But the Government’s measures for the augmentation of the regular Army at the close of 1793, though not yet criticised in Parliament, were still more questionable than its military policy. In the first place, from blind assurance of an easy triumph, no sufficient provision had been made in time for raising additional men; and the result was that in October 1793 it was a matter of the greatest difficulty to furnish a draft of one hundred men to stop the gaps in Abercromby’s brigade in Flanders.[190] In August, however, Alan Cameron of Erracht after much importunity had received permission to raise a regiment of Highlanders without levy-money, and with a special stipulation that the men should not be drafted; and thus was created the Seventy-ninth or Cameron Highlanders. In September 1793, new regiments began to follow each other more rapidly. First came a battalion formed by Lord Paget, whom we shall know better as a leader of cavalry under the successive titles of Lord Uxbridge and Marquis of Anglesey. The commission which he received to command it was the first that he ever held in the Army; and the regiment took, and still keeps, the number of the Eightieth. Then came in succession Colonel John Doyle’s regiment, now the Eighty-seventh; Colonel Albemarle Bertie’s, now the Eighty-first; Colonel Thomas De Burgh’s, recruited chiefly in Connaught and still known as the Eighty-eighth Connaught Rangers; Major-general Leigh’s, now the Eighty-second; and finally three Scottish battalions raised by Colonels Ferrier, Halkett, and Cunninghame, who had left the Scots Brigade of Holland during the American War and now tried to make a new brigade for their own land. Thus after a separation of over a century the old comrades of the Buffs rejoined them in Great Britain. In November other regiments were added, namely, General Bernard’s, now the Eighty-fourth; General Cuyler’s, now the Eighty-sixth; Colonel Nugent’s, recruited by Lord Buckingham among his tenants at Stowe, now the Eighty-fifth; Colonel Fitch’s, formed chiefly of recruits from Dublin, now the Eighty-third; and Colonel Crosbie’s, now the Eighty-ninth.[191] From January to October 1794, there was a deluge of new battalions, of which it must suffice to mention here a second battalion of the Seventy-eighth, and three which began life in February, namely, that raised by Mr. Thomas Graham, the volunteer of Toulon, which was and still is the Ninetieth, and two Highland corps formed by Colonel Duncan Campbell and Lord Huntly, which though originally distinguished by other numbers[192] are known to us as the Ninety-first and Ninety-second Highlanders. Five regiments of Light Dragoons raised in February and March must also be mentioned, since we shall meet with them not unfrequently, namely, Beaumont’s, Fielding’s, Fullarton’s, Loftus’s, and Gwyn’s, which were raised without expense to the Government, and bore the numbers Twenty-one to Twenty-five. Lastly, attention must be called to March 7. a notable new departure in the formation of a Corps of Waggoners in five companies, with a total strength of six hundred non-commissioned officers and men, one-tenth of them artificers. This was the first attempt at a military organisation of the transport-service.
It was reckoned that, in one way and another, at least thirty thousand men were enlisted for the regular Army between November 1793 and March 1794,[193] and the number was the more astonishing since Fencibles and substitutes for the Militia had absorbed a large number of recruits. It would, however, be a fallacy to suppose that Ministers had yet thought out any regular plan for continual filling of the ranks; on the contrary, they had resorted to a variety of hasty expedients founded upon no fixed principle, and therefore unfitted to meet more than a temporary emergency. Such procedure is invariably wasteful and extravagant in the highest degree; but Yonge and Dundas honestly believed themselves to have found true economy in a clever and specious scheme put forward by one of the Generals in Ireland, for defraying the cost of new levies by the sale of commissions.[194] The experiment was tried on a grand scale and with high hopes, not unmingled with misgiving, on the part of officers; and indeed the prospect of raising a large number of men without charge to the country was sufficiently alluring. None the less the scheme failed completely,[195] as is the common fate of all projects which aspire to obtain a costly article at a trifling outlay.
