THE STORY
OF
THE BRITISH ARMY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Map and Plan Drawing
History of Berkshire
George Washington
The British Army

ALSO EDITOR OF
Great Campaigns in Europe

FIELD MARSHAL THE RIGHT HON. VISCOUNT WOLSELEY, K.P., G.C.B., G.C.M.G., &C., &C.

From a Photograph by Werner & Son, Dublin

THE STORY
OF
THE BRITISH ARMY

BY
Lieut.-Colonel
C. COOPER KING, F.G.S.

WITH PLANS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
1897

IN TOKEN OF A LENGTHENED FRIENDSHIP
I DEDICATE THIS STORY
OF
HER MAJESTY’S ARMY
TO
ITS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
F.-M. THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
VISCOUNT WOLSELEY, K.P., G.C.B., G.C.M.G.

PREFACE

I have endeavoured in the space at my disposal to show how the British Army has grown up. I have tried merely to tell a “story,” and therefore omitted much that might have been said regarding the noble work the Queen’s Army has done. As regards the opinions advanced, I have always, as far as possible, given the reasons for my views and the authorities which induced me to form them.

I have adhered to the principle of using the old regimental numbers, for the sake of continuity; though, after the date when these were altered, I have, in most cases, added their present territorial titles.

I wish to express my great appreciation of the courtesy of the Colonel and the Officers of the Lancashire Fusiliers (20th), South Wales Borderers (24th), and the Prince of Wales’s Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment (14th), in allowing me to sketch the uniforms of their men from the interesting histories of their respective regiments, and to E. C. Brett, Esq., for permitting me to copy the suits of armour that I have chosen as types from his father’s magnificent volume on Arms and Armour.

Kingsclear, Camberley,
March 1897.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF MAPS, PLANS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS

THE STORY
OF
THE BRITISH ARMY

CHAPTER I
THE ARMY OF THE PEOPLE—TO 1100

All nations have passed, more or less, through the same stages in the up-growth of that military system which is as essential to the political security of the mass as the formation of a police force is necessary for the protection of the individual in civil life. From the outset, the history of human existence has been one of combat.

First, in the earliest of primeval days, archaic man had to contend with mammoth, cave bear, and all the host of extinct mammals primarily for food, and then for safety when the need for clearing them away became more and more apparent as population increased. With this increase in numbers grew also the instinctive hostility between man and man. The desire for conquest is one of his strongest attributes. The stronger has always tried to make the weaker subservient; and as time went on, that desire was accentuated by the wish to possess the women or slaves—the terms were then synonymous—of the weaker family.

It was no mere poetic statement, therefore, that the head of a patriarchal household felt safe with a body of stalwart sons, and was not afraid “to speak with his enemy in the gate.” That old-world text tells volumes, behind which lie sinister pages and details of family feud and rapine.

But families segregated together and became tribes; these in their turn formed clans under a general head, and this led to the further development of inter-tribal and clannish contest, of which the greater wars of the present time are the natural outcome.

Still, throughout all this pre-historic or semi-historic time, there was no organisation of what is called an army. Every able-bodied male was bound to join in the defence of his poor village or district, or, on the other hand, to acquiesce in the general desire of a more courageous or dominant group, and share in the attack on, and despoiling of, some other group weaker or richer than itself. A king of men, a stronger soul, a man with more ambition or more boundless energy than his compeers, carried his fellows, by the divine right of leadership, to war. Except as a consequence of his greater bravery, he stood in no one place higher than those he led. The fighting was individual. There were no tactics; there was no systematic military organisation. All fought singly, with a view to the common end of success.

It was only when the character of arms themselves advanced, as civilisation and greater inter-dependence of peoples increased, as communication from point to point improved, rendering combined operations possible, that systematic war began. Even then, there was much of the personal element in the matter. The known chief planted his standard, and round it gathered, at first, a mass of subordinate units, led by their chosen sub-chiefs. But even this was the beginning of greater things. Organisation, on which the real art of war depends, had arisen. The chief now directed subordinate commanders, and command became subdivided. He no longer led only; he directed, in addition to infusing courage into his men by his personal bravery.

So it has been with the successive races that have fought in those early days on British soil. The first real military system worthy of the name was that which brought woad-clad Britons in collision with the military might of Rome. But wonderful as the Roman organisation was, it seems to have left but little permanent trace on the people it had governed and civilised for four hundred years, from the time of Cæsar’s first landing to that in which Honorius recalled the last legion from the deserted province of Britannia to assist the main trunk of the empire. There is little evidence that the Saxons met with any more valuable opposition than mere courage, an attribute of little real permanent importance against a foe that had at the least a sort of military organisation. For that the Saxons had such is clear. They had learned from the Romans indirectly if not directly; and there is a distinct trace of Roman influence in the way they arranged a battle. This applies still more to their fighting organisation after they had conquered and subdued the effete defenders of Roman Britain, before the Danes came. Though they, too, had succumbed to the enervating influence of peace, they had established a genuine system which had in it the elements of the army as it is, or at least some portion of it. For the army of Saxon England was, in all essential respects, a militia; that is to say, a body closely resembling the tribal array, but better organised. Against these came the Danes, whose methods were those of the early Saxons; that is to say, tribal leading under renowned chiefs. But the stronger and more correct principles that underlay the Saxon organisation triumphed in the end; and the raids of Danish hordes were beaten in detail, and became absorbed in the Saxon stock, to revivify and strengthen it. The Roman was an alien, and remained so; but both Saxon and Dane had the same racial origin, became, finally, part of the nation they had conquered, and were absorbed by it, to form the English, when the still stronger tone that Norman soldiers gave—coming also, be it remembered, from the same group of peoples—had borne fruit.

The story of the Saxon conquest and of the Danish invasion contains few points of military interest, though that period was the cradle in which the future army was to be reared. Still there is one battle of that time which should rank with the decisive battles of the English world, for it stemmed the tide of Danish success, and led to the amalgamation of the hostile sides against the next new comer. This turning-point is the battle of Æscesdune, or Ashdown, fought most probably on the Berkshire hills.

The Saxon had retained, somewhat, the Roman fighting formation, as they had utilised Roman villas in Britain, and altered them to suit Saxon tastes. A spearman—one of the hastati, say, of a Roman legion—required for the free use of his weapons a space of three clear yards round the spot on which he stood;[1] and it is more than probable that the later Saxons had adopted some of the Roman methods. The arms varied little from those in use during the Roman invasion. The spear or javelin and arrow showed no change; the sword was broad and two-edged, with a heavy pommel; the favourite Saxon weapon, the axe, was either double or single, like the Gallic Francisca.[2] The body armour and head armour was of leather, strengthened in some cases with iron, and the chief defence, the shield, was of wood with bosses or umbos of iron. Their skill with the latter, as tradition tells it, seems fabulous: it is even stated that Harold, surrounded by ten archers, was able, his back being protected by a tree, to intercept every shaft aimed at him. Until later, both antagonists fought mainly on foot.

Outline Map of England & Wales.

Turn then again to the battle of Ashdown, and let the Saxon chronicler, Bishop Asher of Sherborne, tell the story of the last great Saxon fight, but one, on English soil. The next was to show the descendants of the combatants at Ashdown united against yet another invader—and the last. “The Pagans, dividing themselves into two bodies of equal strength, draw up their lines—for they had there two kings and several jarls—and they give the central part of the army to the two kings (Baegsaeg and Halfdene), and the rest to all the jarls (Fraena, Hareld, and the two Sidrochs). When the Christians perceive this, they, in the same manner, divide themselves into two bodies, and draw themselves up with equal diligence. But Alfred comes more speedily and readily with his men, as we have heard from trustworthy reporters who saw it, and arrives at the place of battle; for his brother, Ethelred the king, was still remaining in the tent in prayer, hearing the Mass, and declaring that he would not depart thence alive before the priest should end the Mass, nor would desert the divine service for the human. And he did as he had said, which faith of the Christian king availed greatly with the Lord, as in the sequel shall be fully shown. The Christians, therefore, had decreed that Ethelred the king with his own forces should fight against the two pagan kings; but Alfred his brother with his companies would know how to try the chance of war against all the leaders of the pagans. Thus strongly were they placed on either side when the king was lingering long in prayer, and the pagans were prepared and had hastened to the place of conflict. Alfred then being second in command, when he could no longer endure the ranks of the foe, except he either retreated from the fight, or dashed forward against the hostile forces before his brother’s arrival, at last boldly, after the manner of a wild boar, guided the Christian forces against the foe as had been determined, though still the king had not come. Thus relying on the guidance of God, and supported by His help, with the lines drawn up closely, he moves forward the standard with speed against the enemy. But to those who know not the place it must be explained that the site of the battle was unequal for the belligerents, for the pagans had occupied beforehand a higher position; but the Christians drew up their lines from a lower place. There was also, in the same place, a single thorn-tree of very small size, which we ourselves have seen with our own eyes. Around this, therefore, the hostile armies, all with a great shout, meet together in conflict, the one acting most wickedly, the other to fight for life and friends and country. And when they fought for some time, fiercely and very cruelly on both sides, the pagans, by the divine judgment, could endure the attack of the Christians no longer; and the chief part of their forces being slain, they took to flight disgracefully. And in this place one of the two pagan kings and five jarls were slain; and many thousands on the pagan side, both in that place and along the whole breadth of the plain of Æscesdune, where they had been everywhere scattered, were slain far and wide. For there fell their king Baegsaeg and Jarl Sidroc the elder and Jarl Sidroc the younger, and Jarl Obsbern, and Jarl Fraena, and Jarl Hareld; and the whole army of the pagans was put to flight till the night, and even to the following day, until those who escaped arrived at the citadel, for the Christians pursued them until night and overthrew them everywhere.” “Never before or since,” says a Saxon writer later on, “was ever such slaughter known, since the Saxons first gained England by their armies.” All the next day the rout was followed up, until the shattered remnants gained the shelter of their fort. Whether it was absolutely abandoned by the Danes after their defeat is doubtful; but it is recorded that fourteen days later Alfred and Ethelred suffered a reverse at Basing, which shows, at anyrate, that some portion of the enemy’s forces had retreated to the south.

To meet the last invasion of foreign blood, the Anglo-Saxons had, by that time, a military organisation which differed but little from the hosts that William of Normandy brought against Harold the king at Senlac. There had been much intercommunication between the British Isles and the mainland. Both armies were armed and equipped in much the same way. Their leaders wore the same kind of armour, and there was little to distinguish between them, save that the Norman’s chief strength was in his cavalry, that of Harold in his infantry. The Bayeux Tapestry shows both Harold and William clad in the same attire.

The Saxon fighting system at Hastings differed little from that of the mercenaries of the most varied character that followed the banner of the Conqueror, except that on Harold’s side there was union of men, then of the same nationality to a great degree, against a mere collection of adventurers. As to the political situation there is little to be said. The true history of the eleventh century is still, and ever will be, unwritten; the most reliable account is after all largely, if not entirely, traditional. It is poetical rather than actual. It is based on “hearsay” rather than fact. Yet, notwithstanding, before real recorded history was, tradition had to take its place, and this is what it and legend have to say of that great conflict which destroyed Saxondom in Britain, and which placed William the Norman on the English throne as king.

Battle of Hastings. 14^th. Oct. 1066.

This, then, is what the fighting seems to have been. Curiously enough, Harold selected the defensive, as did Wellington, as a rule, seven hundred and fifty years after, and fought on foot while fortifying his front with palisades; while the Normans attacked in a series of lines, much as was done by British troops before the introduction of the breech-loader led to the abandonment of “linear” tactics. The last of the Saxon kings had chosen for his stand for crown and kingdom the hill where Battle is now built; but there was one vast difference between the opposing leaders. On the one side the Saxons feasted and made merry, though there is little evidence that Harold made any effort to rouse the enthusiasm of his men as his adversary did. In the Saxon camp there was wine and wassail, and in that of William penitence and prayer. William knew the guiding spirit of the art of war of the time, the infusing into his host that religious fervour which later on made Cromwell defeat Royalists as physically brave as his own Ironsides, and the instilling in their minds confidence in their own powers, which has been at the base of every English victory since then. The Saxons were “slow to find out they were beaten”;[3] but the Norman enthusiasm was raised by the duke’s address on the morning of the fight, in which he recalled to their minds that the Normans “had won their land in Gaul with their own swords; how they had given lands to the kings of the Franks and conquered all their enemies everywhere; while the English had never been famed in war, the Danes having conquered them and taken their land whenever they would.”

All this may be fable, and probably is, but what we know of William tends to show it was likely. Even omens he turned to advantage. He fell on landing, but, rising with his hands full of English soil, he exclaimed, “What is the matter? I have thus taken seisin of this land, and so far as it reaches, by the splendour of God, it is yours and mine.” He put on his mailed shirt back in front, only to laughingly exclaim, as he reversed it, “A good sign and a lucky one: a duke shall this day be turned into a king.”

All this evidences genius for war such as Harold never had. His bravery is undoubted, but mere bravery counts little against bravery plus skill. So it was that, armed with sword and priest-blessed relics, protected by the “consecrated” banner of Pope Alexander, and bearing on his finger a ring set “with one of St. Peter’s hairs,” William went into battle with not merely an army of sixty thousand men, to whom success meant profit, but to whom death meant falling in a holy cause, and to whom the very battle itself was a crusade. Everything was in his favour, when, singing the battle hymn of Roland, he moved his three lines against the hill on which Harold’s royal standard was planted.

The details of the battle are of little interest. It was one of hand-to-hand fighting. “The English axe, in the hand of King Harold, or any other strong man, cut down the horse and his rider by a single blow.”

The personal element entered largely, as it did later, into the contest. The fall of the leader led to the fall of the army. Where Harold was, where his standard flew, there was the “tactical key” of the field of battle. True tactics do not depend on the death of the king, or the capture of so many yards of silk embroidery. But true tactics, rightly understood, were not in these days.

The duke formed his army in two wings and a centre, each of which seems to have advanced covered by archers, supported by heavy infantry, and strengthened by the main arm of battle, then the mailed cavalry. The left wing, composed of men from Ponthieu, Maine, and Brittany, was led by Alan; the right, adventurers from Picardy and France, was directed by Roger de Montgomery; and the centre, comprising the flower of the Norman host, was commanded by William himself.

The bowmen covered the advance by arrow fire, and seemed to have produced little effect; but towards the end of the day they, possibly and apparently from the flanks,[4] poured in a vertical fire, and so covered, without interfering with, the attack of the main bodies, and it was from this, in a sense, long-ranged fire that Harold received the wound that disabled him, caused his death and the ruin of the Saxon cause.

Whether the statement that William, by a feigned retreat, drew the Saxons from their entrenchments in pursuit and then turned on them with success, is true or not, may be open to doubt. Harold’s tactics and his method of entrenchment all point rather to passive than active defence. His best armed and best equipped men were in the centre, round his royal standard, armed with javelin, axe, and sword, and covered close by the large Saxon shield; on his flanks were the less reliable and poorly armed “ceorls,” who could not be trusted to meet the main brunt of battle. It is quite possible, however, that these less disciplined troops may have been decoyed into a pursuit which was counter attacked by the cavalry, and thus the flank was turned, and with it the line of obstacles along the front, whatever they might have been.

Be that as it may, it is most likely that the traditional termination of the battle is in the main correct, and that William, by his “high angle” fire of arrows, was able to “search” the ground behind the stockade, and that the last Saxon king received his death-wound in the eye from one of these missiles. It would have been better strategy on his part to have fought a merely rearguard action at Hastings, and, falling back, have both weakened his adversary by the guards he must have left on the coast, and increased his own power of resistance by the aid of the reinforcements that were coming up. So night went down on the bloody field of Senlac, where Harold lay dead with fifteen thousand Normans and “threescore thousand Englishmen,” though the latter statement is, on the face of it, exaggeration. But the fight had broken the Saxon power, and the Conqueror—as William of Poictiers says—refused his royal brother burial, swearing “that he guarded the coast while he was alive, let him thus continue to guard it after death.” None the less, it is believed he was buried eventually at Waltham, and William the duke passed on to cross the Thames at Wallingford, seized London, and become William the king.

With Senlac perished the militia system of the Saxon rulers of England. The new-comers had brought with them the elements, though not the completion, of the feudal system that was to follow and be the outcome of the Norman Conquest. As a matter of fact, the invading army that William led was only after all a gathering of armed men under leaders of sorts. Its very origin prevented the full organisation which means a real or regular army. Mercenaries, men who had never before the war met the chiefs who were to lead them, in rare cases religious enthusiasts, who believed that the cause of the Pope and the Normans was the cause of God, mere soldiers of fortune, who thought from the fair English land they might obtain fortune even more than fame;—these were the men who were to break up the Saxon kingdom, still existent more or less, and were to weld into one homogeneous whole the English race. Never has the end better justified the means. Never have the means themselves in 1066 been more ignoble. The Norman host as men had scarcely a redeeming feature. To count descent from them, is to count often enough from the meanest social ancestry, though age has made it venerable and respected. Some of the noblest of English families trace, or rather claim, descent from men of the lowest origin, who rose from such a place as that of “Hugo the Dapifer,” to be the rulers of England and replace Saxon jarls whose descent was more distinct, and on whom the Norman parvenu looked down. It cannot be too definitely expressed that to “have come in with the Conquest” is only a confession that those who use the expression are ignoring the fact that many a Saxon thane could show a family title far deeper set in the history of England than any of the men who usurped and trampled on those whose pedigree went back to the days of Æscesdune, before the soldiers of fortune of the Duke of Normandy had emerged from their original obscurity.

Battle of Hastings (From Bayeux Tapestry).

None the less the new invaders were “men,” and had a “man” to govern them, while William, the king by right of everything that in those days made kingcraft, ruled.

“Stark was he,” says the English Chronicler, “to men that withstood him; none dared resist his will. Earls that did aught against his bidding he cast into bonds; bishops he stripped of their bishopricks and abbots of their abbacies. But stern as his rule was, it gave peace unto the land.”

This was William. “Out of the strong cometh forth sweetness,” out of the horrors that followed the Norman Conquest came the English people, and, as time went on, that army which has mostly conquered, often suffered, and generally met disaster with a bold front. And so the new, or rather the last successful invaders seized the fair isle of Britain, added their names to old place-names of Celtic or Saxon origin as an affix, converting, for example, the “town by the water” of Ashton into “Ashton Tyrrold,” and, holding the richest lands as their own appanage, raised the massive frowning towers of Norman castles at all important strategic points throughout the country, marking their conquest as by a sign-manual that they held the land, as they had gained it, by the sword.

Notwithstanding that the Norman had many friends in England, it was long before the whole country was subdued. There was fighting in the north of England and on the marches of Wales; there was prolonged resistance by Hereward in the Fenland and central forests, until, in 1071, the “Wake” surrendered, and became the “king’s man.” There was much still to settle, and William settled them in his own stern way. So much so that his own often parvenu barons revolted, and for many a century rebelled against the royal authority, which, backed by the clergy and English, won in the end. Ralf Guader was quieted in 1074, and Robert of Bellème, with Robert Mowbray and Prince Robert, were beaten in 1078. Similarly, when Rufus reigned, the same Robert Mowbray, with Odo of Bayeux and others, held their castles as rebels until they were stormed in 1095.

