Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors. Richard Holmes

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      THE NOTION OF a universal hierarchy in the army was slow to evolve. For instance, until 1788 troopers in the Life Guards were ‘private gentlemen’, initially recruited from that flotsam of gentry left unemployed after the Civil War, and expected to buy their own costly uniforms. In 1678 the separate troops of Life Guards had been reinforced by the newly raised Horse Grenadier Guards who used explosives in battle. Diarist John Evelyn described them at camp on Hounslow Heath as ‘dextrous in flinging hand Granados, every one having a pouch full; they had furred hats with coped crowns like Janissaries, which made them look very fierce …’¹ In contrast to the gentlemen of the Life Guards, however, privates in the Horse Grenadiers were just like private soldiers in the rest of the army. As time went on, service in the ranks, even the ranks of the Life Guards, became less attractive to a gentleman, all the more so because his 1660 pay of £73 a year (then equivalent to the income of ‘Eminent Clergymen’) was eroded by inflation and by the 1780s an artisan might expect to earn at least as much.² By then the Life Guards had become recruited with ‘native Londoners with alternative sources of income, whose part-time jobs as private gentlemen simply furthered family business interests’.³

      The 1788 reform replaced the existing troops of Life Guards and the Horse Grenadiers, with two new regiments: the 1st Life Guards and the 2nd Life Guards. These would now be recruited like the rest of the army, although the grenade badge on officers’ cloaks remained as a last echo of the Horse Grenadiers. This induced the Duke of York to write ‘I was a little sorry for the Horse Grenadiers because they were to a degree soldiers, but the Life Guards were nothing but a collection of London Tradespeople.’ Their regimental custom of addressing their men as ‘gentlemen’ harks back to an older world, and so too does the Household Cavalry practice of addressing lieutenant colonels and above by their rank rather than as ‘sir’. The reform also did away with the old Life Guards rank terminology, where commissioned ranks below captain (just two for the army as a whole) had been cornet, guidon, exempt, brigadier, and sub-brigadier. It left the Household Cavalry with an NCO terminology that still endures. Lance corporals are lance corporals, just as they would be in the rest of the army. But corporals are styled ‘lance corporal of horse’, sergeants are ‘corporal of horse’, staff sergeants are ‘staff corporals’, squadron sergeant majors are ‘squadron corporal majors’, and the regiment’s senior non-commissioned member is the ‘regimental corporal major’.

      The reforms did nothing about the advantageous double-ranking system enjoyed by Guards officers. Central to its operation was the concept that rank in the army and rank in a given regiment were distinct. In 1687 captains in the Guards were given the army rank of lieutenant colonel. Four years later, the privilege was extended to lieutenants, who ranked as majors in the army. Finally in 1815 – as a reward for the conduct of the Foot Guards at Waterloo – ensigns were granted lieutenancies in the army. When a Guards officer reached the rank of major in his regiment he was at once made a colonel in the army. Formally a Guards captain would style himself ‘captain and lieutenant colonel’, but the custom of referring to officers by their higher army rank, clear enough at the time, easily causes confusion now.

      At Waterloo there was a glut of colonels in and around the farm complex of Hougoumont. The light companies of the 1st, Coldstream, and 3rd Guards played a distinguished part in the defence of the Hougoumont, standing like a breakwater in front of Wellington’s right centre. All the company commanders, captains by regimental rank, enjoyed lieutenant-colonelcies in the army. James Macdonnell of the Coldstream was in overall command; Charles Dashwood of 3rd Guards in the garden and farm surrounds; Henry Windham of the Coldstream in the château and farm; with Lord Saltoun of 1st Guards in the orchard. Eventually Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Woodford (and a ‘proper’ lieutenant colonel in this context), commanding 2nd Coldstream Guards, was sent down with most of his battalion from Major General Sir John Byng’s brigade up on the ridge. Although he was now the senior officer in the area, Woodford generously let James Macdonnell remain in command. The burly Macdonnell had already distinguished himself by leading the handful of guardsmen who had closed the farm’s north gate after the French burst in. Private Matthew Clay of 3rd Guards ‘saw Lieutenant Colonel Macdonnell carrying a large piece of wood or trunk of a tree in his arms (one of his cheeks marked with blood, his charger bleeding within a short distance) with which he was hastening to secure the gates against the renewed attacks of the enemy.’⁴ Some called him ‘the bravest man in England’ for his part in animating the defence, although he always maintained that it was a team effort. He was knighted and ended his days as a general.⁵

      Guards officers eventually lost their double rank in 1871, with the reforms accompanying the abolition of the purchase of commissions. It had always been more than just a genteel way of ensuring that the ‘Gentlemen’s sons’ – as Guards officers were known in the Wellingtonian army – enjoyed added status. This had practical advantages: a force made up of several units or detachments was commanded by the senior officer, by army rank, present. As a general’s rank came by seniority from the date of promotion to lieutenant colonel, a Guards captain found himself on the roll from the date of his appointment. This increased his prospects of becoming a general early, and a handful of officers did indeed find themselves major generals in the army while still doing duty as captains in their own regiments.

      Andrew Wheeler of the 1st Guards was commissioned in 1678, promoted to captain and lieutenant colonel in 1692, became a major general in 1727, and died a regimental captain three years later. More typical was Richard, sixth Earl of Cavan, commissioned in 1744, made captain and lieutenant colonel in 1756 and major general in 1772. He departed to command the 55th Foot as a regimental lieutenant colonel in 1774, and died, by now a lieutenant general, in 1778.⁶ Major Charles Jones, author of the The Regimental Companion (1811), argued that dual rank ‘has often been detrimental on real service, is always a cause of distracting jealousy to the line, and has never … offered one solid advantage’. Ending purchase did not end the concept of dual rank. This situation initiated a long-running joke: a foreign officer in British pay, marching through Portugal in 1810, saw a senior Guards officer astride a donkey:

      ‘What a beautiful mule that is!’

      ‘It is not a mule, my good fellow, it is a jack-ass.’

      ‘Pardon me, it would indeed be a jack-ass in the line, but because it belongs to the Guards it must be a mule by brevet.’⁷

      From its earliest days the army had granted promotion as a reward for gallant or distinguished service, and this was known as brevet promotion. It was especially relevant in an age where medals and decorations were not generally available, and could be awarded individually or to a whole group. By the nineteenth century brevet was available, as an individual reward, only to officers who were already captains, and it could not take a man beyond colonel. Captain Garnet Wolseley, commissioned into the 12th Foot in 1852, was repeatedly put up for the brevet promotion for which his harum-scarum courage qualified him. But the military secretary regretted that he had not yet acquired the six years service that brevet rank demanded:

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