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 Officer21 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.”
88 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 personal89 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.90 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 relieve91 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 in92 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 la93 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 command94 (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 of95 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 not96 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 man?uvring, 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 prizes97 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.
The delay was turned to full account by the English Government. Ill luck had followed the Stuart cause from its outset, and was to continue till the end; even success in battle seemed to bear but little fruit. Regiments were recalled from Flanders, though many were reduced to mere skeletons. Thus, when the king asked where the rest of the 3rd Dragoons were, he was told by their colonel, “I believe the residue is at Dettingen.” But an army was formed by Marshal Stair, and reviewed by the king on Finchley Common; another, under Wade, was in Yorkshire; and a third, under Cumberland, lay at Lichfield.
Thus, when in November the Jacobite force moved into England, and received no adherents as they had hoped to, and might have had if they had started earlier before the Government could prepare for defence, it had only taken Carlisle and reached Derby when the above armies were ready to co-operate and check it.
So the prince turned back, to find that in Scotland the Whig clans had risen, the west was in arms, and Edinburgh had assembled a force of which Cope’s refugees were the nucleus.
The command of the sea in this as in all other cases was of the highest value to one of the combatants. Especially in those days when sea travel was quicker and more certain than land.
The retreat was only molested by the English dragoons at Penrith, for the infantry could advance but slowly owing to the execrable nature of the roads and the inclement season of the year, and the prince moved to Stirling. The discipline of the small army there was excellent, its behaviour to the people was at all times better and more gentle than that of their adversaries, while the “orders” are concise and soldierlike.98 Hawley, from Edinburgh, with the 1st Royals, 3rd Buffs, 4th, 8th, 13th, 14th, 27th, 34th, 37th, 48th,25 and 52nd Regiments, the 7th, 10th, and 14th Dragoons, and some local volunteers, was the first to attack it. This he did at Falkirk, but, making the common mistake of undervaluing the enemy, he was defeated, and retired in some disorder to Edinburgh, with the loss of his guns, five colours, tents, stores, and camp equipage. Thus a second English general had failed to defeat the Scottish Jacobites.
The Duke of Cumberland was therefore despatched to Scotland, with Major James Wolfe, of the 20th, as aide-de-camp, and met the prince at Culloden, where he accepted battle with a weak and ill-provided army against one strong in cavalry and artillery, the two arms in which he was notoriously deficient. The story of that dismal battle is one of 10,000 against 4000, of well-fed against fasting men, of cruelty after the fight so revolting that the very names of all concerned in it should be held in execration by every honest man. Wholesale, cold-blooded butchery of wounded and prisoners, the vilest treatment of women, who were then turned naked into the snow to die; these are stories that stain the name of a general who well merited the name he earned. To his credit be it said, however, Wolfe refused to take part in these barbarities, and he must have felt with pride afterwards that because of his conduct “it was remarked that the recusant officer declined visibly in the favour and confidence of his commander.” It was the last real battle that was fought on British land, and the only point worthy of remembrance is the gallantry of the 4th Foot, in whose ranks “there was not a bayonet that was not either bloody or bent.”
It pointed out for the last time the curious clannish pride which characterised the Highland people, for the three Macdonald regiments, who had been placed on the left rather than the right, a post of honour they claimed as theirs since the days of Bruce, for the gallantry of their forefathers at99 Bannockburn, refused to fight, or even to follow their chieftain Keppoch, who fell, pierced with musket balls.
