CHAPTER IX

1797–1807

OSTEND--LA PLATA

[Sidenote: 1797.]

On landing in England the Seventeenth was distributed into quarters at Nottingham, Leicester, Trowbridge, Bath, and Bristol. The regiment was reduced to a mere skeleton. Four hundred recruits and a draft from the 18th Light Dragoons, however, soon filled up the gaps and restored it to its strength. All ranks had something new to learn. In 1796 a new drill-book, far more ambitious than any that had yet appeared, was provided for the cavalry; and for the first time (so far as I have been able to discover) a properly authorised system of sword exercise. The drill shows little that is new, except that the system of telling off by threes now came into general use, and with it the practice of executing all movements to the rear by means of “Threes about.” The interval of “six inches from knee to knee” in the ranks also makes its appearance as the normal formation. A further change is the reversion to the old practice of posting troop leaders on the flanks of troops, dressing with the men, and covered by a corporal in the rear rank.

As regards sword exercise we must content ourselves with observing that we encounter for the first time the once famous “six cuts.” The recruit was posted in front of a wall on which was drawn a circle; and he was then taught that each of the six cuts required of him should intersect at the centre of the circle, and divide it into six equal segments. I do not mean that the unhappy man was tortured by any such abstruse terms as these, but that this was the principle on which the six cuts were based. [Sidenote: 1797.] In addition, there was a seventh cut, directed vertically, so to speak, from heaven to earth, and called by the high-sounding name of St. George. These seven cuts are still familiar to hundreds of living men. The whole of the sword exercise was comprehended in no fewer than six divisions, each containing from seven to ten words of command, and must therefore have consumed considerable time. It may be remarked that, when cutting the sword exercise on foot, the men were not required to extend their legs as at present, though they kept the bridle hand in the bridle position. The swords themselves were perhaps the most defective part of the whole concern, and caused great complaint among the Light Dragoons in the Peninsula. The pattern was bad, and the material was bad; and common sense was so absolutely ignored in the design that the hilt was not even provided with a guard. Before quitting the question of drill, it is well to remind readers that dismounted drill still occupies a prominent place in the training of the Light Dragoons; and the words “Form battalion” and “Fix bayonets” are still in full use.

[Sidenote: 1798.]

In 1798 the regiment was moved to Canterbury, where it made the acquaintance of a naval officer who was destined to exert some influence on a part of its career. This was Captain, afterwards Sir Home, Popham. Just then he was full of a scheme for blowing up the lock-gates of the Bruges Canal, which lock-gates were situated at Saas, a village just a mile from the entrance to Ostend harbour. The canal itself from Bruges to Saas was thirteen miles long, one hundred yards wide, and thirteen feet deep, and had recently been completed at a cost of five millions. For the invasion of England it was of great importance to the enemy; for any number of vessels could be fitted up therein and brought down to Ostend without risk of facing the British cruisers at sea. If an invasion were intended, Ostend was obviously the best port of embarkation for the invading army; and even if the project of a descent on England should prove to be no more than a scare, the destruction of the lock would at any rate spoil a seaport and stop all internal navigation from Holland to West Flanders.

[Sidenote: April.]

So Captain Popham argued; and his arguments were held to be good. Accordingly the whole plan of operation was entrusted to him; and preparations for the little expedition went forward with the utmost secrecy all through the month of April. By the second week in May everything was ready, and on the 13th the troops were embarked at Margate on seven transports. The force consisted of four companies of the 1st Guards, the flank companies of the Coldstream Guards, 3rd Guards, 23rd, and 49th Foot; the 11th Foot, artillerymen with six guns, and, lastly, one sergeant and eight men of the 17th Light Dragoons, the only mounted men of the expedition. [Sidenote: 16th May.] On the morning of the 16th May the little fleet got a fair wind and sailed away, arriving, without further mishap than leaving the 1st Guards hopelessly astern, in Ostend at 1 A.M. on the 19th. [Sidenote: 19th May.] For a time everything went like clockwork. Sir Eyre Coote, who commanded the expedition, summoned the French commander at Ostend to surrender, as a feint, to make him believe the town was the object of attack. Then having received a high-flown reply, and seen all the French troops drawn into Ostend, he quietly landed his men on the opposite side of the river, and blew up the lock-gates with the greatest success. By 11 A.M. Coote was back on the beach and anxious to re-embark, having accomplished his object with the trifling loss of five men killed and wounded. But meanwhile a gale had sprung up, and the surf was so great that re-embarkation was impossible. After several futile attempts, in which boats were swamped and the men nearly drowned, Coote decided to entrench himself where he lay and wait for better weather.

