Wellington's Army, 1809-1814

by Charles Oman

The Quartermaster-General

The officers of the Quartermaster-General’s department, besides their duties with regard to the moving of the army, or the detachments of it, had often to undertake independent work at a distance from headquarters, and sometimes remote from the theatre of war. It was they who made topographical surveys, reports on roads and bridges, and on the resources of districts through which the army might have to move in the near or distant future. There was issued early in 1810 a little manual called Instructions for the officers in the department of the Quartermaster-General which was given to all its members: it contains a selection of orders and forms, relating to every possible duty with which its recipients might be entrusted. The most interesting section is that on topographical surveys, to which there is annexed a model report of the road from Truxillo to Merida, containing notes on everything which a staff officer ought to notice,—positions, defiles, size of villages, character of sections of the road, amount of corn-land as opposed to pasture or waste, warnings as to unhealthy spots, notes as to the depth of rivers and the practicability of fords, etc.

So far as I can ascertain, Wellington had only two Quartermaster-Generals during the whole of the long period of his supreme command. Colonel George Murray of the 3rd Guards held the post from April, 1809, to May 28, 1812: he must be carefully distinguished from two other Murrays, who sometimes turn up in the dispatches. One is Major-General John Murray, who commanded a brigade in the Oporto campaign, went home because he considered that Beresford had been unjustly promoted over his head, and came out later to the Peninsula on the Catalan side, where he was responsible for the mismanaged operations about Tarragona. The other is John Murray, the Commissary-General. When Wellington sometimes uses such a phrase in his dispatches as “Murray knows this,” or “see that Murray is informed,” it is often most difficult to be sure which of the three men is meant. Early in 1811 Colonel George Murray became a major-general, and in the following May he appears to have gone home. He was replaced as Quartermaster-General by Colonel James Gordon—who, again, must not be confused with Colonel Sir Alexander Gordon, who was one of Wellington’s senior aides-de-camp, and was killed at Waterloo. This is another of the confusions between homonyms which often give trouble. If a diarist speaks of “Colonel Gordon” we have to find which of the two is meant. James Gordon, having acted as quartermaster-general from May, 1811, to January, 1813, went home, and George Murray, returning early in that year, worked out the remaining fifteen months of the war in his old position.

The Adjutant-General

Parallel with the Quartermaster-General was the other great departmental chief at headquarters, the Adjutant-General, whose sphere of activity was disciplinary and statistical. He was charged with all the detail of duties to be distributed, with the collecting and compiling for the use of the commander-in-chief of all returns of men and horses in “morning states,” etc., with the supreme supervision of the discipline of the army, and with much official correspondence that did not pass to the Military Secretary. Roughly speaking, the internal condition of the troops fell to his share, while their movement belonged to the Quartermaster-General. He had to aid him on the first organization of the army in 1809, eight assistant-adjutant-generals and six deputy-assistant-adjutant-generals, but (as in the Quartermaster-General’s department) the number of subordinates mounted up, as the war went on, and new units were from time to time created, since an assistant-adjutant-general was attached to each division.

The first holder of the office was Major-General the Hon. Charles Stewart (afterwards Lord Londonderry, the earliest historian of the Peninsular War), who was discharging its functions from April, 1809, till April, 1813, just four years. He was then sent on a diplomatic mission to Berlin, and Wellington offered the post to his own brother-in-law, Major-General Edward Pakenham, who, while in charge of the 3rd division, had made the decisive charge at Salamanca. Pakenham was adjutant-general for the last year of the war, April, 1813, to April, 1814, and went straight out from Bordeaux to command the unlucky New Orleans expedition, in which he lost his life.

It will be noted that Wellington had actually only two Quartermaster-Generals and two Adjutant-Generals under him during the five years of his Peninsular command—a sufficient proof that when he had found his man he stuck to him. Charles Stewart, who served him so long, was a person of some political importance, as the brother and confidant of Lord Castlereagh. In the early part of his tenure of office he seems sometimes to have made suggestions to his chief, but met little encouragement, for Wellington loved his own way, and was not to be influenced even by his own highest staff officers.[134] He did not wish to have a Gneisenau or a Moltke at his side: he only wanted zealous and competent chief clerks.

Minor Heads of Departments

Attached to headquarters in addition to the three great functionaries already named, were the heads of several other departments of great importance. These were—

(1) The general officer commanding the Royal Artillery, who had a general supervisory charge of the batteries attached to the divisions, and a more specific control of the battering-train and reserve artillery, when these came into existence in 1811, as well as of the ammunition columns. The first artillery chief was Brigadier-General E. Howarth, who arrived at Lisbon in 1809, about the same time as Wellington himself. He was promoted major-general in 1811, and went home that year. The command then went through a rapid succession of hands. Howarth was followed by Major-General Borthwick, who apparently crossed Wellington, and went home in March, 1812, after less than a year’s tenure of the post. Borthwick was succeeded by Colonel H. Framingham, and he within a few months by Colonel G. B. Fisher, who (like Borthwick) fell out with the commander-in-chief, and applied for leave to go home ere 1813 was six months old. Wellington then appointed Colonel Alexander Dickson to the command late in May. This officer had been for the last two years in charge of the Portuguese artillery under Beresford. He had given such satisfaction at Rodrigo and Badajoz that Wellington re-transferred him to the British service, and finished the campaign of 1814 with Dickson in chief charge of this branch.