Part 7

I hope I may be excused for giving here another trifling anecdote. I remember well Colonel Guard, whose adjutant I was at the time, being most anxious that the 45th regiment, which he for some years commanded, should be made Light Infantry, and also to have had them styled, "The Sherwood Foresters." He, however, for what reason I know not, failed in the objects he had in view. Not long after, the 45th was brigaded in England for exercise with the 87th and 88th regiments. Colonel Guard had constantly, and much to his annoyance, and more particularly on account of his recent failure, heard these corps called to attention by their appropriate local designations, in place of their numbers; but one day he could stand it no longer, and when Colonels Butler and Duff loudly and proudly exclaimed, "Prince's Irish," and "Connaught Rangers,"--he in a very shrill voice, called out at the same instant, "Nottingham Hosiers," attention. His brother chiefs, who seemingly had not heard, or understood what he had said, looked all astonishment, when the whole brigade burst into an irrepressible, and unmilitary fit of laughter. I fear that in this instance, like old soldiers in general, I have been led away by the love of telling my story, and must therefore apologize for the liberty I have taken with the reader; yet, if I am not mistaken, I think I have shown, that a particular designation, however acquired, is considered by many, as of more importance to a corps, than a mere number; I therefore look forward to the day, if my views are adopted, when a district will have just cause to be proud of its regiment; and to a regiment never hearing it named but with a feeling of revived affection, and a determination, that their home shall never be disgraced by any act of theirs.

CHAP. IV.

Other causes besides those arising from the description of men generally enlisted into our army, tended greatly to keep soldiers what they were--that is to say, difficult to manage, and always ready to avail themselves of any opportunity of getting away from under the eyes of their officers, with the view of indulging in irregularities whenever it was possible to do so; as, I trust, I shall be able hereafter to point out. I cannot, however, undertake to say, what may be the custom in the present day; but a soldier, in former times, could not commit a greater offence than to presume to think or act for himself; and I remain still in doubt, when, or at what rank, an officer was supposed to be capable or had a right to think. And as for education, too many entertained the strange notion, that beyond reading and writing, which were allowed to be useful to non-commissioned officers, the less soldiers knew of such matters the better. After this need it have surprised any one, that intelligence of any kind was but rarely to be met with in the ranks of a British army; and that it was constantly found in those of the French, into which the conscription necessarily introduced it; and when evinced, it was sure to meet a due reward.

I remember, years ago, being visited by a brother-adjutant. As he entered my barrack-room, a young soldier placed a book upon the table and retired; which my visitor, a few minutes after, took up, and being surprised at what it indicated as its contents, he asked me, in seeming astonishment, what a private soldier could have to say to such a work? I replied carelessly, that the soldier who had just left the room, was a young man of considerable ability and great promise; and that I wished him to read useful books; so as to be fit, at a future period, for any station he might attain. He looked at me again, and seemed by no means satisfied by what I had said, nor with the book, and thus in a very friendly way addressed me:--"You are a very young man, the youngest I ever saw made an adjutant--I have myself risen from the ranks, and have consequently had much experience amongst soldiers; and know them well. You may therefore take my word for it, that books containing such information, only tend to make soldiers question the wisdom of their officers; and to fit them for being ringleaders in any discontent, or even mutinous conduct in their companies: and it also causes them to be disliked by the non-commissioned officers who have to teach them their duties, and especially the drill-serjeants, who are always jealous of those who are likely to become rivals." This certainly surprised me as coming from my visitor, but he had been for many years an adjutant, and it has often been remarked, that no officers are so severe, or have so little consideration for the feelings of soldiers as those who have risen from the ranks. With this as a kind of text, and also requesting that the reader will bear in mind what was shown at the commencement of this work, by excellent authorities, to be the character of our soldiers in general, I shall now proceed with my remarks, some of which may probably be thought trifling.