[Sidenote: 20th May.]

At four o’clock next morning, when the wind and surf had considerably increased, the enemy was seen advancing in two columns, with far superior numbers, against Coote’s position. Outnumbered and outflanked the British force fought for two hours against hopeless odds, until Coote was wounded while rallying the 11th Foot. [Sidenote: 1798.] Then General Burrard, the second in command, seeing the front broken and both flanks turned, was compelled to surrender. Of the 1100 men landed, 163 were killed and wounded, and the rest of course taken prisoners. Of the nine men of the Seventeenth, one was wounded. So exemplary had been their behaviour, we are told, that when, shortly after, they were exchanged and returned to the regiment, [Sidenote: 1799.] every man of them was promoted to be a non-commissioned officer, while the sergeant, William Brown, was given a commission, first in the waggon train and latterly in the regiment. As usual the non-commissioned officer of the Seventeenth, when in independent command, brings credit to his corps.

In this same year two squadrons of the regiment were ordered to Portsmouth to embark for Egypt, but, the order having been countermanded, the whole regiment joined a large cavalry camp then formed at Swinley. [Sidenote: 1800.] In the following year another camp of 30,000 men was formed on Bagshot Heath under the command of the Duke of York, of which the regiment again formed part. In September it was employed in suppressing riots which had arisen in consequence of the high price of provisions. While engaged in this service many men were badly knocked about, and Captain Werge, who had escaped without injury from such deadly marksmen as the Maroons, narrowly escaped death at the hands of his own countrymen, receiving a shot through his helmet. [Sidenote: 1801.]Two troops having been added to the establishment, the regiment paraded in its greatest recorded strength at Manchester in the following year--upwards of 1000 non-commissioned officers and men, and nearly 1000 horses, being present. Colonel Grey was the fortunate officer who held command, and we must hope that Major-General Oliver Delancey, the Colonel-in-Chief, who alone could remember the regiment before it went to the American War, went up to inspect so fine a corps. Unfortunately this magnificent strength did not last long. [Sidenote: 1802.] In May 1802, England and France, being both of them exhausted after nine years’ fighting, agreed to the peace of Amiens. Thereupon, with the usual blindness, the army was reduced, and two troops of the Seventeenth were disbanded. Their horses were valued by a dealer at forty guineas apiece, a larger price in those days than in these, which shows that the regiment must have been superbly mounted.[10]

[Sidenote: 1803.]

Peace lasted for just fourteen months; and then in May 1803 England took the initiative and declared war against France. On the 1st of that month the Seventeenth embarked from Liverpool for Ireland. It met with its usual luck at sea on the passage, the transports being dispersed by a gale which drove them into various ports on the East Coast, and permitted but one immediately to reach its destination at Dublin. [Sidenote: 1804.] In the course of the following year the establishment was again augmented to ten troops, four of which joined the camp at the Curragh, where a large force was assembled under the command of Lord Cathcart. This Lord Cathcart, let us remember, was an officer of the Seventeenth during the American War; he is the same man who commanded the expedition against Copenhagen in 1807, when Sir Arthur Wellesley himself served under him. [Sidenote: 1805.] The following year is memorable for the formation of Napoleon’s camp of invasion at Boulogne. Napoleon’s hopes having been shattered by Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar (12th October), he broke up the camp and marched away to the campaign of Ulm and Austerlitz. Previous to these two great disasters there had been some idea of a diversion to be made by an English army on the Continent; and in September the Seventeenth received orders to prepare for foreign service as part of this force. But Austerlitz effectually smothered this design. In December the regiment was moved back to England, and spent Christmas day on the passage, the first of four successive Christmas days that it was destined to celebrate on the sea.

