There was no fighting worth mentioning in James’s reign save at Sedgmoor, and there the only noteworthy points are the failure of the night attack, through faulty and imperfect reconnaissance; and the fact that Sergeant Weems of the 1st Royals received a gratuity of £40 for serving the “great guns in an emergency.” The true use of artillery was not understood, evidently, and the guns were attached to infantry regiments (as they were later, and singly, to cavalry squadrons), and James organised an “ordnance regiment” armed with fusils, for the protection of his artillery, which finally became the Royal Fusiliers. The only point of interest in the dreary slaughter of the vanquished after the battle of Sedgmoor, in which the Somersetshire clown, ill-armed and wounded, showed the greatest gallantry, is the stern repression exercised by Colonel Kirke of the 2nd Queen’s, whose regimental badge of the Paschal Lamb acquired an ominous significance when applied to the cruelties inflicted by his men after the rebels were defeated. “Kirke’s Lambs,” they were named, in derision, from their regimental badge. Sedgmoor was the last serious battle fought on English soil.
But the army had largely increased none the less. The troops at Tangiers had been recalled. The king dreamed of using the army as a means of overawing the country, and formed at Hounslow the first camp of exercise for field manœuvres. But this effort to gain the army’s support was made in vain. The 12th Regiment grounded its arms en masse rather than agree to support the repeal of the Test Penal Law; the cheering of the soldiery at the acquittal of the Seven Bishops was an unpleasant reminder that they were not with him in sympathy; and the effort to introduce Irish Catholics in numbers into the purely Protestant regiments met with the strongest opposition. “No man of English blood,” says Macaulay, “then regarded the aboriginal Irish as his countrymen; the very language spoken by the Irish was different from their own.” No wonder, therefore, that there was friction, such as found its full expression in the resignation of their commissions by the colonel and five captains of the 8th Foot—resignations which were not accepted, the offenders being tried by court martial and cashiered. It is curious to note that Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, thought the sentence inadequate.
So the army as a whole proved but a rotten reed to the second James. An increase to the standing army, which all feared, an oppressive use of the billeting law, and an evident desire to employ martial law, cost him his crown. So that when the Prince of Orange landed in Tor Bay there was little active opposition. The Dutch troops won the admiration of the invaded by their discipline, admirable equipment, and good behaviour; and so, to the tune of what at the time was a popular air, “Lillibulero bullen a la,” William marched on through Windsor to London, and became king. Still there was a considerable number of men in the ranks who were but lukewarm adherents to the Dutch-born sovereign, and all Ireland was still openly and avowedly hostile. The army by this time had been increased by six regiments of horse (now the 1st to the 6th Dragoon Guards): the 1st Royal Dragoons (brought on the English Establishment in 1683); the 2nd Dragoons (at first on the Scotch Establishment in 1681); the 3rd and 4th Light Dragoons (now Hussars); the 4th to the 14th Regiments of the line; the 15th (on the Scotch Establishment apparently), and the 16th, which was created, disbanded and re-formed later. The 18th Regiment had been formed in Ireland before this, out of a number of independent Irish companies, and was on the Irish Establishment, but did not receive its numerical seniority until later.
Peace, with such conflicting elements as Irish Romanists, English Protestants, Scotch Jacobites, and the Dutch elements introduced into the country, could not be of long duration. The smouldering embers of civil war broke into a flame both in the West and North. For James had, with French support, landed in Ireland, and was received with the greatest enthusiasm; while in Scotland some thousands of Highlanders were in arms, under Claverhouse, now Viscount Dundee. Against them, Mackay, with the 21st, the King’s Own Borderers or Edinburgh Regiment, and the 13th, with some irregulars, was despatched. He met them at Killiecrankie, where the Highland charge broke the more disciplined ranks, but the battle, which only lasted two minutes, says an old writer with obvious exaggeration, was practically terminated by the death of Dundee. The officers who had then been under arms for their king retired to France, and, after undergoing the bitterest privations, were formed into a company of ordinary soldiers under their own officers. This “gentlemen company” behaved with the utmost bravery whenever engaged. In 1697 they attacked an island in the Rhine with such headlong bravery that it still bears the name of “Isle d’Ecosse,” and the Marquis de Sella signed himself with the cross when he personally thanked each officer for what he and his men had done. In these isolated cases of determined courage, not confined to the English, but displayed equally by the Irish Brigade or by Scottish regiments serving in foreign armies, the true camaraderie of those who serve under the “Union Jack” as soldiers, it may be hoped, will always be found.
The troubles in Ireland were more prolonged and serious, and required a further addition to the army of the 7th “Horse,” the 6th Dragoons, and the 7th Dragoons. The 18th, weeded of the Roman Catholic recruits, was reorganised; and also appeared the 17th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd (raised by that staunch Protestant the Duke of Norfolk in Wiltshire); and the 23rd (formed by Lord Herbert of Cherbury in Wales with its badge of the Black Prince, the rising sun, the red dragon, the three feathers, and the motto Ich Dien; it is headed on parade even now by a white goat, and its marching-past air is the “Men of Harlech”); the 25th (enlisted eight hundred strong in two hours by Lord Leven for the defence of Edinburgh, and having for its gallantry afterwards, at Killiecrankie, the right of “beating up” the town of Edinburgh for recruits without the “special permission of the provost”); while the 26th, or Cameronians, was enrolled in one day two hundred strong without any beat of drum, and was punctiliously careful that their officers should be “men such as in conscience they could submit to,” and required besides a chaplain “an elder to each of its twenty companies.” Finally, the 27th and 28th Regiments were added to the gradually increasing standing army. This was at the direct instigation and at the direct appeal of William III.; but the Commons, in agreeing to the proposed increase, only did so on the condition that it was to be paid by the State, and not out of the royal purse. It was the beginning of the Parliamentary recognition of a real standing army paid by taxation. The 24th was also raised in Ireland about the same time, and was therefore borne on that establishment; as also was the 5th Dragoons.
