Invasion Panics.
When, about the year 1899, Field-marshal Dowbiggin, full of years and honours, shall edit, with copious notes, the Private Correspondence of his kinsman, Queen Victoria’s celebrated War Minister during England’s bloody struggle with Russia in 1854–5, the grandchildren of the present generation may probably learn a good deal more respecting the real causes of the failures and shortcomings of that “horrible and heartrending” period than we, their grandfathers, are likely to know on this side our graves.
And when some future Earl of Pembroke shall devote his splendid leisure, under the cedar groves of Wilton, to preparing for the information of the twentieth century the memoirs of his great ancestor, Mr. Secretary Herbert, posterity will then run some chance of discovering—what is kept a close secret from the public just now—whether any domestic causes exist to justify the invasion-panic under which the nation has recently been shivering.
The insular position of England, her lofty cliffs, her stormy seas, her winter fogs, fortify her with everlasting fortifications, as no other European power is fortified. She is rich, she is populous, she contains within herself an abundance of coal, iron, timber, and almost all other munitions of war; railways intersect and encircle her on all sides; in patriotism, in loyalty, in manliness, in intelligence, her sons yield to no other race of men. Blest with all these advantages, she ought, of all the nations of Europe, to be the last to fear, the readiest to repel invasion; yet, strange to say, of all the nations of Europe, England appears to apprehend invasion most!
There must be some good and sufficient reason for this extraordinary state of things. Many reasons are daily assigned for it, all differing from each other, all in turn disputed and denied by those who know the real reason best.
The statesman and the soldier declare that the fault lies with parliament and the people. They complain that parliament is niggardly in placing sufficient means at the disposal of the executive, and that the people are distrustful and over-inquisitive as to their application; ever too ready to attribute evil motives and incapacity to those set in authority over them. Parliament and the people, on the other hand, reply, that ample means are yearly allotted for the defence of the country, and that more would readily be forthcoming, had they reason to suppose that what has already been spent, has been well spent; their Humes and their Brights loudly and harshly denounce the nepotism, the incapacity, and the greed, which, according to them, disgrace the governing classes, and waste and weaken the resources of the land. And so the painful squabble ferments—no probable end to it being in view. Indeed, the public are permitted to know so little of the conduct of their most important affairs—silence is so strictly enjoined to the men at the helm—that the most carefully prepared indictment against an official delinquent is invariably evaded by the introduction of some new feature into his case, hitherto unknown to any but his brother officials, which at once casts upon the assailant the stigma of having arraigned a public servant on incomplete information, and puts him out of court.
But if, in this the year of our Lord 1860, we have no means of discovering why millions of strong, brave, well-armed Englishmen should be so moved at the prospect of a possible attack from twenty or thirty thousand French, we have recently been placed in possession of the means of ascertaining why, some sixty years ago, this powerful nation was afflicted with a similar fit of timidity.
The first American war had then just ended—not gloriously for the British arms. Lord Amherst, the commander-in-chief at home, had been compelled by his age and infirmities to retire from office, having, it was said, been indulgently permitted by his royal master to retain it longer than had been good for the credit and discipline of the service. The Duke of York, an enthusiastic and practical soldier, in the prime of life, fresh from an active command in Flanders, had succeeded him. In that day there were few open-mouthed and vulgar demagogues to carp at the public expenditure and to revile the privileged classes; and the few that there were had a very bad time of it. Public money was sown broadcast, both at home and abroad, with a reckless hand; regulars, militia, yeomanry, and volunteers, fearfully and wonderfully attired, bristled in thousands wherever a landing was conceived possible; and, best of all, that noble school of Great British seamen, which had reared us a Nelson, had reared us many other valiant guardians of our shores scarcely less worthy than he. But in spite of her Yorks and her Nelsons, England felt uneasy and unsafe. Confident in her navy, she had little confidence in her army, which at that time was entirely and absolutely in the hands and under the management of the court; parliament and the people being only permitted to pay for it.
