A British army, as it was,--is,--and ought to be

by James Campbell

The staff of an army ought to be a distinct and permanent branch of the service, and no officers should be employed upon it but those who had received such an education, as is usually given to our engineers, the usefulness of which is so ably demonstrated by experiments and practice under Colonel Pasley, whose establishment for instruction (if we except what the artillery are taught at Woolwich,) is the only one worth keeping up; but it is a great drawback to our military service, that the officers of engineers are not more frequently placed in high responsible situations, and intrusted with high important commands and missions; at all events, officers employed even as Aides-de-Camp, but certainly as Brigade-Majors, or in the departments of the Adjutant and Quarter-Master-General, should have had a first-rate military education; but I repeat, that I would not ask where it had been acquired, whether in France, Germany, or wherever it can be had upon the most reasonable terms, for in England it is far too expensive.

Staff officers ought to be men of talents and of great enterprise and perseverance, and should possess even a certain knowledge of what is considered business, both in a civil and military point of view, which would render them capable of ascertaining and calling forth the various resources of a country. They should also be well acquainted with military police duties, or the best modes of exercising military law, in all its bearings, and to enable them to do this with advantage to the army, and to the country, they should have attached to them an intelligent mounted police corps. From the want of such an establishment, which it is the work of years to form, how often, and how severely have our armies suffered, and must continue to suffer till a change takes place.

Inexperienced officers, if even well educated, taken suddenly from their regiments, and, according to the fancy of general officers, or in compliance with the wishes of injudicious and interested friends, are unfit for, and must be ignorant of the complicated duties of the staff; and our generals, at least of old, were themselves too often unequal to instruct them. The consequences therefore invariably were, that on first taking the field, nothing could be worse managed than the departments over which our misnamed staff had to preside. The system, if it deserved to be so called, being undefined or ill-digested, the movements or manœuvres of the army, were, as a matter of course, often badly arranged, and nearly as badly executed; its combinations, as far as the staff were concerned in them, were frequently defective. The General-in-Chief had little or no assistance from the generality of them in the time of need, and it was really ridiculous to see how even our common out-posts were sometimes thrown out, leaving the most essential points unwatched, or wholly disregarded.

These are sweeping charges, and I ought to be able to shew that I am justified in making them: for example then—some may remember that on the 27th of July, 1809, the first day, I may say, of the battle of Talavera, the enemy's light troops broke unexpectedly in upon us at the Alberche river, when our troops were quite unprepared for such an event; some young corps were surprised and consequently did not behave well. Lord Wellington, himself, if I mistake not, and some of his staff were placed in a very perilous situation in an old unroofed house, into which they had gone in order to ascertain from its highest windows what was going forward; and his Lordship had, immediately after, to take upon himself, in a great measure, the direction of the hastily-formed rear guard of infantry, consisting of the 45th regiment and 5th battalion 60th; which corps, assisted by our cavalry, covered the retreat of the advanced division till it reached the position in which the battle of that night, and the following day were fought. But who, that witnessed it, can ever forget the scene of confusion which took place on the night of the 27th, amongst the Spaniards! They literally swept away with them, in their panic, occasioned by the fire of a few French sharpshooters who had followed up to their position, the part of the rear-guard to which I belonged. These untoward events, were, in a great measure, the consequence of the advanced division not being managed by instructed or experienced staff officers; but I can scarcely undertake to say, that even for some time afterwards this branch of our service had become respectable, though it certainly had improved by practice. In short, in point of movement and intelligence on the part of regimental officers, the British corps of cavalry and infantry were, in general, excellent; but we had not, with a few exceptions, many officers of rank employed, either as generals or upon the staff, who were capable of directing or making use of such troops scientifically, or to advantage. It may be said, that in thus speaking of British soldiers I now contradict my former assertions, but I by no means do so; I here only allude to their discipline and courage in the field, under good regimental officers, and not to what occurred too often upon other occasions.

The French fairly worked us into practical knowledge of war at last; not that the officers of that gallant nation were themselves so greatly enlightened, as was generally supposed, or that they or their troops gained the battles fought—although I often, and especially at first, wondered they did not—but we had almost always to pay most dearly for victory, that is to say, for getting possession of the field of battle, which was sometimes all we had to boast of.

I may not, perhaps, appear to be borne out in the opinions I have ventured to give, by Lord Wellington's general orders after the battle of Talavera; I must, nevertheless, bring it before the reader to enable him to come to a right conclusion:—

"G.O. Talavera de la Reyna, 29th July, 1809.

"No. 1. The Commander of the Forces returns his thanks to the officers and troops for their gallant conduct in the two trying days of yesterday and the day before, in which they have been engaged with, and beaten off the repeated attacks of an army infinitely superior in number.

"He has particularly to request that Lieutenant-General Sherbrooke will accept his thanks for the assistance he has received from him, as well as from the manner in which he led on the infantry under his command to the charge of the bayonet. Major-General Hill, and Brigadier-General Alexander Campbell, are likewise entitled, in a particular manner, to the acknowledgments of the Commander of the Forces, for their gallantry and ability with which they maintained their posts against the attacks made upon them by the enemy.

"The Commander of the Forces has likewise to acknowledge the ability with which the late Major-General M'Kenzie (whose subsequent loss the Commander of the Forces laments,) withdrew the division under his command from the out-posts, in front of the enemy's army, on the 27th instant, as well as to Colonel Donkin for his conduct on that occasion.