Chapter 10
In This Chapter
● British expeditions to the Low Countries, 1793-1795
● Fighting in Wales and Ireland, 1797-1798
● The Egyptian Campaign, 1801
● Fighting the French around the globe, 1793-1810
To the surprise and horror of Europe’s ruling establishment, the downtrodden French common folk rose against their king in 1789. The other European powers, however, saw the French Revolution as a threat to the existing order of things, and some governments took steps to restore the ancien regime by force. By degrees, the revolution passed into the hands of extremists who revelled in slaughtering their real or imagined opponents. The execution of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette was the last straw for many; Great Britain would probably have declared war on France if the French had not declared war on the British first, in 1793. For more on the causes and impact of the French Revolution, see Sean Lang’s European History For Dummies (published by Wiley).
The British army was committed to a mismanaged and mercifully short-lived campaign in the Low Countries. The French responded by attempting to invade Wales and providing armed assistance for a rebellion in Ireland. After this, British concern about the security of India prompted a major expedition to Egypt, and as the war became global they despatched smaller expeditions elsewhere. And this is just the prelude to the real showdown with Napoleon, covered in Chapter 11.
Militia and yeomanry regiments
French enthusiasm for spreading revolutionary values throughout Europe resulted in an overhaul and expansion of the British home defence forces. Militia regiments, usually raised by county, were recruited by ballot, although any individual so chosen could pay a substitute to take his place. On mobilisation, militiamen were liable to serve for a period of five years. Those willing to transfer to the regular army were formed into drafts and received postings to regiments overseas. Militia drafts regularly reinforced Wellington's army during the Peninsula
War and were generally considered to raise the overall quality of that army. Gaps in the militia ranks left by outgoing drafts were filled from fencible regiments, another type of reserve unit with a limited liability for home defence only. England, Wales, Ireland, and the Isle of Man all had militia. Scotland had none, but formed the largest number of fencible units. Well-to-do individuals formed volunteer cavalry regiments known as yeomanry, most of which had a county basis; yeomen had to provide their own mounts and at least some of their own equipment.
The British army at this time had entered a period of evolution. Dragoons had long since abandoned the mounted infantry role and fought purely as heavy cavalry, not mounted infantrymen. In 1800, further uniform changes took place: Infantry wore a coatee (a short, close-fitting coat) and a stovepipe shako or headdress, although fusiliers continued to wear the bearskin; rifle regiments wore green uniforms, and light cavalry wore blue. Militia and yeomanry regiments started to appear (see the sidebar of the same name). The army also formed the Royal Horse Artillery, equipped with light horse-drawn guns to support the cavalry, in 1793; it wore a uniform similar to that of the light dragoons and quickly became regarded as an elite.
Campaigning with the Grand Old Duke of York: The Low Countries, 1793-1795
British Prime Minister Pitt ordered a British army under command of the Duke of York to capture Dunkirk. His army consisted of 6500 British, 13,000 Hanoverians, 8000 Hessians, and 15,000 Dutch, but he had to withdraw to Ostend when the French defeated his Austrian allies further south. In fact, the Austrians preferred to employ their troops elsewhere and left the Duke in the lurch altogether. Pitt reinforced him with another 10,000 men under Lord Moira, and York withdrew into Holland. On 15 September 1794, though heavily outnumbered by the French, York fought a battle at Boxtel, an engagement that may have been totally forgotten if it had not given the future Duke of Wellington his baptism of fire. The then Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Wesley (the name Wellesley came later, as did the Wellington title; read more about him in Chapter 11) completely smashed up an attacking French column with disciplined, close-range volley firing by the 33rd Foot, the regiment that would later bear his name.
The Duke of York never had a chance of inflicting a decisive defeat on the French. Worse still, his army was totally unequipped to spend a winter in the open. His men dropped like flies from disease, exposure, and starvation, which forced him to withdraw into Germany in February 1795. In April, leaving part of the artillery and all the cavalry to support the Hanoverians, the survivors embarked for home. The French had been responsible for only a small percentage of the fatalities the British sustained.