Yet the royal commander-in-chief was declared by the general officers most in favour at court to know his business well, and to be carrying vigorously into effect the necessary reforms suggested by our American mishaps; his personal acquaintance with the officers of the army was said to have enabled him to form his military family of the most capable men in the service;[5] his exalted position, and his enormous income, were supposed to place him above the temptation of jobbing: in short, the Duke of York was universally held up to the nation by his military friends—and a royal commander-in-chief has many and warm military friends—as the regenerator of the British army, which just then happened to be sadly in need of regeneration.
A work has recently been published which tells us very plainly now many things which it would have been treasonable even to suspect sixty years ago. It is entitled The Cornwallis Correspondence, and contains the private papers and letters of the first Marquis Cornwallis, one of the foremost Englishmen of his time. Bred a soldier, he served with distinction in Germany and in America. He then proceeded to India in the double capacity of governor-general and commander-in-chief. On his return from that service he filled for some years the post of master-general of the Ordnance, refused a seat in the Cabinet, offered him by Mr. Pitt; and, although again named governor-general of India, on the breaking out of the Irish rebellion of 1798 was hurried to Dublin as lord-lieutenant and commander-in-chief. He was subsequently employed to negotiate the peace of Amiens, and, in 1805, died at Ghazeepore, in India, having been appointed its governor-general for the third time.
From the correspondence of this distinguished statesman and soldier, we may now ascertain whether, sixty years ago, the people of England had or had not good grounds for dreading invasion by the French, and whether the governing classes or the governed were most in fault on that occasion for the doubtful condition of their native land.
George the Third was verging upon insanity. So detested and despised was the Prince of Wales, his successor, that those who directed his Majesty’s councils, as well as the people at large, clung eagerly to the hopes of the king’s welfare; trusting that the evil days of a regency might be postponed. And it would seem from the Cornwallis Correspondence, that the English were just in their estimation of that bad man. H. R. H. having quarrelled shamefully with his parents, and with Pitt, had thrown himself into the hands of the Opposition, and appears to have corresponded occasionally with Cornwallis, who had two votes at his command in the Commons, during that nobleman’s first Indian administration. In 1790, Lord Cornwallis, writing to his brother, the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, says: “You tell me that I am accused of being remiss in my correspondence with a certain great personage. Nothing can be more false, for I have answered every letter from him by the first ship that sailed from hence after I received it. The style of them, although personally kind to excess, has not been very agreeable to me, as they have always pressed upon me some infamous and unjustifiable job, which I have uniformly been obliged to refuse, and contained much gross and false abuse of Mr. Pitt, and improper charges against other and greater personages, about whom, to me at least, he ought to be silent.”[6]
The intimacy which had existed from boyhood between General Richard Grenville, military tutor to the Duke of York, and Lord Cornwallis, and the correspondence which took place between them, to which we have now access, afford ample means of judging of the real capacity of that royal soldier, to whose charge the military destinies of England, both at home and abroad, were intrusted by the king at such a critical moment.
At seventeen years of age the duke became, per saltum, as the usage is with royal personages, a colonel in the British army. After attending for two or three years the great Prussian reviews, by way of studying his profession, he was, on attaining his majority, raised to the rank of general, and appointed colonel of the Coldstream Guards. Various notices of H. R. H. are to be found in the numerous confidential letters which passed about that time between Cornwallis and Grenville. They were both warmly attached to him; both most anxious for his own sake, and for that of their profession, that he should turn out well.
They describe H. R. H. as brave, good-humoured, and weak; utterly destitute of military talent, incapable of attending to business, much given to drink, and more to dice, hopelessly insolvent, and steeped in debauchery and extravagance of all kinds. In 1790, Grenville writes to Cornwallis in India: “The conduct of a certain great personage, who has so cruelly disappointed both you and myself, still continues to give me great uneasiness; more especially as I see no hopes of amendment.” The duke was at that date twenty-seven years of age.
