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

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       LINE OF BATTLE

      IF THE ARMY HAD A HEART, then this organ beat away, very steadily indeed, in Horse Guards in Whitehall, and the expression Horse Guards became synonymous for the army’s high command. A spacious first-floor office, looking out across Horse Guards Parade to the trees, ponds and greensward of St James’s Park, housed the commander-in-chief. The first recorded commander-in-chief was General George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, described as ‘Captain General and Commander-in-chief of all Forces’ in a commission issued in 1660, and the Duke of Marlborough held the office twice. Its importance decreased in mid-century, and the office was vacant from 1778 to 1793, when the 76-year old Jeffrey, Lord Amherst, was appointed to it with the title ‘general on the staff’. He was so far past his best that even the deeply conservative General Sir David Dundas, author of the army’s principal drillbook and himself commander-in-chief 1809–11 reckoned that he produced nothing but mischief.

      It was only with the Duke of York’s appointment in 1798 that the post recovered some of its earlier importance. However, its accession to the level of real authority suggested by its title was effectively blocked because of a typically British piece of constitutional evolution. The commander-in-chief’s clerk, the secretary at war, had grown rapidly in status. Even in the late seventeenth century, he was an official of considerable importance and by 1688 he ‘issued orders of almost every description for paying, mustering, quartering, marching, raising and disbanding troops, and also upon the various points of discipline, such as the attendance, duty and comparative rank of officers and regiments.’²⁶ In 1704, the post was held by a politician, the Tory Henry St John, later Viscount Bolingbroke. He dealt with the monarch on a regular basis, led on military matters in the cabinet, and spoke for the army in the House of Commons. And when one commanding officer wrote about the misconduct of officers direct to the prince consort, nominally commander-in-chief, he received a sharp reprimand from St John. Although not all St John’s successors claimed such powers – or, more to the point, wielded such clout within their party – they were a key instrument in the exercise of parliamentary control.

      The secretary at war, however, shared his influence on military affairs with the cabinet’s two secretaries of state, whose responsibilities were divided geographically. In 1794 Pitt created a Secretary of State for War, adding responsibility for the colonies four years later. The first incumbent of the combined post was Pitt’s associate Henry Dundas, later Viscount Melville, who held office until the change of ministry in 1801 and in 1806 was unsuccessfully impeached for misappropriation of public funds. Although the importance of the Secretary at War declined after the establishment of a Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, the post was not abolished but responsibilities were shared: thus while the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies controlled the overall size of the army, the Secretary at War was responsible for its finances and for the introduction of the annual mutiny act.

      The misfortunes of the British army in the Crimea provoked enormous popular and political discontent, in part because of the war reporting of William Howard Russell of The Times. He was a man of courage, humour and great personal charm: William Makepeace Thackeray remarked that he would give a guinea any day to have Russell sitting with him at dinner at the Garrick Club. He painted a grim (if not always objective) picture of the impact of administrative incompetence on the British soldier. Early in the campaign, before the Allies had even reached the Crimea, he told his readers that:

      The men suffered exceedingly from cold. Some of them, officers as well as privates, had no beds to lie upon. None of the soldiers had more than their single regulation blanket…The worst thing was the continued want of comforts for the sick. Many of the men labouring under diseases contracted at Malta were obliged to stay in camp in the cold, with only one blanket under them, as there was no provision for them at all at the temporary hospital.²⁷

      He later wrote of the British base at Balaclava that ‘words could not describe its filth, its horrors, its hospitals, its burials, its dead and dying Turks, its crowded lanes, its noisome sheds, its beastly purlieus, or its decay…’²⁸ If Russell was subjective he was certainly not inventive: he told the truth. A medical officer also described the appalling conditions for the wounded, this time recalling the hospital at Varna.

      No words can describe the state of the rooms when they were handed over for the use of the sick; indeed, they continued long after, from the utter inability to procure labour, rather to be fitted for the reception of cattle, than sick men. Myriads of rats disputed the possession of these dreadful dens, fleas were in such numbers that the sappers employed on fatigue refused to work in the almost vain attempt to clean them…²⁹

      In 1854, in response to the outcry inspired by Russell’s articles, the government appointed a specific Secretary of State for War, the Duke of Newcastle. Newcastle’s successor, Lord Panmure, combined the offices of Secretary of State for War and Secretary at War, paving the way for substantial reform. The Board of Ordnance was abolished and its military functions transferred to the commander-in-chief. Its civil functions went to the Secretary of State for War, whose War Department was now responsible for the whole of army administration, including the Commissariat and Medical departments. This reforming СКАЧАТЬ