The Story of the British Army

by Charles Cooper King

It is curious to note how rapidly, as far as time goes, active hostility between the late antagonists died out or simmered down. Nor is the reason far to seek. The war was unquestionably conscientious on both sides. Who can think otherwise when the death of Hampden on the one hand, or of Falkland on the other, is taken into account? The disease of political disagreement had to be cured by the stern tonic of cold shot and sharp steel, and both antagonists in their several ways must have sorrowed over the painful need. Certainly Falkland did. That the antagonism so speedily ceased to be active, is strongly typical of the English character. Fight out the battle of opinion if you will, but when the contest is decided, then let the old friendships resume their pleasant sway. Thus it was that within one generation many a reconciliation had been effected, many an old sore healed; and as time went on, the flowers of a more kindly appreciation of the good that lay on both sides sprang up over the re-cemented factions, as the flowers of the summer days had sprung up over the graves of Roundhead and Cavalier.

Though Parliament had decreed that the army should be entirely disbanded, and the operation was actually begun, it had calculated without its host. There were many stern fanatics who viewed their loss of power with anything but favour. Crack-brained Thomas Venner created a rising in London of the extremest sect of religious enthusiasts, the fifth-monarchy men, and proclaimed the reign of “King Jesus.” This menace to the public peace arrested the total abolition of the army. Some form of military police was evidently necessary, and therefore a reluctant permission was given for the formation of a small force for the “guards and garrisons” of the king. They were to be raised by him, and paid by him out of the State allowance for the support of the royal estate, and were not to exceed three thousand men. They consisted of the Yeomen of the Guard, the Gentlemen-at-Arms (founded by Henry VII. and Henry VIII. respectively), the Life and Horse Guards or “Oxford Blues” (so called from its commanding officer, the Earl of Oxford, and to distinguish them from a Dutch regiment of horse, which was also clad in blue), and the Coldstream Guards, raised from Monk’s own regiment of foot. Their duties were to hold the Tower, Portsmouth, etc., and guard the king’s person; but in addition the “Guard” especially was “employed as police or thief-takers, patrolling the high roads, suppressing conventicles, and at the London playhouses keeping the peace.” The Household Cavalry were at first called “Troops of Life Guards of Horse,” and the 2nd, or “Queen’s Troop,” wore green facings in honour of Queen Catherine. But the dread of an army was very slow in dying, even with so small a force as the king could now command. As soon after this as 1673, the Commons resolved to grant no more supplies until secured against Popery, and in 1674 the Commons voted “that any armed force in the kingdom, excepting the militia, was a grievance.”[16] In case of foreign war, therefore, armies were hastily levied for a campaign, and as hastily disbanded when hostilities ceased, and peace was declared. Thus, after a war, the country was overrun with discharged soldiers, who were little better than bandits. Roads were not safe to travel, for highwaymen abounded; and a fresh war was a relief to both robber and robbed in more ways than one. The licence of the camp in the days of the later Stuarts (unlike the sobriety of the “Army of the Saints”) was also not likely to furnish a peaceful population.

Foreign wars and the constant dread of domestic broils were therefore gradually wearing down the Parliamentary reluctance to the professional soldier. The marriage of Charles added the 2nd Queen’s Tangier Regiment, with its badge of the Paschal Lamb (the badge of the Royal House of Portugal), the 3rd Buffs (or Holland Regiment, originally the 4th in order, and so called from its facings), and the 1st Royals (or Dumbarton’s Regiment), to the permanent Army List; while the troops recalled from Dunkirk in 1662 became the Grenadier Guards. The Admiral’s Regiment (so called from the Duke of York, its colonel, the Lord High Admiral of England, and really the first force of marines) was created before the Buffs, but soon after was incorporated in the Guards. The occupation of Tangier had also strengthened the army by the troop of horse that was the forerunner of the 1st Royal Dragoons, and by a regiment that, transferred to the East India Company, became eventually the 103rd Bombay Fusiliers. Thus, by the Peace of Nimeguen, there had been some twenty thousand men under arms. Finally the militia had been placed under the lords-lieutenants of counties, to whom was granted the appointment of the officers.