In 1791, the Duke of York married, and but two years afterwards Lord Cornwallis, on his return from India, actually found his friend Grenville’s unpromising pupil in Flanders, at the head of a considerable English force, acting in conjunction with the Austrians, Russians, and Dutch, against the French. His utter want of military talent, his inexperience, his idleness, and his vices had not prevented his being intrusted by his royal parent with the lives of a large body of brave men, and with the honour of England. Great difficulties soon arose in this allied army, its chiefs mutually accusing each other, possibly not without good reason, of incapacity. At last, a person, whose name is not even now divulged, but who possessed the entire confidence of both Pitt and Cornwallis, wrote as follows, from the British head-quarters at Arnheim, on the 11th Nov. 1794:—
“We are really come to such a critical situation, that unless some decided, determined, and immediate steps are taken, God knows what may happen. Despised by our enemies, without discipline, confidence, or exertion among ourselves, hated and more dreaded than the enemy, even by the well-disposed inhabitants of the country, every disgrace and misfortune is to be expected. You must thoroughly feel how painful it must be to acknowledge this even to your lordship, but no honest man who has any regard for his country can avoid seeing it. Whatever measures are adopted at home, either removing us from the continent or remaining, something must be done to restore discipline, and the confidence that always attends it. The sortie from Nimeguen, on the 4th, was made entirely by the British, and executed with their usual spirit; they ran into the French without firing a single shot, and, consequently, lost very few men,—their loss was when they afterwards were ordered to retire. Yet from what I have mentioned in the first part of my letter, I assure you I dread the thought of these troops being attacked or harassed in retreat.”[7]
Upon the receipt of this grave intelligence, Mr. Pitt at once communicated to the king the absolute necessity of the duke’s immediate recall. His Majesty had no choice but to consent, which he reluctantly did; and H. R. H. returned home, was immediately created a field-marshal, and placed in command of all the forces of the United Kingdom!
Lord Cornwallis’s bitter remark upon this astounding appointment is—“Whether we shall get any good by this, God only knows; but I think things cannot change for the worse at the Horse Guards. If the French land, and that they will land I am certain, I should not like to trust the new field-marshal with the defence of Culford.”[8]
Having thus practically ascertained, at an enormous cost of blood and treasure, that the best-tempered and bravest general cannot command with success a British army in the field, if he happens, as was the case with the Duke of York, to be a weak man of high social position, destitute of military talent and habits of business, and much addicted to pleasure, an examination of Lord Cornwallis’s correspondence during the next few years will show how it fared with the British army when it was directed by such an officer at home.
In expressing his conviction that the French were determined to invade us, Lord Cornwallis proved a true prophet. Late in 1796, a fleet, commanded by Admiral De Galle, sailed from Brest for Ireland, carrying General Hoche and 15,000 men. Furious December gales dispersed the French ships,—only a portion of the expedition reached Bantry Bay; the vessel in which De Galle and Hoche were, was missing. Admiral Boivet, the second in command, hesitated to disembark the troops without the orders of his superiors. The United Irishmen, who had promised instant co-operation, made no sign; the weather rendered even Bantry Bay insecure; and, finally, such of the ships as escaped wreck or capture, straggled back to France, where Hoche and De Galle, after cruising about for many days in fog and storm on the banks of Newfoundland, had had the good luck to arrive before them. On that occasion, our natural defences may indeed be said to have stood us in good stead. But it was not consolatory to those who feared invasion to reflect that such a large force should have succeeded in reaching our shores unperceived and unmolested by the British cruisers; and that, had the weather been tolerable, 15,000 French bayonets would have landed without opposition on Irish ground.