The Celts of both Wales and Scotland proved troublesome, so to hold the latter frowning Norman castles were erected at each end of the neck between North Britain and England at Carlisle and Newcastle, while the former were shut in by a chain of similar fortresses from Cheshire to the Severn valley, along which hostilities continued for many a year, to the territorial aggrandisement of the defenders of the “Marches.”

Henry I.’s marriage, uniting the old royal race with the new, much pacified matters, or at anyrate gave the king still more aid from the English people as distinct from the Norman barons. Again Robert of Bellème on the Welsh border revolted, but was driven into exile by the sovereign: in the claim of Robert to the throne, Englishmen sided with Henry, and for the first time served abroad to defeat the pretender at Tenchebrai. But Henry left no male successor, and Matilda his daughter was distasteful to the barons, who chose Stephen, grandson of the Conqueror, as king. This created two factions—that of Stephen and that of Matilda, the first of the great Civil Wars (for now the “English” counted for much more than heretofore), and the king, unlike his predecessors, unwisely allowing the barons to build castles on their own lands, paid for his over-confidence. For Matilda’s party, led first by the Earl of Gloucester, formed in the west of England, assisted by David King of Scots in the north. Stephen advanced against the latter, defeating the former at Northallerton, and after many vicissitudes on both sides, the war ceased by the retirement of Matilda to Normandy.

So in anarchy and suffering—suffering so great that it was said “that God and His saints were asleep,” so terrible were the wrongs done in the land—the Norman power as such ceased to be, and Plantagenet kings (no longer Norman but English) reigned over the realm for more than three hundred years.

Out of that time grew up the system of feudal levies, that is, of men who served as the personal retainers of some baron or overlord, and who fought therefore no longer as freemen, fighting freely in their country’s wars. Military service long remained personal rather than national.

CHAPTER II
THE ARMY OF THE NOBLES—TO 1500

With the rise of feudalism arose a further expansion of the principle of subdivision of command, though in its earliest days it degraded fighting to the mere personal prowess of the individual, and tactics as an art of war consequently made little, if any progress. Armies were built up much as before, and were still in many respects a species of militia. The knightly tenure was one of personal service for variable periods,—generally of about forty days,—during which the knight received no pay, and beyond which the king or overlord was supposed to defray the cost, and too frequently didn’t.

Sometimes he compounded for service by a money payment to the king, which enabled the latter to pay others to do his work; this indirectly leading to the mercenary soldier, or one who serves for pay. Throughout all the feudal times armies for foreign service therefore had to be paid, as campaigns could never be concluded within the period of free service. Hence they were composed partly of feudal retainers, partly of forced levies or mercenaries raised by some knight or gentleman, expert in war, to serve the king at a fixed rate of pay, which was often higher than that of a day labourer at home, with the prospect of adventure and booty. There seems to have been little difficulty in thus raising recruits. The money for this, which was paid in advance, was raised from the royal revenues, crown funds, fines, or parliamentary grants. These armies were disbanded, therefore, directly the war ceased.

It is calculated that this system produced a levy of about 60,000 knights and men-at-arms, and the country was divided into areas or “knights’ fees,” each of which provided one armed man.

The main “arm” in battle was the mailed cavalry, and infantry was long thought little of; but in England speedily grew up the steady and trustworthy bowmen, the foundation of that infantry which has carried the national flag to victory in every part of the world, and which had no counterpart in those days in foreign armies, such as France, where the footmen were, till much later, merely armed serfs or dependants, armed indifferently, and treated with contumely. In England it was otherwise. There were both greater freedom, and better, because more independent men. The trust that successive governments had in the people is best evidenced by the fact that all classes were armed. As far back as the reign of Henry II. it had been enacted that every man should possess at least a bow, and it is said that a good bowman could fire twelve shots a minute at two hundred and forty yards. Archery and archers were encouraged on the one side of the Channel, and on the other looked upon with contempt. Nowhere is the difference between the English and foreign footmen better shown than at Crecy and Poitiers; and the former is a type of the fighting of the period immediately before the active employment of gunpowder. The political events which brought about the battle need not be detailed here: it will be sufficient to bear in mind that the “Hundred Years’ War” with France commenced by the claim of Edward III. to the throne of France, and the corresponding effort on the part of Philip to possess Guienne, which the King of England held in fief as Duke of Aquitaine, one of the six “peers of France.” After sundry fruitless expeditions, Edward landed at St. Vaart on the 11th October, with an army composed of 4000 men-at-arms, 10,000 bowmen, 12,000 Welshmen, and 6000 Irishmen, and one of his first acts was to bestow on his gallant son, the Black Prince, the honour of knighthood.[5]

It is interesting to notice how even at this date footmen and infantry formed an important part of the British army, which, after advancing almost to the gates of Paris, was compelled to fall back to the coast for many reasons, among which want of supplies predominated, and finally, after a brilliant skirmish in crossing the Somme, took up a position at Crecy-en-Ponthieu—whence, even if defeated, it had a secure retreat through Flanders—there to give battle to the French. When day dawned on the 26th August 1346, the battle was formed on the slopes of the Vallé des Clercs, with the right flank resting on the village of Crecy, situated à cheval the river Maye, a shallow stream some ten feet broad. The left flank was protected somewhat by a belt of trees near Wadicourt, and the position—about a mile long—faced south-east, and was held in three bodies; the first, on the right, under the Prince of Wales, with Lords Warwick and Oxford, was composed of 800 men-at-arms, 1000 Welsh infantry, and 200 archers, with 2000 Welsh and Irish infantry in support;[6] the second, on the left, commanded by the Earls of Arundel, Northampton, and Willoughby, with Lords Basset and Ross, contained 800 men of all arms; while in rear of the right wing was the reserve, 1700 men-at-arms and 2000 archers, commanded by the king in person.

The baggage was securely packed in a wood in rear of all. Each of the wings was arranged with archers “formed in the manner of a portcullis or barrow,” and the men-at-arms dismounted. The king utilised the steadiness of the dismounted men-at-arms to resist the charge of the enemy’s cavalry, while shaking and demoralising him in his advance by fire. It was not unlike the “Battaglia” of the civil war in principle, which were composed of “pikes” in the mass and “shot” at the angles. The longbow was no bad weapon as time went. It could range four hundred yards, was silent, and rapid to shoot, and, like modern smokeless powder, did not obscure the field of view. There is little doubt that the real formation was that of a line of men-at-arms, flanked by two wings of archers, thrown forward, and with a central body of archers forming a “herse” by the meeting of the inner wings.[7] Cannon, in the shape of six small pieces slung to a beam, and called “brakes,” were used for the first time, and both entrenchments and abattis seem to have been made along the front.

Philip himself, with an army estimated at as much as 120,000 men, was meanwhile advancing from Abbeville with 15,000 Genoese crossbowmen, forming an advanced guard, led by Antonio Doria and Carlo Grimaldi, followed by 4000 men-at-arms and foot soldiers under the Dukes of Alençon and Flandres, behind which came the remainder of the army in four lines, under the command of the king. The march was disordered and confused. “There is no man,” writes Froissart, “unless he had been present, that can imagine or describe truly the confusion of the day.” It was a case again of “those behind cried Forward, and those in front cried Back”; and while the masses surged backward and forward, under contradictory orders and want of plan, a gathering thunderstorm burst with peals of heaven’s artillery, and the driving rain lasted long enough to wet the bowstrings of the crossbowmen and render them of little use. The superiority of the longbow was fully shown then, for the English were able to keep the bows cased and the strings dry until the moment for their use came. And come it did; for the sunshine again broke through the clouds, and now full in the faces of the French. Other omens too were there, which in days of superstition helped to raise the courage of one side and depress that of the other; for over the French early gathered great flocks of ravens, which “was deemed,” so writes De Mezeray, “a presage of their defeat.”

When, therefore, the Genoese were ordered to attack, they did little execution, and under a fire of clothyard shafts so heavy that “it seemed as if it snowed,” they fell back in panic and disorder. Whether Edward’s artillery had any real effect is doubtful, but the noise of the new weapon, probably firing stone shot, may have tended to add to the débâcle, even if the actual loss it caused was small. The Genoese were between two fires. In front were still the English line, cool on the defensive, as they have always been; behind was Alençon’s cavalry, who cared but little—in that chivalric age—for mere men on foot. “Kill me those scoundrels,” said Philip, “for they block up our road without any reason. “Truly,” also answered D’Alençon, “a man is well at ease to be charged with these kind of rascals who are faint, and fail us now when most at need;” so through the flying men rode the French knights, whilst over the disordered crowd still fell the heavy rain of English arrows. To add to the confusion, too, the Irish and Welsh infantry, though they were of little value apparently otherwise, joined in the mêlée, to slay with their long knives the dismounted knights, whether wounded or not, “nor was any quarter given that day by the victors.”

But when the French cavalry had cleared a way to the English line, they were a mere crowd, and the Black Prince advanced his line to counter attack. But there was no lack of bravery in his antagonists. They fought brilliantly and well, and so far succeeded as to place the prince’s command in some danger. And while the French knights assailed the flanks of the English right wing, a sharp attack was made by some German and Savoyard cavalry which broke through the bowmen, and even engaged the men-at-arms in rear. To his aid, therefore, pressed Arundel’s left wing, and soon the French second line also fell back routed, leaving its chief behind dead. It was too late to retrieve the disaster, and it is somewhat pitiful to read how at that moment the poor old blind King of Bohemia turned to those around him to say, “Sirs, ye are my men, my friends and companions, I require you to lead me so far forward that I may strike one stroke with my sword.” Verily there were men in those days, and two knights did not fear to humour him; so, tying their reins to his, they led him into the thick of the fight, where, seeking death, the king “struck a stroke with his sword, yea, and more than four, and fought valiantly, and so did all his company; but they adventured so far forward that they were all slain, and the next day were found in the place about the king, with their horses tied to each other.” His was a valiant death, and though his son, the King of the Romans, had fled, with him fell the flower of the French army, the King of Majorca, the Duke of Lorraine, the Count of Flanders, the Count of Blois, eight other counts, two archbishops, 1200 knights, and 30,000 men. The loss on the English side is not recorded, but was probably small, and the battle was won chiefly by the fire of infantry,—in this case, arrow-fire,—as modern battles are mainly decided by the bullet.

Among the spoil of eighty banners was captured the banner of the King of Bohemia, charged with three ostrich feathers, and the motto “Ich Dien,” though the statement that the Black Prince thereupon adopted them for his crest and motto is probably mythical, as many such stories are.

Philip seems to have been stunned by the disaster, and long refused to leave the field. When late that night he reached the castle of La Broyes, he had with him, of all his armed host, but Sir John Heynault and five barons. On the other hand, Edward had the joy of embracing his victorious son, with the words, “Persevere in your honourable career. You are indeed my son, for valiantly have you acquitted yourself this day, and shown yourself worthy of empire.”

When the sound of conflict ceased, even Edward did not then know the magnitude of the victory he had gained. And the night passed without festivity, while the king himself “made frequent thanksgiving to the Lord.”

The battle of Crecy is a marked stage in the history of our own army, for it shows clearly the value of the English infantry of the past, the importance of infantry fire, and the dawn of the employment of artillery. But by other nations and in other parts of the world, too, had the value of resolute infantry been recognised, except in France. The age of chivalry—so called—had increased, and fostered the use of body armour. Its very dead weight literally and metaphorically prevented the growth of tactics. There was no real organisation in the crusading hosts; they were but gatherings of armed men such as William led at Hastings, and battles were but a series of incidents of rivalry between leading or ambitious chiefs. The age of chivalry was an age of vanity, both of deeds and of iron clothes. Magnificent was the armour of the knight; magnificent, too, his inordinate desire to be noticed! These were not the days of personal interviews, daily papers, or self-advertisement; but Sir Galahad, going from tournament to tournament to show he was a stronger man, or with a Christian desire to hurt somebody, did his best in that line none the less! The Irishman who drags his coat along the ground at a fair—another sort of tournament—in the hope that somebody will tread on the tail of it, differs little from the challenger at Ashby de la Zouche. There was the same human nature at the bottom of both—each was spoiling for a fight! Still the spirit of the time sensibly increased the military spirit. To individual prowess was open the tournament where doughty deeds, or what were considered such, met with immediate reward and encouragement. No better school for mediæval war ever existed than that in which men learned to fight under the personal criticism of women. Vanity, pride, love were all brought to play in these contests, and poetry spread far and wide through the songs of the troubadour the deeds of the valiant, the defeats of the weaker—

“Throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace high triumph hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit, or arms, while both contend
To win her grace whom all commend.”

War was for long the only career open to men who did not care to don the cowl of the monk. It, therefore, in the Middle Ages, was essentially the one pursuit of the gentle born. It tended in a brutal time to lessen some of the evils of war, which “is a barbarism which civilisation only intensifies.” “Væ victis” was softened by the feeling that the conquered opponent could be held to ransom and treated gently. The very training of the knights combined the religious, the romantic and combatant elements. The right of conferring it from time to time varied. Before 1102 abbots of the Church had the power to bestow the golden spurs. Hereward the Wake received his knighthood from the Abbot of Crowland. But later on, only bishops, princes, or knights themselves were permitted to bestow the honour, and, with them all, great care was exercised that the recipient should be worthy thereof. Considering the value of money in those days, the costs were heavy, the robes alone amounting to £33. The golden collar of SS. or Esses, part of the knightly decoration, must have been costly. Its origin is very doubtful. Whether from “Souveraine,” from “Sanctus Simo Simplicius” (an eminent Roman lawyer) or in compliment to the Countess of Salisbury, has not yet been determined.

The knightly duty was laid down with exactness, though probably few carried out all the wholesome rules in their entirety. “They must learn from the beginning to labour, run, carry weights, and bear the sun and dust; to use sparing and rustic food, sometimes to live in the open air and sometimes in tents; then to practise the use of arms.” The “true merit of a knight is correctly stated by the Troubadour Arnaud de Marveil.” It is “to fight well, to conduct a troop well, to do his exercise well, to be well armed, to ride his horse well, to present himself with a good grace at courts, and to render himself agreeable there. Seldom are these qualities in the same person. To unite martial habits and vigour with the courteous elegancies of polished life, could not be often accomplished in a half-civilised age.”

His oath declared his duty to be “To defend the Church, to attack the perfidious, to venerate the priesthood, to repel the injuries of the poor, to keep the country quiet, and to shed his blood, and if necessary to lose his life, for his brethren.” But if his duties were grave, his privileges were great. Knights were freed from all “gelds” and taxes and from all other services and burthens by Henry I., in order “that being so alleviated, they may instruct themselves in the use of horses and arms, and be apt and ready for my service and the defence of my kingdom.” Salisbury also mentions that knighthood “rejoices in many immunities and more eminent privileges, and has not to provide horses, carriages, and other sordid burthens.” Yet another advantage, of doubtful value perhaps, was that of being rated at a high value when taken prisoner in war. His ransom, always higher than a less titled personage, sometimes amounted to ten thousand crowns, but if of higher value than that, the captor was obliged to surrender him to the king. Those who were knighted for valour on the field of battle were empowered to use the square instead of the swallow-tailed pennon, as knights banneret, and had the privilege of a war-cry. From this came the mottoes of the modern “coats of arms.”

The history of knighthood is a part, and a very important part too, of the history of arms. To its institution can be traced many of the decorations and forms of the arms and armour of the Middle Ages. The honours it offered were so great and highly prized, that it increased martial enthusiasm and encouraged military exercises; and the part taken by women in rewarding the exertions of the knights both in the tournament and in battle, exercised an enormous influence over the warlike portion of mankind. Where the prizes were so great, attention to arms of offence and armour of defence became natural and right. The chivalric feeling engendered by knighthood and knightly exercises was not confined to joust and tournament in times of peace. It was a useful and valuable adjunct to personal bravery in war. “Oh that my lady could see me now!” said a knight as he successfully led his men to the storm of a well defended breach. The spirit thus aroused was due to the knightly customs of the times.

But this “chivalrous” and in a wide sense “cowardly” system was to receive two rude shocks. The first came from the Swiss mountaineers, who with the pike grievously routed the gorgeous knighthood of Charles of Burgundy, and the second from the results of the brain-thought of the peaceful chemist who rediscovered gunpowder.

That cavalry were useless against determined infantry was a new and lurid light to the iron-coated feudalist, and led to a considerable increase of foot-soldiers and the use of the half pike. As the firearms improved, so the unhappy knight tried to meet the bullet by thickening his armour of proof, until on foot he was helpless, and mounted not much better.

Complete Plate (Circa 1500).

Armour, therefore, had much changed since the Conquest, and was still changing. The Norman knight was chiefly clad in mail, composed at first of rings sewn side by side on quilted cotton or leather, rings overlapping (jazerant), scales overlapping (lorica), or square plates overlapping (tegulated); to be followed by rings set edgewise (as single mail); and finally regular double mail extending over the head and entire body. Over the mail coif was worn a conical helmet with a “nasal” or nose-piece, followed by a cylindrical flat-topped helmet over the coif; and finally the latter was replaced by a round topped helmet from which depended a mail cape or camail. Similarly as iron replaced mail for the headpiece, so were knee-pieces, elbow-guards and neck-guards of plate added. The foot-soldier wore an iron headpiece, and now and then a back and breast plate, but he was generally badly provided with defensive armour, and relied on the leather “buff” coat or clothing of quilted cloth. But the armour from the end of the fourteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth century became more and more massive. At first mixed armour,—mail and plate,—then plate armour chiefly. In the former period more and more pieces of iron plate were used to cover weak parts, such as knees, elbows and shoulders, cuirasses, leg-pieces, thigh-pieces, gorgets (for the neck), shoes (sollerettes), and gauntlets for the hands, appear successively, until the only mail armour was that hung from the waist in front, between the plate cuisses that protected the outer part of the thighs. The helmet or headpiece also became gradually closer, with a visor that could be opened or closed at will, until it completely covered the face, so that by the fifteenth century, the whole of the armour was practically plate. Underneath the armour was generally worn a leather suit, and over it the “tabard,” which not only bore the wearer’s coat of arms, but protected him from the sun. Arms remained much the same—sword, lance and dagger chiefly for the mounted man, with at times the axe and mill-pick; on foot the two-handed sword, with halberts and partisans of various types, such as the glaive or byl, together with sword or dagger. The missile weapons, the longbow and crossbow, were still common, though giving way slowly but surely to the firearm; and the former was long more formidable than the latter. It could be discharged much more quickly, it was less liable to get out of order, it did not require heavy stores of powder and shot. The arrow missiles were twofold in character. “Flight” arrows had both heads and feathers small, and were used for ranges up to two hundred and forty yards. “Sheaf” arrows were shorter in the shaft, were heavily feathered and pointed, and were intended for close range. Even when this ammunition was expended, there was no lack of similar missiles to be found, either in the bodies of the slain or sticking in the ground. Moreover, the flight of the clothyard projectile could be directed over the heads of the men fighting in first line, and reach therefore the reinforcements hurrying up in rear. Still the firearm slowly gained ground, and the extensive use of body armour practically lasted until the end of the sixteenth century, though by that time leg-armour was generally falling into disuse.