Beyond this experiment the Government could think of no better plan for augmenting the Army than to encourage young men of means to raise men for rank, or in other words to offer them rank in the Army in proportion to the number of recruits that they could produce. This was an old system which hitherto had been confined chiefly to the raising of independent companies, and had therefore led to no higher rank than that of Captain. Even then it had been vicious and had been repeatedly condemned; and it was no good sign that in 1793 a Lieutenant had advertised in the London papers, offering two thousand guineas to any one who could raise him one hundred recruits in six weeks, and get them passed at Chatham.[196] But it was now extended to the raising of a multitude of battalions, which, for the most part, were no sooner formed than they were disbanded, and drafted into other corps. Thereby of course the men were easily absorbed, but not so the officers, to whom the Government had pledged itself to give half-pay; and thus it was possible for a young man to obtain a pension for life from his country on investing a sufficient sum to raise a few score of recruits.[197] But this was the least of the evils of the system. There was instantly a rush to obtain letters of service; and commissions became a drug in the market. It was said that over one hundred commissions were signed in a single day,[198] while the Gazette could not keep pace with the incessant promotions. The Army-brokers, who in the days of purchase negotiated for officers the sale of commissions, exchanges, and the like, carried on openly a most scandalous traffic. “In a few weeks,” to use the indignant language of an officer of the Guards, “they would dance any beardless youth, who would come up to their price, from one newly raised corps to another, and for a greater douceur, by an exchange into an old regiment, would procure him a permanent situation in the standing Army.” The evils that flowed from this system were incredible. Officers who had been driven to sell out of the Army by their debts or their misconduct, were able after a lucky turn at play to purchase reinstatement for themselves with the rank of Lieutenant-colonel. Undesirable characters, such as keepers of gambling-houses, contrived to buy for their sons the command of regiments; and mere children were exalted in the course of a few weeks to the dignity of field-officers. One proud parent, indeed, requested leave of absence for one of these infant Lieutenant-colonels, on the ground that he was not yet fit to be taken from school. It must be noted, too, that, thanks to the Army-brokers, these evils were not confined to the new regiments, but were spread, by means of exchange, all over the Army; and, since the great majority of the regiments were abroad on active service, the old officers, who were daily facing danger and death, suddenly found themselves inferior in rank to men undistinguished by birth or intellect, and without the smallest pretension to military ability.
Little less dangerous was the enormous encouragement given to crimping by the sudden demand from all quarters for recruits. The Navy, as has been seen, was unable to find its complement of men for the fleet, despite the fact that the Common Council of London in January 1793 had offered an additional bounty of two pounds to seamen;[199] and now there was thrown into competition with the press-gang a race of greedy, unscrupulous scoundrels, some of them holding and disgracing the King’s commission, who made profit out of every boy or man that they could lay hold of by fair means or foul. Thus the ranks were filled, as Tarleton phrased it, with infancy and dotage; recruiting became a mere matter of gambling; and the price of men rose to thirty pounds a head.[200] So large a sum set a premium on every description of rascality in the trepanning of recruits by violence or by guile; and the ordinary Englishman does not lightly bear with oppression of this kind. At length, on one day in August, an unfortunate lunatic, who had been enlisted by a sergeant and locked up in a brothel—the synonym for a recruiting-house—in London, hurled himself out of a window in the third story, into the street. Instantly a mob assembled, which delivered a succession of riotous attacks upon all houses of this description, and was only suppressed, after several days of disorder, by the calling out of the Guards and six regiments of cavalry.[201] Pitt defended the system on the ground that the Navy as well as the Army would be manned, by the turning over of soldiers to reinforce the marines; but this is only another instance of Pitt’s callous ignorance and self-deception. The truth is that while doing nothing, and probably worse than nothing, for the Navy, it destroyed the efficiency of the Army for a time, and but for the timely interposition of a capable soldier would have destroyed it permanently. Who was responsible for the introduction of the system it is not easy to say, for there were so many disgraceful circumstances attending it that the whole subject was hushed up, and is now extremely obscure; but assuredly it was not Lord Amherst, nor is it credible that it can have been any soldier. It is safe to assert that it was the work of civilians; and if we seek among the civilians at the War Office for the two men of tried conceit, unwisdom, and incapacity, we can find them at once in Sir George Yonge and Henry Dundas.[202]
