CHAPTER XIII
THE ARMY AFTER THE LONG PEACE—THE CRIMEA, 1854
Reference has already been made to the reduction of the army after Waterloo. When warlike enthusiasm died out, and the cost of the war—some £800,000,000—had been grasped, the natural reaction came. Retrenchment “all along the line” was natural; but though the numbers were reduced to a weak peace footing, few regiments actually ceased to exist. The old 100th, 99th, 98th, 97th, 96th, 95th, and 94th Battalions were disbanded. Many regiments received fresh numbers. Hence the army in 1821 numbered 99,224 men, with 20,000 in India; but there was a slight increase to the infantry in 1823, when the 94th, 95th, 96th, 97th, 98th, and 99th reappear, and a further increase of 7,000 in 1831 because of Irish discontent; but this was again reduced, to be increased in 1848. In 1837 the army consisted of ninety-nine regiments of the line, with the Rifle Brigade, but was extremely weak in the matter of the artillery and cavalry.
The dread of war died with the banishment of the great emperor to St. Helena, and was buried with his death. Europe was at peace for many a year, and people, foolish then as now, could not read by the lessons of the past that no perfect or continual peace was possible until the millennium came. Even those who looked forward to that event did not read prophecy correctly. There were to be “wars and rumours of wars,” but the people sat quietly down and dreamed of a continual peace, which was as impossible as a continual war.
Exhaustion follows great warlike efforts, and exhaustion, of a different kind, follows prolonged peace. There is “a deal of human nature about man,” and there is at the bottom of most of us an old combative spirit that, however concealed by common conventional life, is none the less still smouldering below the surface, and quite ready to break out into a flame.
The exhaustion of war requires repose: that of peace requires excitation, as the future proved. No war has ever been seriously unpopular in England—after a long peace. Man is a pugnacious animal at the heart of him, and woman is little better! The red coat, the “scarlet fever,” appeals to both sexes, and the most peace-loving woman in the world would rather see her brother or her lover die the death for country’s sake, than see him stay at home if his soldier’s work lay elsewhere.
Still, a great reaction, national and personal, had followed all these years of nearly continuous war. No wonder the army was reduced, and, to avoid further reduction, hidden away. The civilian idea that armies could be raised anyhow, that any man was not only fit for, but could be easily made, a soldier, was as common then as now. Yet if these well-meaning people, people of business, had been asked if any of their clerks could be so improvised, such a remark would have been met by a scornful negative. Curious to remember that people who think so are absolutely ignorant of the training in rapid decision, quick initiative, and perfect coolness, which in the midst of battle and sudden death the soldier, and still more his leader, has to show. But human nature is human nature. Civilians held the purse-strings, and the army suffered. The canker of peace rusted all things until the rude awakening of the Crimean War, and then those who complained most of the undoubted errors committed were the very descendants of those who had refused in every way to keep sound and commercially intact that great national insurance—the army.
But for India and the far East, the practice in the fighting trade would have been little or nothing for forty years! The history of the army from 1820 to 1854 is mainly domestic. Thus, between 1821 and 1827 the Household Cavalry had the cuirass restored; the list of battles on the regimental colours was increased, and regimental histories ordered to be written (by Mr. Cannon, of the War Office) by royal command; trousers took the place of leggings, and short boots and “Wellingtons” came into being; and when the Deccan prize-money was distributed, the general commanding these operations received £44,201, and the private soldier 19s. 10d.!
In 1827 the Duke of York died, and was succeeded the next year by the Duke of Wellington.
The late Commander-in-Chief was by no means a great general, and had lacked both tact and judgment, as was shown by his entanglement with Mrs. Clarke, which led to a heated debate in the House of Commons. But he was honest in his endeavour to improve the army as a fighting machine. When Sir Arthur Wellesley was a member of Parliament, he bore willing testimony to the work His Royal Highness had done. “Never was there army in a better state, as far as depended on the Commander-in-Chief, than the one he had commanded,” was his successor’s honest opinion in 1808 regarding His Royal Highness. There is little, if any, evidence that he was personally aware of the somewhat doubtful transactions that had been carried on, and his rigid integrity in all other matters had won him the respect of the army, when he finally ceased to command it in chief.
The Duke of York was, after all, but a man of his time. He had condescended to fight a duel with Colonel Lennox in the days of his hot youth. He had behaved with coolness and intrepidity in Holland when the 14th Foot and the Guards had distinguished themselves at Famars and Lincelles. He was notorious for his courtesy at his numerous levées. He behaved with dignity, certainly, in the unfortunate campaign of 1799. He had the interest of the army at heart, as is evidenced by his dying words to Sir Robert Peel, when he said, “I wish that the country could compare the state of the brigade which was to land in Lisbon in 1827 with that which landed at Ostend in 1794.” A contemporary opinion stating that “No man of his high rank, since the days of Henry IV. of France, had ever conciliated more personal attachments, or retained them longer,” is sufficient eulogy of his private worth, if his military career be not remarkable for any marked success.