A History of the British Army, Vol. 1 / First Part—to the Close of the Seven Years' War

by Sir J. W. Fortescue

Although the narrative of the War of the Spanish Succession has not infrequently been interrupted in order to give the reader an occasional glimpse of the progress and difficulties of the military administration at home, yet much has been of necessity omitted, lest the strand, enwoven of too many and too distinct threads, should snap with the burden of its own weight and unravel itself into an inextricable tangle. I propose therefore at this point to summarise the orders, regulations, and enactments of the War Office and of the House of Commons during the reign of Queen Anne to the Peace of Utrecht, so as, if possible, to convey some notion of the legacies, other than those of glory and prestige, that were bequeathed to the Army by this long and exhausting war.

The reader will, I think, have gathered at least that the extension of operations and the consequent increase of the British forces during the war was almost portentously rapid. A few figures will make this more apparent. In 1702 and 1703 Flanders was practically the only scene of active operations, the raid on Cadiz being of too short duration and too little account to be worthy of serious mention. In both of these years the British troops with Marlborough were set down at eighteen thousand men. In 1704 to 1706 they rose to twenty-two thousand, and in 1708 to 1709 to twenty-five thousand men, reverting once again to twenty-two thousand from 1711 to 1712. Concurrently with the first increase of 1704 came the first despatch of eight thousand troops to the Peninsula, rising to nine thousand in 1705, ten thousand in 1706, and twenty-six thousand[380] from 1707 to 1709, relapsing between 1710 and 1712 to rather over twenty thousand. The total number of forces borne on the list of the British Army at its greatest was six troops of Household Cavalry, eleven regiments of horse, sixteen of dragoons, and seventy-five of foot, comprehending in all seventy-nine battalions.[381] The nominal war strength of a battalion in Flanders was, as a rule, in round numbers nine hundred and forty of all ranks, in the Peninsula from seven hundred and fifty to eight hundred and eighty, a diversity of establishments which gave rise to much trouble and confusion. It would not be safe to reckon the British infantry at any period during the war as exceeding fifty thousand men. The regiments of dragoons again varied from a normal strength of four hundred to four hundred and fifty, rising in occasional instances to six hundred; but they cannot reasonably be calculated at a higher figure than six thousand men. The regiments of horse were subject to similar variations, but their total strength, even including the six strong troops of Household Cavalry, cannot be counted as more than seven thousand men. There then remains the artillery, of which, from want of data as well as from vagueness of organisation, it is impossible to make any accurate calculation. Speaking generally, the highest strength actually attained by British troops at home and abroad during the war may be set down at seventy thousand men.[382]

The defect that will seem most flagrant, according to modern ideas, in the scheme above sketched is the multiplicity of distinct units that go to make up so small a force. The French had long abandoned the system of single battalions, and indeed given to their regiments the name of brigades. In the British Army the Guards and the Royal Scots alone had two battalions; and though we know by actual information that, in the case of the former, the battalions at home were used to feed those abroad, yet it is indubitable that both battalions of the Royal Scots took the field and kept it from beginning to end of the war. For this, however, the principles that then governed the conduct of a war and the maintenance of an army sufficiently account. The year was divided for military purposes into two parts—the campaigning season, which lasted roughly from the 1st of April to the 1st of October, and the recruiting season, which covered the months that remained over. Directly the campaign was ended and the troops distributed into winter quarters, a sufficient number of officers returned home to raise for each regiment the recruits that were needed. In strictness no officer enlisted a man except for his own corps; and it was only occasionally that a regiment, having enlisted more recruits than were required for its own wants, transferred its superabundance to another.

But apart from this, we find throughout the reign of Queen Anne a resolute and healthy opposition to the principle of completing one regiment by drafts from another. At the beginning of the war the ranks of the Army were, thanks to the wanton imbecility of the House of Commons, so empty that it was impossible to send any appreciable number of regiments abroad without depletion of those that were left at home. As an exceptional favour therefore the first troops sent to Spain and to the West Indies were completed by drafts; but at that point the practice was checked.[383] Marlborough had early set his face against so vicious a system, and although once, under pressure of orders from the Queen herself, he directed it to be enforced, yet it is sufficiently clear from his language and from his ready deference to the protest of the officer concerned, that he fully recognised the magnitude of its evil.[384] After the disaster of Almanza the War Office appears to have been urged in many quarters to resort to drafting, but St. John told the House of Commons outright that the practice had been found ruinous to the service, prejudicial alike to the corps that furnished and that received the draft. As Marlborough's influence declined, the mischievous system seems to have been revived, and although in more than one case colonels flatly declined to part with their men,[385] yet at the close of the war we find garrisons denuded by drafts to an extent that was positively dangerous.[386] The same objectionable practice, as is well known, is still rampant among us; would that the authority of Marlborough could help to break it down.