Meanwhile new levies, even when raised under these false conditions, were not to be produced in a moment; and thirty thousand recruits were not to be reckoned, even by the most sanguine of Ministers, as equivalent to the same number of old soldiers. The Government, therefore, renewed its contract for the hire of Hanoverians and Hessians on a greater scale, raising the total number of them to close upon thirty-four thousand men. To these were added five foreign corps, which were intended to supplement the dearth of light troops from which the British contingent had suffered so much during the campaign of 1793. As early as in May of that year, one Captain George Ramsay had offered to raise a small body of foreign riflemen, and had after some delay been permitted to enlist also a corps of Uhlans. Thus originated three corps which, in honour of the Commander-in-Chief in Flanders, were called by the name of York Chasseurs, York Rangers, and York Hussars. The formation of the remaining two, the Prince of Salm’s Hussars and Hompesch’s Hussars, was only authorised in February 1794, and consequently they were not ready for service at the opening of the campaign. No effort had been made to provide British soldiers for the work of light infantry, except by raising eight additional light companies for the Brigade of Guards, the men of which were distinguished by round hats with large green feathers, trousers instead of breeches and gaiters, and fusils instead of muskets. But with these details of dress their qualifications as light troops were exhausted; for they received no sufficient instruction in their peculiar duty.[203]
The Light Dragoons likewise continued to belie their name, being trained in reality simply as cavalry of the line of battle; but for this, probably, the civil rather than the military authorities of the Army were responsible, for at this period it was literally impossible to obtain officers for the mounted troops. It will be remembered that before the outbreak of the war the Adjutant-general had constantly, but in vain, endeavoured to obtain an increase of the wholly inadequate pittance of pay meted out to subalterns of dragoons. Even in peace the burdens laid upon them were too heavy to be borne, and to these were now added inadequate compensation for losses in the field, only eighteen pounds being granted to replace a charger which had cost thirty-five. The consequences became immediately apparent. The Duke of York was obliged to beg that the cornetcies of regiments serving in the Low Countries might be given away, since purchasers for them could not be found.[204] Thus the Light Dragoons were untaught, because there were no officers to teach them; patrols and advanced detachments lacked the daring and adventurous leading of youth; and one of the highest schools for the training of subalterns was wholly neglected. It is hardly possible to estimate the evil consequences of Pitt’s misdirected parsimony, in devoting to the hire of mercenaries the money which should have been spent in the improvement of the British Army.
So much must be said of the regular forces; but the year 1794 was not less remarkable for an enormous increase in the number of the Fencible regiments, Militia and Volunteers, all due to Carnot’s menace of invasion. The estimate for the Fencible Cavalry provided in March 1794 for forty troops; by May this figure had already risen to ninety-two troops, and was still rising. Next, the number of the embodied Militia for England was augmented to thirty-six thousand; while by an Act of the Irish Parliament, passed in 1793, sixteen thousand additional Militia were levied in Ireland. This latter was an entirely new departure; and it need hardly be said that the first ballots drawn on the west of St. George’s Channel led to serious rioting.[205] Provision was also made in the estimates, and a Bill was introduced for the raising of six thousand Militia in Scotland; but this measure was for the moment deferred, in order that familiarity might ultimately facilitate its passing. The formation of the Scottish Militia, however, appears to have been begun in anticipation,[206] and men were enlisted who, later in Oct. 15–Nov. 20. the year, were formed into over twenty battalions of Fencible infantry. The extension of the ballot throughout the three kingdoms, though not actually completed until the passing of the Scottish Militia Act in 1797, must be regarded as the most important military step taken since the passing of the Militia Act of 1757 by the elder Pitt; and due credit should be allowed to the Government for it.
Meanwhile, to augment the English Militia to the prescribed figure, an Act was passed, after the model of that of 1778, empowering the Lord-Lieutenants to enrol volunteers, to be added to the Militia, and to be entitled to the same bounty, subsistence, and clothing. Finally, in April, was passed an Act, limited to the duration of the war, authorising the formation of district corps or companies of Volunteers, to be entitled to pay and subject to military discipline if called out for invasion or in aid of the civil power. This was the first attempt to summon the manhood of the kingdom to arms; for though Shelburne in the peril of 1782 had sent a circular to all the Mayors and Lord-Lieutenants in England with the object of forming a levy en masse, yet the hastening of the peace, by Rodney’s victory of the Saints and by the relief of Gibraltar, had rendered any elaboration of the plan unnecessary. Now, however, there sprang up an infinity of Volunteer corps, infantry, artillery, and light horse or Yeomanry Cavalry, first in single companies and troops, but very soon in battalions and regiments. The first of the Volunteer corps appears to have been the five Associated Companies of St. George’s, Hanover Square, which was formed in anticipation of the Act;[207] the first of the Yeomanry was Lord Winchelsea’s three troops of “Gentlemen and Yeomanry,” raised by the County of Rutland.[208] The rapidity with which these Volunteers were raised would be flattering to the national vanity were it not susceptible of a commonplace explanation. By a certain clause in the Act Volunteers were exempted from service in the Militia, upon producing a certificate that they had attended exercise punctually during six weeks previously to the hearing of appeals against the Militia list. This dissociation of the Volunteers from the Militia was a great and disastrous blunder, which has never yet been thoroughly repaired. It is, however, sufficient to note for the present that the Government had deliberately set up three different descriptions of auxiliary forces, Militia, Fencibles, and Volunteers, all competing with each other and with the regular Army. The number of regular troops provided for in the estimates of 1794 (reckoning the Irish establishment at fourteen thousand) was one hundred and seventy-five thousand men, besides thirty-four thousand foreign troops, four thousand Fencibles, and fifty-two thousand Militia; or, say, two hundred and sixty-five thousand men in all.
