The Story of the British Army

by Charles Cooper King

“Every particular hill, every wood thus occupied, must be considered as a separate post acting for itself. Consequently, whatever number of men may arrive in each, should be immediately organised. They must appoint a captain and three lieutenants. The captain must be aware that every post should be defended in front and flank, and to this effect he must form his people into three divisions.”

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“On all occasions, an ambuscade in a wood or behind hedges must allow the enemy to approach as near as possible before the firing commences, and it should be well understood that, at even three hundred paces, musquet shots are very uncertain, and only become destructive at that distance where one body of troops fire together upon another closely collected. It is different where people are dispersed and act individually; in that case any degree of precision with a common musquet is not to be reckoned on at a greater distance than from fifty to sixty paces.”

This is a curious story, but it shows how exceedingly short the range of firearms in those days, and even up to the Crimean War, was. General Mercer, whose memoirs, apparently from fear of the duke, were not published until after his death, gives in his account of Waterloo a similar curious story. He says, that after a charge of the Grenadiers à Cheval and Cuirassiers against his battery, “they prepared for a second attempt, sending up a cloud of skirmishers who galled us terribly by a fire of carbines and pistols at scarcely forty yards from our front. We were obliged to stand with port-fires lighted, so that it was not without a little difficulty that I succeeded in restraining the people from firing, for they grew impatient under such fatal results. Seeing some exertion beyond words necessary for this purpose, I leaped my horse up the little bank and began a promenade (by no means agreeable), up and down our front, without even drawing my sword, though these fellows were within speaking distance of me. This quieted my men; but the tall blue gentlemen, seeing me thus dare them, immediately made a target of me, and commenced a very deliberate practice, to show us what very bad shots they were, and verify the old artillery proverb, ‘The nearer the target, the safer you are.’ One fellow certainly made me flinch, but it was a miss; so I shook my finger at him and called him coquin. The rogue grinned as he reloaded and again took aim. I certainly felt rather foolish at that moment, but was ashamed, after such bravado, to let him see it, and therefore continued my promenade. As if to prolong my torment, he was a terrible time about it. To me it seemed an age. Whenever I turned, the muzzle of his infernal carbine still followed me. At length bang it went, and whiz came the ball close to the back of my neck and at the same instant down dropped the leading driver of one of my guns (Miller), into whose forehead the cursed missile had penetrated.”

This forgotten effect of the range of firearms, before rifles were, is interesting to follow. In a drill-book, dated 1829, occurs the following. It is a book of questions and answers, and in it occurs Question 65, which asks, “When firing them (the men) at ball cartridge, do you increase or decrease their distance in proportion to their confidence?” To which the answer is, “I increase or decrease the distance in proportion to their confidence, making the diffident strike it at all events; as I find his or their confidence increase, I increase the distance accordingly.” So in Question 66 occurs that of “And how is this done?” to which the reply is, “If a man do not strike the target at forty yards, I decrease the distance to thirty yards, and so on till he hits it.”

This was in 1829; but it is still more remarkable to find in a “Military Dictionary” of the year 1844, that even then “the first target for the instruction of infantry recruits is made round and eight feet in diameter, the practice commencing at thirty yards, so that it is impossible for the recruit to miss it. This range is increased to fifty, eighty, and a hundred yards at the same target”; while the extreme range at this target practice was only two hundred yards! Even later, in the “Manual of Field Operations” written by Lieutenant Jervis-Whyte-Jervis, and dated 1852, it is stated that recruits are placed into three squads in the French exercise which he admires, and to which he attributes the accuracy of fire in their infantry. They are thus classed: “1. Those who have struck the target three times in 120 yards. 2. Those who have struck it more than three times. 3. Those who have struck it less than three times”; and the instruction goes on to say that while every recruit fires eighty ball cartridges every year, the older soldiers are formed into three groups, of whom the older soldiers fire nine times at the distance of 120 yards, and six at 180 yards, and the successful marksmen are rewarded with silver epaulets.”

This, then, was the value of musketry-fire for long after the beginning of this century and before rifles were common. Until 1854 there had been, as far as armament was concerned, little alteration.

When the Peninsular war broke out, England set quietly to work in her wonted fashion, showing neither fear nor anger. Even when Portugal was driven by France to close her country to us, we, though in what looked like dire extremity, calmly took Madeira, just to express our resentment at this treatment!

Then the peace of Amiens intervened, and the danger temporarily ceased. England resigned all her conquests but Ceylon and Trinidad. She agreed to resign Malta, but didn’t; and this was used by Napoleon as a pretext for the resumption of hostilities a year later. But for the first time since the army was created, peace and reduction were not synonymous terms. The danger had been too menacing for even the most unwarlike citizen to desire to lessen the nation’s defensive strength. More drilling and an attempt at a better organisation took the place of the old-time disbandment; and when war was once more declared, there was less reason for dread than before the “scare” occurred. The volunteers, especially, were full of enthusiasm. The king reviewed twenty-six regiments of them in Hyde Park on the 26th of October 1803, and thirty-five more two days later. The Prince of Wales in vain besought his father’s permission for a command, but though refused, the effect on the national enthusiasm was marked.

Abroad, we captured St. Lucia, Tobago, Demerara, and Surinam, and the French occupied Hanover, which mattered nothing. But the destruction by Nelson of the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar mattered much. It destroyed altogether the idea of a French invasion for more than fifty years.