During this same period there was a corresponding growth, in addition to the increasing appreciation of infantry already referred to, of permanently organised armies. Their origin as “Free Companies” from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries was probably largely due to the constant state of war and political contests that characterised the time. A numerous soldiery, disbanded after the termination of a campaign, were only too eager for further employment, however hazardous. Their mode of life had destroyed their peaceful instincts, and so as paid soldiers they served under the banner of any of the unscrupulous leaders, often of noble birth, that such a condition of affairs was likely to force to the front. Thus arose the mercenary soldier, the forerunner of the paid soldier; and from the continuous training the former perforce received also came the permanently embodied armies of later days. The system insensibly influenced the feudal levies, for among them served many others besides knights who made a profession of arms. Finally, the practical value of a permanent force was recognised in France, when “Compagnies d’ordonnance” were raised by paid officers and composed of paid men. So things and matters went, until the first of the great civil wars brought into the field English armies that fairly typify the final development of the feudal system that had been growing up. It differed much from what obtained elsewhere still. There were but few mercenaries in England, at least of foreign origin. The native independence of character had produced a splendid infantry as times were. And with the Wars of the Roses terminated mediæval tactics and its warfare, as with them finally came in the dire foe to feudal knight and iron-clad noble, that “villainous saltpetre” which was to revolutionise war and abolish armour altogether.

So when, on the 13th October 1453, a prince, Edward, was born to the feeble Henry VI. of Lancaster, the hope Edward of York cherished of peacefully succeeding to the throne was rudely destroyed. Before him lay the chance of a long minority under an imperious queen, Margaret of Anjou, a prospect that pleased neither the duke nor the people. Many who would have otherwise lived and died peaceful, unwarlike, citizens sided, half in apprehension, half in sympathy, with the “White Rose,” a feeling which acquired political importance by the temporary appointment of the Duke of York as Protector during the king’s mental feebleness and his son’s minority. “This Richard of York was a personage to be reckoned with.” And political excitement was soon followed by a political badge, as in later days the primrose became a party emblem. In the gardens of the Temple—so tradition has it—the white and red roses were plucked and worn by the spectators, the latter by those who followed the reigning house of Lancaster; and from this small beginning, from this outward and visible sign of internal disagreement, sprang an internecine contest that lasted for thirty years, brought about on English soil twelve pitched battles, more than decimated both branches of the royal family, all the noble houses, and for savage rancour and hideous cruelty is unequalled in the world’s history. Yet it is not a war as modern military historians would class it: there was little method, no “plan of campaign,” worthy the name. Where “armies”—or rather, bodies of armed men—gathered together, there a similar body went to fight them like two pugnacious cocks in a farmyard.

Not that Richard of York began with any certain idea of kingship, though his son, afterwards to be Edward IV., was less scrupulous. After the first battle of St. Albans,[8] matters went quite mildly to begin with. Henry VI. was made prisoner, but was treated with courtesy, and but for his determined queen, whose influence on his weak character was as that of Jezebel on Ahab, the end of his reign may yet have been peace. She was naturally despotic, and a conspiracy to seize the Yorkist leaders drove them again into open revolt, and gave them a victory at Blackheath in 1459, but much panic and some treachery led to the dispersion of the Yorkist soldiery at Ludlow the next month; to be followed in February 1460 by a complete victory at Northampton, in which Richard’s son Edward, Earl of March, with Warwick the Kingmaker, led the hosts of the White Rose, and Henry became a prisoner once more. This led to a second temporary compromise, whereby the Yorkists were promised the succession on the death of King Henry. But it availed little. The war-spirit and the blood feud were aroused. Wakefield Green witnessed the defeat and death of Richard of York, and the cruel murder of his twelve-years old son, Edmund of Rutland, by Lord Clifford. The cruelties of the Lancastrian party, the systematic pillaging which their soldiery—recruited often from the ruder North—so often indulged in, alienated the sympathy of the London men; while the more commercial spirit of Edward of York also tended to strengthen the party of the White Rose, to keep alive and embitter the strife, and postpone the long-looked-for peace. The country had practically subdivided itself into geographical as well as political factions. The North and Midlands sympathised with Henry, who had there the support of the landowners, the nobles, and their retainers; the south more or less with Edward, with whom the great towns, such as London, Bristol, and Norwich sided. Hence, after the latter had been proclaimed king, there was still a powerful army of some sixty thousand Lancastrians at York that had to be dealt with. And dealt with it was, by the new king and Warwick his Kingmaker, who at Towton won one of the most decisive and bloody battles during the struggle, and drove Margaret first to Scotland, and then to exile. Much as her character may be disliked,—and she was after all only a type of the imperious feudal “divinely-appointed” ruler,—her dauntless energy and courage cannot but meet with sympathy. So exile meant with her but reculer pour sauter le mieux, and in France such poor supplies as she could raise enabled her to make one despairing effort for her son’s sake, and she landed in Northumberland in 1462; but nothing came of it except dispersion again and despair. Unhappy queen! unhappy more by her own faults than aught else. The legal claim of her branch to the kingdom was never seriously contested. Her method of asserting that claim was contested, and with results fatal to her and her line, together with fateful results to her people. Commercial Edward was more likely to develop English handicraft and English trade than pious Henry. As later the divine right of Tudor, and still more of Stuart, had to give way to the rising spirit of freedom from autocratic control, whether of king or pope, so out of the Wars of the Roses began to sprout, from the soil of feudalism, broken by many a sword, manured by the best of English blood, the plant of English liberty. Yet one more great contest between rulers and ruled, and that plant was to spring into full and vigorous life, of which we now see the matured and widespreading tree. The nation hardened under the troubles of that stormy time; and, hardening, grew to stout manhood. In thinking this we see that Margaret unknowingly helped to make it. For “God fulfils Himself in many ways”; and by many means, often seemingly of the meanest, do great things come. Not that Edward was faultless, it was rather the other way. His private conduct was not beyond reproach; his marriage with Elizabeth Woodville, and the rise of that lady’s family, alienated many of the leading nobles, Warwick among the number. So the smouldering embers of civil war broke out again into flame, and now Margaret had to help her the mighty power of Warwick, with and by whose direction her next descent on England was to be made. But this, too, availed nothing. Though first so successful that Edward fled, later on, he too returned, but, unlike Margaret, to conquer. For at Barnet the great earl fell, and with him the last hope of Lancaster.

This remarkable battle is instructive as showing how slow was the change in tactics during feudal days. There was still the feeling of personal chieftaincy, so strongly held, that the result of the battle depended largely on the life of one of its leaders. With the death of Warwick the battle became a rout, and the feudal retainers fled when the head of their house fell. Again, to deal with the special political details which brought about the great fight would be foreign to the object of this book. The battle of Barnet must be taken as a type of the progress, such as it was, that had been made in the art of war since Crecy and Poitiers had been won. It began thus. Edward, after a five months’ exile, had landed at Ravenspur, and by the time he reached Nottingham he had raised an army of about ten thousand men, with, it is said, three hundred Flemings armed with handguns, and apparently some other artillery. On the other side, the Lancastrians, about equal in strength, had also some artillery, and had taken up a position on Gladmore, or Hadley Heath, north of Chipping Barnet, and awaited the approach of the Yorkists. The night preceding the battle was dark and gloomy, and the morning broke in heavy mists and rain; notwithstanding which the troops engaged between four and five o’clock on the morning of Easter Day, the 14th of April 1471.

Battle of Barnet (From a M. S. at Ghent)

Warwick had at first his artillery on his extreme right, and this fired through the gloom, but with no effect, as Edward’s right wing did not extend so far, and was overlapped by the Lancastrians. This army was commanded by the Earl of Oxford, who led the van, and by the Marquis of Montagu, who led the second line; the left wing was commanded by the Duke of Exeter—both wings being largely composed of cavalry. The extreme left was occupied by archers and pikemen entrenched or palisaded in a small wood. This probably extended at that time from Wrotham Park to the column now marking the site of the battle, and near which tradition says Warwick fell. The centre, consisting of bows and pikes, was commanded by the Duke of Somerset; and behind this there appears to have been a reserve under Lord St. John, Sir John Conyers, and, for a time at least, Warwick himself.

The order of march of the host was with the right wing leading and the left closing the column of march. On the other side, Edward from his initial dispositions similarly outflanked the left of his antagonist, opposite which was the Duke of Gloucester commanding that wing, and presumably the artillery, if any. The left wing was led by the Marquis of Hastings; and, as in the Lancastrian army, both wings were mainly composed of cavalry. In the centre were the Londoners, infantry armed with bows and bills, and in general reserve was a force commanded by Edward himself. Some writers speak as if the armies were formed in three parallel lines, but it would seem that the formation customary for long after Barnet was that of two wings and a centre. It is impossible otherwise to account for the curiously isolated and impulsive attacks on either side by Oxford and Gloucester. Still, it is practically certain that each of the three bodies into which the army was divided was more than one line deep. Thus from the outset these dispositions show a tendency to employ infantry in battle with cavalry and artillery on the flanks, but the feudal idea still preponderated, and paramount importance was still attached to the mounted arm, which on both sides, as in all cavalry actions, simultaneously took the offensive.

One point, however, is especially noteworthy, and that is, the appearance of London citizens in Edward’s fighting line. Though not strong in numbers, they none the less represented the beginning of a new era, which was to see a citizen soldiery formed of London trained bands even more important in the next civil war, and which was to find its climax in the later citizen soldiery, the Volunteer Army of modern England. The natural result of such a primary disposition of the troops on either side was that the right wings of both armies, practically equal in number, gained a temporary success. The battle began by Oxford’s attack on the wing opposite him, which actually routed it and dispersed it; but the value of a reserve in the hand of the general was never more clearly evidenced than when, during Oxford’s absence and ill-advised, because too prolonged pursuit, Edward launched his reserve against Warwick’s then exposed flank and the left centre. To the suddenness of the attack was added the demoralisation caused by imagined treachery. On that misty Easter morning it was difficult to distinguish between the badges and banners of one side and the other. The dress was not a different-coloured uniform, as later on; it had only the uniforms of iron and steel. A false war-cry was easily raised, the Oxford banner with a “star” not readily distinguishable from that of Edward with the “sun.” So that when Oxford returned to the fray, he fell on his own centre and produced the cry of “Treachery!” which was always likely to be raised in an army composed of selections from two factions deadly hostile to one another, and in which the Lancastrians especially looked with something more than doubt on their new friends, once the followers of hated York. So that confusion began and spread. Somerset did little, and soon the centre and right dissolved, and only on the left assembled round Warwick the relics of the beaten host, and defended the entrenched wood. Here it was essentially a foot encounter, with London archers and bills against Lancastrian bows and pikes, aided by dismounted cavalry and supported by mounted troops, threatening the flanks and rear. It is said even that Edward’s artillery was brought up close to aid in destroying the defences; but the defence only delayed the inevitable end. The battle was lost already, but it wanted yet one death to make it a type of the death of a system. When Warwick dismounted of his own will, and after slaying his favourite charger, so that no retreat should be possible, took up his position with his friends and personal retainers in the wood at Wrotham, and fell there, axe in hand, he did something more than destroy the last practical hope of Lancaster, for with him fell the feudalism of which he was so magnificent an exemplar. No such man or soldier was ever afterwards to hold from his own remarkable personality such a position as his. Cromwell’s resembles it only in his becoming a great and prominent leader in a civil war. Warwick, and nobles such as he, fought as much for their order as their king; all succeeding soldiers fought more for a cause than either.

Meanwhile, Margaret and her son had landed in the West at Plymouth, to be present at the fatal fight at Tewkesbury where defeat was followed by the death of her son, whom Edward struck before subservient attendant lords and stabbed to death, the imprisonment of the queen, and, later on, the death of Henry VI. in the Tower. Neither he nor all the house of Lancaster had been able to save his order from decay.

Edward, too, according to his views, had unconsciously aided its downfall. His death was illumined only by the lurid light of an ill-spent life. However enthusiastic in bygone years was the following of the Earl of March, he played the game so badly that with him the feudal spirit practically disappeared. No son of his succeeded. No kindly thought clung round the last of the Yorkist line. For he was practically the last, inasmuch as his son was king but in name, his brother Richard but a transient star. When on Bosworth field Richard III. died, with him finished the civil wars of mediæval England and the feudalism that had accompanied them. In Henry VII., a personality of no great merit, though he certainly instituted a nucleus of the future army in raising the “Yeomen of the Guard,” fifty archers strong, was united the two Roses; and then was born the nation that in the next civil troubles laid the foundation as far as England is concerned of modern life, modern armies, and modern war.

Never had a class suffered so severely as that of the nobles in this prolonged struggle. Many of the royal princes, half of the nobility and gentry of England, and quite a hundred thousand men had fallen in the great wars. At Barnet the loss was accentuated by Edward’s own orders. So many of the leaders of the great houses had been killed, murdered, or beheaded, that the very decimation of the aristocracy rendered the growth of the middle class more easy, its fusion with the higher class, as time went on and wealth increased, more possible. The knighthood of men of low degree was rare in feudal days; the Tudors were to extend it to the merchant princes who developed English commerce sword in hand, and taught foreign nations the prowess of the English race.

Formation of Lines of Battle at Barnet 14^th April 1471.

But there is also a marked distinction between the conduct of the battles of the houses of York and Lancaster, and those of the Stuarts and the Parliament of England in the next civil war. Up to Bosworth, armies raised at a convenient feudal centre advanced, when “mobilised,” against another army collected in a similar way at another place convenient for the faction to which it belonged. They met as soon as they were ready. They selected no “position for defence,” a primary tactical law for a weaker force, which by so doing enlisted on its side the elements afforded by such a selection. This was chiefly due to the fact that the bulk of each army was still cavalry, but the other “arms” were increasing in number and value, though still not fully appreciated by the mounted men.

The two battles of St. Albans and the fight at Barnet fully show this. In both of the former the combatants met en plein face. The one was making for London, the other stopped him. In the second battle the Lancastrians tried to check the opponent, and failed in preventing his advance, both armies in which mounted troops predominated. There was nothing but a mutual offensive, the system that was at the basis of feudal tactics, and which crystallised in the personal battle between knight and knight in the lists. Strategy in its best sense was not, neither were tactics, for tactics mean the development of a means of equalising the deficiency of one side in numbers, arms, or morale.

So long as a battle depended on personal prowess, the personal fighting power, or even the personal domestic influence of a leader, so long were battles often a mere matter of chance. When Warwick fell, Barnet was lost. The next civil war changed this: neither the death of Falkland nor that of Carnarvon at Newbury affected the fight seriously in one single degree. Finally, as a rule throughout all these days armies moved in order to subsist, and supply trains were rare. Thus true strategy was barely in existence yet, but shock tactics in battle were just beginning to give way to the fire tactics of bow and musket.

As regards supplies in the Wars of the Roses, it must be remembered that, as in later times, notoriously in the Peninsula, when the armies had at times to collect the enemy’s shot and bullets, the weapons of either side were interchangeable.

Doubtless at certain places—castles or fortresses—the actual munitions were stored. To these the armies must have either periodically gone to refit, or what answered to convoys, conveying absolutely necessary warlike stores, must have been formed for the specific purpose of replenishing the locally exhausted stores. All that was really required for the purposes of such wars must have been carried on the persons of the combatants, as seems generally to have been the case, or even on pack animals or country carts. The state of the roads and both their poverty and paucity must have rendered regular organised supply trains impracticable. Similarly as regards food supplies little could have been carried. Like the French about 1811 and 1812, necessity must have rendered the soldiers hardy and self-dependent, though of course at the cost of the civil population. Thus it is said of the French troops in 1811 that they “were trained to reap the standing corn, and grind it by portable mills into flour; if green, they mowed it down with equal dexterity for their horses; if reaped (and hidden away by the inhabitants), they forced it from the peasants’ place of concealment, by placing the bayonet to their throats.” And Wellington himself writes, that “the French armies in Spain have never had any secure communications beyond the ground which they occupy; and provided the enemy opposed to them is not too strong for them, they are indifferent in respect to the quarter from which their operations are directed, or upon which side they carry them on.”

And, later, the French “live by the authorised and regular plunder of the country if any should remain; they suffer labour, hardships, and privations every day; they go on without pay, provisions, money, or anything, but they lose in consequence half their army in every campaign.” This accounts for the enormous losses of the rank and file in the early days of the nineteenth century, while the losses in the fifteenth century, with little or no medical or surgical knowledge for the aid of sick and wounded, can only be surmised.

History, military history especially, always repeats itself in pointing out the necessary results of such unsystematically organised systems.

Half Armour (Circa 1640).

CHAPTER III
THE PURITAN HOST

The early part of the seventeenth century saw a considerable alteration in the armament of the soldiery, and, notwithstanding the increasing use of gunpowder, body armour long continued to be worn. On it was lavished the highest skill of the artisan in its workmanship, and the highest taste of the artist in its decoration by engraving and inlaying. But the firearm, a matchlock, had, to all intents and purposes, everywhere superseded the bow, so that even in Elizabeth’s reign leg-armour was falling into disrepute, and, except in the corselet or cuirass, was steadily lessening in weight. Buff coats with sleeves, leather gauntlets, and leather boots were lighter than iron; just as useful against a sword-cut, and no worse against a shot. What little armour was left soon became too heavy to wear.

Even James I. thought that the heavy armour of his time was “an excellent invention, for it not only saved the life of the wearer, but prevented his hurting anybody else”;[9] while “Dugald Dalgetty” found the metal thigh-pieces were powerless to stop the bullets of the firearms used by those who pursued him when he escaped from “that high and mighty prince,” the Duke of Argyle. To summarise the gradual disuse of arms from Tudor times to those of Anne, it may be stated that though body armour and the helmet were long used, the former had become but a cuirass to which a short skirt of metal was attached. The helmet became more open; still covering the head, the back of the neck and ears, but the face was only guarded by a “nasal” (like that of the time of the Conqueror somewhat), which could be moved up or down, or by a triple bar attached to the peak, which could be raised bodily like the visor was. This soon gave way to the mere iron “pot-helmet” without any face guards; and when this went, the cuirass soon followed. Last of all, the neck-piece or gorget was worn finally as a mere ornament. For mounted men the lance disappeared, and the sword, pistol, carbine, or “dragon” took its place. On foot, as the musket became general, the ammunition was long carried in a bandolier. But in addition to the firearms, or “shot,” there were pikemen carrying plain pikes eighteen to twenty-four inches long, and forming an important part of the infantry.

Naturally, therefore, by degrees the proportion of firearms in the battaglia (whence comes our modern “battalion”) increased, and the formation of definite fighting units, such as brigades, by Gustavus Adolphus, Maurice of Nassau, and others, began to make the force more capable of direction and control. De Rohan in France, too, devised regiments on what were then scientific principles. His were composed of 600 pikes, 600 musketeers, and 240 swordsmen, and, later, cavalry were placed between these massive battalions. Speaking generally, the artillery was little moved, and remained stationary during a battle. The cavalry charged sword in hand or with pistols, and the infantry received the charge with the pike or partially met it by fire. But with an improved artillery arose also the necessity for ammunition and other supply trains from fixed magazines, and hence more careful strategy based on care for these magazines or “bases of operations,” and regard for the roads “or lines of communication” leading from them to the army, influenced the conduct of campaigns; so also did the introduction of superior organisation.

For food supplies, armies on the move were still dependent on the good-will of the people, open markets, or plunder. It was long before the supply of troops formed part of the serious study of the art of war. There was yet but little change in the method of fighting. Artillery as an “arm” was not. Rupert thought still that cavalry was the principal arm and could do anything. Cromwell alone recognised what trained infantry could be made to do.

