Only one or two points remain to be noticed. First, the amalgamation of the Royal Irish Artillery was contemplated as early as 1788, although it did not take place until after the Union in 1801. The delay was mainly caused by the protest of the officers of the Royal Artillery, who would have suffered greatly from supersession,—the promotion in the Irish corps having been much more rapid than in that from which it sprang. Amalgamation must always produce this supersession to a certain extent; and the Board listened to the remonstrances, and deferred the incorporation of the Irish Artillery for some years. About the same date that this question was being discussed, a long petition was forwarded from Gibraltar, in which the officers of the Royal Artillery there stationed pointed out how much better the position had become of officers in the Royal Engineers of the same standing as themselves, than their own. The wording of the petition was faulty, and its arguments were unsound; thus giving the Master-General an opportunity, of which he availed himself, to administer a dignified rebuke to the malcontents. On one point, however, he admitted the force of their complaint. The rank of Major had been abolished in the Royal Engineers, its holders being made Lieutenant-Colonels, and thus obtaining a decided advantage over their contemporaries in Duke of Richmond, 10 March, 1788. the Artillery. “This difference,” wrote the Master-General, “and there being no rank of Major, is, I admit, an advantage in point of rank in favour of the Engineers. The reason of the rank of Major being suppressed in the Corps of Engineers was that there were no troops belonging to them to be commanded in Battalions, and therefore there could be no use for an officer of that description.” In the year 1827, the rank of Regimental Major was abolished in the Royal Artillery, its holders being made Lieutenant-Colonels, but with Majors’ pay; and in the year 1872, the rank of Major was substituted for that of First Captain, on account of the responsibility attached to the command of a Battery of Artillery.
It was during this period that a blow was struck at the custom, which had hitherto prevailed, of buying and selling the appointments of Adjutant and Quartermaster. On the Colonel Miller, Pamph., 1868. 24th February, 1783, the Master-General ordered that no such appointment should in future be sold, with this exception, that any officer who then held an appointment which he had obtained by purchase would be allowed to sell it when he relinquished it, but must accept 100l. less than he gave for it; and that his successor must also sell for 100l. less than that purchase-money; and so on until the price should be extinguished. It was ruled, at the same time, that a Captain-Lieutenant, holding an Adjutancy, should vacate it on being promoted to a Company; and that as soon as any “warrant” of a Quartermaster should become vacant without purchase, “some meritorious non-commissioned officer should be recommended for the same.”
A privilege which the Regiment had hitherto enjoyed was abolished, and with good reason, in 1785. Prior to that date no charge was ever made for the subsistence of either officers or men of the Royal Artillery when being conveyed by transports to foreign stations, an exemption which was not accorded to the rest of the army. Doubtless the custom arose from the fact that the Board of Ordnance, which in one capacity governed the Artillery, in another capacity hired the transports; but the case had only to be stated to ensure remedy. On the 27th August, 1785, it was ruled that a “stoppage of 3d. per diem (being the same as is made from the rest of His Majesty’s troops) be made from the officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates of the Royal Artillery during the time they shall be on board ship.” Doubtless, the same individuals would be glad if, in the year of grace 1873, they could travel on board ship at the rate of 3d. per diem.
Perhaps of all the letters which the student finds in the official correspondence of the period, the following is the most amusing. It ought already to have been mentioned that when the Captain of a Company retired on his pay, awaiting a vacancy in the Invalid Battalion, his Captain-Lieutenant received certain allowances connected with the command of the Company. Apparently, the regulations were not very clear on the subject; or, as is very probable, decisions had been given in individual cases, which had not been promulgated to the Regiment—a pernicious custom which existed in the 18th century, and even since. A Captain William Houghton had retired in this way; and from his retirement the following cry of agony reached the 2 April, 1789. Commandant of his Battalion:—“Ever since the day your goodness was made known to the Regiment in getting me leave of absence to retire from duty till provided with an Invalid Company, I have never had a moment’s peace with my Captains-Lieutenant. Their first claim was for one non-effective—I gave it; the next was for both—I gave them; and was then told they had a right to the 6l. per annum allowed for stationery—this I gave up also. They have now demanded my share of the stock purse, and the 20l. per annum granted by His Majesty’s warrant, 27th July, 1772, to the Captains of Artillery, on account of the slowness of promotion in the Regiment. Had I known these were to be the hard conditions of a little rest before death, it would have been all fair; but in that case I certainly should have remained with my Company, provided I had done duty upon crutches.”
