of his colonel: his unnecessary acts of oppression may be made to appear to his superiors as laudable zeal, and his severity as merit deserving reward.... If the commanding officer be of an easy, complying turn, or again of a repulsive, haughty, _don’t-trouble-me_ disposition, and the adjutant (which is often the case) not over well informed, the sergeant-major is consulted on all occasions. His opinion is asked as to character, he can establish or injure at pleasure, for who will be called in to contradict him? In short he has much more to say between the non-commissioned officers and the colonel, concerning the poor soldiers’ conduct, than all the captains and subalterns of the regiment.”[231]

[Sidenote: The Sergeant’s Self-Respect]

The gap between the sergeant and the men in the ranks was necessarily a well-marked one. The non-commissioned officers kept together and formed messes of their own. “Pride and propriety” kept them from joining in the carouses of the rank and file. “He who has once joined the company of sergeants is disincluded for any other,”[232] writes one veteran proud of well-deserved promotions. The non-commissioned officer who was too familiar with his inferiors was generally one of those who profited by their misdeeds, and would some day be convicted of sharing their plunder, or conniving at their excesses.