The next year passed over in constant alarms; our information respecting the local preparations of the French being unfortunately very vague. The military defence of England appears to have been at that time mainly intrusted to Sir David Dundas, an unlucky pedant of the German school of tactics, of whom the king and court had the highest opinion, so tightly had he dressed and so accurately had he drilled the Guards. Lord Cornwallis, writing early in 1798 to the Hon. Col. Wesley,[9] says:—“We are brought to the state to which I have long since looked forward, deserted by all our allies, and in daily expectation of invasion, for which the French are making the most serious preparations. I have no doubt of the courage and fidelity of our militia; but the system of David Dundas, and the total want of light infantry, sit heavy on my mind, and point out the advantages which the activity of the French will have in a country which is for the most part enclosed.”
At this juncture, the rebellion of 1798 broke out in Ireland, and at the urgent request of Ministers, who appear to have considered Lord Cornwallis the man for every difficulty, his lordship consented to undertake the joint duties of lord-lieutenant and commander-in-chief in that unhappy country, then as disturbed and disloyal as conflicting races and religions, and the most savage misgovernment, could make it.
His lordship’s letters to the Duke of Portland and others, from Dublin, evince far more apprehension at the violence, cruelty, and insubordination of the army under his command, than at the rebels who were up in arms against him. His words are:—“The violence of our friends, and their folly in endeavouring to make this a religious war, added to the ferocity of our troops, who delight in murder, most powerfully counteract all plans of conciliation.” Nevertheless his judgment, firmness, and temper soon prevailed; by midsummer the insurrection was suppressed with far less bloodshed than was pleasing to the supporters of the government; and Lord Cornwallis was endeavouring to concentrate his attention on the reorganization of the military mob, which then, under the name of soldiers, garrisoned Ireland against foreign and domestic foes, when the invader actually arrived.[10]
On the 22nd of August, three frigates under English colours anchored in Killala Bay, co. Mayo, carrying a force of about 1,100 French troops, commanded by General Humbert. They were the vanguard of a larger force under General Hardy, which was to have sailed at the same time, but which had been detained by unforeseen difficulties at Brest.
There being no sufficient force to oppose them, the French easily took possession of Killala, and established their head-quarters in the palace of the bishop, Dr. Stock, who has left a most interesting journal of what occurred whilst the French occupied the town.
Humbert had brought with him a large supply of arms, ammunition, and uniforms, to be distributed amongst the United Irishmen, who he had been led to suppose would instantly rally round his standard. But he soon discovered that he had been deceived, that he had landed in the wrong place, and that he had arrived too late. The peasantry of Mayo, a simple and uncivilized race, ignorant of the use of fire-arms, crowded round the invaders as long as they had anything to give, and as long as there was no enemy to fight; but, at the first shot, they invariably ran away. Besides, the neck of the rebellion had been already dislocated by the judicious vigour of Cornwallis. Had the landing been effected earlier, and farther north, the result might have been different; as it was, the French general found that he had a losing game to play—and most manfully and creditably did he play it.
Professing to wage no war against the Irish, he assured the bishop that neither pillage nor violence should be permitted, and that his troops should only take what was absolutely necessary for their subsistence; and on these points, the bishop tells us, the Frenchman “religiously kept his word;” not only controlling his own soldiers, but actually protecting the bishop and his little Protestant flock from the rapacity of the Irish rebels who for a time joined the invaders.
The bishop’s account of the French soldiery is notable; they appear to have been an under-sized and mean-looking set of men, whom Sir David Dundas would have held in no account on parade; yet they did the work they had to do, hopeless and fatal as it was, as well as the Duke of York’s own gigantic regiment of guards could have done it.
“The French,” says the bishop, “are a nation apt enough to consider themselves as superior to any people in the world; but here, indeed, it would have been ridiculous not to prefer the Gallic troops in every respect before their Irish allies. Intelligence, activity, temperance, patience to a surprising degree, appeared to be combined in the soldiery that came over with Humbert, together with the exactest obedience to discipline. Yet, if you except their grenadiers, they had nothing to catch the eye: their stature for the most part was low, their complexions pale and sallow, their clothes much the worse for wear; to a superficial observer they would have appeared incapable of enduring almost any hardship. These were the men, however, of whom it was presently observed that they could be well content to live on bread and potatoes, to drink water, to make the stones of the street their bed, and to sleep in their clothes, with no covering but the canopy of heaven. One half of their number had served in Italy under Buonaparte, the rest were from the army of the Rhine, where they had suffered distresses that well accounted for thin persons and wan looks.”