It is only here and there that strategical enterprise is apparent, while the old tactical methods too were changing, but very slowly. Mr. Ward in his Animadversions of War, dated 1639, shows the cavalry formed five ranks deep, and (as the battles show) an undue dependence was placed on this arm, though in the early battles it, seriously, effected little, and was rather a cause of disaster than of victory. They were armed with firearms of sorts and the sword, the lance of the Middle Ages having fallen into complete disuse. They were classed as cuirassiers, arquebusiers, carbineers, and dragoons; but all fought much the same way, and were, taken altogether, rather mounted infantry than true cavalry. Each battaglia, even as late as 1677, so says Lord Orrery in his Act of War, had still one-third of its number “pikes”; the remainder, as “shot,” were assembled in groups at the four angles of the mass of pikes, which were ten ranks deep; but at the beginning of the Civil War the proportion of pikes to shot was about one-half. No wonder that the weapon “which never missed fire,” and was sixteen feet long, for many a year was all-important, and that the heavy arquebus, a matchlock with a rest which trailed, was long looked on as an adjunct, not as the primary weapon of the foot-soldier. The weapon was fired by a slow match, and one common stratagem at night, in retreat, was to leave these matches attached to the branches of trees in a hedgerow, to make believe that it was still held after the defenders had actually fallen back.

The general “order of battle” was two or three lines of these battaglia (named the “main battle,” the “battle of succour,” and the “rear battle”) at close intervals, with the cavalry on the flanks, and the guns dispersed along the front. In the beginning of the battle small bodies or “forlorn hopes” were pushed to the front to draw the enemy’s fire, much as the deployment of lines or columns later was covered by light infantry skirmishers. The guns, immobile, badly mounted, and badly horsed as they were, were not to be despised as far as size went. There were “cannon royal” of 8 inches calibre, firing a 63-pound shot, down to “sakers” with 6-pound projectiles, and “bases” of half a pound, and the range varied from 500 to 1500 yards; and the “demi-culverin” with a 10-pound shot was a not uncommon field gun. Of course their rate of fire was slow. There were no cartridges, and the gun was fired, after being primed, by a linstock with a slow match. Curiously enough, the first cannons were breech-loaders, and were simply securely fastened into wooden slabs on low wheels by way of carriage, and so were capable of very little elevation; but later on they were furnished with trunnions on which the gun pivoted.

The colours worn by the men seemed to have followed the armorial bearings of their leaders. Orange, the colour of Essex, was generally worn by officers; Lord Saye’s men wore blue, Hampden’s green, and so on.

The opposing armies formed opposite one another at about 400 yards range, and after due consideration one side attacked, and without any real tactical plan the battle became a series of independent combats, in which, practically, the last unbroken body remained master of the field, and called it victory. Still this was a great advance on the tactics of earlier days. The idea of “tactics” was there, but, like the Caroline “strategy,” it was of a very feeble description. There was plenty of bravery, little of the combined effort which “tactics” implies.

Artillery.

Early B.L. Cannon

Culverin

B.L. Ship Gun, 1545 (Recovered 1836).

M.L. Burgundian (without trunnions) 1477.

M.L. Spanish (with trunnions & dolphins) 1800.

R.B.L. Field Gun 1896

But with the Stuarts had arisen a new power. To loyalty to the head of the State was to be added reverence for an asserted divine right to govern, of which little had been said before. With James I. arose the theory of the divine right of kings. How it came to be that his people, or a section of them, acquiesced in this assumption,—if they ever really did,—is one of the unexplained wonders of the time; but that the idea grew up and grew into full strength when Charles I., the best, if not the ablest of the Stuarts, was king, is clear.

With him the idea of the personal sacredness of majesty came to a head, and died with him, as men died for his “idea.” Again another stage in the army’s growth. Before this brave soldiers had died for “ideas” in battle; now they were to die for an idea translated, or crystallised, into a king. Out of this feeling came the men who fought for the cause and the country as well as the sovereign, and less than before for the personal duty due to the military chief or leader of a feudal family or clan. There were several reasons for this alteration in the causes that made men then join armies. During the Tudor dynasty there had been a vast extension of foreign trade, with foreign travel, which opened men’s minds and induced freedom in political thought. The theological revival which culminated in the Reformation had aroused a spirit, first of intolerance, and then of a desire for freedom in religious belief. To the latter a hatred to Roman Catholicism, a dread of popish interference in secular matters, the example given by the religious conditions of our great commercial antagonist, Spain, and the cruelties attributed to the Inquisition, largely contributed. To the former the increase of commercial wealth, with a corresponding decrease in the feudal power of the nobles, and a greater dependence on general taxation to support the Government and foreign wars, lent their aid. When Charles I. became king, he represented, in person, these conflicting elements; for though not a Roman Catholic himself, he was a High Churchman, his wife a Roman Catholic, and to an autocratic belief in his own divine right he added an untrustworthiness which was one of the many causes that led to his downfall. “From this inordinate reverence for the kingly office grew a great evil, for with a perverseness of reasoning which we name Jesuitical, Charles held that for the advancement of so holy a cause as that of the king must ever be, no means, however vile or mean to the common eye, could be in verity aught but virtuous and true. To this Moloch he sacrificed his children, as he had previously surrendered his home, his wife, and his happiness; to this idol he offered up the love of his subjects, the hope of his house, and the good of his country; for this he became an outcast, a vagrant, and a prisoner; and when love, friends, and liberty had been swallowed by the burning fiery furnace, he flung in with them his honour and his fair fame for ever. It was then no hard matter to die for the god. Let those only judge him for whom there exists a Truth so living.”[10]

The coming recrudescence of civil war differed somewhat, therefore, in its origin from that between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. In these, political rancour was fostered by great nobles, and armies were formed on the feudalistic principle of personal servitude to these chiefs; while on the other side was the trading spirit openly fostered by Edward the Fourth. The Stuart wars are much more personal and individual throughout. The men, the rank and file even, fought with interest in the cause, and—as a rule, not as an exception, as before—joined either side from feelings of personal predilection. Hence it was that when the Restoration came, there was less bitter antagonism between the factions than when Warwick fell at Barnet. Then the king or queen or the feudal lord decided the measure of slaughter. In the Stuart wars no such order as that of Edward, before Barnet, “to give no quarter,” would have been, save in the most exceptional case, obeyed. It was only when the purely theological animosity was paramount that needless cruelties followed victory. The Covenanters at Bothwell Brig were personally hateful to men like Claverhouse, for religious as well as other reasons; so also the massacres at Drogheda, of which more anon. Stern repression of the severest kind in such cases was both the law and custom in those days.

The actual outbreak of hostilities was preceded by minor outbreaks, which increased the growing antagonism. Ships were lent to France and used against the Huguenots of Rochelle, and the failure of an attempt at Cadiz increased the irritation; and when the troops returned from the Continent, they were not disbanded, as was customary, but billeted on the population, and martial law was introduced during a time of peace. Lastly, the efforts of the Star Chamber to raise fresh loans accorded but little with the English spirit, and the direct tax of ship-money on inland as well as coastal towns, together with the attempted arrest of the five members of the House of Commons hostile to the king’s policy, brought matters to a climax.

Thus the Civil War began, much as in former times, without real strategy. At first, certainly, there was little or no plan of campaign. When an army formed, it moved on some point that seemed locally of value, or to some town or garrison that wanted help. The only broad principle of a very feeble strategy seems to have been to threaten (or protect) London, and on the Parliament side to keep free for use the road from London to the West.

Practically, as in the Wars of the Roses, the political situation was this. The north part of the Midlands and the west favoured the Royalists, the east and south the Parliamentarians. But in both cases there were numerous centres of disaffection in each area, and the commercial spirit of the great towns and seaports in the south and east was hostile to the king.

Speaking generally, too, the nobles and gentry favoured the royal cause, the middle classes that of the Parliament; though of course there were many exceptions on both sides. The fashionable, worldly, and gay were with Charles, the serious-minded, austere, and visionary with the Parliament. But there was more than this: even the “people” found a recruiting ground, for London trained bands and peaceful traders donned buff and bandolier to fight in the national cause. As at Barnet, though now much more so, the commercial class stood side by side with that which deemed itself, by birth and education, more military.

The gradual introduction of the supply train had introduced the elements of strategy, though the study was still in its infancy. The strategical objectives were rather more distinct, but even now there is little trace of a connected serious strategic plan. The isolated armies did not yet unite to a definite strategic end; the plan of campaign was much the same as before, though a little less so. The king assembled an army at X, the Parliament formed one at Y to beat it. The main difference is, that in the Wars of the Roses defeat generally meant dispersion, in this Civil War it meant more or less retreat to re-form. The art of war was growing up, that was all.

Briefly speaking, the only noteworthy points of military interest are these which follow; as the most instructive tactical example is that of the battle of Naseby.

The early campaigns merely tell the usual tale of disconnected skirmishes and resultless battles. Nominally the Parliament guarded the capital, their opponents wanted to seize it. But they rarely tried, and never seriously. In 1643, when Essex was retreating from the relief of Gloucester, he was intercepted by the king at Newbury, where strategically and tactically the royal forces were skilfully posted. But the battle partakes of the nature of chance rather than intent. Nothing practically came of it; but it showed the Cavaliers that if infantry stood firm, the most reckless gallantry of cavalry could do nothing.

In that same year two political steps were taken that led eventually to serious results. The Parliament allied itself with Scotland, and increased Cromwell’s innate dislike to that nation; on the other hand, Charles, to all intents and purposes, allied himself temporarily with the Irish, and raised the theological hatred of his British foes to fever heat. But constant war was hardening and teaching Cromwell and his men, if it taught their opponents nothing. The handling of the three armies in 1644 was skilful. Throughout the whole contest, too, the better and steadier pay of the Parliamentary army told; they plundered less than their harder-up adversaries, and as the rank and file improved, so did their leaders, when the “self-denying ordinance” eliminated incompetent soldiers, and handed over the conduct of the war to those who meant to bring it to a successful issue. The true professional soldier was being made. The superior and more intelligent strategy of the end of the campaign of 1646 clearly shows this, and by the end of the following year hostilities had practically ceased.

FORMATION OF THE LINES OF BATTLE AT NASEBY 14^th JUNE 1645

Though there was at first much similarity between the conduct of all the battles, there was an observable improvement on the Parliamentary side as the years rolled on; and the battle of Naseby is perhaps the best evidence of the better tactical appreciation of the situation than that of any early combat. It evidenced how little the Royalists, how much the Parliamentarians, had learned of the art of war in this the fourth year since hostilities began.

Of course the armies met haphazard, as such forces must do with little or no strategic plan; so that when the king’s levies met at Daventry, it was surprised, when contemplating the relief of Pontefract and Scarborough, to find itself in touch with the army of Fairfax, which, abandoning the siege of Oxford, had moved north to engage the royal army. With it was Cromwell as lieutenant-general of horse. But if the king was ignorant as to the whereabouts of his adversary, Fairfax was not. The use of cavalry was being understood; “every step of the army of the Parliament was guided and guarded by the action of detachments” of this arm.[11] Ireton watched and threatened the enemy’s retreat on Market Harborough, and on the evening of the 13th drove the king’s rearguard out of Naseby, the main body of the army being then south of Harborough. The next day the very casual and careless reconnaissance of Rupert’s troopers reported that no hostile bodies were in sight, and with the false impression that Fairfax was retreating, the royal army advanced to the attack of an enemy superior in number, more highly disciplined, and strongly posted on Mill Hill, north-west of the village of Naseby. The king’s army was in three lines: the first of four regiments, the second of three regiments, the third of the king’s and Rupert’s regiments. Lord Astley commanded the infantry (about 5500 men), Rupert the right, and Langdale the left, wing of cavalry, or “horse,” each about 2500 strong.

The army of the Parliament was thus disposed: right wing, six regiments of cavalry under Cromwell in three lines, with the right flank echeloned back. Ireton commanded the cavalry of the left wing, of five regiments of cavalry and one of dragoons arranged in two lines, while the latter lined a hedgerow to protect the left flank. The infantry under Skippon was in two lines: the first, five regiments strong, the second or reserve, three regiments. The baggage, with a strong guard of “shot,” was posted in rear of the left flank.

The battle began by the attack of Ireton against the opposing cavalry “in echelon right in front”; but as this exposed his right flank to the fire of the infantry squares of the first line, he turned his right squadrons upon them. In this he was dismounted and wounded. Whether from this cause, or what not, Rupert routed this wing, pursuing them as far as Naseby, and then wasting time in attacking the baggage train, while Ireton’s broken squadrons rallied. This is a perfect example of the reckless and unskilful way in which the Royalist charges were always made.

The Royalist first line next advanced, and, breaking Skippon’s left and centre, forced it back upon the second line or reserve; but by this time Cromwell’s cavalry had broken that under Langdale, and with a true appreciation of the situation, had then despatched but two regiments in careful and guarded pursuit, and turned with the remainder on the king’s still unbroken centre. This relieved the pressure on Skippon’s infantry, and these, thereupon, rallied, and in a combined attack broke the king’s remaining square. The battle was virtually over. Rupert returned, all too late and all too exhausted to be of service. The king in person tried to rally and employ the reserve, but the force was already beaten and demoralised, and the retreat became a disorderly rout. The prizes of the victors were 5000 prisoners, 8000 arms, and 100 colours; but, most of all, this severe defeat was a death-blow to the royal cause, and was the last in which Charles I. engaged in person.

One curious result of it was that Lieutenant-General Cromwell himself reported to the Speaker of the House of Commons “how the good hand of God” had fought for them.

There was little after Naseby in the year 1648 to disturb the victorious army of the Parliament. There were sundry small fortresses and castles to reduce, and these soon fell. To Cromwell was deputed the task of capturing Devizes, Winchester, and Basing, and the latter is especially noteworthy for the tenacity with which it was long defended, and the rapidity of its final fall. The seat of the Marquis of Winchester, whose motto of “Aimez loyauté” gave the name of “Loyalty” to his mansion at Basing (to which also “the jubilant Royalists” had given the name of “Basting” House), was a large and important group of buildings, consisting of four great square towers linked together by a wall, and with inner buildings of sorts. The main importance was, that it closed the Great Western Road, south of the Kennet valley, as Donnington Castle did on the north bank of that river. It had been several times attempted during the past four years—first by Sir W. Waller in 1643, who suffered heavily in his attempt to storm; and other very partial attempts followed, until Cromwell himself was sent to settle, once and for all, in whose hands the road by Basingstoke from London should rest.

So the lieutenant-general laid formal siege to it, and, on the morning of 14th October 1645, stormed it, and carried it in three-quarters of an hour. “He had spent much time in prayer,” says Mr. Peters, “the night before the storm, and was able to write that night to ‘the Hon. William Lenthall, Speaker of the Common House of Parliament,’ to the follow-effect: ‘Sir, I thank God I can give a good account of Basing.’” The marquis and two hundred prisoners were taken, and so speedily was the capture completed, that there is some reason for the tradition that the attack was a surprise, and that the garrison were playing cards. Hence the local saying, “Clubs trumps, as when Basing was taken.” Here, too, was slain Robison the player, who was mercilessly shot after the surrender by fanatical Harrison, who shot him through the head with the wild quotation, “Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently.” The action and the remark evidence, better than anything else could, the increasing embitterment of the controversy, and the real, or pretended, religious fervour, or rather rancour, that accompanied its continuance. That the feeling was honest, however strained, with many who fought against the king, is undoubted; as undoubted as the religious fervour of the Jews when “Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord”; or when a modern Mohammedan charges home upon a British square with “Allah” on his dying lips. Incomprehensible to some, it is a feeling that has to be taken serious account of in the last great Civil War in England.

So Basing fell. It was “now the twentieth garrison that hath been taken in the summer by this army; and I believe most of them the answer of the prayers, and trophies of the faith of some of God’s servants.”

So thought Mr. Peters in that year of grace 1645, and so thought many who, in the Commons House of Parliament, heard him tell his story of how Basing fell.

With the death of the king in 1649 came the real beginning of the end. This is no place to discuss the merit or demerit of a step so serious that it only finds a partial parallel in the action of Elizabeth towards Mary of Scotland. But two great results grew out of it: the proclamation of Charles II. as King of Scotland, and the invitation of Ormond to Ireland, where also Charles was hailed as the new sovereign. From this came the last two wars of the Commonwealth, the first of which was fought in Ireland. There anarchy reigned. Petty war was the normal condition of the rather more than half-savage clans. There had been a massacre of Protestants, variously estimated at from forty thousand to a hundred thousand, under circumstances of the “most revolting barbarity; ... men, women and children they indiscriminately murdered, in a manner of which the details recall those of the massacre of Cawnpore.” This fact must be gravely borne in mind in considering the English invasion, and must be added to the fierce religious hatred and the increasingly intense political antagonism which the latest events had once more brought to the front. There is much to be said for the bitter revenge taken by the stern Protestant party, which composed the army sent to destroy the Irish people who had done their utmost to aid the monarchical cause in the late war.

To the sectaries it was no mere word-painting to say that Papacy was “Anathema,” and the Pope “Antichrist.” To break down the “carved images” was infinitely less a figure of speech in Irish churches than it was in English fanes. War in Ireland was to them a crusade, a religious war, a war of creeds as well as people; and the antagonism of peoples was little less than the antagonism of creeds. So alien were the Irish deemed, that, long before this, Pigott of Clotheram disinherited his eldest son merely for marrying an Irishwoman! Often conquered before, never had this unhappy land been more completely subdued than now. Yet even with this “curse of Cromwell” came peace and prosperity. “Districts which had recently been as wild as those where the first white settlers of Connecticut were contending with the red men, were in a few years transformed into the likeness of Kent and Norfolk. New buildings and new roads were everywhere seen.” Rightly or wrongly, he held that war was not made with rosewater any more than omelettes without breaking eggs. He may have been, and probably was, quite conscientious when he wrote: “Truly I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood.”

It is not just to severely condemn Cromwell for his action in Ireland. He lived in the seventeenth, not the nineteenth century, and acted according to his lights. His Irish campaigns have been described as “a series of blood-massacres, the just punishment of atrocious deeds, or as the fanatical orgie of a tyrant. This was a complete perversion of fact, and Cromwell’s conduct in Ireland had yet to be judged impartially by a candid historian and by a competent thinker on war. No doubt he was a stern and severe conqueror; no doubt they turned their eyes away from Wexford and Drogheda; no doubt Cromwell and his avenging host regarded Celtic Papists as accursed idolaters, dripping with the carnage of 1641, and to be trodden under foot, like the doomed tribes of Palestine were crushed ‘at the bidding of the Lord’; but when he set foot in Ireland, he had to deal with a nation in armed and furious revolt, which had a country difficult in the extreme to penetrate. The experiences of previous Irish wars had shown, that under conditions like these, it was essential to strike hard at once, and the peculiarities of the Irish climate, fatal in the seventeenth century to British troops, made it necessary to avoid the inland districts, and, if possible, to obtain immediate success. These considerations explained his deeds in Ireland. He was pitiless and inexorable, but he acted upon a far-sighted policy, and his generalship was bold, decided, and brilliant. His severity at Drogheda, he told them himself, was calculated ‘to prevent the effusion of blood.’ Just as Villars deliberately starved Fribourg, just as the garrison of Pampeluna would have been put to the sword had it not yielded to the summons of Wellington.”[12]

Whatever be the criticism of the means he employed, the end was that all open rebellion had ceased by 1653.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, too, the war-cloud had again burst; and though Fairfax resigned rather than invade that country, Cromwell either had less scruples, or was more firmly determined to put down all armed insurrection to the Republic, and assumed command of a fresh army of the North.