With Culloden the last hopes of the Jacobite “faction”—for it had again become one now—died. Whatever hold, up to 1745, the Stuart “idea” may have had on a section of the people, the wisest of them saw that it was hopeless, and only the hopeful enthusiasts still had dreams. It is difficult to know in these days whether there ever really was a Jacobite party after “the ’45.” The idea seems to have died in despair. Of course there were feeble and hysterical conspiracies like the, possibly legendary, one of the young Scot who plotted the assassination of the royal family; and the studied ignorance of Sir Robert Walpole, who kept his eyes shut to these last faint flashes of the fire of the cause, may have deepened the hopefulness of those who still dreamed of “another opportunity,” as an old rebel of the name of Scott did. There was one exception, in the cruel treatment and death of Dr. Cameron about 1750 or 1751; but there may be some justification for his execution, as he was no doubt a “go-between” the Pretender in France and the few left faithful to him in the north. The Young Pretender, too, seems to have been as blind as his adherents. Dr. King, in his Anecdotes of His Own Time, states that in 1750 the prince was in London; but he gives prominence to the undoubted fact that the real destruction of the party was due to the decadence, physically and morally, of the last real aspirant to the throne, and to the dread that his mistress—Walkinshaw—was a paid spy of the house of Hanover, her sister being housekeeper at Leicester House. Well might one of the party ask this hopeless scion of a hopeless house, when endeavouring to separate him from this woman, “What has your family done, sir, thus to draw down the vengeance of Heaven on every branch of it for so many ages?” The answer is simple enough. They had done little but bad. Their kingship was only honourable with those who believed that any sovereign was divinely appointed. The last of the Stuarts more than proved the worthlessness of the whole race as far as the English throne was concerned. Whether, as100 Scott romantically suggests in Redgauntlet, the Young Pretender ever returned to Great Britain about 1765, is improbable. Even if he did, his cause was lost, and that by his own fault. What scion of the house of Stuart but so fell? It is not that the early members of the house of Hanover were really great or good, but it was because the last of the house of Stuart were irretrievably mean and bad that the embers of the Civil War remained such, and never after 1745 burst into a serious flame.
But while the house of Stuart was declining from mere corruption and decay, the almost alien house of Hanover was slowly and securely winning its way into English sympathies. This was natural enough as the successive sovereigns became more English in their feelings and their speech. Until the early Guelphs could speak freely and fully the language of the nation over which they were called to rule, until they were English born and had English ideas, there was, no doubt, ground for a certain amount of antagonism. Thackeray’s Four Georges proves up to the hilt how slow these sovereigns were in learning the very patent fact that they must become English and cease to be German to get a firm hold on our insular mind. And this they did eventually. But, up to the ’45, their rule, which was still very foreign for years after that date, was rather endured as a necessity than loved, their personality regarded as alien rather than English. The one thing that made the nation, up to the first half of the eighteenth century, accept with little complaint, or hostility, princes who still were far too German to please the tastes of English-speaking peoples, was their own honesty of purpose and their personal courage and bravery. The house of Guelph lost nothing by actual want of success in the foreign wars about the time of the really serious Jacobite rising. Englishmen like pluck, and don’t mind a beating, provided good men do their best. This, then, is the story, as far as the army is concerned, of Dettingen and Fontenoy. They were not successes, certainly, but neither king nor soldier had shown want of the good old fighting spirit of Blenheim and Malplaquet. At the worst it was a healthy time, and showed101 that our mere bull-dog courage was not by itself the only thing by which battles are won.
The causes of the war in which an English reigning sovereign led an army in the field were the guarantee of Great Britain, France, and other States, of the succession of Maria Theresa to the throne of the German Empire, known as the “Pragmatic Sanction,” and the attack upon Silesia by Frederick of Prussia. From this action France and Bavaria were drawn into the struggle against the Empress, and George II., possibly fearing the preponderating growth of his neighbour Prussia as a menace to his Hanoverian dominions, assembled a force of Danes, Hessians, Hanoverians, and British, under the Earl of Stair, numbering forty-four battalions, twenty of which were British, with fifty-three squadrons. This army, about 35,000 strong, met the French, some 25,000 in number, and composed of twenty-four battalions, and thirty squadrons, in position on the left bank of the Maine. The Allies were at Aschaffenburg and Klein Ostheim, and prepared to march through Dettingen on the right bank to join with a Hessian force at Hanau.
Noailles, who commanded the French army, forming a tête du pont at Selegenstadt on his left, and massing the centre and right opposite Aschaffenburg, crossed by his left to head the allies off. Thus when the battle began, both held positions at right angles to the Maine, the British left and the French right respectively resting on the stream. The offensive was continued by the French, and led to a wild and injudicious advance of the right wing through and beyond Dettingen, a movement contrary to what the general commanding, who now wished to assume the defensive, intended, so that finally the French were beaten and driven across the stream. Except for incidents in the battle it has few points of interest.
