Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket. Richard Holmes

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      Shortly after Braddock’s defeat, the British raised a new, large regiment, the 60th Foot (Royal Americans), some of whose battalions were trained as marksmen. ‘In order to qualify for the Service of the Woods,’ ran a contemporary account, they were ‘taught to load and fire, lying on the ground and kneeling…to march in Order, slow and fast, in all sorts of Ground…[to] pitch and fold their Tents, and be accustomed to pack up and carry their necessities in the most commodious manner.’⁴¹ Each battalion of line infantry was given a light company, whose training emphasised skirmishing and marksmanship, in 1758. These light companies – ‘light bobs’ – were paired with the pre-existing grenadiers to form what were termed flank companies, with the grenadiers parading on the right of the battalion’s line and the light company on its left.

      This polarity was as much ideological as ceremonial, with the grenadiers – ‘tow rows’ – epitomising the wheel and pivot of the old world, and the light bobs the stalk and scurry of the new. In 1763 American Indian tribes in the Great Lakes region rose in a rebellion known from the name of the Ottawa chief who led it, as Pontiac’s. Amongst the troops who opposed it were light companies, serving away from their parent battalions, who looked markedly different to Braddock’s redcoats. An officer described the sombre dress of British light infantry.

      The ground is black ratteen or frieze, lapelled and cuffed with blue;…a waistcoat with sleeves, a short jacket without sleeves; only arm holes and wings to the shoulders (in like manner to the grenadiers and drummers of the line) white metal buttons, linen or canvas drawers;…a pair of leggings of the same colour with their coat which reach up to the middle of their thighs…and, from the calf of the leg downwards, they button…[The light infantry man] has no lace, but, besides the usual pockets, he has two, not quite so high on his breast, made of leather, for balls and flints…His knapsack is carried very high between the shoulders, and is fastened with a strap or web over his shoulder, as the Indians carry their pack…⁴²

      However, the army tended to revert to formal type in peacetime, and light companies disappeared after the Seven Years’ War, though they were later reinstated. It was not just that conventionally-minded officers argued that they were of little value on European battlefields, where the fortune of the day would be decided by the volleys of the line, but that whole ethos of light troops was inimical to formal discipline. During the American War of Independence when conditions again made light troops an indispensable component of the army, one British officer described them as:

      For the most part young and insolent puppies, whose worthlessness was apparently their recommendation for a service which placed them in the post of danger, in the way of becoming food for powder, their most appropriate destination next to that of the gallows.⁴³

      There was a palpable tension between the light infantry ethos, with its emphasis on practical uniform, individual skills and relaxed discipline, and the older notion of unthinking obedience.

      By the time the Wars of the French Revolution broke out in 1792 British light companies had little, apart from their shoulder-wings, to mark them out from their comrades in battalion companies. William Surtees, born in Northumberland in 1781, had always wanted to be a soldier, and in 1799 he joined the 56^th Regiment. It was known as the Pompadours because its purple facings were allegedly Madame de Pompadour’s favourite colour – or, as some smutty warriors alleged, the colour of her drawers. Surtees was almost immediately posted to the light company, and tells us that: ‘I felt not a little proud of my advancement, as I considered it (as I believe the generality of soldiers consider it) an honour to be made a light-bob.’ But he wore a red coat like his comrades of the battalion companies, and had little specialist training. His company was combined with ten others into a light battalion commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Sharpe of the 9^th Foot and sent on the Helder expedition, dispatched to Holland in September 1799 as part of an Anglo-Russian force commanded by the Duke of York. It fought an inconclusive battle at Egmont op Zee, and, perilously short of supplies, was lucky to be able to negotiate a convention which allowed it to withdraw unmolested.

      During the battle, Surtees discovered what it was like to fight real light infantry, tirailleurs, some armed with rifles which outranged the musket and all trained to take full advantage of the ground. The French skirmishers ‘had greatly the advantage over us in point of shooting, their bullets doing much more execution than ours.’ As he followed up the retreating enemy he saw remarkably few dead Frenchmen, and thought that most of the dead must have been carried off, ‘but experience has since taught me that we must have done them little harm.’⁴⁴ Although he fired almost 150 rounds, he doubted if he actually hit anybody.

      The Helder expedition rubbed home the point that light troops were scarcely less valuable in Europe than in North America. Colonel Coote Manningham and Lieutenant Colonel the Hon William Steward were amongst the reformers who demanded the establishment of light troops armed with rifles rather than muskets, dressed in something less conspicuous than the ‘old red rag’. We shall see later how an Experimental Corps of Riflemen was raised in 1800, soon to be embodied as the 95^th Regiment (later The Rifle Brigade). For the moment, though, it is worth observing that with the Baker rifles and green uniforms of the new riflemen came a new notion of discipline. The new unit’s regulations emphasised that trust and respect were, with discipline, the cement that bound riflemen together.

      Every inferior, whether officer or soldier shall receive the lawful commands of his superior with deference and respect, and shall execute them to the best of his power. Every superior in his turn, whether he be an Officer or Non-Commissioned Officer, shall give his orders in the language of moderation and of regard to the feelings of the men under his command; abuse, bad language or blows being positively forbid in the regiment…It is the Colonel’s particular wish that duty should be done from cheerfulness and inclination, and not from mere command and the necessity of obeying…⁴⁵

      Influential though the linked concepts of the citizen-soldier and the light infantryman were, neither revolutionised the conduct of war. If the Duke of Marlborough, who fought his last great battle at Malplaquet in 1709, was wafted back from the Elysian Fields to watch the battle of Waterloo in 1815 (or even the Alma fifty years later), he would have found many superficial differences but little fundamental change. Shakos were now worn instead of tricorne hats, and longskirted coats with big turned-back lapels had been replaced by something altogether trimmer. Regiments now had numbers, instead of being known by the name of their current colonel (though if the 37th was no longer Monro’s Regiment, it still retained its familiar yellow facings); there were indeed more skirmishers about than he would have remembered, and some of them wore uniforms which might have struck him as disturbingly drab.

      Weapons had certainly improved. Marlborough would have observed that reforms like those initiated in the French army by Jean Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval had standardised the calibres of artillery pieces and, through improved carriages and better harness, made it possible for them to move faster on the battlefield. The snappy movement of Captain Cavalié Mercer’s Royal Horse Artillery would doubtless have merited his applause. Yet most of their projectiles were roundshot, a single solid cannon ball, or canister, a tin container filled with small balls that burst on leaving the muzzle to give the cannon the effect of a gigantic shotgun. Howitzers, still a minority amongst the artillery, fired explosive shells, though, like those in his own day, their effect was uncertain. Sometimes they exploded harmlessly in mid-air, and sometimes they lay on the ground, fuses sputtering, giving ample opportunity for those nearby to escape. Even ‘spherical case’ – in the British service eponymously named after Henry Shrapnel, its inventor – a shell designed to bust in the air and scatter balls and СКАЧАТЬ