But the actions were, except that at Dunbar, disconnected and inconclusive. There were the usual small affairs, minor sieges and operations in an exceptionally difficult country. Whether Cromwell wilfully left the doorway into England open or not is doubtful, though Colonel Walford is of opinion he did; but be that as it may, the Scotch army fell into a trap, marched into England as far as Worcester, and there met what Cromwell and his party thought the crowning mercy of defeat. His army had marched to that victory for twenty-four days, and had covered in that time 350 miles.

Thus in Scotland, as in Ireland, the stern discipline of Cromwell’s army, though the religious feeling was in this case more or less common to both, prevailed when the time came. Notwithstanding the theoretical, and to a certain extent practical, sympathy which linked the two nations of Great Britain together, all the wild and undoubted bravery of the Northern Celt availed the royal cause at the end as little as, or even less than, that of his more emotional brother across the channel of St. George. But it must be remembered that the racial antipathy between the two great branches of the inhabitants of Britain had never been so accentuated, certainly not for half a century, as that which existed then, and long after, between the Irish and the British.

What is clear in this last campaign is, that Cromwell had little in common with those who governed the sister kingdom. “You ken very well,” said the Lord Chancellor of Scotland in 1645, “that Lieutenant-General Cromwell is no friend of ours.” He knew this, and his personal and possibly religious antipathies were therefore in no wise lessened.

But with the general and steady improvement in the systematic conduct of war that is increasingly apparent as time went on, there is evidence of an attempt at organising a system of supply; an attempt that, though in a very sketchy and elementary way, foreshadows the higher strategy that is more and more noticeable as the eighteenth century grew from youth to old age.

There is no doubt that in many of the battles the baggage trains were more considerable than heretofore, and formed an important element in the operations of the campaign. Instances of their presence, in sufficient strength to be mentioned in the contemporary accounts, are shown both in the first battle of Newbury, where they were collected at Hampstead Park; as also at Naseby, where, far in rear of Mill Hill, Rupert attacked Fairfax’s baggage train and its guard. Essex, in his march to Newbury in 1643, complains of the want of food and the difficulty in foraging, owing to the small amount of supplies they could carry; and in passing through Aldbourne two ammunition waggons broke down, and were consequently blown up. Doubtless they were even then only improvised from private sources, and only the ordinary vehicles used in the districts where war was being carried on were employed. Even then, be it remembered, roads were still few and bad, though probably more numerous and somewhat better than when Barnet was fought. But firearms and what not had increased the importance of not being dependent for supplies on what could be locally collected in towns and villages, or what the soldier could himself carry; and thus with the need for their replenishment at recognised bases, and their protection before, during, and after a battle, began the true strategy of modern war. Supply trains, organised supply trains, alone render an army really mobile and capable of carrying out a connected serious plan of campaign.

Again, comparing the time that was to come with that at this time existing, Marmont writes to Berthier in 1812: “I arrived at the headquarters of the north in January last: I did not find a grain of corn in the magazine; nothing anywhere but debts; and a real or fictitious scarcity, the natural result of the absurd system of administration which has been adopted. Provisions for each day’s consumption could only be obtained with arms in our hands. There is a wide difference between that state and the possession of magazines which can enable an army to move;” and later on: “The army of Portugal at this season is incapable of acting, and if it advanced beyond the frontier, it would be forced to return after a few days, having lost all its horses. The Emperor has ordered great works at Salamanca; he appears to forget that we have neither provisions to feed the workmen nor money to pay them, and that we are in every sense on the verge of starvation.”

What was true in Spain in 1812 must have been infinitely more so in 1644. The country was not rich in any way, and the armies were, for a poor country, considerable. But another step forward in the art of war is faintly indicated in the greater mobility, because more regular attention to supply, that characterises the armies of the Civil War as compared with those of York and Lancaster.

Thus the great Civil War terminated in a considerable change both in the tactical and strategical condition of the army. It left behind a true “army of the people,” such as England had never seen before, and probably will never see again. If in previous wars the mass had followed the lead of the few, in the middle of the seventeenth century the Civil War had affected the mass and not the few only. There was a greater feeling of individualism; and, unlike previous armies, either of feudalism or of Saxondom, which was essentially more or less the compulsory service of a militia, it was a force recruited by a voluntary system. But this was of two kinds.

The soldiers of the king were essentially volunteers, serving very largely without pay, or even contributing to the royal military chest; those of his opponent were also voluntarily enlisted, but received pay from the resources of the State, over which Parliament had the chief control.

At first, therefore, the former afforded far the best fighting material. They were largely—and entirely, as far as their leaders were concerned—gentlemen and men accustomed to the use of arms, but there they remained, and showed little aptitude of infusing into their natural martial ardour the stern and necessary tonic of discipline. On the other hand, the early armies of the Parliament were “hirelings whom want and idleness had reduced to enlist.” Even Hampden’s regiment, one of the best of any, was described by Cromwell as a “mere rabble of tapsters and serving-men out of place.” No one saw this more than Cromwell, and it is that instinct which makes him stand out among the leaders of the Civil War. No one more fully recognised than he that “you must get men of spirit: of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else I am sure you will be beaten still.” The metal might be there, but it wanted tempering, and the opportunity for this the “self-denying ordinance” gave. By means of this the army was purged of all its weaker parts. As Cromwell had organised his own special regiment, so did he infuse into the rest of the force some of the stern enthusiasm that made his Ironsides “very devils”[13] in battle, fearless and fearful factors in the fight. They “prospered because they were much in prayer and reading Scripture, an exercise that till of late soldiers have used but little.” They “were constant, conscientious, sober, strict, and thus conquered much upon the vanity and looseness of the enemy. Men fought on principle as well as for pay; they were little mutinous in disputing commands, fair in their marches, to friends merciful in battle, and in success to their enemies.” Finally their commissioners were “wise, provident, active, faithful in providing ammunition, arms, recruits, of men’s clothes, and that family must needs strive that hath good stewards.” It was inured to war, therefore, by a series of campaigns in which strategical as well as tactical conditions were beginning to be foreshadowed. Its organisation was more complete and thorough than heretofore, its men were imbued with the stern religious enthusiasm which has ever rendered such armies dangerous. It knew its strength and had gauged it by its continued success; what it had had to do had been God-directed (so its leaders and rank and file thought, or professed to think), and bore the imprint of immediate divine direction.

Thus it was, when the great Protector died, that the army he left was probably the most formidable body of armed men the world had ever seen.

Socially and morally, pecuniarily and theologically, it was peculiar. “The pay of the private soldier was much above the wages earned by the great body of the people,[14] and if he distinguished himself by intelligence and courage, he might hope to attain high commands. The ranks were accordingly composed of persons superior in station and education to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral, diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been induced to take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of novelty and licence, not by the arts of recruiting officers, but by religious and political zeal, mingled with the desire of distinction and promotion. The boast of the soldiers, as we find it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was, that they had not been forced into the service, nor had enlisted chiefly for the sake of lucre, that they were no janissaries, but free-born Englishmen, who had, of their own accord, put their lives in jeopardy for the liberties and religion of England, and whose right and duty it was to watch over the welfare of the nation which they had saved.”[15]

Such a body was none the less a distinct menace to the State it had armed itself to protect. So strong an engine for defence against the tyranny of monarchy was equally a possible engine of oppression to the rest of the body politic in the hands of an autocratic or incapable ruler.

It had compelled Richard Cromwell to dissolve Parliament, and by “this act left the people at the mercy of an irresponsible authority, and without representation or means of appeal.”

It is curious to see, therefore, how the first voluntary national army, long embodied, produced an antagonism, among the mass of the people, to standing armies altogether, a feeling which lasts even until now in theory, if not in fact.

When Charles II. entered London in triumph, the sombre Ironside soldiery must have felt their reign was over. If they did not, the people did. For with the “Happy Restoration” of the monarchy, the dread of a military supremacy, whether of king or dictator, was strong enough to decree that the army of the Commonwealth should be totally disbanded.

So, for a short time at least, the army ceased to be. Its men soberly disappeared as a mass into private life; but so good was its warlike material, that “the Royalists themselves confessed that in every department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an alms, and that if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability one of Oliver’s old soldiers.”[15]

Of the royal force there is nothing to be said, except that in displaying the national bravery they added nothing to the military knowledge and strength of the country when the sword was sheathed. It is not from them, but from their stern, more resolute, and better trained adversaries that we have to look for the germs of the future army of the State. After the war in 1652, the total force of the Protector’s army was 31,519 men in England, and about 20,000 in Ireland, though during the war it seems to have numbered at the highest about 80,000 men.

So, till Richard Cromwell disappeared, Great Britain not only possessed a standing army, but was practically governed by it. To the very fact that this was so may be directly traced its nearly entire disappearance; and, curiously enough, to the dread of it, when Charles II. returned, may be confidently attributed its reluctant restoration to safeguard the State he ruled.

CHAPTER IV
THE ARMY OF THE KING—TO 1701

Two important results affecting the composition and growth of the army which, after the Restoration, was to replace that of the “Commonwealth,” were apparent when Cromwell died. The number of well and continuously trained soldiers in Great Britain was far larger than at any previous period, and therefore formed a large nucleus from which a fresh, freely enlisted body could be recruited. It is difficult otherwise to account for the brilliant fighting power of the men who again began to make the name of the English army respected on the Continent, as in the days of Crecy and Poitiers. Many of those who fought under William were probably old soldiers of the latter part of the Civil War; while even those who had not taken an active share in the campaign of King and Cromwell, must have heard much of the bravery of their fathers, and of the glory—a feeling rightly common to both factions—won by the fighting power of those who had so recently passed away.

Armies, especially during long years of peace, live much upon past honours and tradition; and that which had now to be formed could not, if it tried, dissociate itself from the widespread military spirit that prolonged hostilities had aroused and permanently created. As in our days the memory of Peninsular victories lives to fan the flame of military ardour and national courage, so doubtless the “old man eloquent,” whether Cavalier or Roundhead, was listened to by his children, or grandchildren, at his knee with interest and wonder, when he descanted on how Rupert charged at Naseby, or how the trained bands stood the shock at Newbury.

It is curious to note how rapidly, as far as time goes, active hostility between the late antagonists died out or simmered down. Nor is the reason far to seek. The war was unquestionably conscientious on both sides. Who can think otherwise when the death of Hampden on the one hand, or of Falkland on the other, is taken into account? The disease of political disagreement had to be cured by the stern tonic of cold shot and sharp steel, and both antagonists in their several ways must have sorrowed over the painful need. Certainly Falkland did. That the antagonism so speedily ceased to be active, is strongly typical of the English character. Fight out the battle of opinion if you will, but when the contest is decided, then let the old friendships resume their pleasant sway. Thus it was that within one generation many a reconciliation had been effected, many an old sore healed; and as time went on, the flowers of a more kindly appreciation of the good that lay on both sides sprang up over the re-cemented factions, as the flowers of the summer days had sprung up over the graves of Roundhead and Cavalier.

Though Parliament had decreed that the army should be entirely disbanded, and the operation was actually begun, it had calculated without its host. There were many stern fanatics who viewed their loss of power with anything but favour. Crack-brained Thomas Venner created a rising in London of the extremest sect of religious enthusiasts, the fifth-monarchy men, and proclaimed the reign of “King Jesus.” This menace to the public peace arrested the total abolition of the army. Some form of military police was evidently necessary, and therefore a reluctant permission was given for the formation of a small force for the “guards and garrisons” of the king. They were to be raised by him, and paid by him out of the State allowance for the support of the royal estate, and were not to exceed three thousand men. They consisted of the Yeomen of the Guard, the Gentlemen-at-Arms (founded by Henry VII. and Henry VIII. respectively), the Life and Horse Guards or “Oxford Blues” (so called from its commanding officer, the Earl of Oxford, and to distinguish them from a Dutch regiment of horse, which was also clad in blue), and the Coldstream Guards, raised from Monk’s own regiment of foot. Their duties were to hold the Tower, Portsmouth, etc., and guard the king’s person; but in addition the “Guard” especially was “employed as police or thief-takers, patrolling the high roads, suppressing conventicles, and at the London playhouses keeping the peace.” The Household Cavalry were at first called “Troops of Life Guards of Horse,” and the 2nd, or “Queen’s Troop,” wore green facings in honour of Queen Catherine. But the dread of an army was very slow in dying, even with so small a force as the king could now command. As soon after this as 1673, the Commons resolved to grant no more supplies until secured against Popery, and in 1674 the Commons voted “that any armed force in the kingdom, excepting the militia, was a grievance.”[16] In case of foreign war, therefore, armies were hastily levied for a campaign, and as hastily disbanded when hostilities ceased, and peace was declared. Thus, after a war, the country was overrun with discharged soldiers, who were little better than bandits. Roads were not safe to travel, for highwaymen abounded; and a fresh war was a relief to both robber and robbed in more ways than one. The licence of the camp in the days of the later Stuarts (unlike the sobriety of the “Army of the Saints”) was also not likely to furnish a peaceful population.

Foreign wars and the constant dread of domestic broils were therefore gradually wearing down the Parliamentary reluctance to the professional soldier. The marriage of Charles added the 2nd Queen’s Tangier Regiment, with its badge of the Paschal Lamb (the badge of the Royal House of Portugal), the 3rd Buffs (or Holland Regiment, originally the 4th in order, and so called from its facings), and the 1st Royals (or Dumbarton’s Regiment), to the permanent Army List; while the troops recalled from Dunkirk in 1662 became the Grenadier Guards. The Admiral’s Regiment (so called from the Duke of York, its colonel, the Lord High Admiral of England, and really the first force of marines) was created before the Buffs, but soon after was incorporated in the Guards. The occupation of Tangier had also strengthened the army by the troop of horse that was the forerunner of the 1st Royal Dragoons, and by a regiment that, transferred to the East India Company, became eventually the 103rd Bombay Fusiliers. Thus, by the Peace of Nimeguen, there had been some twenty thousand men under arms. Finally the militia had been placed under the lords-lieutenants of counties, to whom was granted the appointment of the officers.

In these early days, the regiments first paid nominally by the sovereign were, as time went on, borne on the strength of three “establishments,” Irish, Scotch, and English, a method of distributing their cost over the sum granted for the administration respectively of each of these sections of the State. The first of these appears in the reign of Edward IV., the second after the union of the Scotch and English crowns,—before which time officers of the Scottish army had to take an oath of fealty to the Estates of Scotland, and not to the sovereign,[17]—and the cost of each establishment slightly varied in detail. Hence we find in the list of the Scotch Establishment of 1678, the Earl of Mar’s Fusiliers, afterwards the 21st Foot, which was brought on the English Establishment in 1689, and dates its seniority, therefore, from that year. The seniority of regiments was ordered by the royal will, and depended on the date on which they came on the English Establishment; and thus, though the Coldstream Guards had been among the first to welcome the Restoration of the king, on the return of the Grenadiers from Dunkirk, it was decreed that “our own Regiment of Foot Guards shall be held and esteemed the oldest regiment.”[18] Each company had at that time a colour, and, in the Guards only, a company badge, but the Grenadiers seem never to have been wholly armed with the “grenade,” and the name was only given after Waterloo, where they had defeated the French Grenadiers. Similarly the “Royal Scots,” constituted as a regiment in 1633, dates its seniority by order from 1661. Its nickname of “Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard” is said to have arisen from a dispute with a French officer, who declared that his regiment had been on duty the night before the Crucifixion; to which his opponent replied, “Had we been on duty, we should not have slept on our post.” It is probably the oldest organised regiment in existence, and is descended lineally from the Scottish Archer-Guard of the French kings, first raised by Charles III. in the ninth century. Naturally also the “Irish Establishment” ceased with the Union. Some of these early regiments were possibly recruited from the London trained bands, and it is because of this that the Royal Marines, the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards, the Royal London Militia, and the 3rd Buffs claim the right, shared by no other foot regiment, of marching through the city with fixed bayonets, drums beating, and colours flying.

At first, too, regiments were known by the name of their colonel; and the numbers and definite regulations as to the colour and clothing of regiments were not issued until 1751. Territorial designations were added to the numbers in 1782, and the present titles were given in 1881.

So that when Charles II. died, the fear of Puritan risings and the beginning of a foreign policy which the occupation of Tangier had initiated, and which the war with the Dutch in 1665, and that with the French three years later, emphasised, led to the permanent organisation, as regiments, of the Grenadier, Coldstream, and Scots Fusilier Guards, the 1st Royals, the 2nd Queen’s, and the 3rd Buffs, with the 1st and 2nd Life Guards and the Horse Guards. The standing army had thus increased from three thousand to about eight thousand men. The cavalry regiments were formed of from three to eight troops, and the foot regiments had twelve companies. Though dressed in scarlet, the relics of body armour were long retained in the cuirass, and, with the men, the pot helmet in addition; but the officers wore plumed hats. The arms of the mounted troops were sword and carbine, with pistols having barrels fourteen inches long, and throwing a ball of fourteen to the pound. The infantry carried, some the sixteen-foot pike, and others a musket of a calibre similar to the pistol, the cartridges of which were carried in a bandolier. The bandolier was a leather belt worn over the shoulder, from which depended a series of small wooden boxes, each containing a charge: the bullets were carried in a bag, whence the present name of “ball-bag” for the soldier’s ammunition pouch is derived. Before beginning to load, the bullet was frequently placed in the mouth.

During this period, too, the bayonet was introduced, but at first was a simple dagger screwed or stuck in the muzzle of the firelock, and known as a “plug-bayonet.” It took its name from Bayonne, where it was first made, and is first mentioned in a British Royal Warrant of 1672 in the armament of a regiment of dragoons who were to have “the matchlock musket, a collar of bandoliers, and a bayonet or great knife.”

But perhaps the most noteworthy reminiscence of those days is the foundation of Chelsea Hospital for old and disabled soldiers, for which the army has to thank that somewhat notorious lady, Nell Gwynne.

Tradition has it that, struck by the appeal of a beggar who had been wounded in war, she persuaded her royal lover to found this beneficent institution, and proved again to the army that women are at the bottom of most things, whether they be good or bad. As a set-off to this, the normal impecuniosity of Charles II. had led to the sale of army commissions, and to the institution of the system of promotion by purchase, which lasted until 1872.

The accession of James II., and the consequent rebellion of Monmouth in the interest, nominally, of Protestantism, led to the first serious increase of the standing army; but again it is curious to note that Monmouth’s own manifesto at Lyme Regis, where he landed, brings prominently forward the proposal to have no standing army at all, but only the militia. This is proof positive, if such were needed, that a permanent military force, such as it then was, was still unpopular in England.

There was no fighting worth mentioning in James’s reign save at Sedgmoor, and there the only noteworthy points are the failure of the night attack, through faulty and imperfect reconnaissance; and the fact that Sergeant Weems of the 1st Royals received a gratuity of £40 for serving the “great guns in an emergency.” The true use of artillery was not understood, evidently, and the guns were attached to infantry regiments (as they were later, and singly, to cavalry squadrons), and James organised an “ordnance regiment” armed with fusils, for the protection of his artillery, which finally became the Royal Fusiliers. The only point of interest in the dreary slaughter of the vanquished after the battle of Sedgmoor, in which the Somersetshire clown, ill-armed and wounded, showed the greatest gallantry, is the stern repression exercised by Colonel Kirke of the 2nd Queen’s, whose regimental badge of the Paschal Lamb acquired an ominous significance when applied to the cruelties inflicted by his men after the rebels were defeated. “Kirke’s Lambs,” they were named, in derision, from their regimental badge. Sedgmoor was the last serious battle fought on English soil.

