During the rest of the year small detachments of the regiment were employed in repelling aggressions on the part of the Kandians, who raided British territory in many directions. Several officers and a considerable number of men died of disease, and the 51st was reduced to a mere skeleton. Nor was the health of the other troops at Colombo any better; and when it became known, in June 1803, that the garrison at Kandy, now a handful of weaklings, was being besieged by the infuriated Kandians, it was found to be impossible to send a force to its relief; and India could not spare a single man for Ceylon, as all available troops were required for the Mahratta War. In the end, the Kandians recaptured their capital, and murdered the remnant of the British garrison in cold blood, though preserving the life of Major Davie, the commandant, whom they cast into prison, doubtless under the impression that he might be useful to them some day. The war died out in 1805, without any attempt on the part of the British to revenge their murdered compatriots, for the reason that no sufficient reinforcements were ever available, and the fate of Major Davie is pitiful to think of. For nearly nine years he languished in a dungeon in Kandy, and died there, worn out by disease, not to be revenged until 1815, when the power of the Kandian kings was broken for ever, and the whole island taken over by the British.
The 51st continued to garrison Colombo until 1807, and suffered much from the enervating climate, losing a great many officers and men, and having a number of officers invalided home—amongst them Samuel Rice, whose constitution was undermined, and who never really recovered from the effects of service in Ceylon, although he managed to fight through many subsequent campaigns. In September the remnant of the regiment landed in England, after an absence of fifteen years, the last nine of which had been passed in absolute exile. Home news lost most of its interest during the six or eight months which it took to drift through to Ceylon, and what was going on in Europe affected the exiles little, for their own petty war and its attendant hardships gave them sufficient to think about. Yet, in Europe stirring events had been in progress, and the 51st, in going to the East, were denied the satisfaction of taking part in the reoccupation of the Mediterranean, which commenced with the capture of Minorca by a force under Sir Charles Stuart, only a month after the regiment sailed from Lisbon. They missed also the subsequent capture of Malta in 1800, and the chance of sharing in Abercromby's great victories over the French in Egypt in 1801. But they did not miss much else, for the Peace of Amiens (March 1802) brought the war to a close, and though France again declared war against England fourteen months later, no actual fighting took place on shore. The British navy, however, continued to be actively employed, more especially in frustrating Napoleon's designs for an invasion of England, and this grand scheme was finally wrecked in October 1805, when the mighty Nelson, at the cost of his life, almost annihilated the French fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar. Napoleon being thus deprived of the means of transporting his "Army of England" across the Channel, turned and vented his wrath on Continental Europe, carried his conquests far and wide, and proclaimed one of his brothers King of Naples, and another King of Holland.
That there was plenty of fighting in prospect for the army was apparent to the officers of the 51st when they reached England, but for the moment they had no men, and the next few months were devoted to bringing the regiment up to strength, as well as to gaining an insight into the vast changes which had taken place in the army and in military methods during the past decade; for the officers, who had been absent from England for so long, soon realised that they were considerably behind the times. In Ceylon they had heard little or nothing of the great reforms in progress at home—reforms initiated by none other than their old commanding officer, Major-General John Moore, and, as will be shown in the next chapter, far-reaching in their ultimate results.
[CHAPTER VI.]
THE REFORM OF THE ARMY.
After such brilliant work as was done by Abercromby's army in Egypt in 1801, it may seem strange that any one should have questioned the ability of the British army to meet and defeat any numerically equal force in Europe. Fortunately for England, however, there were in the army officers whose deep study of their profession told them that the tactics of fighting were moving towards a change, and that old methods before long would have to pass away. Fortunately, again, such officers were not carried away by the glamour of the recent victories in Egypt, and the fact that they themselves participated in those victories added considerably to the weight of their counsels. It has always been the case that campaigns, however successful they may have been, have been followed by reforms in the army; for it is only from experience gained in actual warfare that it is possible to discover the shortcomings of a force, or how to set matters to rights. There was, therefore, nothing peculiar in the move which was made in 1802 towards overhauling the affairs of the army, and the prime mover in the reforms was the Commander-in-Chief, H.R.H. the Duke of York.
As was mentioned in an earlier chapter, it was common knowledge, as far back as 1792, that a long immunity from European warfare was beginning to tell on the wellbeing of the British army, and that the officers were in a measure losing touch with their profession. Still, no immediate action was taken, and the good work done in India, the West Indies, and elsewhere led the authorities to believe that there was nothing very much amiss. In 1802, however, came the opportunity. The peace patched up in that year brought about extensive reductions in the establishment of the British army, and it became necessary to place a great many officers on half pay. Moore, who, after much foreign service, was then commanding the Canterbury district, and who, as we have previously shown, had great ideas on the subject of good officers, seized the opportunity offered by these reductions to weed out such officers as he deemed undesirable. The matter of seniority was nothing to him, and he applied, at any rate to the regiments under his immediate command, the hitherto unheard-of principle—selection, pure and simple, and made by himself. His methods were somewhat severe, and he did not confine his operations to the junior officers, as is evident from his correspondence with the Adjutant-General of the Army. "Some commanding officers," he wrote in 1803, "the state of whose regiments justify it, must be told to retire from the service, the duties of which they are unequal to. The command must not be allowed to devolve upon their majors, who may be equally incapable, but be given to officers of approved talents. One or two measures of this sort generally known would excite an exertion which at present is much wanted."[40]
Moore was ably supported, not only by the Commander-in-Chief, but also by his old commanding officer of Corsican days, General David Dundas, who, in these early years of reform, first was Quartermaster-General of the Army, and afterwards was in command of the Southern District—and so again Moore's commanding officer. Moore's suggestions carried immense weight with the authorities, and a great number of officers who had failed to take their profession seriously found themselves retired on half pay. The result, though disastrous to the officers concerned, put new life into the commissioned ranks, and opened the way for the remodelling of the whole organisation of the army. The question of the officers having been settled, and their zeal and efficiency having been assured, Moore's work was simplified, and it was on Moore—only a major-general commanding a comparatively small district—that the military authorities leaned in carrying out their scheme for the reorganisation of the army. This was, of course, natural enough, for Moore himself, if not the originator of the scheme, was at any rate the chosen mouthpiece of General Dundas, whose views concerning the training of troops were held in high esteem. But what is not easy to understand is the absence of opposition on the part of the older conservative officers, senior to Moore. The fact, however, remains that he was given a free hand, and when, in 1803, he determined to reform the discipline and training of the army on lines which he had been working out for many years, principally during active service in the West Indies, Holland, and Egypt, he was given the command of a special brigade of selected regiments, with which he was permitted to experiment to his heart's content.
The sole purpose of his system was to convert the British army into a thoroughly sound and reliable fighting machine, suitable to the times. He had observed that Napoleon was adopting new tactics; he foresaw that the times were changing; and he realised the fact that the experiences of fighting in India, in the West Indies, in Holland, and in Egypt would be of small value to troops pitted against Napoleon's trained veterans in Europe, unless such experiences were thoroughly examined, with a view to discovering if the army had learned anything worth learning, or if it was still behind the times. Moore was perfectly convinced that in tactical formations in the attack and the defence the methods of the infantry of the army were out of date; but he knew, also, that the men of the British army were made of sound stuff, and that under efficient officers they could be trained to do anything. It is worthy of note, however, that the changes which Moore introduced did not arise, as is usually the case, from any improvement in firearms, but rather from a careful study of recent campaigns in various parts of the world. In short, Moore saw what was wrong, and endeavoured to set matters right, with what result will presently be shown.