The French plan of carrying the knapsack, though not so smart looking, is in the opinion of many, superior to that adopted in our army; as it has much more the ease and comfort of the soldier upon a march in view. Our present mode, which binds the soldier so tightly within the slings and straps of the knapsack, as almost to prevent the free circulation of the blood, is certainly far from judicious, but we have been long accustomed to it, and like it on account of appearance. But in olden times, we had many ways of trying the tempers and dispositions of our soldiers; such as making them, though kept at drill, or at exercise in the field the greater part of the day, to burnish the barrels of their firelocks, to their serious injury, till they were made to shine like silver, and to polish their pouches, and oddly shaped caps, so as to render looking-glasses quite unnecessary. How often have I, when a zealous and enthusiastic adjutant, cracked a pouch with the head of my cane, when it was not bright enough to please my practised eye, with the kind intention of affording the owner a pleasant week's occupation to get it again into order. And how often have I, on my well-practised horse, placed camp colours as points of movement, till the whole "Eighteen Manœuvres" were gone through; many of them, if the commanding officer was dissatisfied, with the regiment's day's performance, two or three times over; having previously had the delight of marching past repeatedly, in quick and slow time, to please the spectators, or because the soldiers did not make the ground sufficiently resound by the firmness of their steps; thus altogether agreeably occupying from five to six hours of the officers and soldiers time, with the prospect before them of a long evening parade, or inspection, because they had not been so steady under arms as they ought to have been during the morning's occupations.

I sincerely hope we shall never again hear of such things being practised in a British army; and no commanding officer should be allowed to keep his regiment longer than an hour and a half, or two hours at a time under arms, which will be found quite sufficient, if well occupied, for every useful purpose of instruction; especially as at almost every parade, a battalion ought to be made to perform a movement or two before it is dismissed. I however look upon it to be of the first importance, that a soldier should be accustomed to consider his knapsack and accoutrements, I may say, as parts of himself, and that he should be so habituated to them, that whether marching or not, he could perceive little or no difference; and to effect this, he should never appear under arms without his knapsack; but I hope, if this plan be enforced, as it ought to be, to hear of an improvement being made in the mode of carrying them.

Our soldiers were greatly overloaded, especially on service, when they had to carry, besides their arms, accoutrements and ammunition, their canteens, haversacks, and well-filled knapsacks, their great coats, and often wet and consequently very heavy blankets, and sometimes in addition two or three days bread, and generally ten extra rounds of ball cartridges. Overloading soldiers in this manner was down right madness, especially if we had considered the description of men we too often had to deal with; and this will never answer in the more rapid modes of carrying on war, to which we must hereafter look forward.

I saw it not along ago announced in a daily paper, that the recruiting of the army had been very successful, 13,000 men having been raised for the line, and had joined their corps in the course of 1838. Of that number, more than 4000 were passed in the London district, and this was exclusive of men raised for the East India Company's service. By this it would appear, that London alone furnishes about a third of the men raised to fill up casualties in Her Majesty's regiments.

It is very likely that the editor of the paper, who seemed so pleased at being able to afford us this intelligence, is a zealous advocate for doing away with flogging in the army; but if such be the description of men of which it is chiefly composed, any person of common sense must see that it is impossible to do so, for what are these men in general but the vitiated and debilitated part of our population.

I have no doubt but it is very desirable that the country should get rid of such subjects, who are mostly unfit for any military purpose whatever; but why, at a great expense, burden the army with them? Would it not be much better to allow the worthy Yankees to have many of them at once, as emigrants or soldiers; and if sufficient authority were given to our Police Magistrates, they could very soon, by only threatening such fellows, with what a certain Colonel once upon a time practised in Ireland with so much success, make volunteers in plenty, and thus save our sympathizing friends the trouble and expence of enticing them to desert from their corps in the Canadas. I am well acquainted with their proceedings in this way, and can therefore speak from experience, having been for some time employed upon the staff of the army stationed in that part of the world. I certainly had at that time no trifling task assigned me to make arrangements, so as to have a good look-out kept all along the extensive frontier of the lower Province, to prevent desertions, to which our soldiers were much addicted, and encouraged by promises of both money and land, but which were seldom intended to be fulfilled; indeed, most of those who got off had nothing else left for it, in order to keep themselves from starving, but to become once more soldiers, and to fight against their old comrades.