Simultaneously with these efforts at home, Pitt worked strenuously to restore unity and vigour to the Coalition. The relations of the coalesced powers at the close of 1793 were in the highest degree unsatisfactory. The Empress Catherine, still insatiable, despite the deterioration of her forces and the exhaustion of her treasury, had resumed her old designs upon Turkey, and had set a large force in motion towards Constantinople. The Emperor Francis, still under the guidance of Thugut and full of vague plans for increasing his territory, was drawing closer to the Empress in the hope of obtaining her countenance to the annexation of Venice by Austria, if indemnity in France should fail, and of sharing with her the ultimate partition of Turkey. Both were bitterly incensed against Prussia: Catherine because King Frederick William had diverted his troops from the invasion of France to the strengthening of his position in Poland; Francis from jealousy that his rival should have enlarged his boundaries, when he himself had not. Frederick William, as has been seen, had practically withdrawn his forces from active operations on the Rhine; and accordingly in December 1793 Pitt had sent Lord Malmesbury to Berlin to ascertain (if, indeed, anything could be ascertained in such a centre of intrigue and falsehood) what might be Prussia’s motive for retiring from the struggle. In reply to Malmesbury, Frederick William, having obtained his desire in Poland, declared himself eager to continue the contest against the Jacobins, but absolutely prevented by lack of money. Thereupon Feb. 5. Pitt proposed to give Prussia a subsidy of two millions sterling, of which England should pay three-fifths, and Holland and Austria each one-fifth. This was a liberal offer; and, since it was certain that Holland would raise no objection, it lay practically with Austria to give effect to it. It was well known that Austria was in financial straits, that Hungary was full of unrest and the Belgic Provinces much cooled in their loyalty, and that, apart from these troubles at home, the Emperor had contrived to quarrel with Sardinia abroad. Hence it was beyond question that Austria could not carry on the war without Prussia’s assistance; and, forasmuch as Francis had already despatched emissaries to Berlin to discuss the operations to be undertaken in the spring, the natural presumption was that he would gladly close with Pitt’s proposal.
The British Government thereupon bestirred itself to frame its projects for the coming campaign. The Duke of York left Belgium for London on the 6th of Feb. 12. February; and a few days later Mack, now advanced to the rank of Major-general, arrived there likewise to concert plans with the Ministers. The Austrian genius had shortly before submitted[209] a scheme calculated for a force of three hundred and forty thousand men, which had been received with great satisfaction by the British Cabinet and the Duke of York; but, since there was no earthly possibility that the Coalition could put that number of men into the field, the whole of this elaborate creation was valueless. Both Mack and Coburg, however, pressed for a concentration of forces and a march on Paris, though neither of them could conceive the feasibility of taking the offensive without leaving one hundred and twenty thousand men behind them to guard the frontier from the Meuse to the sea. The prime question, therefore, was one of men, and Pitt on his side promised his utmost endeavour to increase the British contingent to a figure which should ensure a genuine total of forty thousand fighting soldiers. As to the means whereby this force should be produced, Pitt was remarkably vague, being clear only that he could not spare the few thousand men under Lord Moira’s command, since he wished to hold them ready to sail to any part of the British coast which might be threatened by a French invasion. Moira, therefore, though one of the ablest officers in the Army and adored by the men, was kept inactive, while his troops sickened and died of gaol-fever in overcrowded transports at Jersey.[210] However, Pitt made up his forty thousand men to his own satisfaction by naming various reinforcements, which he hoped to pour into Flanders during the summer and autumn; for it was one of the delusions of this gifted man, as also of his friend Dundas, that an army of twenty thousand men, supplemented by monthly driblets of two thousand men during ten months, is the same thing as an army of forty thousand men ready for the field at the opening of the campaign.