Humbert himself, who had accompanied the Bantry Bay expedition in 1796, had risen from the ranks, and had brought himself into notice by his brilliant conduct in La Vendée.
The day after landing, the French advanced towards Ballina, leaving at Killala six officers and two hundred men to guard a quantity of ammunition which they had no means of carrying with them. The English garrison of Ballina fled on their approach, and Humbert, stationing there one hundred more of his men, pushed on to Castlebar, where General Lake was prepared to meet him. The latter had previously ascertained, by means of a flag of truce, the exact number of the French, and had sent a message privily to the bishop, telling him to be of good cheer, inasmuch as the great superiority of his own numbers would speedily enable him to give a good account of the invading force. What did occur when the French and English met is, perhaps, best told in the words of General Hutchinson, Lake’s second in command during the affair. Contemporary authorities, however, prove that Hutchinson has very much understated the numbers of the English force:—
“On Monday morning, 27th August, about an hour before sunrise, a report was received from the outposts, distant about six miles, that the enemy was advancing. The troops were immediately assembled, having the night before received orders to be under arms two hours before day-break. The troops and cannon were then posted on a position previously taken, where they remained until seven o’clock. They were 1,600 or 1,700 cavalry and infantry, ten pieces of cannon and a howitzer. The ground was very strong by nature; the French were about 700, having left 100 at Ballina and 200 at Killala. They did not land above 1,000 rank and file. They had with them about 500 rebels, a great proportion of whom fled after the first discharge of cannon. The French had only two 4-pounders and from thirty to forty mounted men.
“Nothing could exceed the misconduct of the troops, with the exception of the artillery, which was admirably served, and of Lord Roden’s Fencibles, who appeared at all times ready to do their duty. There is too much reason to imagine that two of the regiments had been previously tampered with; the hope of which disaffection induced the French to make the attack, which was certainly one of the most hazardous and desperate ever thought of against a very superior body of troops, as their retreat both on Killala and Ballina was cut off by Sir Thomas Chapman and General Taylor.
“When the troops fell into confusion without the possibility of rallying them, there was scarcely any danger; very few men had at that time fallen on our part: the French, on the contrary, had suffered considerably. They lost six officers and from 70 to 80 men, which was great, considering how short a time the action lasted and the smallness of their numbers. I am convinced that had our troops continued firm for ten minutes longer, the affair must have been over to our entire advantage, but they fired volleys without any orders at a few men before they were within musket-shot. It was impossible to stop them, and they abandoned their ground immediately afterwards.”
Although the French did not attempt to pursue, the defeated army of Lake never halted till they reached Tuam, nearly forty English miles from the field of battle. On the evening of the same day they renewed their flight, and retired still farther towards Athlone, where an officer of Carabineers, with sixty of his men, arrived at one o’clock on Tuesday, the 29th August, having achieved a retreat of above seventy English miles in twenty-seven hours! All Lake’s artillery fell into the hands of the French. As soon as Lord Cornwallis heard of the invasion, conscious of the uncertain temper of the troops upon whom he had to rely, he determined to march in person to the west, collecting, as he came, such a force as must at once overwhelm the enemy.
Meantime the victorious French were met on the 5th of September at Colooney by Colonel Vereker, of the Limerick Regiment, an energetic officer, who had hastened from Sligo to attack them with 200 infantry, 30 dragoons, and two guns. After a gallant struggle he was compelled to retire with the loss of his guns, and the French advanced into Leitrim, hoping to find elsewhere stouter and more helpful allies than they had hitherto found amongst the half-starved cottiers of Mayo.