There remains the question why, instead of raising new regiments, the authorities did not raise additional battalions to existing regiments? The reply is that they doubtless knew their own business, and adopted the best plan that lay open to them. Englishmen have a passion for independent command. To this day, as the history of the volunteers shows, there are many men who, though unwilling to serve in any existing corps, would cheerfully expend ten times the care, trouble, and expense on a regiment, or even on a troop or company, of their own. It must be remembered, too, that a regiment in those days was not only a command but a property, that it afforded to officers opportunities for good and for evil such as are now undreamed of, that, lastly, it was in the vast majority of cases called by its colonel's name.

Let us now, before examining the measures taken for the supply of recruits, glance briefly at the principal centres and causes of consumption and of demand. The inquiry must not be considered superfluous, for the primary force in the maintenance of a voluntary army is attraction, and it is only after full knowledge of the elements of repulsion which work counter to it that the failure of the attractive force, and the necessity for substituting coercion in its place, can be rightly understood. The theatres of war claim first attention, and of these Flanders claims the precedence. It is well known that sickness or fatigue are more destructive in war than bullet and sword, and Marlborough's campaigns can have been no exception to the rule. Yet it is remarkable that the British were never so much thinned as after the campaign of Blenheim, wherein they bore the brunt of two severe actions. The march to the Danube was of course severe, but the men stood it well; nor do we hear of extraordinary sickness on the return march. All that we know is that when the British regiments reached the Rhine they were too weak to be fit for further work. We never hear the like in subsequent campaigns, in spite of severe marching and sieges. Yet the capture of one of Vauban's fortresses was always a long and murderous piece of work, while, if the trenches were flooded by heavy rain or the natural oozing of marshy ground, an epidemic of dysentery was sure to follow. We have no returns of the losses from sickness in Flanders, but it is certain that the operations in that field were by no means the most deadly to the troops, nor the most exhausting to England. This must be ascribed almost entirely to the care and forethought of the great Duke. Marlborough knew the peculiar weaknesses as well as the peculiar value of his own countrymen, and was careful to keep them always well fed. In the second place, and this was most important, the theatre of war was but a few hours distant from England, so that a force once fairly set on foot could be maintained with comparative ease. Recruits, too, did not feel that they were going to another part of the world, and would never return home. Moreover, a bounty had been granted for Blenheim, there was some prospect of plunder,[387] and there was the glory of marching to certain victory with Corporal John.

It was far otherwise in the Peninsula. There a campaign was broken not only by winter-quarters, but also by summer-quarters in the hot months of July and August. Again, the voyage to Lisbon, and still more to Catalonia, to say nothing of the risk of storm and shipwreck, occupied days and weeks, whereas the passage to Flanders was reckoned by hours. The transport-service, too, had a bad name. Although after 1702 the official complaints of bad and insufficient food ceased, yet the mortality on board the troop-ships sent to the Peninsula shows that the sickness and misery must have been appalling. The reinforcements despatched to Lisbon in the summer of 1706 with a total strength of eight thousand men were reduced to little more than half of their numbers when they landed in Valencia in February 1707. They had suffered from bad weather and long confinement, it is true, but theirs was no exceptional case.[388] In 1710, of a detachment of three hundred men that were landed, only a hundred ever reached their regiments.[389] In 1711 five weak regiments lost sixty men dead, and two hundred disabled from sickness in a voyage of ten days.[390] A private of the First Guards summed up his experience of a month in a transport as "continual destruction in the foretop, the pox above board, the plague between decks, hell in the forecastle, and the devil at the helm."[391]

This was one great discouragement to recruits; and others became quickly known to them. The Peninsula was ill-supplied, transport was difficult, the quarters of the troops were very unhealthy, and the Portuguese unfriendly even to brutality.[392] Altogether, though steel and lead played their part in the destruction of the British in the Peninsula, the havoc that they wrought was trifling compared with that of privation and disease. Prisoners of course were never lost for long, as Marlborough had always abundance of French to give in exchange for them; but in spite of this, the waste in Portugal and Spain was terrible, and the service proportionately unpopular.

So much for the two theatres of war; but the sphere of foreign service was not bounded by these. New York, Bermuda, and Newfoundland each possessed a small garrison; and the West Indies, as we have seen, claimed from four to six battalions. This colonial service was undoubtedly the most unpopular of all. When the single company that defended Newfoundland left England in 1701, their destination was carefully concealed from the men lest they should desert. The most hardened criminal could hope for pardon if he enlisted for Jamaica. Once shipped off to the West Indies, the men seem to have been totally forgotten. No proper provision was made for paying them; colonels who cared for their men were compelled to borrow money to save them from starvation; colonels who did not, came home, together with many of their officers, and left the men to shift for themselves.[393] Clothing, again, was entirely overlooked. The troops in Jamaica were reduced almost to nakedness; and when finally their clothing, already two years overdue, was ready for them, it was delayed by a piece of bungling such as could only have been perpetrated by the War Office.[394] Another great difficulty was that, there being no regular system of reliefs, colonels never knew whether to clothe their men for a hot or a temperate climate. Recruits were consequently most difficult to obtain, although owing to the unhealthiness of the climate they were in great request. The result was that old men and boys were sent across the Atlantic only to be at once discharged, at great pecuniary loss, by the officers, who were ashamed to admit creatures of such miserable appearance into their companies.[395]