Many of these regiments served in the Irish campaign in which the sieges of Londonderry and Enniskillen by James stand out so prominently on the one side, as do the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim on the other.
The latter battle was not of long duration, and was decisive. The combatants were distinguished on the one side by green boughs in their hats, and the Irish by white paper. The 23rd behaved with great gallantry, and the spurs of Major Toby Purcell, who led the regiment on that day, are still preserved by the senior major for the time being. It is unnecessary to enter fully into the details of the campaign or its battles; but it may be well to record that of existing regiments, the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th of the line, the 1st, 6th, and 7th among the cavalry, and the 8th, 9th, 12th, 13th, 18th, 20th, 22nd, 23rd, and 27th Regiments of foot fought in the Irish wars, though the Dutch regiment claimed to have borne the brunt of battle at the Boyne in 1690, where old Marshal Schomberg fell. But the battle of Aughrim in 1691 practically completed the conquest of Ireland, and the fall of Limerick led to the exile of thousands of brave Irishmen, who preferred service in France to the English yoke, and who formed the nucleus of that “Irish Brigade” whose gallantry is conspicuous in all the battle history of that time. In no case is this more conspicuous than in the defence of Cremona in 1702, where Burke’s and Dillon’s regiments lost fully one-third of their strength, and by their own desperate fighting forced Eugene to abandon an assault that at first seemed likely to be successful. Well might the contemporary poet write of them—
“News, news in Vienna! King Leopold’s sad.
News, news in St. James’s! King William is mad.
News, news in Versailles! Let the Irish Brigade
Be loyally honoured and royally paid.
News, news in old Ireland! High rises her pride,
And high sounds her wail for the brave who have died,
And deep is her prayer—‘God send I may see
Macdonell and Mahoney fighting for me!’”
So with the continental part of the war with France, in which William had allied himself with the Netherlands, the Austrian empire, and others, because of the aggressive and menacing aspect of Louis XIV., was resuscitated the renown of the English infantry. At Steinkirke fought the predecessors of the Horse Guards, the 4th Hussars, the 3rd, 4th, and 6th Dragoons, the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards, the 4th, 6th, 7th, 10th, and 16th Foot, the 19th, 21st, the 1st Royals, the 25th, and the 26th battalions of the line; and so close was the action that “in the hedge fighting their fire was generally muzzle to muzzle, the hedge only separating the combatants.” Ten battalions of British troops held in check thirty of the French, and one battalion alone “drove four battalions of the enemy from their cannon.” Here it was that “Corporal Trim”—really Corporal James Butler—was ridden down in the retreat, and where he blames Count Solmes: “‘He had saved five battalions, an please your reverence, every soul of them. There was Cutts’,’ continued the corporal, clapping the forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of his left, and counting round his hand, ‘there was Cutts’, Mackay’s, Angus’s, Graham’s, and Leven’s, all cut to pieces; and so had the English Life Guards too, had it not been for some regiments on the right, who marched up boldly to their relief, and received the enemy’s fire in their faces before any one of their platoons discharged a musket. They’ll go to heaven for it,’ added Trim. ‘Trim is right,’ said my Uncle Toby.” Landen, too, where were present the Coldstreams, Scots Guards, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 16th Foot, etc., as well as much cavalry, and Neerwinden, showed the extraordinary gallantry of the British troops, especially of the 6th Carabineers, and on that field fell Count Solmes himself, as well as one of the most gallant of the Irish leaders in the Boyne campaign—Sarsfield, who was shot, though not at the head of the Irish Brigade he loved so well. It was one of the bloodiest battles of the time, and the stubborn fighting of both sides resulted in 20,000 dead being left on the field. The next summer the soil so fertilised “broke forth into millions of poppies,” and it seemed as if “the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood and refusing to cover the slain.”
Finally the siege of Namur stands out prominently as the marked success in the campaign, and gives to one regiment, the 18th, the motto of “Virtutis Namurcensis Præmium.” It lost 297 of all ranks in the final attack. The regiments present in this famous siege were 1st, 5th, 6th, 7th Dragoon Guards, the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Dragoons, the 4th and 7th Light Dragoons, the 5th, 15th, 18th, and 19th Foot, forming one division to keep in check the relieving force of Marshal Villeroy. The other was composed of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 16th, and 17th Foot, to carry out the actual siege operations. The greatest gallantry was shown throughout by both sides; but the place finally fell, and it is curious to note the punctiliousness of the soldiers of those days in that Marshal Boufflers, though all the fortress had been captured save only the castle, and though Villeroy was powerless to raise the siege, would not capitulate without an assault. Unnecessary as it was, it was undertaken, at the cost of 2000 men, and for the first time a great fortress was surrendered by a French marshal to a British general. Here it was that Sterne’s “Captain Shandy” was wounded in the groin before the gate of St. Nicholas. Lord, formerly Colonel, Cutts, of the regiment that bore his name, and to which another novelistic hero (this time one of Thackeray’s), in the person of “Count Maximilian Gustavus Adolphus von Galgenstein,” is presumed to have belonged, behaved with his usual gallantry; and, says contemporaneous authority, “the bravery of our infantry was very remarkable, for they forced the enemy from several posts where they were very well lodged.”