Crawford, afterwards the celebrated leader of the light division in Spain, rashly attacked them on the 7th of September with an inferior force near Ballynamore, and was very roughly handled by them; but on the 8th, Humbert, closely followed by Lake and Crawford, found himself confronted at Ballynamuck by Cornwallis and the main army. In this desperate situation, surrounded by upwards of 25,000 men, Humbert coolly drew up his little force, with no other object, it must be presumed, than to maintain the honour of the French flag. His rearguard, again attacked by Crawford, surrendered, but the remainder of the French continued to defend themselves for about half-an-hour longer, and contrived to take prisoner Lord Roden and some of his dragoons. They then, on the appearance of the main body of General Lake’s army, laid down their arms—746 privates and 96 officers; having lost about 200 men since their landing at Killala, on the 22nd of August.
The loss of the British at the battle of Ballynamuck was officially stated at three killed, and thirteen wounded. Their losses at Castlebar and elsewhere were never communicated to the public.
Plowden, who gives a detailed account of Humbert’s invasion in his Historical Review of the State of Ireland, published but five years after the event, observes:—“It must ever remain a humiliating reflection upon the power and lustre of the British arms that so pitiful a detachment as that of 1,100 French infantry should, in a kingdom in which there was an armed force of above 150,000 men, have not only put to rout a select army of 6,000 men prepared to receive the invaders, but also provided themselves with ordnance and ammunition from our stores, taken several of our towns, marched 122 Irish (above 150 English) miles through the country, and kept arms in their victorious hands for seventeen days in the heart of an armed kingdom. But it was this English army which the gallant and uncompromising Abercromby had, on the 26th of the preceding February, found ‘in such a state of licentiousness as must render it formidable to every one but the enemy.’”
Although the private letters of Lord Cornwallis, General Lake and Captain Herbert Taylor, which are now submitted to us, breathe nothing but indignation and disgust at the misconduct, insubordination, and cruelty of their panic-stricken troops, the public despatches, as the custom is, contain unalloyed praise.
A lengthy despatch penned by General Lake, on the evening of the surrender of Humbert’s little band, is worded almost as emphatically as Wellington’s despatch after Waterloo; about thirty officers are especially mentioned in it by name, and the conduct of the cavalry is sub-sarcastically described as having been “highly conspicuous.” Lord Cornwallis’s general order, too, dated on the following day, declares “that he cannot too much applaud the zeal and spirit which has been manifested by the army from the commencement of the operations against the invading enemy until the surrender of the French forces.” Such is too often the real value of official praise.
Notwithstanding this public testimony to the worth of the large army which surrounded and captured the handful of French invaders of 1798, the information which we now glean from The Cornwallis Correspondence serves but little to establish the Duke of York’s character as a successful military administrator, if a commander-in-chief is to be judged of by the effective state of the officers and troops under his direction.
Tired of the parade-ground and the desk, or, possibly, feeling that he did not shine at them, H. R. H. again tried his hand at active campaigning in 1799, and again failed. On the 9th of September of that year he once more sailed for Holland, and was actually permitted to assume the direction of the most considerable expedition that ever left the British shores. In conjunction with Russia, its object was to expel the French from Holland. After several bloody battles, fought with doubtful success, the duke found himself, in less than five weeks, so situated as to render it advisable for him to treat with the enemy. He proposed that the French should allow the allied army under his command to re-embark, threatening to destroy the dykes and ruin the surrounding country if his proposal was not entertained. After some discussion the French agreed to the re-embarkation of the allies, provided they departed before the 1st of November, left behind them all the artillery they had taken, and restored 8,000 French and Batavian prisoners who had been captured on former occasions. On these terms “a British king’s son, commanding 41,000 men, capitulated to a French general who had only 30,000,”[11] and the duke, fortunately for England, sheathed his sword, to draw it no more on the field of battle.
