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

by Sir J. W. Fortescue

On the accession of James there was added to the twelve companies of every regiment an additional company of grenadiers. These were established first in 1678, and took their name from the grenade,[217] the new weapon with which they were armed. The hand grenade was simply a small shell of from one to two inches in diameter, kindled by a fuse and thrown by the hand. Hence it was entrusted to the tallest and finest men in the regiment, who might reasonably be expected to throw it farthest. The white plume, supposed to be symbolic of the white smoke of the fuse, was not apparently used at first as the distinctive mark of grenadiers. They, and the fusiliers likewise, wore caps instead of broad-brimmed hats, to enable them to sling their firelocks over both shoulders with ease. These caps, which were at first of fur, were soon made of cloth, and assumed the shape of the mitre which Hogarth has handed down to us. Another peculiarity of grenadiers was that they were always armed with firelocks and with hatchets,[218] and that both of their subaltern officers were lieutenants.

Another new branch of the infantry was the regiment of Fusiliers, so called from the fusil or flintlock, as opposed to the matchlock, with which they were armed. They were, in fact, simply an expansion of the companies of firelocks which formed part of the New Model in the department of the Train; they were borne for duty with the artillery specially, and therefore included one company of miners. Miner-companies were armed with long carbines and hammer-hatchets peculiar to themselves, and they had but one subaltern officer, a lieutenant. Like the grenadiers, the fusiliers did not recognise the rank of ensign, and their junior subalterns were therefore called second lieutenants.[219]

It is somewhat remarkable that so much should have been made of a weapon so familiar as the firelock. Men who, like Gustavus Adolphus, saw that the whole future of warfare turned on the fire of musketry, had long accepted its superiority to the matchlock; and George Monk, on marching into London in 1660, had at once ordered the Coldstreamers to return their matchlocks into store and to draw firelocks in their stead. Nor was this preference confined solely to military reformers, for we find the Assemblies of Barbados and Jamaica, remote islands in which old fashions might have been expected to die their hardest, uncompromisingly rejecting the matchlocks prescribed for them by the English Government and insisting on arming themselves with "fusees."[220] At home, however, jobbery and corruption were doubtless at work, for the Coldstream Guards reverted to the matchlock in 1665. Finally, after many compromises, the Guards were in 1683 armed exclusively with firelocks, while the other regiments carried a fixed proportion, probably not less than one-half, of the superior weapon among their matchlocks.

Correspondingly we find throughout these reigns a steady diminution in the use of the pike. In companies of grenadiers and regiments of fusiliers they were utterly abolished; in other corps the proportion, which had once been one-half, had already sunk at the Restoration to one-third, whence it speedily declined to one-fourth and one-fifth.[221] We find them, however, still in use during the wars of William the Third, and we shall see that they did not want advocates even at the close of the Seven Years' War, to say nothing of the part that they played in the French Revolution.[222] As a weapon for officers it survived for many generations under the form of the half-pike or spontoon,[223] even as the halberd prolonged its life as the peculiar weapon of sergeants. To the officers also was assigned by a singular coincidence the preservation of the memory of the armour which had once been worn by all pikemen; and the gorget survived as a badge of rank on their breasts long after corslet and tassets had vanished from the world.[224]

None the less the pike had received its death-blow through the invention of the bayonet. This new and revolutionary weapon had been invented in 1640, when it consisted of a double-edged blade, like a pike-head, mounted on two or three inches of wooden haft, which could be thrust into the barrel of the musket. In this form the bayonet was issued first to the Tangier regiment[225] alone in 1663, and to all the infantry and dragoons in 1673, but only to be withdrawn, until in 1686 it was finally reissued to the Foot Guards. It was not until after the Revolution that bayonets were served out to the whole of the infantry.