The disastrous campaign in the Low Countries made a deep impression on the Duke of York, appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British army on his return. The army’s rank-and-file strength had expanded steadily from 40,000 in 1793 to 125,000 just two years later. This led to a proportional demand for officers. In this context, many who offered themselves lacked any form of qualification or instinct for their duties, and some of those in receipt of commissions were actually infants. The most notable example of the fashion was that snappy dresser George ‘Beau’ Brummel, who resigned his commission when his regiment was ordered to Manchester, commenting that he could not be expected to serve abroad. The Duke, an efficient administrator, swept away this sort of nonsense and greatly improved the administration that served the army so badly. In 1801 he founded the Royal Military College, training regimental and staff officers. Another of his introductions was the Royal Wagon Train, a forerunner of the modern Royal Logistic Corps, which did away with the tiresome business of hiring civilian drivers.
Everyone knows the nursery rhyme, ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’. The trouble is, the Duke may have been grand but he wasn’t old (he was 30, actually), he had more than 10,000 men, and as he was campaigning in the Low Countries, hills were in short supply. What the rhyme says, really, is that the poor chap wasn’t getting anywhere fast, and that was true enough. When the American War of Independence ended (see Chapter 9), the British government let the army run down, just as it did and would do after every war. Not only a manpower shortage existed, everything the army needed was in short supply, and too many office-based bunglers were building empires for themselves.
The Battle of Fishguard, February 1797
Whenever possible, the French liked to make trouble for the British at home. In 1796 a 13,000-strong invasion force commanded by General Hoche hoped to effect a landing in Bantry Bay, Ireland, to stir up trouble with the help of anti-British Irish folk. Some of Hoche’s ships arrived but bad weather prevented a landing. Of the rest, five were lost in storms, six were captured, and the rest went home.
The following year the French decided to mount an expedition to Wales. In command was an American named William Tate. Originally of Irish extraction, Tate had served as a rebel artilleryman during the American War of Independence; his qualifications for the job in hand seemed to be the ability to speak English and a dislike of the British. His troops, known as the 2nd Legion de Francs, consisted of some 1200 gaol sweepings, deserters, and former rebels against the Revolution. It seems probable that General Hoche considered Tate and his troops very expendable indeed, judging from his orders: After being put ashore near the Bristol Channel, they were to burn Bristol, capture Chester and Liverpool, destroy port facilities and fill in docks as they went, and raise the country in rebellion. Obviously, they would have no shortage of things to do.
The wonder is that what happened next has not become a musical or an ice show. Unable to agree with the ships’ captains on a suitable landing place in the Bristol Channel, Tate agreed to put his command ashore somewhere in Cardigan Bay. In fact, the troops landed on a rocky headland close to Fishguard on 22 February 1797. The locals spotted them and raised the alarm. Some French troops went out to forage and quickly became drunk on wine the local people had salvaged from the wreck of a Portuguese ship. Others were shot while trying to steal from farms. A Welsh woman tipped one down a well, but he survived, and a fierce lady cobbler named Jemima Nicholas rounded 12 up with a pitchfork. Meanwhile, the Lord Lieutenant of Pembrokeshire, Lord Cawdor, was assembling a counter-invasion force. While the troops were gathering, a number of Welsh women in their traditional scarlet cloaks and black steeple hats apparently lined up to give a distant impression of infantrymen. The story may well contain an element of truth. Lord Cawdor’s army finally numbered 43 men of his own Pembroke Yeomanry, 100 Cardigan militia, 93 Pembroke volunteers, 191 Fishguard Fencibles, a 148- strong naval party with two 9-pounder cannon, and some attached officers, giving a grand total of 575, or approximately half of the invaders’ strength. However, Tate and his officers were in no mood to fight; in the circumstances, surrender seemed the most comfortable option. Tate initiated a courteous correspondence with Lord Cawdor, as a result of which the invaders grounded arms and marched off under escort.
So ended the last ‘invasion’ of the British mainland. As if the whole business had not been bizarre enough, the battle honour Fishguard was subsequently awarded to the Pembroke Yeomanry although they had fought no battle.