Lord Cornwallis writes on the 24th October: “By private letters which I have seen from Holland, our troops in general seem to have been in the greatest confusion, and on many occasions to have behaved exceedingly ill. There may be some exception in the corps belonging to Abercromby’s division. Considering the hasty manner in which they were thrown together, and the officers by whom they were commanded, I am not surprised at this. Would to God they were all on board! I dread the retreat and embarkation. David Dundas will never be like Cæsar, the favourite of fortune; hitherto, at least, that fickle goddess has set her face very steadily against him.” “I see no prospect of any essential improvement in our military system, for I am afraid that a buttoned coat, a heavy hat and feather, and a cursed sash tied round our waist will not lead the way to victory.”
The abortive expeditions against Ostend and Ferrol, which had terminated in the capture and disgrace of the troops employed in them, appear to have induced Lord Cornwallis to draw up a memorandum on the subject, and to submit it to the duke. The following is an extract from it:—
“I admit that while we are at war, and have the means of acting, we should not remain entirely on the defensive, but at the same time I would not go lightly in quest of adventures, with regiments raised with extreme difficulty, without means of recruiting, and commanded principally by officers without experience or knowledge of their profession. The expense, likewise, of expeditions is enormous, and the disgrace attending upon ill success is not likely to promote that most desirable object—a good peace.”
After the re-embarkation of the Ferrol expedition, he writes: “The prospect of public affairs is most gloomy. What a disgraceful and what an expensive campaign have we made! Twenty-two thousand men, a large proportion not soldiers, floating round the greater part of Europe the scorn and laughing-stock of friends and foes.”
In the spring of 1801, Lord Cornwallis, replaced in Ireland by Lord Hardwicke and Sir W. Medows, assumed the command of the eastern district in England—invasion appearing imminent. His letters to his friend Ross at this period are most desponding. Our best troops were abroad upon expeditions. One barren success in Egypt, with which ministers attempted to gild half-a-dozen failures, had cost us the gallant Abercromby. The defence of the country was intrusted to the militia. The Duke of York had actually proposed to introduce a Russian force to coerce and civilize Ireland, and would have done so had not the better sense and feeling of Cornwallis prevailed. “My disgrace must be certain,” writes he to Ross, “should the enemy land. What could I hope, with eight weak regiments of militia, making about 2,800 firelocks, and two regiments of dragoons?”... “In our wooden walls alone must we place our trust; we should make a sad business of it on shore.”... “If it is really intended that —— should defend Kent and Sussex, it is of very little consequence what army you place under his command.”... “God send that we may have no occasion to decide the matter on shore, where I have too much reason to apprehend that the contest must terminate in the disgrace of the general and the destruction of the country.”... “I confess that I see no prospect of peace, or of anything good. We shall prepare for the land defence of England by much wild and capricious expenditure of money, and if the enemy should ever elude the vigilance of our wooden walls, we shall after all make a bad figure.”[12]
Bad as matters had been at the time of Humbert’s invasion, it is clear that Lord Cornwallis believed our military affairs to be in a much worse condition in 1801.
In Ireland, in 1798, he had under him a few officers on whom he could depend, and although his army, thanks to Lord Amherst and the Duke of York, was in a deplorable state of discipline, he, a good and practised general, was at its head, to make the best of it.
The Duke of Wellington has since taught us, on more than one occasion, that there are some extraordinary workmen who can do good work with any tools, and who can even make their own tools as they require them.—But in England, in 1801, the military workmen in court employ were all so execrably bad, that it mattered little what was the quality of the tools supplied to them. The Duke of York, David Dundas, and Lord Chatham had everything their own way: the most important posts, the most costly expeditions, were intrusted, not to the officers most formidable to the enemy, but to the friends and protégés of the military courtiers who stood best at Windsor and St. James’s. It is no small proof of Cornwallis’s tact in judging of men, that whilst we find him deprecating the employment in independent commands of such generals as the Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland, Dundas, Burrard (of Cintra), Coote (of Ostend), Pulteney (of Ferrol), Whitelock (of Buenos Ayres), and Lord Chatham (of Walcheren), he had always a word of approval for Lake and Abercromby, and in an introductory letter to Sir John Shore, speaks of the lieutenant-colonel of his own regiment, the Hon. Arthur Wesley, as a “sensible man and a good officer.”