It was supposed by some officers, that shooting a number of them (I saw six shot in one day at Chambly), who were caught in attempting to cross the boundary line, would have put a stop to this disgrace to our army, but it had no effect whatever; indeed nothing we could devise produced any change in this respect, until it was made the duty of commanding officers to give me immediate information whenever a man was missed from his corps. Small detachments of dragoons were posted at certain points to convey to me at St. Johns the necessary intelligence. Upon receiving it, the out-posts were instantly informed of the circumstance. At the same time parties of Indian warriors were sent out in all directions in search of him, and a reward was held out to them for bringing him in. These arrangements being made known to the several corps, and the deceptions of our kind neighbours being pointed out to them, a complete stop was thus put for the time to desertions. But are men who would so readily desert, those Great Britain should have in her armies? I ought here however to mention, to the honour of my old friends, the 88th, or Connaught Rangers, that they were exempted, by Sir Thomas Brisbane, from witnessing executions for this crime, as not a man of that corps had deserted to the United States.

In order to show what little effect executing men for desertion had upon others, I shall take the liberty of mentioning what took place upon one occasion at St. Johns. My General being absent at Montreal, as Brigade-Major attached to the troops, most of the melancholy duty of superintending such executions fell to my share. A private of De Meuron's regiment was at this time to be shot. The troops were formed in three sides of a square, at the other side towards the forest the grave was dug, and the coffin for the criminal to kneel upon, was placed, as usual upon such occasions, beside it. The Provost, with the firing party escorting the prisoner, and with the band of the regiment at their head playing the Dead march, entered the square--when, to my surprise, there proudly marched the prisoner--coolly smoking a cigar. Seeing at once the bad effects likely to result from such evident contempt of death, painful as it was to me, I called the Provost, and ordered him to take away the cigar from him. On approaching the grave, the prisoner walked quietly, but steadily forward, looked into it, and turning round to me, said, in French, "it will do." But still more to my surprise, yet with equal calmness, he walked up to his coffin, and before I was aware of what he was about, with his middle finger and thumb he measured its length, and turning round again to me, he said, in French, which his corps generally spoke, "it will do also." This was so far beyond any thing I had ever before witnessed, that I found it necessary to direct the Provost to proceed with the execution as quickly as possible; he therefore went up to the prisoner with a handkerchief, and, as is customary, offered to bind up his eyes. He however, pushed the Provost aside, exclaiming, in French, "I am a brave soldier, and have often looked death in the face, and shall not shrink from it now." The Provost then desired him, or rather made signs to him, to kneel upon his coffin, but he replied, "I prefer standing, and shall do so firmly." "Vive L'Empereur, vive Napoleon," were his last words. The party fired, and in an instant he ceased to exist.

He was a Frenchman, and had been a prisoner of war for a considerable time in England, but had been very improperly allowed to enlist into De Meuron's regiment; which he had, no doubt, entered with the intention of deserting the first opportunity which should present itself.