The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798
Planned and executed by the Society of United Irishmen, the events of 1798 are a rare example of Protestants and Catholics working together for what they believed to be the good of Ireland. The Protestant Ascendancy wanted more power for the toothless Parliament in Dublin, and the Catholics (in the majority in Ireland) wanted the full rights and privileges enjoyed by other Irish citizens. The inspiration for this rising was the French Revolution and its architects were Wolfe Tone and Napper Tandy. They agreed the date for the rebellion as 24 May and ingeniously set the time to coincide with the passing of mail coaches through the towns and villages, so creating an ever-enlarging ripple across the countryside. For more on the political situation, see Mike Cronin’s Irish History For Dummies (published by Wiley).
The rebellion’s fortunes were mixed. In some areas the local British garrisons experienced no difficulty in containing the outbreak, in others they had to fall back. In general, the rebels lacked discipline and direction; some took time off to settle old scores and the old religious rivalries surfaced before long. Throughout May and on into June, British regular troops, yeomanry, and militia brought one area after another back under government control, sometimes with little mercy being shown to those involved in the uprising.
The rebellion was at its strongest in County Wexford, where the rebels held the towns of Wexford and Enniscorthy in strength. Commanded by Lieutenant General Gerard Lake, some 10,000 troops fought a pitched battle against 16,000 rebels at Vinegar Hill, near Enniscorthy, on 12 June. They routed the rebels, who lost approximately 4000 men killed or wounded, and the back of the rebellion was broken. Folklore sometimes presents the battle as an Anglo-Irish contest, but most of Lake’s troops were Irish yeomanry and militia regiments.
Too late in the day, the French awoke to what was happening. On 22 August approximately 1000 French troops under General Joseph Humbert landed at Killala Bay in County Mayo. Having been joined by a large number of Irish rebels, Humbert inflicted a defeat on Lake at Castlebar. The engagement was notable on two counts:
● Most of the Irish element in both armies took to their heels at the first cannon shot.
● A lone Highland sentry, positioned at the top of a flight of steps in the town, fought with such ferocity that the bodies of his French assailants surrounded him when he was finally killed.
Humbert must have known his was a fool’s errand, but he gamely continued to march in the direction of Dublin, hoping that more rebels would join him.
In fact, the reverse applied. The new Viceroy of Ireland, Lord Cornwallis, carefully coordinated the movement of his own and Lake’s armies until they finally cornered Humbert near the village of Ballinamuck on 8 September. Humbert fought for a token half hour, then surrendered. Cornwallis’s forces killed several hundred rebels, mostly during the pursuit, and captured 90.
The London government, severely shaken by the rebellion and angered by the Irish Establishment’s inability to keep order, passed the Act of Union in 1800. This merged the Kingdom of Ireland with the Kingdom of Great Britain and allowed Ireland to send elected members to the Westminster Parliament, governing the country from London rather than Dublin.
Chasing the French out of Egypt, 1801
On 12 April 1798 General Napoleon Bonaparte, commander of France’s 40,000-strong Army of the Orient, sailed from Toulon for Egypt. He intended to occupy Egypt as a stepping stone to India, thereby ruining British trade in the Middle and Far East. Although Napoleon’s land campaign in Egypt went well, the British Admiral Nelson ruined his strategic aim by destroying the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile on 1 August 1798. This left the French army completely stranded.
Egypt was a province of the Ottoman Empire and to secure its possession, Bonaparte made a fruitless foray into Palestine. On returning to Egypt his troops repulsed a Turkish landing from British ships at Aboukir on 25 July 1799. On 23 August he abandoned his troops and returned to France aboard a fast frigate.