But the army had largely increased none the less. The troops at Tangiers had been recalled. The king dreamed of using the army as a means of overawing the country, and formed at Hounslow the first camp of exercise for field manœuvres. But this effort to gain the army’s support was made in vain. The 12th Regiment grounded its arms en masse rather than agree to support the repeal of the Test Penal Law; the cheering of the soldiery at the acquittal of the Seven Bishops was an unpleasant reminder that they were not with him in sympathy; and the effort to introduce Irish Catholics in numbers into the purely Protestant regiments met with the strongest opposition. “No man of English blood,” says Macaulay, “then regarded the aboriginal Irish as his countrymen; the very language spoken by the Irish was different from their own.” No wonder, therefore, that there was friction, such as found its full expression in the resignation of their commissions by the colonel and five captains of the 8th Foot—resignations which were not accepted, the offenders being tried by court martial and cashiered. It is curious to note that Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, thought the sentence inadequate.

So the army as a whole proved but a rotten reed to the second James. An increase to the standing army, which all feared, an oppressive use of the billeting law, and an evident desire to employ martial law, cost him his crown. So that when the Prince of Orange landed in Tor Bay there was little active opposition. The Dutch troops won the admiration of the invaded by their discipline, admirable equipment, and good behaviour; and so, to the tune of what at the time was a popular air, “Lillibulero bullen a la,” William marched on through Windsor to London, and became king. Still there was a considerable number of men in the ranks who were but lukewarm adherents to the Dutch-born sovereign, and all Ireland was still openly and avowedly hostile. The army by this time had been increased by six regiments of horse (now the 1st to the 6th Dragoon Guards): the 1st Royal Dragoons (brought on the English Establishment in 1683); the 2nd Dragoons (at first on the Scotch Establishment in 1681); the 3rd and 4th Light Dragoons (now Hussars); the 4th to the 14th Regiments of the line; the 15th (on the Scotch Establishment apparently), and the 16th, which was created, disbanded and re-formed later. The 18th Regiment had been formed in Ireland before this, out of a number of independent Irish companies, and was on the Irish Establishment, but did not receive its numerical seniority until later.

Peace, with such conflicting elements as Irish Romanists, English Protestants, Scotch Jacobites, and the Dutch elements introduced into the country, could not be of long duration. The smouldering embers of civil war broke into a flame both in the West and North. For James had, with French support, landed in Ireland, and was received with the greatest enthusiasm; while in Scotland some thousands of Highlanders were in arms, under Claverhouse, now Viscount Dundee. Against them, Mackay, with the 21st, the King’s Own Borderers or Edinburgh Regiment, and the 13th, with some irregulars, was despatched. He met them at Killiecrankie, where the Highland charge broke the more disciplined ranks, but the battle, which only lasted two minutes, says an old writer with obvious exaggeration, was practically terminated by the death of Dundee. The officers who had then been under arms for their king retired to France, and, after undergoing the bitterest privations, were formed into a company of ordinary soldiers under their own officers. This “gentlemen company” behaved with the utmost bravery whenever engaged. In 1697 they attacked an island in the Rhine with such headlong bravery that it still bears the name of “Isle d’Ecosse,” and the Marquis de Sella signed himself with the cross when he personally thanked each officer for what he and his men had done. In these isolated cases of determined courage, not confined to the English, but displayed equally by the Irish Brigade or by Scottish regiments serving in foreign armies, the true camaraderie of those who serve under the “Union Jack” as soldiers, it may be hoped, will always be found.

The troubles in Ireland were more prolonged and serious, and required a further addition to the army of the 7th “Horse,” the 6th Dragoons, and the 7th Dragoons. The 18th, weeded of the Roman Catholic recruits, was reorganised; and also appeared the 17th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd (raised by that staunch Protestant the Duke of Norfolk in Wiltshire); and the 23rd (formed by Lord Herbert of Cherbury in Wales with its badge of the Black Prince, the rising sun, the red dragon, the three feathers, and the motto Ich Dien; it is headed on parade even now by a white goat, and its marching-past air is the “Men of Harlech”); the 25th (enlisted eight hundred strong in two hours by Lord Leven for the defence of Edinburgh, and having for its gallantry afterwards, at Killiecrankie, the right of “beating up” the town of Edinburgh for recruits without the “special permission of the provost”); while the 26th, or Cameronians, was enrolled in one day two hundred strong without any beat of drum, and was punctiliously careful that their officers should be “men such as in conscience they could submit to,” and required besides a chaplain “an elder to each of its twenty companies.” Finally, the 27th and 28th Regiments were added to the gradually increasing standing army. This was at the direct instigation and at the direct appeal of William III.; but the Commons, in agreeing to the proposed increase, only did so on the condition that it was to be paid by the State, and not out of the royal purse. It was the beginning of the Parliamentary recognition of a real standing army paid by taxation. The 24th was also raised in Ireland about the same time, and was therefore borne on that establishment; as also was the 5th Dragoons.

Many of these regiments served in the Irish campaign in which the sieges of Londonderry and Enniskillen by James stand out so prominently on the one side, as do the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim on the other.

The latter battle was not of long duration, and was decisive. The combatants were distinguished on the one side by green boughs in their hats, and the Irish by white paper. The 23rd behaved with great gallantry, and the spurs of Major Toby Purcell, who led the regiment on that day, are still preserved by the senior major for the time being. It is unnecessary to enter fully into the details of the campaign or its battles; but it may be well to record that of existing regiments, the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th of the line, the 1st, 6th, and 7th among the cavalry, and the 8th, 9th, 12th, 13th, 18th, 20th, 22nd, 23rd, and 27th Regiments of foot fought in the Irish wars, though the Dutch regiment claimed to have borne the brunt of battle at the Boyne in 1690, where old Marshal Schomberg fell. But the battle of Aughrim in 1691 practically completed the conquest of Ireland, and the fall of Limerick led to the exile of thousands of brave Irishmen, who preferred service in France to the English yoke, and who formed the nucleus of that “Irish Brigade” whose gallantry is conspicuous in all the battle history of that time. In no case is this more conspicuous than in the defence of Cremona in 1702, where Burke’s and Dillon’s regiments lost fully one-third of their strength, and by their own desperate fighting forced Eugene to abandon an assault that at first seemed likely to be successful. Well might the contemporary poet write of them—

“News, news in Vienna! King Leopold’s sad.
News, news in St. James’s! King William is mad.
News, news in Versailles! Let the Irish Brigade
Be loyally honoured and royally paid.
News, news in old Ireland! High rises her pride,
And high sounds her wail for the brave who have died,
And deep is her prayer—‘God send I may see
Macdonell and Mahoney fighting for me!’”

So with the continental part of the war with France, in which William had allied himself with the Netherlands, the Austrian empire, and others, because of the aggressive and menacing aspect of Louis XIV., was resuscitated the renown of the English infantry. At Steinkirke fought the predecessors of the Horse Guards, the 4th Hussars, the 3rd, 4th, and 6th Dragoons, the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards, the 4th, 6th, 7th, 10th, and 16th Foot, the 19th, 21st, the 1st Royals, the 25th, and the 26th battalions of the line; and so close was the action that “in the hedge fighting their fire was generally muzzle to muzzle, the hedge only separating the combatants.” Ten battalions of British troops held in check thirty of the French, and one battalion alone “drove four battalions of the enemy from their cannon.” Here it was that “Corporal Trim”—really Corporal James Butler—was ridden down in the retreat, and where he blames Count Solmes: “‘He had saved five battalions, an please your reverence, every soul of them. There was Cutts’,’ continued the corporal, clapping the forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of his left, and counting round his hand, ‘there was Cutts’, Mackay’s, Angus’s, Graham’s, and Leven’s, all cut to pieces; and so had the English Life Guards too, had it not been for some regiments on the right, who marched up boldly to their relief, and received the enemy’s fire in their faces before any one of their platoons discharged a musket. They’ll go to heaven for it,’ added Trim. ‘Trim is right,’ said my Uncle Toby.” Landen, too, where were present the Coldstreams, Scots Guards, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 16th Foot, etc., as well as much cavalry, and Neerwinden, showed the extraordinary gallantry of the British troops, especially of the 6th Carabineers, and on that field fell Count Solmes himself, as well as one of the most gallant of the Irish leaders in the Boyne campaign—Sarsfield, who was shot, though not at the head of the Irish Brigade he loved so well. It was one of the bloodiest battles of the time, and the stubborn fighting of both sides resulted in 20,000 dead being left on the field. The next summer the soil so fertilised “broke forth into millions of poppies,” and it seemed as if “the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood and refusing to cover the slain.”

Finally the siege of Namur stands out prominently as the marked success in the campaign, and gives to one regiment, the 18th, the motto of “Virtutis Namurcensis Præmium.” It lost 297 of all ranks in the final attack. The regiments present in this famous siege were 1st, 5th, 6th, 7th Dragoon Guards, the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Dragoons, the 4th and 7th Light Dragoons, the 5th, 15th, 18th, and 19th Foot, forming one division to keep in check the relieving force of Marshal Villeroy. The other was composed of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 16th, and 17th Foot, to carry out the actual siege operations. The greatest gallantry was shown throughout by both sides; but the place finally fell, and it is curious to note the punctiliousness of the soldiers of those days in that Marshal Boufflers, though all the fortress had been captured save only the castle, and though Villeroy was powerless to raise the siege, would not capitulate without an assault. Unnecessary as it was, it was undertaken, at the cost of 2000 men, and for the first time a great fortress was surrendered by a French marshal to a British general. Here it was that Sterne’s “Captain Shandy” was wounded in the groin before the gate of St. Nicholas. Lord, formerly Colonel, Cutts, of the regiment that bore his name, and to which another novelistic hero (this time one of Thackeray’s), in the person of “Count Maximilian Gustavus Adolphus von Galgenstein,” is presumed to have belonged, behaved with his usual gallantry; and, says contemporaneous authority, “the bravery of our infantry was very remarkable, for they forced the enemy from several posts where they were very well lodged.”

Of this Cutts, the colonel of a regiment of old time, it is said that “few considerable actions happened in the wars in which he was not, and hath been wounded in all the actions in which he served”; and again: “In that bull-dog courage which flinches from no danger, however terrible, he was unrivalled.” There was no difficulty in finding hardy volunteers, German, Dutch, and British, to go on a forlorn hope; but Cutts was the only man who appeared to consider such an expedition as a party of pleasure. He was so much at his ease in the hottest fire of the French batteries that his soldiers gave him the honourable name of “The Salamander.” He was a fighting man of the time; became baronet first, and was then raised to the peerage, and of him it was written—

“The warlike Cutts the welcome tidings brings,
The true, brave servant of the best of kings—
Cutts, whose known worth no herald need proclaim,
His wounds and his own worth can speak his fame.”

Still, with all that, he had not enough science to make a general.

During this period armour was still gradually being abandoned, though the cuirass was worn by mounted troops and to some extent by the officers of the line regiments. The beaver hats of the cavalry were lined with steel and the legs were protected by heavy jack-boots. The ranks of the infantry had been reduced to six, and were still further being lessened in depth. The companies, about 100 strong, still had, in 1680, 30 pikemen, 60 matchlock men, and 10 men armed with a light fusil to pick off conspicuous leaders; but three years later the English Guards were furnished with “snaphaunce” muskets, with flint, or pyrites, locks, and the bandoliers were replaced by pouches. In 1695, the king directed that the “cap” was to be worn by the Royal and Scots Fusiliers and the Grenadiers of each regiment. The others wore the three-cornered hat. The company was by then 60 strong, with only 14 pikemen, and the officers carried pikes, partisans, or half-pikes. Pikes were not entirely abandoned until about 1705.

The pay of the cavalry soldier was 1s. 6d. per day, out of which he had to keep his horse; that of the private was but 8d. per day. The cavalry regiments were organised in four squadrons, much as they are now, and were being armed with sword and pistol. The artillery alone were only partly organised as an “arm” of battle, and had made little progress save in construction from the time of the Civil War; but the necessity for military engineers had arisen, and Captain Burgh and Lieutenant Wallace remained “with the forces engaged in the siege of the castle (of Namur) in the capacity of engineers.”

But the growth of the permanent army had been steady. By the time Charles II. died, there were about 16,500 men enrolled, of whom about one-half were now regulars; in 1697 the total home and field army which has been variously estimated at from 80,000 to 65,000 men, had been again reduced—this time to what was liberally supposed to be the number on the English Establishment after Nimeguen, or about 10,000 men; but William’s proposal to permanently increase the army to 20,000 met with the greatest opposition. An amendment that the army in England should consist only of 7000 men, and those entirely British, was carried, and thus the Dutch guards of the king were disbanded, though apparently there were still some 12,000 men on the Irish Establishment and about 4000 on the Scotch, while there had been no objection to voting 15,000 men for the fleet. With this branch of our national defence there has always been greater liberality and less suspicion. This at least was mainly, if not entirely, defensive, was the absolutely necessary protector of our commerce, and could never have been a serious menace, so men seemed to think, to the peace or liberties of the realm. The amalgamation of the English and Scotch Establishments in 1707 had given precedence to the infantry in the case of the Royal Scots, but had placed the cavalry second, in the case of the Scots Greys, though they had been raised in 1681.

Still the army had much improved. The introduction of the first Mutiny Act in 1689, giving Parliamentary authority for officers to punish men for mutiny and desertion without reference to civil law, a power hitherto denied to them in Great Britain during peace, still further recognised the standing army as a constitutional force, besides the militia, which had been up to that time theoretically the only one; for it was not permanently paid or embodied. But before King William’s time the “method of voting men and money for the army annually had been introduced, to some extent.”

The distinguished gallantry of the men at Landen, Steinkirke, and Namur had called forth the reluctant admiration of foreign powers, and had converted this country into a power having Continental as well as insular interests:—“the English subaltern was inferior to no subaltern, and the English private soldier to no soldier in courage.” This criticism speaks for itself.

It is curious to notice how the political centre of gravity had changed. Before this time English armies had indeed fought Continental battles, but they were largely those in which only our real or fancied personal interests were concerned. Now, however, the English flag was to fly in causes alien to her own personal interests, and valuable only to the king and the country the king loved. For Holland first of all was really at the bottom of the “soldier king’s” action in leading the armies of Great Britain. His interests had always been Continental, and his personal influence, as well as other less important factors, was leading this country to assert herself and display her military value in his own national interest That William had some military skill is evident, but his action was rather that of a brave soldier than that of a great commander. By his own often reckless exposure, he aroused the spirits of his soldiery, and he did not fear to face danger, as Landen, where his clothes were several times pierced with bullets, proved. Yet, though apparently respected, he was little liked. The “asthmatic skeleton” who at Neerwinden “covered the slow retreat of England” had roused irritation among the officers. Dutch generals had been forced into high commands for which they showed no special capacity. Neither Schomberg nor Ginckel in Ireland had displayed marked ability; and Solmes at Steinkirke had evidenced an incomprehensible apathy in going to the help of Mackay’s British contingent; while, after Aughrim, when Ginckel had been raised to the peerage as Earl of Athlone, the veteran Mackay was left out in the cold. The British officers felt the incompetency of these foreign leaders, and also in the above battle that English soldiers had been sacrificed to save the Dutch Blues. The defeat at Neerwinden cost the army sixty-nine cannon and sixty standards. So often were Dutch and English colours captured in these early wars, that the Prince of Condé called King William the “Upholsterer of Nôtre Dame,” from the number of banners he had surrendered for the decoration of that building! The two medals for Landen, or Neerwinden, which the king struck, and which have the title “Invictissimus Guillemus Mag.,” have little significance, therefore. The men fought magnificently; the generalship was of no high order on the Allied side; and the results were meagre.

But if the officers cared little for the Dutch prince, the rank and file were not likely on their side to feel affection for a sovereign who introduced flogging into the army and keel-hauling into the navy. And, lastly, the cost of these wars, which were directly designed for the defence of Holland, cost this country some £33,000,000 of money and the establishment of a National Debt.

But Irish disturbance and foreign war had brought to the front the greatest soldier that this country has produced, and who was to carry the glory of the British army to the highest point. It was of Marlborough that, with regard to Ireland, the popular remark was made that “he had achieved more important results in one month, than the king’s phlegmatic Dutch friend had done in two campaigns”; it was of him that Prince Vaudemont, no mean judge, spoke, when he told the king that “there is something in the Earl of Marlborough that is inexpressible; for the fire of Kirke, the thought of Lanier, the skill of Mackay, and the bravery of Colchester seem united in his person; and I have lost my knowledge of physiognomy, if any subject you have can ever attain to such military glory as this combination of sublime perfections must advance him.”

He was not merely a fighting man, he was an educated soldier. His apprenticeship in France had shown him the value of discipline, and under William he was able and encouraged to enforce it. But he was above all a student of the art of war, and so left little to chance, for he recognised that “war is not a conjectural art,” but a science.

This was the man whom William, on his deathbed, commended to the coming queen as the fittest man to “conduct her armies or preside over her councils.” He was head and shoulders above the brave and hard-fighting Anglo-Dutch king in military genius, without a doubt. But “the weak point in his position was, that it depended on the personal favour of a stupid woman. When his wife lost her influence over Queen Anne, his political antagonists in England found no great difficulty in bringing about his disgrace.”

CHAPTER V
MARLBOROUGH AND HIS MEN—TO 1714

With the accession of Anne a fresh impetus was given to the national spirit, and therefore to the army, which was its natural exponent. An opinion by itself is valueless, but when backed up by threat of force, must necessarily be listened to. There was much to keep the military spirit alive, nothing to kill it down. There was a threatening and ominous war-cloud beyond the Scottish border, which might accumulate still more, and break with danger to the whole State, so long as there was a pretender to the throne. There was now a greater amount of intelligence, both as regards the understanding of what was going on abroad, as well as at home, among the people; and still greater was the amount and truthfulness of the news regarding such foreign affairs. The spread of information as to what British soldiers were doing elsewhere against the French and others, kept vigorously alive the memory of past success, whether such was counted from Agincourt by land, or Blake at sea. There was the beginning of the national principle of Empire, as compared with the mere cramped vestrydom of home affairs only. A nation that cares for nothing but such as these is provincial, not national, in its tastes and views. But enlarged interests produce enlarged ideas. The increasing necessity for an army was the first unwilling rift in the old provincial policy of isolation. England was being led, or forced, or both, to abandon her insular position and to take her place more actively among the nations, and the consequent need for that permanent national police, the army, was being slowly, though still reluctantly, recognised.

Private 14^th Reg^t. 1742.

But ill deeds take long a-dying. It was not yet a century since kings had tried to crush the freedom of a people, or since an army had taken the place of personal rule and had threatened another and still worse form of autocracy; still matters were mending. National poverty—for the country was then neither populous nor rich—may have had a little to do with past reluctance to enter the arena of European politics; and for a long time a natural dread of a despotism of any kind led a freedom-loving people to refuse supplies that might be used to create a weapon hostile to their continued liberty. But all strong nations, not governed by feminine hysteria or led by ill-balanced doctrinaires, like to feel themselves strong and respected abroad as well as at home. Blake had already shown the value of such a sentiment, but the time was hardly yet ripe for the full influence of his work to be felt. It was possibly but little known, generally, in his lifetime; for information, in the middle of the seventeenth century, was slow in spreading. Certainly it had not been fully grasped. But times were changing. National glory, once tasted, could not be maintained by keeping aloof from the broader work and interests of the world. The wars of Anne’s reign, in which Marlborough was the leading spirit, roused the bold fighting spirit that made the England of the eighteenth century, as the campaigns of the early part of the nineteenth century have kept that spirit from decay.

THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH

From an old print

But, more than this, an Englishman, the greatest of our national leaders, John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, Captain-General of the combined forces in the Netherlands, was not only to take a more prominent part in the coming war, was not only to enter into a campaign the theatre of which was to range from the Atlantic to the German Ocean, but was to command a more distinctly British contingent than in William’s reign, when British, Dutch, and even Danes fought under the same flag. And if the causes of the wars of the Dutch prince had been rather of a personal nature, as before remarked, those which now led the advisers of Queen Anne to take a vigorous offensive on the Continent, were to preserve that “Balance of Power in Europe,” which eventually became one of the special reasons advanced in the Mutiny Act for the continuous, large standing army in this country. The war was to check French oppression generally, for Europe’s sake, and to prevent a single small State from falling into her hands.

“The necessity of war is occasioned by the want of a supreme judge, who may decide upon the disputes of individuals.... In the failure of any perfect remedy, however, for the disorder of war, a corrector of its evils has been found in the system called the Balance of Power. Europe being divided into many separate states, it has been the established policy of all, that when any one by its aggrandisement, threatened the general safety, the rest should unite to defend their independence. Thus Louis XIV. was checked by England, Holland, and the Empire.”[19]

So the war-clouds again burst, with, on one side, a British, Dutch, and Austrian army under Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and a force of Spanish, Bavarians, and French under Tallard on the other; but the extension of the interest in foreign political war was not now confined only to the Continent, for seven regiments of infantry were also despatched to the West Indies, to attempt the capture of the enemy’s possessions in the Caribbean Sea and elsewhere.

There was much desultory fighting before the great battles whose names are borne on British colours were fought; for victories at Schellenburg, Bonn, Huy, etc., earned for the British general a dukedom before the battles of Blenheim, Ramilies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet were fought. Ramilies is remarkable for the fact that, though the contending forces were nearly equal, of the Allies only twenty-two battalions were English, and nine Scotch; and that Marlborough, by recognising that the French left was behind a marsh difficult to pass, neglected this side and attacked in strength the other flank with complete success. Here, too, an Irish regiment captured an English colour, which long hung in the Irish Benedictine Church at Ypres; and it was at Ramilies that the 25th King’s Own Borderers found the French had not to halt and fix the “plug” bayonet in the muzzle before charging, because they had adopted the socketed bayonet. Of the regiments that fought in these campaigns, the Coldstream Guards were at Oudenarde and Malplaquet only; the 28th and 29th at Ramilies; but all four of these great victories are borne on the colours of the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th Dragoon Guards, the 2nd Dragoons, the 5th Lancers, the Grenadier Guards, and the 1st, 3rd, 8th, 10th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 21st, 23rd, 24th, 26th, and 37th Regiments of the line.

At Oudenarde there was a slight superiority on the part of the French, and the battle is noteworthy for the presence and the gallant bearing of “the Prince Elector of Hanover,” who afterwards, as George II., fought at Dettingen. It was essentially an infantry battle, for the cavalry found little ground for their useful employment, and the artillery were scarcely engaged at all. The field was contested far into the darkness, and the French total loss in killed, wounded, and missing is reported to have amounted to 20,000 men.

Malplaquet ranks as the most sanguinary conflict of the four, and the loss of life almost exceeded the total of the other three. Among the distinguished historical names of the combatants is that of the “Chevalier de St. George,” who, as Marshal Boufflers says in his despatch, “behaved himself during the whole action with all possible bravery and vivacity,” and led twelve charges of the Household troops. Courage was common, therefore, to both aspirants for the British throne. The loss on both sides was heavy, that on the part of the Allies has been variously put at between 35,000 and 18,000 men (Villars); while the French loss was 15,000. Many of the veterans of these wars lived up to the present century, and one, Henry Francis of New York, died in 1820, aged 134.

Of all these battles, Blenheim offers the best type of the “order of battle” of the times. In a story that simply proposes to tell how our army came to be, and how and why it increased, any detailed reference to the causes of and even sequence of the successive wars is beyond its province. It will be sufficient, therefore, to recall to mind that the campaign in which Blenheim was the distinguishing feature arose, in the beginning, from the offensive action on the part of Louis XIV. in supporting the Stuarts, and in the support he gave to the claims of his grandson Philip to the throne of Spain. The odium theologicum was also a serious factor in the game. It was the ever recurring battle between the Catholicism of Rome and that of the other sections of Christianity antagonistic to the claims of the Romish Church.

It was nominally a coalition against France; at the bottom of it all was religious antagonism, and this notwithstanding the nature of the alliance. The Dutch wanted to preserve their frontiers, to protect their faith. The Imperial army wanted to check French aggression and support the Austrian candidature to the Spanish throne; while the alliance of Bavaria with France left the heart of Germany open to these allies. The defeat of the Emperor would destroy the Austrian hopes, and therefore the French, under Tallard, moved towards the valley of the Danube. Hence it was that Marlborough, grasping the situation and seeing the importance of the defeat of the main Franco-Bavarian army, decided on concentrating the allied forces in the valley of the Danube, as Napoleon did later at Ulm.[20]

Thus, after some unimportant tactical and strategical operations, the opposing armies found themselves approaching each other near the village of Blenheim, or Blindheim, between Dillingen and Donauwerth, on the north bank of the great river.

The road between these places is crossed by two streams running into the Danube. West of the first is Hochstadt, the usual name given to the battle by foreign writers; on the second, the Nebel, and close to the Danube, was “Blindheim,” with Unterglauheim, on a marshy space a short distance up the stream, and midway between the Danube and the wooded heights in which these small tributary streams rise. Between the rivulets lie parallel ledges of no great height; but, owing to the period of the year, the streamlet was practically passable—except possibly to cavalry and artillery—in most places. West of the Nebel were the Franco-Bavarians, and Tallard had viewed his front of battle as reduced to a series of defiles by the nature of the wet ground in front, and had moreover retired so far from the stream as to leave plenty of room for an assaulting column to deploy after it had crossed the comparatively insignificant obstacle. Thinking the centre naturally strong, Tallard therefore occupied Blenheim, which was strong enough almost to take care of itself, with twenty-six battalions and twelve squadrons.

Formation of the Lines of Battle at Blenheim 13^th August 1704.

The centre was practically composed of cavalry, eighty squadrons, and seven battalions. The left was held by Marsin from Oberglauheim farther up the Nebel to the wooded hill lands in strength with fourteen battalions (including the Irish Brigade) and thirty-six squadrons. On the east bank of the rivulet, Marlborough, arriving first, had to wait for his ally Eugene, and decided on holding or containing the enemy’s right with Cutts’ hard-fighting regiment; and, waiting for the similar attack by his ally on the enemy’s left, kept in hand a centre of 8000 cavalry in two lines in front and a force of infantry in second line behind. His artillery were posted to cover the passage of the stream, over which extra pontoon bridges had been thrown. So he waited until Eugene was ready to engage.

This happened about 1 p.m., and the battle on this side was hotly contested to the end, with varying results; indeed, the Irish Brigade assailed the infantry of Marlborough’s right centre with serious results, until checked, and finally Marsin was able to retreat in good order. Meanwhile, on the other flank, Cutts had been able to “contain” Blenheim, and then, about 5 p.m., Marlborough’s centre crossed between the villages of Unter and Oberglauheim, and, supported as far as possible by guns, vigorously attacked and broke the centre of the defence, and the battle was practically over. For the separation of the wings obliged Marsin to fall back on Dillingen; and Blenheim, with twenty-four battalions and twelve squadrons, was compelled to surrender.

The Allied loss came to about 5000 killed and 8000 wounded. Of the French, 12,000 were killed and 14,000 made prisoners; while all the cannon and stores, some 300 colours, the general commanding, and 12,000 officers, were captured.

The “advice to officers,” printed at Perth in 1795, tells a quaint story of the conduct of the men of the 15th Foot during the battle. One of the senior officers, who knew he was unpopular because of his severity with his men, turned round to them before getting under fire, and confessed he had been to blame, and begged to fall by the hands of the French, not theirs. “March on, sir,” replied a grenadier; “the enemy is before us, and we have something else to do than think of you now.” On the French giving way, the major took off his hat and cried, “Huzzah, gentlemen!—the day is our own”; and, so saying, he fell dead, pierced through the brain; whether even then accidentally or otherwise by some of his own men or by the enemy, will never be known. But the death of officers by other bullets than those of the enemy is no new thing, if past stories and tradition be true.

The victory had a twofold aspect. On the one side the political effect was enormous. It had checked for ever the idea of universal dominion which may have been in Louis’ mind. More than this, but for it the whole face of Europe might have been politically altered. Protestantism might have once more been overridden by Roman Catholicism; Stuarts and not Guelphs might have reigned in England; the growth of commercial enterprise and religious freedom might have received a serious check; and, to quote Alison without fully endorsing his views, it is possible that “the Colonial Empire of England might have withered away and perished, as that of Spain has done in the grasp of the Inquisition. The Anglo-Saxon race would have been arrested in its mission to overspread the earth and subdue it. The centralised despotism of the Roman Empire would have been renewed in Continental Europe. The chains of Romish tyranny, and with them the general infidelity of France before the Revolution, would have extinguished or prevented thought in the British Islands.” These are strong views and possibly exaggerated; but whatever danger might have accrued from French aggression, the victory of Blenheim effectually stopped it. On the other hand, from a military standpoint the battle shows a curious change in tactics, which forms a sort of link with those of the time preceding it and those that followed. The actual order of battle shows how little, even then, the true employment of the mounted arms with respect to the infantry was understood. For example, Tallard had sent, besides a crowd of infantry, into the confined village space of Blenheim, where the few could check the many, some twelve dragoon squadrons to be dismounted and fight on foot. He did not, evidently, understand or grasp the proportion of footmen necessary for mere passive defence, or the value of the defensive when the protective nature of the cover afforded by such a place was taken into account.

Nor was the relative support of the three arms of battle better understood. If in the past the men-at-arms formed the mainstay of the attack, so here, with a slight difference, is the same result apparent. Much as the infantry had improved and come to the front, it was, apparently, not even now recognised that it was a principal arm of battle, to which all others are accessory. Then, when the decisive moment of the day, about 5 p.m., came, the cavalry, some 8000 strong, were led by the duke himself against the French position. There was still personal leadership of men rather than the direction of them that the general showed. “The infantry were in support, with intervals between the battalions, so that the squadrons, if repulsed, might pass through.” The admixture of the dissimilar arms of infantry and cavalry in the same fighting line is still curious. Similarly, says General Kane, “the Gens d’armes ... began the battle by a most furious charge, and broke through part of the front line” of Cutts’ division.

The probable fact is that the cavalry, being more mobile than the infantry, whose fighting power depended on the fire-action, which was necessarily slow, were used for the real attack, as the infantry were less able to take a vigorous offensive. Besides, the enemy’s centre was composed chiefly of the mounted arm. The artillery, slow moving like the infantry, were brought up in support of the more mobile body. It was only therefore when the ground was hopelessly bad for the mounted arm, as at Oudenarde and Malplaquet, that the decisive blow was given by infantry, and then the fight was more prolonged, more bloody, more stubbornly contested and less resultful. Good as the infantry was,—so good that “Salamander Cutts” advanced his regiments right up to the palisades of Blenheim without firing a shot, and he contained and held therefore in the village the mass of troops that finally had to surrender there,—it was not the principal arm yet. The infantry supported the main attack of the cavalry, and completed the victory. Time was to come when the cavalry were to reverse these tactics, and complete the success that the infantry had begun.

The proportion of the cavalry to infantry again proves the case; nowadays it would be absolutely abnormal. Of the 52,000 Allies (9000 of whom were English), there were 20,000 cavalry. Of the 56,000 French, 8000 were cavalry. It is a stage in the tactical history, and that is all. The artillery took the preparatory part of the battle, and practically stopped there. The infantry finished what the cavalry had begun by Marlborough’s “decisive attack” with his two lines of cavalry; but the value of artillery to support such an advance and its increased mobility is foreshadowed by the advance of the guns across the Nebel.

How history repeats itself backwards and forwards! In a war of pure aggression, with, at its bottom, racial and religious hatred, Shouvaloff, after the capture of Ismail in 1790, “with bloody hands” writes his first despatch, and in it says, “Glory to God and the Empress, Ismail’s ours!” So, in, 1870 Emperor William telegraphs to his Queen, “Thanks be to God!” Here too, at Blenheim, Marlborough says in his despatch to Queen Anne: “So with the blessing of God we obtained a complete victory. We have cut off great numbers of them as well in the action as in the retreat, besides upwards of thirty squadrons of the French which I pushed into the Danube.” The assumption that Providence is on the winning side, or on that of the “big battalions,” is common throughout the military history of all time.

The victory of Blenheim was certainly most complete. The French were not defeated only, but routed and dispersed by the central attack, as Napoleon defeated his adversaries at Austerlitz later on, by a similar tactical blow. “The best troops in the world had been vanquished,” said the marshal mournfully; but, replied Marlborough, “I think my own must be the best in the world, as they have conquered those on whom you bestow so high an encomium.”

And, says another writer of the time, speaking of the anxious and dreadful side of war, “A great general—I mean such as the Duke of Marlborough, weak in his constitution and well stricken in years—would not undergo those eating cares which must be continually at his heart, the toils and hardships he must endure, if he has the least spark of human consideration; I say he could not engage in such a life, if not for the sake of his Queen, his country, and his honour.”

Meanwhile, other warlike operations had been conducted elsewhere on the Continent, though their glories and disasters were overshadowed by the more tremendous conflicts in the northern theatre of war. An allied Anglo-Dutch force under the Earl of Peterborough had been despatched to the Spanish Peninsula in support of the claim of Charles III. to the Spanish throne; and in consequence of the maritime nature of the operations, battalions for sea service as marines were raised, so to the three already in existence were added the 30th, 31st, and 32nd Regiments of the line. The first success was the capture of Barcelona, in which Colonel Southwell of the 6th Foot distinguished himself, and where two Marine colonels, Birr and Rodney, disagreed on landing to such an extent that they thereupon fought in front of the line, and the latter was wounded unto death. Birr finally commanded the 32nd.

But one of the rare disasters in our military annals befell us in this campaign at Almanza, where the Guards, the 2nd, 6th, 9th, 11th, 17th, 28th, 33rd, 35th, and 36th Regiments, the 2nd Dragoon Guards, 3rd, 4th, and 8th Hussars, besides other regiments since disbanded, were present, and where the new Union Jack, with the two crosses of St. Andrew and St. George only, was first carried; but the British were heavily outnumbered by the fifty-two battalions and seventy-six squadrons of the enemy, led by the Duke of Berwick, the son of James II. and Arabella Churchill, and were practically dispersed, with the loss of all their guns, 620 colours, and 10,000 prisoners. To counterbalance this was the gallant defence of the castle of Alicante, and the brilliant “affair” of Saragossa, when 30 standards were taken; and the 6th Foot claim the right of wearing their badge of the antelope from the date of this battle, in which one of the standards taken by them bore that emblem.

Meanwhile, Marlborough retired to France after the treaty of Utrecht, to return when George I. ascended the throne, as Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, Colonel of the 1st Foot Guards, and Master of the Ordnance. But he did not survive the receipt of his new honours and return to power long. He died in 1722, at the age of seventy-three years, and a grateful nation interred him in Westminster Abbey.

Whatever estimate may be formed as to the private character of Churchill, there can be but one opinion as to his military career. Few great generals have had a more difficult task to perform than he, hampered as he was by alliances which often prevented his carrying to its full end the instincts and direction of his military genius. He was, besides being a skilful and scientific general, a brave man, and a leader of men. He never lost a battle or a siege. His recognition of the enemy’s weakness in the centre at Blenheim is only equalled by the similar penetration that Napoleon displayed at Austerlitz, and which proved once more that piercing the centre, if possible and successful, necessarily involves the temporary dispersion of the defeated army. His quick eye for “ground” is equally shown in his grasping the weakness of the French defensive position at Ramilies, and his seeing that the enemy’s left, being powerless for rapid offence, could be checked and held in place, while the weight of the rest of his army was thrown against the other wing.

His personal bravery at the same battle nearly cost him his life; and it is curious to read of the general commanding himself leading a charge in person, and fighting like a trooper, sword in hand.

But this and his personal care for and interest in his men was the secret of his power of leadership. He himself inspected his line before a battle, and his calm presence imparted a courage and confidence that all soldiers understand. His cheerful and cheering “Be steady and go on—keep up your fire, and the enemy will soon be dispersed,” accounts for much of the feeling that the rank and file felt for “Corporal John,” the affectionate title the men applied to him, as French soldiers did that of “le petit Caporal” to the equally great soldier of the next century. The ballad-writer of about 1711 fully emphasises this:—

“Don’t talk of Schomberg and such to me;
Noll and King William they might be queer
To deal with, but he’d have beat them all three,
Lord! as easy as I’m taking off this beer.
All along I was with him, and I should know,
And I tell you, my boys, the sun never shone
On one that has led a charge here below
That was fit to be named with Corporal John.

* * * * *

Then May good luck and Ramilies brought,
At Ottomond’s tomb, by the red Mehaigne,
To slaughter our corporal, Villeroi thought,
But the French and their marshal we thrashed again.
Eighty standards and every gun
Our corporal took that glorious day,
And with it the whole of Brabant we won,
And Louis from Flanders, he slunk away.
Oh, Corporal John always fought to beat;
He was the one who could reckon upon;
There was glory and plunder, but never retreat,
For all who fought under Corporal John.”

He believed in his men, and was careful of them as far as such was possible. He believed that “with 10,000 well-fed Englishmen, 10,000 half-starved Scotchmen, and 10,000 Irishmen charged with usquebaugh, he could march from Boulogne to Bayonne in spite of Le Grand Monarque.” And, true Englishman, he was “always of opinion that English horses, as well as English men, were better than could be had anywhere else.”

And while a strict disciplinarian (an absolute necessity with the very rough material he had to command) he allowed no severe court martial punishment to be carried into effect without his knowledge and confirmation. Men were kept sufficiently employed, when in camp and not actively engaged, to prevent liberty degenerating into licence. He was no advocate, apparently, for night marching, thinking that three hours of sound sleep before midnight were all-important. After that, it did not matter how early the reveillé was sounded. And, lastly, it is curious to read of a fighting man of the early part of the eighteenth century, when morals were not at their highest, and of one the private side of whose character is, to say the least, questionable, taking special care of the theological element of governance. His chaplains were intended to do their duty, and did it. He rarely, if ever, went into action without going to prayers first! At least, so it is said. He has much in common with Napoleon. Both as soldiers stand preeminent; both in their private capacities show weaknesses that are little removed from criminal. But in thus judging the great duke, every allowance must be made for the times in which he lived, and the corruption that was so common as to be almost excusable. But whether his hands were clean or not, whether his conscience was pure or otherwise, whether he was really loyal or disloyal to the sovereign he, militarily, served so well, now all these things may be forgotten, and only the fact that he raised the name of the English army to the highest pitch of glory, and laid the foundation of our present respected position both by land and sea, need be remembered by this generation.

