The Story of the British Army

by Charles Cooper King

But the continued necessity for an increased army, and the dread of serious invasion that obtained, and not without reason, during the closing days of the eighteenth and the early days of the nineteenth centuries, was fast wearing down the old civil dislike. Officers on half-pay were rendered liable to trial by court martial. The militia system was introduced into Scotland, and the Shropshire Regiment was the first of the English militia to serve in that country, while greater care was taken as regards home defence. France was not content with a mere defensive rôle; but attempted, though with extreme feebleness, to carry the war into her enemy’s territory. She had threatened to land at Ilfracombe and then in Pembrokeshire; and actually did so at Castlebar during the Irish insurrection of 1797–98, though with no result save that of having to surrender. Ireland in that year had required, as she has before and since, a large garrison, and seven regiments of cavalry and four of infantry had been necessary to put down the rising that was practically crushed at Vinegar Hill.

The pay of the rank and file remained much the same, 1s. a day for a private; but the stoppage for the food ration out of it amounted to 6½d. Still the army was everywhere growing in esteem and in popularity. Decorations and brevets were largely bestowed in 1795, after the return of the army from foreign service. Frequent reviews, at which George III. and the Prince of Wales attended, were held. The Duke of York was a popular Commander-in-Chief, and did much to improve the discipline of the army. He was so well liked by the men as to win the name of the “Soldier’s Friend,” a title which his founding the “Royal Military Asylum” for the education of soldiers’ children emphasised. Under his auspices, too, and helped by Sir David Dundas, the somewhat varied and irregular systems of drill were made uniform by the introduction of the first real drill-book, the Rules and Regulations for the Formations, Field Exercise, and Movements of His Majesty’s Forces, in 1792.

At that time Prussia was looked on as the great schoolmaster in the art-military, as France was later, and as Germany is now. The English army has been mainly a copyist of other people’s methods since the century began. If, after the Crimea or the Italian campaign of 1859, we adopted kepi-shaped hats, baggy “pegtop” trousers, and “booted overalls” for riding, so, when Germany became successful, we copied her “Blucher boots,” flat-topped forage-caps, infantry helmet, and rank distinctions!

In this case, too, the Prussian system was the basis of our drill instruction, and, with but slight modifications, so remained until 1870, when linear formations gave place to extended order.

The pace was increased from 75 to 80 per minute for the ordinary march or movement, but one of 120 (our present quick march) was permitted for wheeling and such minor manœuvres! The ranks were, when the book first appeared, three deep, as obtained in Germany, until the death of the late Emperor; but light infantry were allowed to form two deep before skirmishing. The battalion had ten companies, including the flank or “Light” and “Grenadier” companies. The absolute rigidity of the line was insisted on. To be able to form line from open column without either making gaps or causing crowding was the essence of good drill; and hence, the “march past,” if well executed, was really then a true test of the efficiency of a battalion. Other editions of this drill-book were published in 1809, 1815, and 1817, but in 1808, the three-rank formation was abolished for active service. It has been surmised that the necessity, with the small armies we despatched in these days, of this reduction in depth was made in order that a wider front might be offered to the frequently numerical superiority of our adversaries.[33]

In all our early campaigns, notoriously those of the Marlborough period, the British infantry had shone in the offensive. From the steady advance against Blenheim to the vigorous dash at Lincelles, it had shown how capable it was of attacking even against enormous odds. And yet from 1800 almost until now there has been an impression that our army is better on the defensive than in the attack. Even after Waterloo, Müffling writes: “I felt a strong conviction that if fortune so far favoured us in a battle that the English army could act on the defensive, while the Prussians acted simultaneously on the offensive, we should obtain a brilliant victory over Napoleon.” Unfounded as such an idea was, if the military history of the past be examined, there is no doubt it remained a tradition for long after the battle that proved once again the undaunted steadiness of the British line.

But the main change was in the extension of the principle of skirmishing which the American war had introduced. For a long time the “light companies” of battalions were designed to cover the front of the line during its advance and protect it while manœuvring. Built up for specific purpose into battalions, they formulated a drill of their own; which General Dundas in his Principles of Military Movements condemns. The rapid movements adopted met with little favour from an officer imbued with the stiff rigidity of Prussian drill-sergeants. “The importance of light infantry has more particularly tended to establish this practice. During the late war their service was conspicuous, and their gallantry and exertions have met with merited applause. But instead of being considered as an accessory to the battalion, they have become the principal feature of our army, and have almost put grenadiers out of fashion. The showy exercise, the airy dress, the independent modes which they have adopted, have caught the minds of young officers, and made them imagine that these ought to be general and exclusive.”

All this the drill-book of 1792 was designed to remedy, but though it produced uniformity, which was valuable, it failed to check the development of permanent light infantry battalions, such as composed the magnificent Light Brigade of the Peninsular days.

But when, in 1804, a Camp of Instruction was formed at Shorncliffe under General John Moore, a new era to some extent began. Moore did not favour the rigid drill of Dundas’s drill-book of 1792. He “d—d the Eighteen Manœuvres,” which were looked on as essential for a well-trained regiment to undergo. He introduced the system of light infantry drill which was the basis of all such work in our army and in our drill-books up to 1870; and the regiments he trained, the 4th, 52nd, 57th, 59th, and 95th, came nobly to the front when the time arrived. The general was knighted a year later, and the 52nd presented him with a diamond star, valued at 350 guineas, in token of their appreciation of his services; while as colonel of the first regiment named officially “Light Infantry,” he chose for one of the supporters of his coat of arms a light infantry soldier. The other was a Highlander, in remembrance of the help one of the 92nd had given him when wounded at Egmont-op-Zee.

Abroad, the formations were generally columnar, more or less, and the movements of these dense bodies was covered, as was the line elsewhere, by skirmishers from the light (flank) companies or light infantry battalions. The French also had foreshadowed two modern improvements in the use of balloons at Fleurus and the introduction of telegraphy by means of semaphores. In England, on the other hand, General Congreve had invented the war-rocket in 1805, and two years before, Sir Henry Shrapnell the “spherical case,” which afterwards took his name and which was first used with effect at Vimiera.