As this was the first train of Artillery to which the Royal Artillery Companies were attached on active service, it has been considered desirable to give some details as to its constitution.
First, as to personnel:—It was commanded by Colonel Borgard, assisted by a major, a captain, three lieutenants, and four fireworkers. The medical staff, a surgeon and his assistant, received a little more remuneration than in former trains; their daily pay—which to a modern ear has a very legal sound—being respectively 6s. 8d. and 3s. 4d. There were seven non-commissioned officers, twenty gunners, forty matrosses, two drummers, and ten artificers. Engineers, conductors, drivers, and clerks were also present; and on account of the particular nature of the service on which the expeditionary force was to be engaged, ten watermen and a coxswain were included among the attendants of the train.
Next, as to matériel:—Borgard selected for his purpose four 24-pounders, four 9-pounders, and six 1½-pounders, brass guns, all mounted on travelling carriages, with a proportion of spare carriages for the first and last, spare limbers for the second, and spare wheels for all. He also took a number of brass mortars, six ten-inch, and two eight-inch, besides thirty Coehorn and twelve Royal mortars. The ammunition comprised 9800 round shot, 180 grape, 3800 mortar shells, 1000 hand-grenades, and 100 carcasses for the ten-inch mortars. Two bomb-vessels, each carrying a thirteen-inch mortar, and with two fireworkers, four bombardiers, and an artificer on board, accompanied the expedition, and were also under Colonel Borgard's command.
The citadel capitulated on the 10th October, 1719, and a large quantity of guns and stores fell into the hands of the English. The first occasion, therefore, on which the Royal Artillery as a Regiment was represented on active service was completely successful. The expedition returned to England in November.
One more incident remains to be enlarged upon ere we leave the gallant officer to tell the story of his own life. In 1716, when attending an experiment at the Foundry in Windmill Hill, where some brass guns were being recast, he was wounded in four places by an explosion which took place, and by which seventeen of the bystanders lost their lives. The accident had been foretold—so the story goes—by a young Swiss named Schalch, who was thereupon invited, after his prophecy was fulfilled, to assist the Board of Ordnance in selecting a suitable place near London where all the guns required for the service might be cast.
Young Schalch's hands were rather tied in the matter; for he was limited to a radius of twelve miles round London. Had this not been the case, it is hardly probable that he would have named as the Depôt for national Artillery Stores, and as the National Arsenal—both of which he must have foreseen the place of his selection would become—a place so exposed as Woolwich. As it was, however, being limited to so small an area, his selection was a natural one for other than the reasons which would first occur to him, as it already had a special connection with Artillery manufactures, and with that Board under whose orders he was to work.
Few countries, and fewer Boards, have ever had a more faithful servant than he proved. As Superintendent of the Foundries, which were built at his suggestion, he lived for sixty years, "during which time not a single accident "occurred."[[8]] The Royal Artillery may well be proud of such a man, who, although not in the Regiment, was so intimately connected with it by the nature of his duties; and as all the management of the various departments in the Arsenal is in the hands of officers of the Regiment now, there is no better model for them to study than this father, so to speak, of Woolwich Arsenal. And the interest which must be felt in him for his own skill and services is increased by the knowledge that no less than six of his descendants have held commissions in the Royal Artillery.
Appended to the chapter will now be found the diary of Borgard, to which allusion has so often been made, copied from a manuscript in the Royal Artillery Regimental Library. In addition to the short account of his services, it contains lists of the various battles and sieges in which he took part, and the dates of his various commissions.
"An Account of the Battels, Sieges, &c., wherein Lieutenant-General Albert Borgard hath served, with what time and station, and in what Prince's service, as also the dates of his commissions during the time of his being in the English service, viz.—