The Story of the British Army

by Charles Cooper King

While Greene watched and “contained” the latter, Washington and Rochambeau, giving up the long-cherished idea of the defence of the Hudson and the capture of New York, moved into Virginia to assist York Town. When the first parallel of the siege was completed, Washington fired the first shot, and soon after, for the second time in this hapless war, a British general with an army surrendered to the Continental levies, just four years after the defeat of Burgoyne.

The British troops had behaved, be it said, with the greatest gallantry. The 71st, the grenadiers of the old 80th, and especially the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, had done all that men could, and the colours of the last-named regiment were, like those of the 9th at Saratoga, taken home wrapped round the bodies of two officers. Lord Cornwallis himself bears testimony that the Allies behaved with dignity, and that “the treatment in general that we have received from the enemy since our surrender has been perfectly good and proper.” Of the above regiments, the 76th, 71st, and 80th were afterwards disbanded in 1783–84.

Five days later, Clinton’s tardy reinforcements reached the Chesapeake from New York, but it was too late. French assistance, and still more French money, to the exhausted and almost bankrupt Americans had brought peace within measurable distance, and just eight years after the eventful conflict of Lexington, the news of the Peace of Paris was communicated to the army.

Though of little military value, the embers of the struggle for independence still remained alight, and so far flickered into a flame in 1814, as to make it worth while recording the last instance in which British troops fought on American soil. The New Republic had been a bit tête montée after its undoubted success against the mother country. There was unquestionably the feeling arising, first of all, of a natural continuance of sympathy for France, as well as that of having “licked the Britishers, who had licked the world.” The causes of irritation are immaterial, and to some extent childish, but they resulted in hostilities none the less. The war began with some minor affairs in Canada, chiefly between the local militias, as there were few British regular battalions in that country; but there was some severe skirmishing for some time, in which the 8th, 41st, 49th, 89th, the Royal Scots, some local bodies of volunteers, and the 100th and 104th battalions of the line, which were disbanded after the long war, took part. Success generally rested with the Americans, and there were some smart naval actions on the Great Lakes.

But after the temporary conclusion of hostilities on the Continent in 1814, Great Britain was freer to turn her attention to this American squabble. It was scarcely worth while at any time to dignify it by the name of war. So some veteran Peninsular battalions, the 4th, 44th, 85th, 29th, and 62nd, as well as the 21st North British Fusiliers, were sent to reinforce the army in America. The fighting showed much exasperation on both sides, and there is little that is creditable to either of the combatants. An advance on Washington was first made, and after the brilliant affair of Bladensburg, where the Americans made their first serious stand, and were easily beaten, the capital was seized, and the Government stores and buildings burned. All that can be said to the credit of the British is, that “no private property was destroyed.”

The American order of battle by this time was quite European. It formed in two lines, and a reserve with cavalry on the flank, and guns more or less dispersed, while the front was covered by “strong bodies of riflemen” in skirmishing order.[27]

A further effort against Baltimore was equally ineffective, and Ross “of Bladensburg” fell. Finally, the army, reinforced by the 7th and 43rd, the 93rd and 95th, and two West Indian regiments, attempted the capture of New Orleans, and, to all intents and purposes, failed.

The whole war is regrettable from every point of view. The operations on the part of the British so far lacked method and cohesion, as to class them rather as filibustering expeditions than serious war. The conduct of the Americans throughout offers no redeeming point, as they fired on a flag of truce, and caused retaliatory measures because of their unwarrantable action in the early operations in Canada. The peace that was signed in 1815 was a relief to both sides; but it left a bad feeling behind which time has failed entirely to eradicate. In the War of Independence, as in this struggle, and to some extent in the Civil War of 1864, we have always most unfortunately been opposed to our own kith and kin. Be the faults what they may, they can scarcely be deemed entirely one-sided. But the evil legacy of armed opposition has a grim tendency to live on, whether it be with a successful or a defeated antagonist.

One curious old custom arose out of the fighting of this time, with one regiment of the line, the 29th. Tradition is doubtful as to the precise time and place, the when and where the custom originated. Long before 1792, and up to about 1855, the officers were always accustomed to wear their swords at mess, and thus got the name of the “Ever-sworded Twenty-ninth.” The custom is referred to in the old standing orders, and is believed to have arisen from a detachment of the regiment having been surprised by Indians at St. John’s, and massacred, the deed being prompted by the French inhabitants from a feeling of revenge. Even now the captain and subaltern of the day appear with their swords at dinner, and in an officer’s diary of 1792 it appears that, on one occasion, “One of our very best men, weighing twenty stone, found it so inconvenient that he was allowed to dine without his sword, provided it hung up immediately behind him.”

The tactical changes that had occurred up to 1793 were not numerous, at least as far as Europe was concerned. The number of ranks was reduced to three, and the battle formations were becoming more linear and less heavily columnar. Minden, again, had shown again what resolute infantry could do, and in that battle the effort to bring about a mutual co-operation of the three arms to a common end is increasingly apparent.