I have yet to mention our North American possessions; but it would appear, that it is now in contemplation, to employ corps of veterans upon the Canadian and our other North American frontiers. It is, however, evident that whoever can have suggested such a scheme, must have altogether overlooked, or be ignorant of the rigorous nature of a Canadian winter, and must likewise have forgotten, that almost all our veterans have spent a great portion of their lives in tropical climates, which cannot be supposed to have prepared their constitutions to bear up against such cold as is quite unknown in any part of Great Britain, as indicated by registers of the thermometer kept during a residence there; where it ranges from zero to 10, 20 and even 35 degrees below it; and should a strong wind prevail along with such cold, any one exposed to it is very likely to be frost-bitten. It may also be supposed, that the proposers of such a plan, are not aware of its being often necessary during winter in Canada, to have sentries relieved, or at least visited every half hour; for if they be unfortunately overcome by the severity of the cold, and in consequence fall asleep, it is certain death. Are worn-out men, many of them already martyrs to rheumatism, or must soon become so, fit for service in such a country, and to which they may be sent from their homes, probably reckoned upon as permanent, contrary perhaps to their wishes, and very likely only to suit the economical notions of penny-wise theorist and grumblers, who grudge old soldiers and sailors, even the pittance their services entitle them to, whilst they would handsomely reward the author of a mischievous pamphlet? But are these poor veterans, I again ask, fit to guard such an extensive frontier, constantly menaced by hardy and restless men, inured to a North American climate?

I have no doubt but that prejudiced men, and such as are always ready to cavil at any change proposed, be it good or bad, will at first be inclined to look upon what I have suggested for keeping up our army, as not only a wild and visionary, but also as an impracticable scheme; yet all I request is a full and fair consideration of what I have said and brought forward; and it ought now, I think, to be obvious, that our regiments must be composed of a superior description of men, if the country is to be served as it ought to be in our future wars, as will, I trust, more fully appear as I proceed.

I shall now beg to remind officers, in general, of the numbers of soldiers who arrived in Portugal and Spain, who went into hospitals before we had many weeks carried on military operations in those countries, many of whom, as might have been expected from their early debilitating habits, never rejoined their regiments; and throughout the war when fresh battalions arrived from England, nearly the same thing invariably occurred, and with detachments of recruits for corps already in the field, it was still worse, so much so, that we could never calculate upon one-third of the new comers remaining fit for duty with their regiments, even for a short time after their first arrival; some of them, however, as they became more habituated to campaigning, turned out to be good soldiers. Now many of these were men who had been probably raised, according to our present system of recruiting, in London, or in our manufacturing districts, and thus the country was put to an enormous but useless expense.

The soldiers we could chiefly depend upon, were those who originally belonged to the corps, or had come to us from many of the militia regiments, and particularly those who had been brought up to early habits of labour in our agricultural districts. I am aware that many of the men we got as volunteers from the militia, had been called out from our manufacturing population, but their habits and health had been much improved by being obliged to relinquish debilitating practices, by good feeding, and regular military exercises for a length of time before we got them. A long peace has probably brought into our corps a more robust description of men, than we had often to make the best we could of during the late wars, and many of whom were frequently most wretched creatures, so much so, that it was unfair to expect that British officers, however zealous they might be, could always be successful in battle against the finest men of France, which the conscription brought into the French ranks; but if an immediate increase of the army, to any considerable extent, should become requisite, and if the present system of recruiting is to be still pursued, the same generally unprofitable and expensive materials must be resorted to, for augmenting or completing the respective establishments of our old, and also of any new corps which it might be necessary to form, and many of whom must be again found to sink under the fatigues and hardships of war, and the weight of their knapsacks. I must, however, declare that none of the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland are deficient in courage. But let us reflect upon the state into which Sir John Moore's army (which almost set him distracted) had got in the retreat to Corunna. Almost all the corps had become completely disorganized in every respect, and had nearly lost the appearance of regular troops. An opportunity of fighting presented itself, and in a moment steady and well disciplined British battalions appeared in the field. Such were the strange beings British officers had to manage as well as they could.

It would appear that a new plan is about to be adopted for re-organizing and training the militia, and that the men are in future to be raised at a small bounty to serve for a period of five years; and that the whole are to be formed into battalions, of one thousand strong each. The training to take place annually, in portions of two companies at a time, for 28 days, under the adjutant, or permanent staff; which in future is to consist of an adjutant, a serjeant-major, eleven serjeants, one drum-major, and five drummers: one Serjeant to do the duty of quarter-master-serjeant; and it is intended to allow a part of the men to volunteer annually for the line.