[Sidenote: 1806.]

The year 1806 opened gloomily with the death of William Pitt, the great man whose indomitable spirit had carried England through the first and worse half of the tremendous contest against France. The want of his guiding hand was soon to be badly felt.

The month of March brought a nearer occasion of mourning to the Seventeenth. On the 20th there died at the Plantation, Guisbrough, in Yorkshire, General John Hale, the father of the regiment. He had been promoted Major-General in 1772, Lieutenant-General in 1777, and General in 1793, and, it seems, had settled down to end his days among his wife’s people. In his long life of seventy-eight years he had seen the rise of William Pitt, “the terrible cornet of horse,” and the death of his son William Pitt, “the pilot who weathered the storm.” He left behind him seventeen children and the Seventeenth Light Dragoons.

Just about this time unfavourable reports of the regiment found their way to headquarters, insomuch [Sidenote: April.] that a general was sent down to Northampton to inspect it. Rather to his surprise this officer found that, so far from being unfit for active service, the regiment was the best in the matter of men and horses, drill and equipment, that he had seen. He reported accordingly to headquarters, with results that were speedily apparent.

In September, the regiment being then distributed in quarters at Brighton, Hastings, Romney, Rye, and other points on the south-east coast, there arrived suddenly one night an express message ordering the Seventeenth to prepare forthwith for foreign service. Its route, it was added, would be sent down immediately. [Sidenote: 27th Sept.] On the 27th September the regiment marched to Portsea and Southampton, and having detached two troops to Chichester as a depôt, gave up its horses and embarked on the 5th October at Spithead, bound for South America. It must now be explained where and why it was wanted.

[Sidenote: 1806.]

On the 4th January 1806, just when the Seventeenth was disembarking in England from Dublin, there arrived off the Cape of Good Hope 4000 British troops under Sir David Baird, convoyed by a squadron under Commodore Sir Home Popham. The troops were landed; and in less than three weeks the Cape Colony had passed from the Dutch into the hands of the English for ever. Before he sailed, Sir Home Popham, always a busy man, had become greatly bitten with the idea of an attack on the Spanish possessions in Central and South America, that is to say, on any part of Central and South America except Brazil, which was a Portuguese Colony. He had held many conversations with one General Miranda, a native of Venezuela, who was at the head of a revolutionary movement against the dominion of Spain in South America, and had promised that if the British would send a force thither the whole population would rise and fight at their side against Spain. It was the old story which had taken the English to the Carolinas in 1781, and to St. Domingo in 1793, with most disastrous results. But Popham, forgetting these two lessons, continually urged upon the English Government the project of an attack on South America, and even drew up a complete plan of operations for descent on the continent from the Atlantic and Pacific sides simultaneously.

The date of this plan is October 1804. The memorandum had been before the British Government for more than a year, and had received little or no notice. At three months’ distance from England, with men and ships to his hand, and no one in command over him, Popham persuaded Baird to let him have Brigadier-General Beresford (afterwards well known in the Peninsular War as Marshal Beresford) and 900 men; [Sidenote: 14th April.] and with these and his squadron he sailed away for Rio de la Plata, to take Buenos Ayres on his own responsibility. At first everything went well. The force, strengthened by 200 more men picked up at St. Helena, duly arrived in the Plata, and disembarked on the 25th June at a point ten miles below Buenos Ayres. From thence, in spite of Spanish troops in greatly superior numbers that were drawn up to oppose him, Beresford marched practically unchecked and unhindered into the city, [Sidenote: 26th June.]and on the following day received its surrender.

[Illustration:

_G. Salisbury, 1832_

OFFICERS, 1824.]