Throughout the whole of The Cornwallis Correspondence, there is no single hint of stinted means for the defence of the country, there is no single doubt cast upon the personal bravery of our officers and our men; but there are many out-spoken complaints of utter incompetence and reckless extravagance on the part of those who had the chief conduct of our military affairs. From 1795 to 1805—that time of fear—we have now incontrovertible testimony that both England and Ireland were in an indefensible condition, had an invader landed with a very moderate body of such soldiers as Humbert led; and that that condition was owing in no degree to any want of manliness or liberality on the part of the British nation, but solely and entirely to the want of capacity of the men whom it pleased the court, in spite of repeated disgrace and defeat, perversely to maintain in the management and command of the army.[13]
Mr. Pitt survived Lord Cornwallis but a few months, dying early in 1806, and Lord Grenville, when invited by George III. to succeed him, positively declined to do so, unless the army was placed under ministerial control. To this innovation the poor crazy king demurred. It had been an amusement and an occupation to him in his lucid intervals, “to transact military business with Frederick,” with what deplorable results to the resources and credit of the nation we now know.[14] His Majesty objected, that ever since the time of the first Duke of Cumberland, the army had been considered as under the exclusive control of the sovereign, without any right of interference on the part of his ministers, save in matters relating to levying, clothing, feeding, and paying it; and he expressed a strong disinclination to make any concession which should fetter himself, and the Duke of York, in doing as they pleased with their own.
Lord Grenville, however, remained firm; for, in the opinion of himself and his friends, the safety of the kingdom required that he should be so, and, ultimately, the king gave way, on condition that no changes should be carried into effect at the Horse Guards without his knowledge and approval.
But other and more complaisant advisers soon replaced Lord Grenville, and circumstances, entirely corroborative of the estimate which Grenville and Cornwallis had formed of his character, rendered it advisable that the Duke of York should retire from public life.[15] Sir David Dundas, notoriously one of the most incapable and unfit general officers in the service, was selected by the court as H. R. H.’s successor; and, about two years afterwards, George III. finally disappeared from the scene, and the Regency commenced.[16] Then the duke, in spite of all that had transpired, was instantly recalled by his royal brother to Whitehall, where he remained until his death. The Regent was not the man to waive one iota of what he held to be his prerogative. During his reign, the right of the Crown to the irresponsible direction of the British army was fully asserted; and, in spite of five years of almost unvaried success in the Peninsula, and of the crowning glory of Waterloo, a fantastically dressed, luxurious, and unpopular body it became under the royal auspices. To the present day, regimental officers, fond of their glass, bless his Majesty for what is called “the Prince Regent’s allowance,” a boon which daily ensures to them a cheap after-dinner bottle of wine, at a cost to their more abstemious brother officers, and to taxpayers in general, of 27,000l. a year.
Happily for the present generation, matters have changed since those corrupt times, in many—many respects for the better. The British army is no longer looked upon by the people as a costly and not very useful toy, chiefly maintained for the diversion of royalty; we now recognize and respect in it an important national engine, for the proper condition and conduct of which—as for that of the navy—a Secretary of State is directly responsible to Parliament. But a change of such magnitude has not been carried out without much peevish remonstrance and factious opposition on the part of the many whose patronage it has diminished, and whose power it has curtailed; and there are still not a few who offer what opposition they dare to its harmonious consummation.
It is to be feared that a slight leaven of the same spirit which, sixty years ago, wasted the resources and paralyzed the energies of this powerful nation, may, perchance, still linger around the precincts of Whitehall and St. James’s,—and it is not impossible that when the Smith and Elder of the twentieth century present to the public their first editions of the Panmure Papers and the Herbert Memoirs, facts, bearing on the disasters of the Crimean war, and on the invasion panic of 1859–60, may for the first time be made known—not entirely different from those with which we have recently become acquainted through The Cornwallis Correspondence.