In these early days, the regiments first paid nominally by the sovereign were, as time went on, borne on the strength of three “establishments,” Irish, Scotch, and English, a method of distributing their cost over the sum granted for the administration respectively of each of these sections of the State. The first of these appears in the reign of Edward IV., the second after the union of the Scotch and English crowns,—before which time officers of the Scottish army had to take an oath of fealty to the Estates of Scotland, and not to the sovereign,[17]—and the cost of each establishment slightly varied in detail. Hence we find in the list of the Scotch Establishment of 1678, the Earl of Mar’s Fusiliers, afterwards the 21st Foot, which was brought on the English Establishment in 1689, and dates its seniority, therefore, from that year. The seniority of regiments was ordered by the royal will, and depended on the date on which they came on the English Establishment; and thus, though the Coldstream Guards had been among the first to welcome the Restoration of the king, on the return of the Grenadiers from Dunkirk, it was decreed that “our own Regiment of Foot Guards shall be held and esteemed the oldest regiment.”[18] Each company had at that time a colour, and, in the Guards only, a company badge, but the Grenadiers seem never to have been wholly armed with the “grenade,” and the name was only given after Waterloo, where they had defeated the French Grenadiers. Similarly the “Royal Scots,” constituted as a regiment in 1633, dates its seniority by order from 1661. Its nickname of “Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard” is said to have arisen from a dispute with a French officer, who declared that his regiment had been on duty the night before the Crucifixion; to which his opponent replied, “Had we been on duty, we should not have slept on our post.” It is probably the oldest organised regiment in existence, and is descended lineally from the Scottish Archer-Guard of the French kings, first raised by Charles III. in the ninth century. Naturally also the “Irish Establishment” ceased with the Union. Some of these early regiments were possibly recruited from the London trained bands, and it is because of this that the Royal Marines, the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards, the Royal London Militia, and the 3rd Buffs claim the right, shared by no other foot regiment, of marching through the city with fixed bayonets, drums beating, and colours flying.

At first, too, regiments were known by the name of their colonel; and the numbers and definite regulations as to the colour and clothing of regiments were not issued until 1751. Territorial designations were added to the numbers in 1782, and the present titles were given in 1881.

So that when Charles II. died, the fear of Puritan risings and the beginning of a foreign policy which the occupation of Tangier had initiated, and which the war with the Dutch in 1665, and that with the French three years later, emphasised, led to the permanent organisation, as regiments, of the Grenadier, Coldstream, and Scots Fusilier Guards, the 1st Royals, the 2nd Queen’s, and the 3rd Buffs, with the 1st and 2nd Life Guards and the Horse Guards. The standing army had thus increased from three thousand to about eight thousand men. The cavalry regiments were formed of from three to eight troops, and the foot regiments had twelve companies. Though dressed in scarlet, the relics of body armour were long retained in the cuirass, and, with the men, the pot helmet in addition; but the officers wore plumed hats. The arms of the mounted troops were sword and carbine, with pistols having barrels fourteen inches long, and throwing a ball of fourteen to the pound. The infantry carried, some the sixteen-foot pike, and others a musket of a calibre similar to the pistol, the cartridges of which were carried in a bandolier. The bandolier was a leather belt worn over the shoulder, from which depended a series of small wooden boxes, each containing a charge: the bullets were carried in a bag, whence the present name of “ball-bag” for the soldier’s ammunition pouch is derived. Before beginning to load, the bullet was frequently placed in the mouth.

During this period, too, the bayonet was introduced, but at first was a simple dagger screwed or stuck in the muzzle of the firelock, and known as a “plug-bayonet.” It took its name from Bayonne, where it was first made, and is first mentioned in a British Royal Warrant of 1672 in the armament of a regiment of dragoons who were to have “the matchlock musket, a collar of bandoliers, and a bayonet or great knife.”

But perhaps the most noteworthy reminiscence of those days is the foundation of Chelsea Hospital for old and disabled soldiers, for which the army has to thank that somewhat notorious lady, Nell Gwynne.

Tradition has it that, struck by the appeal of a beggar who had been wounded in war, she persuaded her royal lover to found this beneficent institution, and proved again to the army that women are at the bottom of most things, whether they be good or bad. As a set-off to this, the normal impecuniosity of Charles II. had led to the sale of army commissions, and to the institution of the system of promotion by purchase, which lasted until 1872.

The accession of James II., and the consequent rebellion of Monmouth in the interest, nominally, of Protestantism, led to the first serious increase of the standing army; but again it is curious to note that Monmouth’s own manifesto at Lyme Regis, where he landed, brings prominently forward the proposal to have no standing army at all, but only the militia. This is proof positive, if such were needed, that a permanent military force, such as it then was, was still unpopular in England.