The regiments engaged were the Life Guards and Blues; the 1st and 7th Dragoons Guards; the 1st, 2nd, and 6th Dragoons; and the 3rd, 4th, and 7th Light Dragoons, now classed as Hussars. Of the infantry the 3rd, 8th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 20th, 21st, 23rd, 31st, 32nd, 33rd, and 37th Regiments102 were engaged. The present Devonshire Regiment, from their heavy losses here, at Ostend, and later on at Salamanca, was long known, it is said, as the “Bloody Eleventh”; and the old 30th acquired the name of the “Young Buffs,” from their facings in this battle, which caused the king to exclaim, “Well done, old Buffs,” and on being reminded of his mistake, and told it was the 31st, and not the 3rd, replied, “Well done, then, Young Buffs.” Of the 37th it is related that a trooper of the 7th Dragoon Guards, who was charged afterwards with being a deserter during the battle, proved that he had fought on foot with the regiment, applying to Lieutenant Izzard for arms, and, behaving with great gallantry, was afterwards rewarded with a commission in the “Royal Welsh.”
The Greys had captured the white standard of the French Household troops, and the 1st Royals took the colours of the Black Musketeers. The king behaved with the greatest courage and coolness. His coolness under fire attracted the notice of the Duke d’Arenberg, who thought him “the bravest man he ever saw.” He headed the second line in person. Thackeray, no great admirer of the Georges, thus writes of him: “Whenever we hear of dapper George at war, it is certain that he demeaned himself like a little man of valour. At Dettingen his horse ran away with him, and with difficulty was stopped from carrying him into the enemy’s lines. The king, dismounting from his fiery quadruped, said bravely, ‘Now I know I shall not run away,’ and placed himself at the head of the foot, drew his sword, brandishing it at the whole of the French army, and calling out to his own men to come on, in bad English, but with the most famous pluck and spirit.” He was very far from a coward, therefore, this last British king who personally took part in battle; and he exposed himself so freely that he was nearly taken prisoner, and was rescued by the 22nd Regiment of the line, which ever after wear oak-leaves on their headdress on Dettingen Day. Such courage is contagious, and one is not surprised to find Lord Crawford of the Life Guards shouting with battle enthusiasm, when attacked in front and flank, “Never mind, my boys, this is fine diversion.”103 The loss, however, was heavy, and few practical results followed the victory. The junction with the Hessians was formed at Hanau, and there, as the king refused to turn and attack the French again, the Earl of Stair resigned his command and returned to England, partly because of this refusal, and partly perhaps (as officers in William III.’s army had felt as regards the Dutch) because he resented the favour too often shown to German over English commanders.
By 1745 the British contingent had been further strengthened by the addition of the 34th and 42nd Regiments up to about 53,000 men, or forty-six battalions, ninety squadrons and ninety guns, and then the Duke of Cumberland decided on attempting to raise the siege of Tournay, which was being conducted by Marshal Saxe, and suffered a severe defeat.
The French position was extremely strong, and Barri wood on the left, Fontenoy in the centre, and St. Antoine on the river on the right were most carefully fortified and entrenched and defended by 260 guns. Here it was, as the attack developed, the story is told of the meeting of the British and French Guards, when the former, saluting with raised hats, called to their opponents, “Gentlemen of the French Guards, fire!” The Highlanders behaved with extraordinary courage in this their first great foreign battle, and one man, who had killed nine Frenchmen, was in the act of cutting down the tenth when a shot carried his sword-arm off. The carnage was extreme, yet the stubborn soldiery would not give way even with the cross fire of musketry and case-shot at short range; and at one moment, when St. Antoine was carried, matters looked serious for Marshal Saxe. But that terrible Irish Brigade, seven battalions strong, were now brought into the fight. The fierce battle-cry of “Remember Limerick and Saxon faith” showed that past evils were not forgotten, and added racial antipathy to natural courage. The broken, wearied troops were too much shaken to meet so fierce a charge of quite fresh men; and hence the Irish counter attack fully succeeded, and the British retired sullenly, beaten. The Allies had lost 21,000 men, killed104 and wounded, against 8000 of their adversaries; but, outnumbered and exhausted as the British were, they accounted for one-third of the men and one-fourth of the officers of the Irish Brigade.