In the matter of drill there was little or no change. The front was still increased or diminished by the doubling of ranks and of files, and the file still consisted of six men. The reduction of the numbers of pikemen, however, greatly increased the homogeneity of the infantry and contributed not a little to simplify its movements. Moreover, although the file might consist of six men, it is not likely, considering how far the musket and bayonet had superseded the pike, that the formation for action was greater than three ranks in depth. The platoon is not mentioned in the drill books, the probable reason being that it was not favoured by the French School, in which Charles and James had both of them received their training. But for this, there is every reason to suppose that the army encamped on Hounslow Heath would not have been found behind the times in the matter of exercise and equipment if it could have been transported without change to the field of Blenheim.

Of the artillery there is still little to be said. Until 1682 gunners seem to have enjoyed their original distribution into small, independent bodies, in charge of the various scattered garrisons. Even such small organisation as appeared in the New Model seems to have been lost, and field-guns appear to have been told off to battalions of infantry, or to have been worked by such of the escort of fusiliers as had been trained by the few expert gunners. The artilleryman had long looked upon himself as a superior mortal,[226] but in 1682 he was brought under the Ordnance, subjected to military discipline, and regularly exercised at his duty. The time was not far distant when the organisation of the gunners was to be improved. Of engineers I can say no more than the few details already given when describing the Ordnance Office and the fusiliers.

A word remains to be said of the foundation of Chelsea Hospital. It has been told that Queen Mary was the first of our sovereigns who showed any care for old soldiers, and that Elizabeth was intolerably impatient of such miserable creatures. Two generations, however, had bred a softer heart in English sovereigns, and when Charles the Second had been twenty years on the throne, and England was again thronged with maimed and infirm soldiers who had served their time in Tangier, in the West Indies, or in the Low Countries, it was felt to be a reproach that faithful fighting-men should be left to starve or to beg their bread. Kilmainham Hospital in Dublin was the first-fruit of this sentiment, and was founded in 1680; Chelsea followed it in the succeeding year. Sir Stephen Fox, the paymaster-general, was the man who was foremost in the work, and it is to his credit that, having made so much money out of the private soldier, he should have chosen this method of repaying him. The scheme of the hospital was submitted to the King, who was asked to grant a piece of land for a building. Charles, always gracious, readily complied, and offered the site of St. James's College, Chelsea. "But odso!" he added, "I now recollect that I have already given that land to Mistress Nell here." Whereupon, so runs the story, whether true or untrue, Nell gracefully forewent her grant for so good a purpose; and Chelsea Hospital is the British soldier's to this day. It is painful to have to add that the officials of the pay-office seem to have begun at once to steal part of the money contributed by the Army to its maintenance, though the fact will astonish no reader who has followed me through this chapter. But the friends of the Army have always been few, and the best of them in former times, strange conjunction, were a queen and a harlot. Had they endowed a fund for supplying African negroes with Bibles, or even with mass-books, much would be forgiven them in England; but they thought more of saving old soldiers from want, so Mary Tudor is still Bloody Mary, and Eleanor Gwyn the unspeakable Nell.

Authorities.—The reader will find the fullest of references for the details in this chapter in Clifford Walton's History of the British Standing Army, with an index which will enable him to trace them without difficulty. Having myself perused the War Office books and papers in the Record Office, and the Calendars of the Domestic and Treasury State Papers independently, I can answer for the care and accuracy of the author in the preparation of this vast store of information, and gladly acknowledge my debt to it. The defect of the work is, of course, that it begins abruptly at the year 1660. Mr. Dalton's Army Lists and Commission Registers are also of great value, and claim the gratitude of all workers in the field of English military history. Sir Sibbald Scott's British Army is worth consulting occasionally for a few details, but is superseded by Hewitt's Ancient Armour on one side, and by Colonel Clifford Walton on the other. Mackinnon's Coldstream Guards contains a very valuable appendix of ancient documents. Sir F. Hamilton's History of the Grenadier Guards should be used only with extreme caution. The drill and exercise of the period may be studied in Venn's Military Observations, 1672.