Military History: Lectures Delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge

by Sir J. W. Fortescue

In 1812 we were again embroiled with America chiefly owing to the intrigues of Napoleon, but in great measure also through the hostility of two of the Presidents. As usual, these two officials and their supporters counted upon Napoleon to fight their battles for them, and made no preparations for war, thinking that they would be able to take Canada with ease from us, who had the great Emperor and all his forces upon our hands. They were egregiously undeceived. Their naval officers and sailors acquitted themselves admirably, though their ships were too few to make head against us in the open sea. Their troops were for long beneath contempt, owing to want of training and discipline. We had so much upon our hands that we could spare few soldiers to meet them; but the Americans never succeeded, in spite of greatly superior numbers, in taking Canada; and at last they were glad to make peace without gaining any of the objects for which they had fought, being absolutely exhausted and ruined by our naval blockade. But it is to be noticed that, as usual, transport and supply were the great difficulties on both sides and that, setting aside some raids on our part which were not always successful, the main fighting took place on the waterway of the great lakes, simply because that was the only quarter in which either side could feed even a small army. In fact it was impossible, for want of decent roads, to bring forward supplies except by water; and success or failure to either party depended wholly upon naval supremacy on the lakes. When we held it we beat the Americans, when the Americans held it they beat us; so that practically this was a naval war albeit fought inland.

Let us pass next to the West Indies. Where islands are concerned, of course naval superiority is essential to every successful campaign, otherwise you cannot bring either troops or stores to the scene of action. The Antilles are for the most part of volcanic formation, mountainous, if a height of three to four thousand feet may be said to make a mountain, rugged, and in the majority of cases covered with forest, cultivation generally being confined to the lower hills and valleys. Situated between the 10th and 23rd degrees of North latitude, they lie well within the Tropic of Cancer; and the climate is consequently such that white men cannot breed and thrive there. Roads in the great majority of the islands are few, and such as there are frequently traverse ground so steep that they are paved and not macadamised, lest the surface should be washed away by the heavy tropical rains. By far the greater number of such roads (I except the island of Barbados) are mere tracks, narrow, rough and unfit for vehicles. Bridges are even fewer than roads, though the islands with which we are chiefly concerned are furrowed by torrents, which have cut deep ravines and valleys in their rush from the mountains down to the sea. Hence what with forests, streams, hills and valleys as steep as those of the Highlands, it is not easy to move about most of the islands. All labour was formerly done by negro slaves imported from West Africa, whose descendants—now for three generations free—still form the mass of the population. These negroes to a certain extent cultivate provision-grounds for themselves; but the islands are none of them self-supporting in the matter of food; and for full two centuries they have been supplied with flour, maize, salt fish and salt pork from America. Strategically they fall into two groups: the Windward, comprising the chain of islets which runs for some six hundred miles north and westward from Trinidad to St Thomas; and the Leeward, consisting of the far larger islands of Porto Rico, St Domingo, Jamaica and Cuba, which run nearly due west from St Thomas. Everything in the West Indies is windward or leeward, that is to say is considered in respect of its situation towards the south-easterly trade-wind, which in the days of sailing ships was a very important matter. Say, for instance, that the General in Jamaica asked for reinforcements from the General at Barbados, the most leewardly from the most windwardly of our possessions; the General in Barbados had to think twice before sending them because, though they would probably reach Jamaica in a week, they could not be sure of beating back in three months. In fact no captain in old days would have attempted such a thing, for it would have been quite as speedy and far Less exhausting to sail back to England by a circuitous course and make a fresh start for Barbados from thence. So too between any two islands the same question of windward and Leeward was equally cogent. Martinique, the French head-quarters in the Windward group, is little over one hundred miles from Barbados, the English head-quarters; but while you may sail from Barbados to Martinique in twelve hours, you will not beat back in less than three or four days.

The Spaniards, as you know, were the first in the West Indies, but they troubled themselves little about the Windward islets, occupying by preference the great islands of Porto Rico, St Domingo, Cuba and Jamaica. We and the French, however, began at much the same time to occupy the islets to windward, which are all of about the size of the Isle of Wight, and we did a good deal of petty squabbling over them. These little places very soon became enormously rich. Sugar, indigo and spices, produced by servile labour, brought in enormous profits; while incidentally the contract for providing the Spanish islands with slaves—known as the Assiento—which we held for a great many years, was highly lucrative. Even in the reign of Charles II a Jamaican planter with an income of £12,000 a year—worth say £50,000 in these days—was not considered extraordinarily wealthy; and for nearly two centuries the West Indian was the most powerful mercantile interest in the British islands.

With aboriginal inhabitants, or Caribs, we never had any very serious trouble, for they were few in the islands which we occupied; and in fact though, when incited by our European enemies, they gave occasional annoyance, they were never the subject of any serious military expedition until 1772, when a hybrid race, bred of yellow Carib and African negro, both brave and vigorous, became rebellious in St Vincent. There were only fifteen hundred of them, men, women, and children; but it took three thousand soldiers and marines, backed by two or three ships of war, five entire months to force them to submission, so formidable were the difficulties of feeding the troops in the thick forest and deep ravines of the interior. Few horses and mules were bred in the Windward islands, so that all the supplies were carried on the heads of negroes. Had the Caribs, therefore, been a really formidable fighting race, it would have taken us long to conquer the West Indies. As things were, we imported the negroes, who bred fast and soon outnumbered the aborigines; and thus we either compelled the Caribs to move, or agreed to let them have some patch of territory for their own. Of course the slaves were not quite an element of safety, and the whole of the West Indies lived in constant dread of a servile war. Hence a little garrison was generally kept by every nation in every island; and at least one fort was erected, as a rule, for defence of the capital and its harbour against both foreign and domestic enemies, while smaller works covered less important towns.

