Wellington: The Iron Duke. Richard Holmes

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      Misfires were common. Flints had a life of twenty or thirty shots and gave little warning of imminent failure: they simply failed to spark and had to be replaced. Sometimes flint and priming-powder both did their job, but resulted only in a ‘flash in the pan’ which did not ignite the charge. And even when the weapon did fire, it was shockingly inaccurate. In 1814 Colonel George Hanger suggested that although a musket might hit a man at 80 or even 100 yards, a man would be very unlucky indeed to be hit at 150 yards by the man who aimed at him. And that, of course, was the catch, for most infantry soldiers aimed not at individuals but at the mass of the enemy’s line. A Prussian experiment on a canvas target 100 feet long and 6 feet high demonstrated that there were only 23 per cent hits at 225 yards, 40 per cent at 150 yards and 60 per cent at 75 yards. In 1779 a battalion of Norfolk militia, many of its members no doubt more handy with the plough than the musket, hit a similar target with 20 per cent of its shots at 70 yards. These experiments were exactly that, and with an enemy returning fire, results in battle were likely to be far worse. With such a weapon, the volume of fire counted for more than its accuracy, and recruits were drilled repeatedly until the sequence of loading had become second nature and they could fire three or even four shots a minute. Drill was also important in enabling them to move forward in columns, the usual formation for covering the ground, and then to deploy into line so that the maximum number of muskets be brought to bear.

      It was axiomatic that good infantry, drawn up in suitable formation (squares or oblongs were ideal) on favourable ground, should be able to resist the attack of cavalry. Although the cavalry of the age still sought to charge whenever possible, it often rendered more useful service by dealing in the small change of war. Cavalry in general, and especially light cavalry, provided a framework of pickets which screened armies in camp or on the march. Although Wellington figured briefly in the Army List as a light dragoon, he was never a real cavalry officer, and rarely showed the arm much sympathy, complaining that its officers had a trick of ‘galloping at everything’. Recent research has shown that he was as unfair in this as in some of his other sweeping judgements, and the achievements of the cavalry which served him were by no means derisory.¹⁴

      Artillery had already begun its long rise that was to end in it dominating the battlefield a generation after Wellington’s death. Cannon were categorised by the weight of the iron roundshot they fired, with handy 6-pdrs to heavy 12-pdrs forming the mainstay of field artillery and more cumbersome pieces, like 24-pdrs and 32-pdrs, taking pride of place when it came to battering the walls of fortresses. The roundshot, pitched to hit the ground just in front of its target and then to ricochet through the enemy’s formation smashing limbs and striking off heads at every bound, was the most common projectile, with an effective range of about 800 yards and a maximum range of perhaps twice that. At close range gunners switched to canister, a circular tin containing a number of lead or iron balls. The tin burst open when it left the muzzle, turning the cannon into a giant shotgun. Almost half the balls from a British 6-pdr would hit a large target at 400 yards, making canister a lethal weapon. One of my abiding memories of the battlefield of Assaye is the sheer prevalance of canister shot, from small shot the size of a thumb-nail to big shot the size of a golf-ball. The path of the Maratha gun-line could almost be traced by the battalions of urchins pressing canister upon the unwary visitor.

      A third artillery projectile, spherical case – known in the British service as shrapnel after its inventor, Lieutenant Henry Shrapnel of the Royal Artillery – consisted of an iron sphere filled with powder and musket-balls. The shell was ignited by a fuse composed of tightly-packed powder in an ash or beech plug; bursting range was regulated by cutting the end off the fuse.

      Cannon, like infantry muskets, were muzzle-loading throughout Wellington’s service. They were horse-drawn, with field guns requiring teams of six or eight horses. In most artillery units the gunners marched behind their pieces, but in horse artillery, designed to keep pace with, and cross the same country as cavalry, all gunners rode. Finally, the rocket made a brief and inglorious appearance in the British army during the Napoleonic Wars, but it was not deemed a success, and Wellington in particular had poor regard for it. When told that sending a rocket troop away would break its commander’s heart, he snapped: ‘Damn his heart: let my orders be obeyed.’

      The Georgian army was a mirror of the state it served. It was heterogeneous, decentralised and riddled with patronage and perquisite. The commander-in-chief at Horse Guards in Whitehall presided over the household troops (horse and foot guards), and the infantry and cavalry of the line. He was, however, subject to political control, itself unevenly applied by the two cabinet ministers with primary responsibility for military matters – the secretary of state for war and the colonies, and the secretary at war. The monarch also took an interest in military affairs, regarding the household troops as a personal preserve, and often becoming involved in that most fecund of royal pursuits, the design of uniform. Artillery and engineers were the creatures of the master-general of the ordnance, usually a peer with a seat in the cabinet, and proved the point by wearing blue uniforms rather than the red which characterised most of the rest of the army. Wellington served on both sides of the fence, both as commander-in-chief and as master-general of the ordnance, an unusual distinction.

      The heavy hand of the Treasury lay on the whole machine, for it controlled the commissariat which was responsible for supplying the army with most of what it required in peace and war, although its representatives were regarded as civilian officials rather than military officers. Yet even here there was little consistency, for some items (soldiers’ water bottles, for instance), were supplied by the board of ordnance and stamped with its initials, BO, and others, like uniforms and some accoutrements, were supplied to regiments by their colonels. The latter were actually not colonels at all, but generals given the appointment as a reward or as the equivalent of a pension. Wellington became colonel of the 33^rd Regiment in 1806, and remained colonel of a regiment until he died. They purchased their regiment’s requisites, using a government grant which they often managed to under spend by economising on the quality of cloth from which uniforms were made or the frequency with which items were replaced.

      Artillery and engineer officers were commissioned after attending the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, and were thereafter promoted by inexorable seniority. In the infantry and cavalry, however, colonels were intimately concerned in the selection and promotion of the officers in their regiments. About two-thirds of commissions in these arms were purchased, although during major wars it was difficult to find sufficient young men whose relatives were prepared to buy the fortunate youth an accelerated chance of an early death: in 1810 only one fifth of all commissions were bought. An individual wishing to buy a commission had to pay the government the regulation price, adding a non-regulation bonus to the officer he was replacing, using the colonel’s representative, the regimental agent, as his intermediary. Regulations on promotion grew increasingly tight during Wellington’s lifetime, and the Duke of York, commander-in-chief 1798–1808 and 1811–1827, forbade commissioning youths under the age of sixteen. He also established time limits that prevented an officer becoming a captain with less than two year’s service and a major with less than six, increasing these limits to three and nine years in 1806.

      Up to the rank of lieutenant colonel, promotion was regimental. A normal peacetime vacancy for a captain, arising because an officer had decided to retire on half-pay, would be offered to the senior lieutenant. If he could afford it, all well and good: if not, the offer was made to the next senior, and so on. The promotion of a lieutenant opened an opportunity for the promotion of an ensign, which was filled in the same way. An astute young man with money behind him could slip from regiment to regiment as opportunities arose, obtaining seniority in an unfashionable regiment and transferring back, in his new rank, to his old regiment, provided its colonel was kept sweet. When officers were killed in action or died of wounds, however, the vacancy was filled by seniority alone: it was small wonder that the ambitious but impecunious drank to ‘a bloody war or a sickly season’.

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