With the peace of Utrecht the great war for a time came to an end, and the army of 200,000 men was reduced to 8000 in Great Britain and 11,000 in the Plantations and elsewhere. All this, be it remembered, with the remembrance of the victories of Blenheim and Ramilies still ringing in the nation’s ears. But people began slowly, though still with reluctance, to desire that the army should go to war strong, even if, after the sound of battle had ceased, the Government reduced it to a mere cipher of its former battle strength. Yet, though a cipher, it was still one of larger value after each campaign than it was before.

When, therefore, a German-speaking king, George I., ascended the throne, the standing army had permanently grown.

There were, besides the Life and Horse Guards, the seven Dragoon Guards Regiments, the light regiments up to the 8th Light Dragoons (of which the 7th, formed from troops of the “Greys” and Royal Dragoons, was disbanded in 1713, but restored in 1715), and up to the 39th Foot inclusive; and of these the 30th, 31st and 32nd, as Sanderson’s, Villiers’ and Fox’s Marines, had been raised for sea service before coming on the army’s strength. It cannot be too often pointed out that the regiments were formed and disbanded more or less after every war, and that consequently many rank their seniority from their first creation.

The arms had little changed. The cuirass for cavalry was abandoned in 1702 and restored temporarily in 1707. The socketed bayonet had been introduced, and Blenheim was the first great battle in which the pike had been replaced by the new weapon. Sergeants still carried the halberd, which was succeeded as time went on by the lighter pike or “spontoon,” which remained in the service until after the Peninsular war, and which was carried by the “covering sergeant,” who protected or “covered” his captain with the weapon while his superior directed the work of the company.

The colours, formerly three in number, had by this time been reduced to two, the one the Union “Jack,” the other the Regimental Colour, the ground of which was that of the regimental facings.

Doubtless the political feeling of expediency and the want of a larger revenue had still much to do with these continuous and expensive reductions, even more than the decaying dread of standing armies. They were expensive as involving greater expenditure when war broke out afresh, as it was likely to do. They cost the internal economy of the State much, from the difficulty of finding employment for the vast numbers of disbanded soldiery after a campaign. Politicians of the time were too narrow-minded to see that it costs less to be always prepared for war in peace rather than wait for the warlike necessity to arise. They were “penny wise and pound foolish” then, much as we are to-day. Taxpayers and Governments are proverbially slow to recognise this. The greater the national wealth, the more need for the national insurance. That means an army and a navy sufficient for that insurance.

CHAPTER VI
THE EMBERS OF THE CIVIL WAR—TO 1755

The method of raising the army from the early part of the eighteenth century until nearly its end had been by a curious system of contract. Recruiting at first was mainly voluntary; but paupers or prisoners for civil offences were given the option of serving in the ranks. Hence was it that the armies that “swore so horribly in Flanders” got the bad name that clung to the profession of arms in Great Britain until recent years. The class of recruits, the severity of punishment, and the degradation of the lash were the three main reasons why, in the opinion of many worthy country people, to become a soldier was to be lost!

“Sergeant Kite’s” statement in the Recruiting Officer[21] is, though coarse, a not much exaggerated picture of what was thought of the soldier, though it can never assuredly be applied to all who wore the uniform. He says: “I was born a gipsy, and bred among that crew till I was ten years of age; there I learned canting and lying. I was bought from my mother Cleopatra by a certain nobleman for three pistoles, who, liking my beauty, made me his page; there I learned impudence and pimping. I was turned off for wearing my lord’s linen and drinking my lady’s ratafia, and then became bailiff’s follower; there I learned bullying and swearing. I at last got into the army, and there I learned wenching and drinking, so that if your worship pleases to cast up the old sum, viz.—canting, lying, impudence, bullying, swearing, drinking, and a halberd, you will find the sum total amounting to a recruiting sergeant.”

This, then, is reputed to be the material; the following was the method of capturing it.[22] The crown contracted with gentlemen of position or known soldiers to raise a certain body of troops, and bounty money per head was granted for the purpose. Regiments, therefore, long bore the names of the colonels who had raised or those who had recruited them. Sometimes in lieu of money the contractor sold the commissions, which was called “raising men for rank”; and hence arose a further extension of the purchase system which seems to have originated with Charles II. For the maintenance of this force the colonel received an annual sum to defray the cost of clothing, pay, and recruiting; thus it is related that a British Fusilier Regiment had four years’ pay owing to officers and men, who, in spite of repeated memorials, could not obtain any portion of it. After the lapse of some time, it transpired that Lord Tyrawley, the colonel, had appropriated the arrears to his own use; an act which he attempted to justify by pleading the custom of the army, and by the fact of the king being cognisant of his proceedings.[23] Recruits were raised by “a beating order,” without which recruiting was illegal, and the regiment was kept up to full strength. Field officers, to increase their rate of pay, received, say, colonel as colonel, 12s. a day, and in addition, as captain of company 8s. a day.

The term of enlistment of the recruit was a matter of arrangement, and was often for life. The troops were long disposed in billets in Great Britain, but in the early part of the eighteenth century barracks for about 5000 men had been created, and the evils of billeting were fully recognised. The barrack accommodation had not increased to more than sufficient for 20,000 men by 1792.

The Jacobite risings form a curious link in the conduct of European politics, and not only led to active interference in them because of the support given by France and Spain to the Stuart cause, but they are also domestically interesting as being the last cases in which armed bodies have met in civil war in England. They also emphasise the curious personal and sentimental attraction which long hung round the dynasty of the Stuarts, and for which there is no sufficient reason to be advanced. They were neither great nor noble, neither good nor trustworthy. Their reigns were either years of disturbance at home or ineptitude abroad. Their attraction was only that of romance, coupled with that odd personal reverence for the divinity of kingship, which James I. brought prominently forward as a political creed, and which no previous sovereign had been successful in establishing. Men of repute and renown often changed sides when the “Roses” reigned; but this was rare when the Stuarts ruled, or tried to rule.

It is this romantic feeling that makes the efforts on the part of the Jacobites to restore King James seem sorrowful. One cannot but sympathise with those who sacrificed all for the most ungrateful group of kings that have ever occupied the English throne, and at the same time wonder why they did so. The Winchester motto of “Aimez loyauté,” meant in the abstract but obedience or love for law, the ordinances of the realm. It was for the enthusiastic Cavalier to translate loyalty into personal regard for an indifferent, to say the very least of it, group of kings, who had as a race scarcely one attribute of true kingship. One’s sympathy, therefore, goes out more fully towards the adherents than the leaders of the hopeless cause; and it is well that the strong common sense of the nation saw that the restoration of either of the Pretenders was hopeless. The peace of Ryswick was the first blow to the faint hopes of James II.’s restoration. His no longer receiving the active sympathy of France reduced, for the time being, his “party” to a “faction.” The mistakes of the Governments which followed were by no means the least of the causes that re-formed it again into a “party” dangerous to the reigning dynasty of Great Britain. There is no doubt that the injudicious conduct of the statesmen of the early Georges, and even of the kings themselves, did little to smooth matters. To have let small bickerings and insurrections severely alone, by treating them as of no great importance, might have rendered serious troubles less probable. Making martyrs strengthened, rather than weakened the Jacobite cause; while, on the other hand, the judicious conduct of the sovereign, later in the century, destroyed for ever the hopes of seeing a Catholic James on the British throne.

But one great result, as far as the growth of the army is concerned, arose from these dynastic troubles. They led by degrees to a closer union between the fighting materials of North and South Britain, and to the formation of those Highland regiments whose glorious record must be the pride of all sections of the army, whose colours they have so often led to victory. The death of James II., and the recognition by France of his son, the “Old Pretender,” as King of England, re-aroused the enthusiasm of the followers of the Stuarts. They ceased to be a faction once more, and hopes rose high when Queen Anne died. The accession of George I. was marked by increasing discontent, and it is possible, though hardly probable, that the Young Pretender may have been in England at the time. But there was no open opposition to the Hanoverian succession at first, though, owing to the severe measures taken against the Jacobites in the north, measures which were looked on as contrary to the Act of Union, many disturbances occurred there and elsewhere, notably in Edinburgh, Oxfordshire, and Staffordshire. Little was known, strange to say, of the Highland people. They were regarded in many quarters as semi-savages, much as the Irish recruits for English regiments were deemed when James II. was king. In 1705 the Lowland Scottish Militia was assessed at 22,000 infantry and 2000 horse, while the fighting strength of the Highlands was regarded as 40,000 men.

The Government hastily prepared for the outbreak of hostilities. Regiments were raised and assembled, and the trained bands warned. The standard of rebellion was soon raised, in Scotland by the Earl of Mar, in Northumberland by the Earl of Derwentwater and others; and some 10,000 men drew the sword for King James VIII., “our rightfull and naturall King ... who is now coming to relieve us from all our oppressions.” Notwithstanding Mar’s slowness, the revolt rapidly spread in Scotland, where only some 2000 English troops under General Wightman were assembled at Stirling, but the eastern counties of England were watched by the newly-embodied battalions in dread of a descent by France. Finally, the Duke of Argyll was appointed to the command of the northern forces, which were to be reinforced, if required, by 6000 men from Holland; and among the troops assembled at Stirling were now the ancestors of the Scots Greys, the 3rd, 4th, and 7th Hussars, the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons, and the 8th, 14th, and 21st battalions of the line. There were also some volunteers from Glasgow, Paisley, and Kilmarnock.

On the 13th November the opposing forces met at Sheriffmuir, near Dunblane. The battle is only instructive as showing the Highlanders’ method of attack; in fact, they had at that time, like cavalry always have, no real defensive. To defend was to take the offensive.

The formation of the Highland host long remained the same. Clans could not be mixed. They fought side by side, each under its chieftain, who stood in the centre, surrounded by his personal kinsmen, much as Harold fought at Hastings with his housecarles. Then, often after silent prayer, the plaids were thrown aside, and the charge was made. To this there were five motions. First, to set the bonnet firmly on the head; secondly, covered by the brass-studded target, to rush up to within fifty yards; next, to fire the long-barrelled Spanish gun and drop it; fourthly, to fire the steel pistol; and, lastly, to charge home with dirk or claymore. The men were often arranged ten or twelve ranks deep.

The march and deployment of the troops on either side in this battle was such as to place the left wings of both armies outflanking the other. This gave Mar his chance, and he quickly took it. Ordering the charge, he led the clan Maclean in person; and they, throwing aside their plaids, fired a volley, dropped their muskets, and rushed with cheers and yells on their opponents, claymore and target in hand. Skilled in the use of these weapons, such a rush was for the time irresistible. The bayonet thrust was met by the shield, and the sword or dirk did the rest. The loss in such a case was terrible, the wounded generally injured beyond recovery. And so the Jacobites swept the enemy’s left clean off the field, but, like the Royalists sixty years before, they did not know when to check pursuit, and turn the defeat of one wing of an army into the rout of the whole. Yet there was more discipline than usual in these irregulars, for they were little more. Their first volley had been most steadily delivered, and they were not “in the least discomposed by the musketry which the British regiments opened on them in turn.” Meanwhile, on the other wing, Mar’s troops had been defeated and routed by the combined attack of Argyll’s cavalry on the flank and his infantry in front, and though the Macraes, especially, fought with desperate obstinacy, the result here was practically as decisive as had been the attack of the Earl of Mar. So he fell back after the battle, leaving Argyll master of the field and of the situation, and who remarked to an officer before the day closed that—

“If it was na weel bobbit,
We’ll bob it again.”

But Mar was not the man to lead continuously a Highland host. Success increased their fighting power—delay but weakened it; so that when Argyll with some military wisdom at once took a simple defensive, Mar feared to push the battle further, and his army fell back with the prayer of at least one Scot, “Oh for one hour of Dundee!” The battle, which is only noteworthy for the hard fighting of the Cameronians against their fellow-countrymen, was theoretically “a draw,” but the possession of the field and the spoil thereof rested with the Hanoverian side. Soon the army of James began to melt away. The Chevalier came to Scotland, but the affair of Preston in Lancashire gave little encouragement for him to stay, and he returned to France. The first attempt to restore James had signally failed, and while Mar, attainted, died in exile at Aix la Chapelle, Lords Derwentwater and Kenmure were beheaded, and the rest of the prisoners, from both fields, were treated with the greatest barbarity. Still, this rather inflamed than cowed the martial spirit of the north, for four years later, the sentiment of revenge for cruelties unworthy even of the days of the first Georges, led to reprisals. Spain had interested herself in the Stuart cause, and treated the Chevalier as King of Great Britain; while, oddly enough, France, being at war with Spain, sided with King George. The Duke of Ormond headed the somewhat puerile effort at invasion, which commenced with but 1500 Spaniards and Scots, who, landing at Loch Alsh, encamped at Glenshiel; but these were to be reinforced by a larger body under Ormond, which was, however, scattered by a storm off Cape Finisterre. The isolated invaders received some small reinforcement, including 400 Macgregors under Rob Roy, and took up a strong position at the pass of Strachells. Against them marched General Wightman once more, with some detachments of Dutch troops, as well as companies of the 11th, 14th, and 15th line regiments; and although the British force was repulsed, the Spaniards surrendered the following day, and the Scots dispersed to their homes.

This second failure resulted in the departure of James from Madrid, and the loss of Spanish help. But the two efforts had taught the British Government a lesson. Two things were necessary to subdue these turbulent Highlands, of whose inhabitants so little was known that they were generally believed by many English people to be savages and by some even cannibals. Roads were necessary to open the country up to organised military movements, and the disarmament of the clans was requisite to lessen the offensive power of their members. General Wade, in 1724, was entrusted with this duty, and about this time independent paid companies of Highlanders were formed, which, from the sombre colour of their tartans, were called the “Black Watch,” and were eventually formed into a regiment, numbered finally the 42nd.

To carry out his instructions, General Wade’s command (the 10th, 12th, 19th, and 21st Regiments) was reviewed by George I. on Salisbury Plain in 1722, and marched to Inverness, where they joined the camp formed by the 2nd Queen’s, commanded by Piercy Kirke. The 21st were quartered in Aberdeenshire, but the remainder marched to Brahan Castle to disarm the Mackenzies. No resistance was offered, but the whole thing was a transparent fraud; for but 784 old weapons were given up, and even then only with the stipulation that the companies of the Black Watch should not be present. Finally, in all 2685 weapons were collected, for which Wade calculated some £13,000 had been paid, “for broken and useless arms which were hardly worth the expense of carriage.” Meanwhile, the six Black Watch companies were detailed “to prevent the Highlanders from returning to the use of arms, as well as to hinder their committing depredations in the low country,” and for this purpose were stationed as follows:—Lord Lovat, the passes between Loch Alsh and Inverness; Colonel Grant, those from Ballindalloch to Dunkeld; Sir Duncan Campbell, from Dunkeld to the Lorn Mountains; while the remaining three companies were at Fort William, Kilcummin, and Ruthven.

Of course the best of the arms had been concealed and buried, to reappear twenty years later, when the Young Pretender came. Probably Wade guessed this, and was wise enough to close his eyes to what he was not strong enough to prevent or enforce. But he improved the communications of the country in an unostentatious way, so that a poem of the time in rather Hibernian style says—

“If you’d seen those roads before they were made,
You’d lift up your hands and bless General Wade.”

One curious thing happened between 1725 and 1745. Two years short of the last date, the newly formed regiment of the Black Watch mutinied.

The year 1745 saw the most serious as well as the last of the Jacobite efforts, and on this occasion France had returned to her first love, and posed for the last time as the friend of the Catholic dynasty of Stuarts. The tinge of romance about “the ’45” would have had little foundation if the Pretender of ’15 had taken part in the rising. He had got old, and, what was worse, fat. Only his divine right could have helped him through. But with his son it was different. He was young, good-looking, and engaging; he was always most affable and accessible; he was a brave if unfortunate princelet seeking to regain a throne. He does not seem to have had any real strength of character, and his end was pitiful; but he was in himself—and his cause was still more—romantic, and he possessed both dash and courage.

So, taking advantage of the absence of the bulk of the British army on the Continent, preparations were begun in 1743, when a French expedition of 15,000 was assembled at Boulogne to make a diversion on the south coast, while a landing of Stuart adherents was effected in the north. But the attempt failed, and the fleet was driven back by a storm.

In 1745 the attempt was repeated, and this time successfully; for though the Elizabeth frigate, convoying the Doutelle, in which the prince was embarked, was driven back by the Lion frigate of sixty guns, after a most determined battle, he was enabled to debark at Moidart, and establish a camp at Inverness. The loss of his convoy, however, had deprived him, so wrote Marchant in his History of the Present Rebellion, published two years later, of £400,000 sterling, besides arms, ammunition, and twenty field guns, all of which would have been of infinite value to him later, even if it had not materially influenced, or at the least prolonged, the insurrection itself.

Sir John Cope, who commanded in Scotland, was not a man of much quickness or resource; and the Jacobite song, “Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye waukin’ yet,” alludes sarcastically to that fact. Stirling and Edinburgh were garrisoned, it is true, and he had marched north to meet the insurgent levies, but when the latter outflanked him and reached Edinburgh, which surrendered at once (except the Castle garrison of two companies of the 47th), he embarked at Aberdeen and landed again near Dunbar. His total strength did not amount to more than 3000 men, all told, and among these were the 13th and 14th Light Dragoons, two companies of the 6th Foot, five of the 44th, eight of the 47th, the 46th, and Loudon’s Highlanders, with six guns manned by sailors and volunteers. His position, near Prestonpans or Gladsmuir, when the enemy came in sight, faced west and then south, and was fairly strong. The right rested on Colonel Gardiner’s house—he commanded the 13th, and fell in the battle—and the left on the Seton Manor House, while in front was a marsh traversed by a ditch. Against this small and not too confident army the prince had a heterogeneous half armed force of some 5000 men, chiefly Highlanders,[24] without artillery and but a few very irregular cavalry; and, hearing of the general’s landing, he moved out at once from Edinburgh, where the Castle still held out, to engage him. The first day was spent in mere manœuvring, but after nightfall the prince decided on attacking at daybreak, and, guided by a Mr. Robert Anderson, who knew the country, he marched in two columns in sections of threes by obscure paths across the marsh, and finally over an unguarded foot-bridge crossing the ditch already referred to, and formed line of battle across Cope’s left flank. That general seemed in no wise dismayed, and again changed front, while in his address to his troops he referred to his opponents as being “a parcel of brutes,” and “a despicable pack,” from whom “you can expect no booty.” He had not experienced the nature of a Highland charge.

The Scottish army was formed in two lines, and it is not clear in this instance that any firing was resorted to, as was often the case; but the fury of the onslaught was such as at once to destroy the morale of both the artillery and cavalry, who were on the flanks and fled in disorder from the field, leaving the infantry isolated. But though they held their ground for a while, they were assailed after their first volley before they could reload, and were taken prisoners, slain, or dispersed. All the colours, the guns, the military chest, 1500 prisoners, besides officers, and baggage, were the prizes of the victors, and while 400 were slain, only 175 infantry soldiers escaped; and this with a total loss of 110 killed and wounded on the opposite side. Practically, the victory gave the whole of Scotland into Jacobite hands, and the prince returned to Edinburgh, and wasted his time in continuing the siege of the Castle.