For seven weeks Beresford held Buenos Ayres, the people swearing allegiance to King George, and doing everything in the way of promises that was asked of them,--all of which did not prevent them from rising _en masse_, when their preparations were complete, and attacking Beresford with unmistakable fury. [Sidenote: 12th Aug.] With but 1300 men against 13,000, Beresford fought for three hours and inflicted heavy loss on the enemy, but having lost 12 officers and 150 men, he was at length compelled to surrender. The Spaniards agreed to his proposals that he and his army should be shipped off to England forthwith; and there it might have been supposed that the whole matter would have ended. But it was not to be. The Spaniards most treacherously violated the treaty, and carried off Beresford and the whole of his army into the back country as prisoners.

On the first capture of Buenos Ayres Popham had, of course, sent despatches home to report his success. The Government, however, was, for various reasons, much annoyed and embarrassed at Popham’s escapade, and responded by ordering him to England and trying him by court-martial. Still the nation at large was so delighted at the exploit that the Government, after much hesitation, was forced to send out reinforcements under Sir Samuel Auchmuty. Auchmuty’s instructions bade him simply make good Beresford’s losses and await further reinforcements, failing the arrival of which he was to proceed with his troops to the Cape. At one moment in August the whole expedition was countermanded; but finally the Government made up its mind and decided, on 22nd September, to despatch it. This vacillation accounts for the very short and sudden warning received by the Seventeenth. The whole force under Auchmuty’s command numbered 3000 men, viz. the Seventeenth, 700 strong; the 87th and 40th regiments of Foot; three companies of the 95th (now the Rifle Brigade), and 170 Artillery. [Sidenote: 1806.] The transports finally sailed from Falmouth on the 9th October, the British Government being still in ignorance of the loss of Buenos Ayres and of the capture of Beresford’s army.

The haste in the equipment of the expedition soon showed itself in various ways. The transports were such miserable sailers that, long before they reached their destination, they ran short of water, and were obliged to put in at Rio Janeiro. There Auchmuty heard of Beresford’s disaster, and further of the arrival of a small reinforcement of the 47th and 38th Foot, which had been sent from the Cape to the Plata, and had taken up a position at Maldonado, a town standing at the entrance to the river on the north side. [Sidenote: 1807.]Not knowing what to do, Auchmuty victualled his ships for four months and started off again for Maldonado, where he arrived at last, after a passage of 147 weary days, [Sidenote: 5th Jan.] on the 5th January.

Finding that Maldonado was an untenable position, Auchmuty evacuated it a week later and sailed up the river. [Sidenote: 13th Jan.] The retention of Beresford’s army was an act of treachery which called for reprisals, and these he resolved to take by attacking Monte Video, which stands on the north bank of the river, on the opposite side to Buenos Ayres, and some one hundred and twenty miles below it. On the 16th he landed in a small bay to west of Caretas Rocks, nine miles from Monte Video, the enemy watching the disembarkation in great force, but not daring to oppose it. Three days later Auchmuty began his advance upon Monte Video in two columns, the right column being made up of the Seventeenth, two troops of the 20th, and as many of the 21st Light Dragoons, all of them dismounted, under Brigadier-General Lumley. The Seventeenth had previously exchanged their carbines for Spanish muskets, which had been obtained at Rio Janeiro. This right column was early attacked by the enemy and threatened by 4000 Spanish cavalry, which occupied two heights in the front and right of Auchmuty’s advance. The attack, however, was soon repulsed by the dismounted cavalry and the light companies of the infantry; and the enemy retired, allowing the British advanced posts to occupy the suburbs of Monte Video on the same evening. [Sidenote: 1807.] Auchmuty himself had his horse shot under him while directing this column, and remounted himself on Colonel Evan Lloyd’s charger.

[Sidenote: 20th Jan.]

Next day the enemy took the initiative, sallying forth against Auchmuty’s force with 6000 men and several guns. This time they attacked the British left and left flank with cavalry, using their infantry to keep the dismounted cavalry in check. After driving in the picquets the Spanish infantry column was repulsed with great slaughter, and the cavalry then retired. The enemy’s loss in this action was reckoned at 1500. The English loss between the 16th and 20th was 18 killed and 119 wounded of all ranks.