Only one point remains now to be mentioned before turning to the causes which led to sudden augmentations in the Regiment, combined with the commencement of hostilities. On the 26th August, 1792, volunteers were called for from the Companies at Woolwich, to form part of a guard ordered to attend His Excellency Viscount Macartney, who had been appointed Ambassador to the Court of the Emperor of China, and also to act as instructors in gunnery to the troops of that potentate. The strength of the party was as follows:—One sergeant, 3 corporals or bombardiers, 1 drummer, and 15 gunners, under the command of Lieutenant Parish. An advance was made to the detachment of a year’s subsistence to purchase necessaries, and a second suit of clothing was given to the non-commissioned officers and men.
It has been difficult to confine this chapter to these purely domestic, although necessary, details, because, after 1787, the whole firmament of history has been lurid with the events in France, which were ripening into a state of things such as has never been seen before, or since. In 1792 it became apparent that war between England and France was inevitable. Recruiting had been brisk since 1787; in 1790 a free pardon had been offered to all deserters, who should return to their Regiments; in the first month of 1793 an augmentation to the Artillery was authorized, which will form the subject of the next chapter; and in October 1793, the following increase to the establishment was ordered, viz.:—
| 30 | Gentlemen Cadets. | |
| To each of the 40 marchingCompanies of the 4Battalions | 1 | Sergeant. |
| 2 | Bombardiers. | |
| 10 | Second Gunners. | |
| 1 | Sergeant Conductor on Sergeant’s pay. | |
| 10 | Drivers upon Second Gunner’s pay. | |
| To each of the 4 marchingBattalions | 1 | Surgeon’s Mate. |
Every officer, without exception, had been ordered to join in 1792; and, although it was not until the beginning of 1793 that the French Ambassador was dismissed from the Court of St. James’s, it was evident that a sufficient casus belli had been found in the operations of the French army in the Low Countries, and the menace to England implied in France obtaining the control of the River Scheldt.
A sufficient casus belli, it has been said; but the student of history must indeed be blind who fails to see that this was but a secondary reason. A panic had seized upon the most stable European governments, a dread lest the revolutionary principles which animated the French people should spread beyond the confines of France. Nor was their fear without reason. Even England had been penetrated by Republicanism; societies were formed, ostensibly for Parliamentary Reform, and under the title of Friends of the People, which desired undoubtedly the overthrow of the monarchy. An Englishman, the author of ‘The Rights of Man,’ had been elected a member of the Assembly in Paris, on account of his advanced political opinions; and, after his trial for sedition in England, an English mob showed their sympathy by taking the horses out of his advocate’s carriage, and drawing it themselves to his residence. That unfailing barometer of political disturbance—the funds—told also a tale of great uneasiness. ‘Annual Register,’ 1792. The Three per Cents., which stood in January 1792 at 93⅜, fell before December in the same year to 74; and all other Government securities were at a corresponding discount.
The state of France was, indeed, enough to appal the most indifferent. In the powerful language of the chronicler of the French Revolution, France, roused by many causes, Carlyle. faced the world “in that terrible strength of Nature which no man has measured;” and “whatever was cruel in the panic-frenzy of twenty-five million men—whatsoever was great in the simultaneous death-defiance of twenty-five million men—stood there in abrupt contrast, near by one another.” France was now “seeking its wild way through the New, Chaotic—where Force is not yet distinguished into Bidden and Forbidden—but Crime and Virtue welter unseparated, in that domain of what is called the Passions.” ... “The Gospel of Man’s Rights was preached abroad with the fearfullest Devil’s Message of man’s weaknesses and sins;” and a whole nation was drunk with revenge, and terror, and blood.