The thanks of Parliament were voted to both services; the XVIIIth Royal Irish were authorised to carry on the Colours the emblem of a Sphinx and the word “Egypt,” and gold medals were presented by the Sultan to all the officers of the regiment. It was not until the year 1847 that a British medal was issued for this campaign, when only three officers—Hill, Beavan, and Deane—were still alive to claim the decoration.
As soon as the last of the French were shipped off to France, Hely-Hutchinson’s army was broken up. Some of the troops remained to share with Baird’s contingent the duty of holding Egypt for a few months; the remainder returned to various parts of the Mediterranean to await the results of the negotiations for peace then going on between the Governments of England and France. The Royal Irish were sent first to Malta, and then on to Elba, where Montresor was appointed military governor of Porto Ferraio for the second time: and when peace was declared the regiment was ordered home, and landed at Cork at the end of August, 1802.
Though there were many signs that France looked upon the Peace of Amiens more as a truce than as the end of her struggle with Britain, our Government soon began to cut down all military expenditure with unreasoning haste. Wholesale discharges from the army left only 40,000 regular troops in the United Kingdom; the militia, after an embodiment of nine years, were sent to their homes; the “fencible” regiments of horse and foot, raised for purposes of local defence, were disbanded. Thus the renewal of the war in 1803 found us almost disarmed; and when Napoleon collected an army for the invasion of England the Government was hard pressed to raise a garrison sufficient for the needs of the United Kingdom. By paying huge bounties to recruits the numbers of the regular army were increased to 12,000 cavalry and 75,000 infantry; bounties nearly as large attracted 80,000 men to the militia; while to escape a mitigated form of compulsory service, introduced to catch those who would not serve of their own free will, 343,000 men joined corps of Yeomanry or regiments of Volunteers. How far this mass of armed men would have been able to face veterans who had won innumerable victories in western and central Europe is a matter of speculation. Happily for England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, though perhaps unhappily for the British Empire of the present day, the threatened invasion did not take place, and our race had no opportunity to ascertain by practical experience whether Britons, very imperfectly trained to war, are as good fighting men as foreigners who have thoroughly mastered the soldier’s trade before they meet their enemy on the battlefield.
MAP No. 3.
W. & A.K. Johnston Limited, Edinburgh & London.
Among the steps taken to increase the regular army was the formation of additional battalions of infantry, one or two of which were allotted to existing regiments. The second battalion of the XVIIIth was raised in Ireland in 1803, and, like the first, served in Scotland until the summer of 1804, when both were sent to Barham Downs, one of the many camps in the south of England where large numbers of troops stood ready to march towards the coast. After a few months the first battalion was ordered to the West Indies, and sailing in January, 1805, with other corps, reached Jamaica at the end of April, 935 strong.[116] The second battalion remained at Barham Downs until the destruction of the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar put an end to Napoleon’s hope of obtaining the temporary command of the Channel necessary to pass his troops across the Straits of Dover. As soon as all danger of invasion was over the encampment was broken up, and the second battalion was sent to garrison Jersey.
When the first battalion of the Royal Irish landed at Kingston, the island was in a fever of anxiety, for the attitude of the black population, who had been thoroughly unsettled by the French Revolution, was disquieting not only in Jamaica but throughout the British West Indies; the coasts were infested by privateers who captured many trading ships; and a great fleet of the enemy’s men-of-war was reported to be cruising among the neighbouring islands. These French ships, however, were part of the squadrons sent by Napoleon to decoy Nelson and his brother admirals from their blockade of the seaports on the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay: their business was to evade the British fleet, to return to Europe, and joining forces with the remainder of the Franco-Spanish fleet, to sweep all British men-of-war from the Channel before our admirals had discovered that they had quitted the West Indies. Thus Jamaica was not attacked; in a few months the excitement died down, and the Royal Irish fell into the routine of the station where they were destined to spend twelve long and dreary years. Once there seemed a prospect of active service: in 1809 they were ordered to form part of an expedition to the island of San Domingo,[117] where the Spaniards, who had again become our allies, were waging war against the French garrison. Major-General Sir Hugh Carmichael sailed from Jamaica on the 7th of June, and landed three weeks later at Polingue, a port thirty miles from the city of San Domingo, where the Spaniards were besieging the common enemy. As soon as his troops were safe on shore the General hurried up to the front, and after a reconnaissance decided that, as the French had already held out for eight months, the best way to deal with them would be by a sudden and vigorous attack. At nightfall on the 1st of July his men struggled up from the coast, tired out by heavy marches in pouring rain, over bad roads, through unbridged rivers, and without horses for the guns, which had to be dragged by hand. Next day the French opened negotiations for surrender, but asked for such impossible terms that Carmichael made his plans to storm the works, and allotted to the Royal Irish an important part in the operations; but before the assault could be delivered the garrison of the town capitulated. As the tricolor still flew over an outlying fort, Major E. Walker, XVIIIth regiment, was sent to reduce it with the Light companies of his own and two other battalions: but on the approach of the little column, the officer in command laid down his arms, and with the lowering of his flag passed away the last chance of the Royal Irish of distinguishing themselves in the second phase of the great war with France. The terms of the capitulation were much the same as those granted in Corsica and Egypt: the French were to be sent back to their own country, and after the Royal Irish had seen their enemies safely embarked for France, they returned to Jamaica. At the taking of San Domingo none of the British were injured, while few if any died of sickness in the island. In this respect they were infinitely more fortunate than the troops who served in the campaign in San Domingo between 1793 and 1795, when in a few weeks whole regiments were virtually annihilated by yellow fever, which in those three years claimed 40,000 victims from the army and the fleet in West Indian waters.
As the news of Wellington’s successive victories in the Peninsula slowly made its way to Jamaica the hearts of the Royal Irish must have sunk very low, when they realised that they were stationed in a part of the world where there was no prospect of adding to the laurels of the regiment. Yet their lot was common to the greater part of the British army, scattered over the whole face of the globe, in places where the prospect of active service seemed most improbable. In 1809, England had about 218,000 regular soldiers, of whom only 22,000 were fighting in the Peninsula. A hundred and eight thousand were locked up in the United Kingdom, to give solidity to the 450,000 Militia and Volunteers then under arms; the Mediterranean fortresses and Sicily absorbed 22,000; the West Indies nearly as many; 8000 guarded the Canadian frontier; the communication with the East was kept open by 900 at Madeira, and nearly 6000 at the Cape; 4000 held the Island of Ceylon; in India were 24,000 white troops, of whom only 4000 were in the pay of the East India Company, while 1300 were employed in keeping order in the penal settlement of New South Wales. The corps of artillery and engineers and troops at sea accounted for the remainder of the army.