Arrived before the town, Auchmuty discovered that the defences of Monte Video were not “weak,” as Popham had described them in his memorandum, but, to use Auchmuty’s own word, “respectable,” mounting 160 guns. Moreover the Spaniards, through possession of a fortified island, kept command of the sea, and were able to cannonade the British advance from their gunboats. Nevertheless, Auchmuty was fully decided that he would take Monte Video somehow. While he was making up his mind how to do it the enemy appeared on his rear, but was repulsed after a sharp skirmish, in which the Seventeenth lost a few men. [Sidenote: 22nd Jan.] After a few days’ construction of batteries and other preparations, Auchmuty saw that if Monte Video was to be taken it must be stormed, and accordingly made his dispositions for an assault at daybreak on the 3rd February. Naturally he chose infantry regiments for infantry work, and left the Seventeenth, together with the rest of the cavalry, the 47th Foot, one company of the 71st, and 700 marines to protect the rear and cover the attack, under the command of General Lumley. [Sidenote: 3rd Feb.] The storming force did its work magnificently, and in a few hours Monte Video was in Auchmuty’s hands, though at the cost of 27 officers and 370 men killed and wounded.

Horses being cheap, some of the Seventeenth were now mounted, doubtless a very welcome change from the drudgery of the infantry work during the siege of Monte Video; though even when employed on foot the regiment earned the personal thanks of the General. [Sidenote: 1807.] The Seventeenth had shown that it could beat the infantry at its own work in Jamaica eleven years before. But the native South American horses, as Auchmuty himself says, were not strong enough to carry the equipment of the British dragoons. The native irregular horsemen, armed with muskets and swords, pursued a method of warfare of the most harassing kind. They would ride up in twos or threes, dismount, fire over their horses’ backs, mount again, and gallop off before the British had a chance of catching them. And these men were not soldiers; they were the ordinary members of the population, not friendly as Popham had hoped, but inveterately hostile to the European invaders. In fact the British on the Plata found exactly the same elements opposed to them in New Spain as Napoleon was to find, a few months later, in the old Spain which is known to us as the Peninsula. [Sidenote: March.] Owing to the difficulty of obtaining forage, the mounted men of the Seventeenth, some 220 in number, were sent up the country forty or fifty miles from Monte Video to Lanelones and St. Joseph, while the remainder of the regiment was quartered in and about Monte Video.

Meanwhile, since the departure of General Auchmuty, the British Government had committed itself to the project of a general attack on Spanish South America. Sir Arthur Wellesley himself was called upon to give advice respecting it. Finally, on the 30th October General Craufurd (the famous Craufurd of the Light Division) was ordered off with 4000 men, with instructions to take Lima and Valparaiso on the Pacific coast, and to open communications with Beresford across the continent when Valparaiso was in his hands. Craufurd sailed on the 13th December 1806, arrived at Porto Praya on the 11th January 1807, waited for several weeks there in vain for the admiral who was to go with him, and at last in despair sailed for the Cape, where he arrived on the 20th March. There he found orders to join Auchmuty at Buenos Ayres, and accordingly sailed thither on the 5th April. [Sidenote: 1807.] The confusion caused by the efforts of the British Government to manage a campaign at from three to six months’ distance from England, can be appreciated only by those who have read the original despatches.

In February there arrived in the Plata a reinforcement consisting of the 9th Light Dragoons, a fact worth noting, inasmuch as this is the only occasion on which this great regiment, the first of the Lancer regiments, has fought side by side with the Seventeenth. The 16th and Seventeenth fought together in their youth in America. Thus after unspeakable confusion a large British force was at last in process of concentration on the Plata. And now the Government in an evil hour decided to put another commander over the heads of Craufurd and Auchmuty, and chose for the purpose General John Whitelocke. He arrived on the 10th May, and found that Auchmuty had already seized the town of Colonia, immediately opposite to Buenos Ayres, so as to make the passage across the river as short as possible. [Sidenote: 15th June.] A month later Craufurd arrived, and next day the Seventeenth and the artillery were embarked at Monte Video, while the rest of the army moved up to Colonia to embark there. Devoutly thankful the Seventeenth must have been to get to serious business again. Forage was terribly scarce for the horses, and flour hardly less scarce for the men, though bullocks could be bought for a dollar a head.