Naturally King George was disturbed by so serious a defeat; and naturally, perhaps, he might have felt and said, in thinking of the Irish at Fontenoy, “Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects!” On the other hand, the exultation felt by the exiled Irish can equally well be understood, as well as the spirit that induced the following lines of the time:—
“The English strove with desperate strength; they rallied, staggered, fled: The green hillside is matted close with dying and with dead. Across the plain, and far away, passed on that hideous wreck, While cavalier and fantassin dash in upon their track. On Fontenoy, on Fontenoy, like eagles in the sun, With bloody plumes the Irish stand—the field is lost and won!”
Little occurred after the battle until the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle brought hostilities to a conclusion.
Few changes had taken place in the armament of the troops in these days. The hand grenade was still in use, as a picture of a grenadier of the Foot Guards, dated 1745, shows; and officers, up to 1759, carried either the spontoon or a “light fusil” as part of their equipment, with the sash worn over the left shoulder as at present. Non-commissioned officers still carried the halberd.
The three-cornered hat was largely replaced by the sugar-loaf-shaped “Kevenhuller” hat; and, in addition to the bright-barrelled musket and bayonet, the privates carried a short sword. Wigs were abolished, and long gaiters covered the leg to the knee, while the coats were shortened to a sort of turned-back swallow-tail, in imitation of the Prussian uniform.
Private 24th Regt. 1751.
Body armour had been reduced to a mere relic of defence in the “duty gorget”—a small plate of brass with the Royal Arms, which was suspended by a piece of black ribbon from the neck by officers “on duty”; a custom that obtained up to105 1830. There had been no material change in tactics; but the Royal Artillery had become more fully organised in four companies, the uniform being a loose, long, heavily-cuffed blue cloth coat with red facings. The Royal Military Academy, for the education of artillery officers, was also established about 1741, and the “Horse Guards” as an institution about 1750.
The Black Watch, however, the first of the new Highland regiments, was permitted, for some time, to carry a dirk, pistols, and round target. Medals were issued after Culloden, and regimental numbers appeared on the coat buttons about 1767.
Tactics and the “order of battle” were slow in changing, but the growing preponderance of infantry, now organised in three ranks only, was becoming more evident after Dettingen and Fontenoy. Battles were fought on more modern lines, and infantry bore the brunt; while the cavalry at Dettingen had at last discovered its proper r?le, and behaved with the greatest gallantry, in not leading the main attack as at Blenheim, but in meeting its own opposing arm and keeping it in check, and finally in converting the French retreat across the river into very nearly a rout.
The artillery still lacked mobility, and were not vigorously handled, with the exception of some Hanoverian batteries, which pushed up to support the final advance of the infantry, and opened fire on the French flank. So at Fontenoy the infantry had most to do. This was the beginnings of the tactics of the future.
Thus by 1755, or thereabout, the army had been steadily increasing. After the death of Marlborough, the 9th and 10th Dragoons and the 40th and 41st Regiments of infantry came on the permanent establishment, chiefly because of the Jacobite rising of 1715; the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th Regiments of cavalry also date from the same period; the 42nd had been formed from the separate Highland companies into the “Black Watch,” so called from the sombre colour of their tartans; and soon followed the 43rd, 44th, 45th, 46th, 47th, and 48th of the line. The106 49th, at first known as the 63rd Americans, dates from 1743.
But still the old jealousy of, and objection to, a large standing army was always recrudescing. On the accession of George II., the cadres only amounted to 17,760 men; and even this small body Mr. Pulteney, M.P., and “downright” Shippen in the House of Commons wished to be reduced to 12,000! The threat of war in 1739 stopped this; but the army was still at the mercy of political partisans, as the Duke of Argyll in his masterly attack on Sir Robert Walpole in the House of Lords conclusively proves. Another hundred years, too, had to pass by before “political services ceased to form the foundation of a claim for military preferment.”
Flogging, long recognised, and rattan punishment, copied, like the absurd uniform and rigid drill, from much-admired Prussia, now became a permanently recognised institution, and so remained until 1878. It is always a wonder that a free country, such as England, ever permitted the correctional system of the crudest of all military despotisms, that of the so-called Frederick the Great, to live so long. But in this, as in uniform and drill, our army has always been more of a copyist of foreign methods than an originator.