An expedition to the West Indies therefore meant almost certainly something in the nature of a siege until the fort and town were captured; and, when that was accomplished, the conquest, so far as white men were concerned, was complete. For in a small island it was inevitable that the capital should be situated by the best harbour; and, when this harbour was in an invader's hands, he could land as many troops as he wished with ease, while he was also master of all supplies of food, which naturally were stored in the town. The operations, however, though short were sure to be arduous owing to the heat of the climate and the ruggedness of the ground; and therefore it was important that they should be undertaken in the cool season, that is to say between November and May, in which latter month the heat and the rains begin to increase and the climate becomes, or at any rate became, unhealthy. The confinement of operations to this season is the more imperative, since between May and October there is always the danger of hurricanes, and the harbours in which a ship can lie with safety during a hurricane in the West Indies are not many. You must remember that a hurricane is not a mere storm—it is a devouring devastation before which no tree and none but the stoutest houses, carefully equipped for resistance, can hope to stand.

Our first serious state-directed expedition to the West Indies was that despatched by Cromwell to St Domingo in 1654. We were not at war with Spain at the time, and the enterprise was simply a piece of piracy; but it was equipped on a great scale, the fleet numbering sixty-five sail and the troops six thousand men. It was intended that the West Indian and American colonies should furnish contingents of soldiers; and, when St Domingo had been taken, to use it as a base of attack against all the Spanish possessions in the South Atlantic. The expedition, from want of experience, was ill-equipped; the men, hastily raised levies, were of poor quality; and the armament did not sail until the end of December, two months too late. The descent upon St Domingo was a disgraceful and disastrous failure; fleet and army quarrelled violently; and the only result of the enterprise was the bloodless capture of Jamaica, after which fleet and army returned home, leaving a garrison behind them. Yellow fever broke out immediately and the garrison was almost annihilated. In October, 1655, reinforcement arrived, and began at once to die at the rate of twenty men a day. Fresh reinforcements followed in 1656, and in a few months two-thirds of these were dead. At last the sickness abated. An attempt of the Spaniards to recapture the island in 1658 was beaten off, and Jamaica has remained under the English flag ever since.

Here was a warning for all time as to the conduct of expeditions to the West Indies. Care must be taken for good understanding between army and navy; and the fleet must sail from England at latest in October. We shall see how far this warning has been observed. The next important expedition to the West Indies was sent by King William in 1695 to root out the French who had established themselves at the western end of St Domingo, now called Haiti, and who were threatening Jamaica from thence. This armament did not sail till January, three months too late, and consequently did not begin operations till May. In four months over a thousand out of the thirteen hundred soldiers had died; while the quarrels between the naval and military commanders banished all hope of solid success.

The next great tropical expedition undertaken was that of 1740–1 against Carthagena on the Spanish main, but little outside the beat of our West Indian squadrons. The enterprise was prompted by sheer greed of gain; the troops were young and raw recruits (for of course we had no old soldiers) and numbered six thousand; American levies to the number of four thousand were sent from Jamaica to join them; the whole were shamefully ill-equipped; and finally the armament sailed four months too late. It was exactly the story of St Domingo over again. The military commander died on the voyage, and his successor, a feeble creature, was treated with the greatest contempt by the naval officers. However, the force reached Carthagena, and the troops were landed; but the General, mistrusting himself and his men, was so slow and dilatory in his movements that he delayed the decisive attack until late in April, and was then repulsed. Sickness, lead and steel had already reduced his force from nine thousand to little over six thousand effectives, and on the night of the defeat the yellow fever fell upon the unhappy army in earnest. In three days—think of this appalling visitation—in three days the effective men had sunk from sixty-six hundred to thirty-two hundred; and in ten days more only a thousand were fit to be landed against an enemy. Reduced to a mere shadow, the expedition returned to Jamaica, but the yellow fever went with it; and, within twelve months of the arrival of the original armament in the tropics, its numbers had shrunk from nine thousand to fewer than three hundred fit for duty. At the beginning of 1742 these were joined by a reinforcement of three thousand men. Within a month a thousand of these were sick or dead. A thousand more died before October, and at last the force practically disappeared. Of the four thousand Americans only three hundred lived to return home; of the nine thousand British a bare one in ten survived. This on the whole is the most terrible story that I know in British military history; but perhaps I am led to think so by Smollett's vivid picture of its horrors in Roderick Random. I remember that I read that book for the first time when I was an undergraduate at Trinity, little thinking that I should live to proclaim the fact to a Trinity audience. Every one of you ought to read it if you have not already done so, to learn at first hand what was meant by naval and military service in the eighteenth century.

Here was another warning to strengthen the first. But meanwhile the West Indies grew and grew in wealth, and were more and more coveted by all nations. Hence the great William Pitt himself was eager to appropriate as many islands as possible, setting thus a very evil example to his son. At the end of 1758 six battalions were sent out to capture Guadeloupe, which they duly did, being handled with great skill by General Barrington, before the hurricane season began. Three of the six battalions were left there as a garrison, and, before the year was out, about half of them had died. In 1762 Pitt's successor, acting upon his designs, sent eight thousand men to capture the remaining French islands; and, this being accomplished, not without heavy loss from sickness, the remnant of the force joined a detachment of troops under Lord Albemarle in the siege of Havana. Twelve thousand men were employed in this siege, which lasted two months, and was one of the most deadly in which British soldiers were ever engaged. Before its close one brigade of four battalions was reduced to twenty men fit for duty. Over five thousand men were buried in Cuba alone in four months, while hundreds more perished both there and in North America, whither they had been transported in the hope of saving their lives.