The passage up the river was delayed by contrary winds, but at last the hundred miles were traversed, and the troops landed at Ensenada, thirty miles below Buenos Ayres. The moment the army was disembarked it was surrounded by a cloud of Spanish light cavalry hovering about just out of musket range. Here was the opportunity for using the Seventeenth; but it was not employed. Two of the four mounted troops, each of forty men, were ordered to give up their horses to the commissariat. [Sidenote: 28th June to 5th July.] But when the pack-saddles were put on them the horses broke loose, and were from that moment useless. Thirty more mounted men were detailed to look after the landing of provisions, of whom ten were used as orderlies to carry despatches. [Sidenote: 1807.] Twelve more were attached to one of the infantry brigades; and the remainder, forty-eight all told, accompanied General Whitelocke, principally, no doubt, as his escort. The natural consequence was that the army could hardly advance at all. One staff officer was taken prisoner by the enemy’s light cavalry while carrying orders between two brigades, and another was stabbed within three hundred yards of the flank of the British line, all for want of a little cavalry which, with unspeakable folly, had been dismounted just when it was most sorely needed to encounter the enemy’s horse.

On the 29th June the advance began, across a very difficult country, much intersected by ditches and swamps, the dismounted men of the Seventeenth forming the rear-guard. The army was like to have been starved on this short march, but eventually it reached Buenos Ayres, after brushing aside some slight opposition from the Spaniards on the 4th July. Part of the Seventeenth and 40th Foot were left behind at the village of Reduction on the way, to protect the artillery. Sixteen of them, mounted men, together with thirty dismounted men of the 9th, were engaged in repelling an attack on the rear of the British advance.

[Sidenote: 3rd July.]

On the 3rd July General Whitelocke managed to lose his army; but on the next day he found it again, and on the 5th July made his attack on the city. [Sidenote: 5th July.] That is to say, that he sent 6000 men up fourteen different streets through three miles of a hostile town, with strict orders not to fire until they reached the far end. What is more, the 6000 men did it. Nearly every street was entrenched and defended with cannon; every house was strongly barricaded and a fortress in itself; from every roof came a shower not only of bullets but of stones, bricks, and tiles, and every description of missile. Nevertheless the men did fight their way to the other end of the town without firing a shot; but by the time they had reached their allotted positions 1000 of them were down, and 1500 more, Craufurd himself among them, had been overpowered and compelled to surrender. Nevertheless Auchmuty on the left held a strong position, to which many men had rallied, where he had captured 32 guns and 600 prisoners; and with him sixteen mounted men of the Seventeenth, together with some infantry, opened communication, through all the fire, from the reserve. [Sidenote: 1807.] On the extreme right the British also held a strong position, and thither also some mounted men of the Seventeenth made their way from Reduction, to keep in touch with the city. But all was to no purpose. Next day Whitelocke came to terms with the Spaniards, and agreed to withdraw every British soldier from the country.

So ended the ill-fated expedition to the Plata. Whitelocke was tried by court-martial on his return, and cashiered. The British in any case could hardly have kept a hold on the country; but Popham’s error was no excuse for Whitelocke’s mismanagement. This was the third time in fifty years in which the Seventeenth was sent on a fool’s errand to a country where the population was expected to receive them with open arms, and met them in fact with loaded muskets. Carolina in 1781, St. Domingo in 1796, and the Plata in 1806, were all part of one great blunder; and for all three the Seventeenth suffered. It is not a soldier’s business when sent on active service to inquire as to the wisdom or unwisdom of the statesmen who send him. He must simply obey orders, and do his duty. But it is hard when years of good and gallant service by a regiment are buried under the cloud of a statesman’s blunder; and this has been the fate of the Seventeenth.

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