The arrangements of the Board for the reliefs of the companies at this time reveal a very distinct attempt to secure, as far as possible, that companies of the same battalion should serve on the same station. For example, it was decided that, in 1803, the whole of the companies at Gibraltar should belong to the 6th Battalion; that the 1st and 2nd Battalions should be collected in England; the 5th in Ireland; and that the detached commands, and the wants of Canada should be supplied by the 3rd and 4th Battalions. The scheme was marred by an occasional company of a battalion, which it was hoped to concentrate, being found to be at the Cape of Good Hope, or Ceylon; but the effort was honestly made, and with the best intentions. That it utterly failed during the tempest of war, which was so soon and so long to rage, was not the fault of those who hoped to produce a very different state of affairs; but the result of inevitable causes. The American War had proved the inconvenience of a battalion’s head-quarters being on the scene of hostilities: the lesson was accepted, and the various head-quarters were located at Woolwich; and therefore, the fact having been once admitted that the necessary control could be exercised, at a distance, over an individual company, all ideas of symmetry had to yield to necessity: and whencesoever a company could be most readily obtained, from that station it was taken, irrespective of the battalion to which it belonged. The test of a system frequently does not occur until the system must vanish before it; and this was the case in the wars between 1807 and 1815, which proved most satisfactorily that the official dreams of the Ordnance in 1802 and 1803 were not worth the paper on which they were written. Out of the web which was so honestly spun, the company, in time of war, made its inevitable escape, and asserted yet again its right to be called the Artillery unit.

On the signing of the Treaty of Peace, at Amiens, on the 27th March, 1802, immediate reductions were ordered in the military forces of England. In the Royal Artillery they took the form of reductions in the strength of the companies; and the following was the scheme, approved by the Master General, on the recommendation of Colonel Macleod. The short-lived amity between the French and English Governments did not admit of the reductions being altogether carried out; but it is interesting to see how they were proposed to be conducted.

Proposal agreed to on 7 Dec. 1801.

——Sergeants.Corporals.Bombardiers.Gunners.Drumers.Non-effectives.Total.
Present strength of one Battalion40407098030301,190
Proposed strength3030607003030880
To be reduced101010280····310
Total reduction in seven Battalions7070701,960····2,170

N.B. Of the above number of men to be reduced, there were about 680 men from the Militia, who were entitled to their discharge.

This reduction left the proportion of non-commissioned officers to gunners the same as before, viz. 1 to 6. During the American War, it had been as 1 to 5; after the peace of 1783, it fell to 1 to 7; and during the earlier wars of the French Revolution it rose to 1 to 6.

The strength of the Corps of Gunner-drivers in 1802 was as follows: Seven troops, each consisting of—

1Captain-Commissary.
2Lieutenants-Commissary.
2Staff-Sergeants.
4Sergeants.
6First Corporals.
6Second Corporals.
6Farriers.
3Smiths.
4Collar-Makers.
4Wheelers.
150Gunner-drivers.
25Riding Horses.
Staff.—1 Quartermaster.
1 Veterinary Surgeon.

The gunner-drivers attached to, and doing duty with the Horse Brigade, are not included above, being by a Royal Warrant of 1st September, 1801, mustered and paid with the Troops to which they were attached. These were in number 336. There were also 18 quartermaster-commissaries awaiting absorption, having been struck off the establishment on reduction. The number of horses belonging to the Corps of Gunner-drivers at this time included 2300 draught-horses, and 178 riding-horses.