Britain wanted the French out of Egypt altogether, so in 1801 a combined British-Turkish force of 18,000 men assembled at Rhodes under the command of General Sir Ralph Abercrombie. Setting sail for Egypt, it made an opposed landing from ships’ boats on 8 March. The landing should have been made before dawn, but it was full daylight when the troops were committed. A hail of round shot, shells, grape, and musketry met them. The French smashed and sunk several boats, and cavalry who waded into the sea attacked the occupants of others. More than a few of the British took a ducking. A sergeant had to hold one tiny Guards officer’s head above the water to prevent him from drowning. Despite this, Abercrombie’s troops reached the shore in increasing numbers and drove off the French. Thrown back into Alexandria, the French counter-attacked on 21 March. The 28th Foot (1/The Gloucestershire Regiment), occupying an incomplete redoubt (fortification) in the sand dunes, found themselves engaged in a furious fire-fight with a French grenadier regiment that called itself the Invincibles; more French grenadiers were closing in behind the 28th. The order was given for the regiment’s rear rank to face about, and for a while each rank fought its own battle against superior numbers. In due course, the Invincibles pulled back, leaving the 28th to go to the assistance of their neighbours, the Black Watch, who were also surrounded. The battle ended with the repulse of a major cavalry charge that failed to reach the British line. British casualties amounted to 1376 killed and wounded, including Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who sustained a mortal wound. French losses were estimated at 3000. In recognition of their remarkable feat, the 28th were awarded the distinction of wearing the number 28 on the back of their headdress, signifying the regiment’s ability to fight in two directions at once. In due course, a small sphinx badge replaced this.
Without the need for serious fighting, Cairo and Alexandria both passed into allied hands. Disheartened and isolated from their homeland, the 26,000 French troops remaining in Egypt surrendered and received a free passage home in September 1801.
Fighting France Here, There, and Everywhere
The Peace of Amiens, signed on 27 March 1802, ended hostilities between Great Britain and France, but only for a while. It was simply half-time (well, nearly) in a war lasting 22 years (see Chapter 11 for the war’s conclusion). In May 1803 it was time to start fighting again. In both halves of this protracted war, British troops were involved in operations that most Britons have now all but forgotten about. This is a good place to give brief details:
● Holland, 1799. When Holland became part of the French sphere of influence, it was of paramount importance to stop the Dutch fleet falling into the hands of the French. In August 1799 the Duke of York returned to Holland at the head of 27,000 British troops as part of a combined operation to secure the Dutch warships at the island of Texel, which surrendered to a British naval squadron. Joined by two Russian divisions, the Duke fought several engagements with the French and then, having secured his objective, signed a convention with them in October. Under the terms of this the allies withdrew from Holland, the British repatriated French and Dutch prisoners, and the Dutch fleet remained in British hands.
● Copenhagen, 1801 and 1807. On 2 April 1801 the 49th Foot (1/Royal Berkshire Regiment) and the Rifle Brigade served as marines during the naval battle in which Nelson destroyed the Danish fleet. In 1807 a larger British force successfully besieged Copenhagen to prevent the Danish fleet falling into French hands. A division under the command of the future Duke of Wellington beat off a Danish relief force.
● Malta, 1798-1800. In 1798 the Maltese rose against the French force that was occupying the island. British troops served alongside the Maltese until the French surrendered on 5 September 1800. This marked the beginning of a long association of the British armed services with Malta that ended only in comparatively recent years.
● India, 1803. Napoleon liked to sneer that Wellington was a ‘sepoy general’ because of his service in India. That was not only unfair to the sepoys, who were trained, disciplined, professional soldiers with fine fighting qualities, but also a very serious underestimation of Wellington’s abilities as a commander. One wonders how the French Emperor would have coped with the situation confronting the then Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley at Assaye on 23 September 1803.
Assaye was a village in Berar located between the confluence of the Juah and Kaitna rivers, approximately 250 miles northeast of Bombay. Wellesley had only 4520 British and Indian troops at his disposal, including 2170 infantry, 1200 cavalry, and a small number of guns. His British troops included the 19th Light Dragoons, the 74th Highlanders (2/Highland Light Infantry), and the 78th Highlanders (2/Seaforth Highlanders). His object was to destroy the Mahratta field army in the Deccan, which may seem overambitious considering that that army, commanded by Dowlut Rao Scindia and the Rajah of Berar, consisted of 30,000 cavalry, 17,000 infantry (including 10,500 regulars), and 190 guns. French instructors had trained it and a German officer named Pohlmann commanded its infantry. Initially, both armies confronted each other across the Kaitna. Wellesley observed that two villages faced each other on opposite banks of the river, some way beyond the Mahratta left, and correctly deduced that a ford connected them. Using broken ground for concealment, he led his troops across and then deployed to face the enemy with his right protected by the Juah and his left by the Kaitna. This forced the Mahrattas to turn towards him, but because the front narrowed as the two rivers flowed towards each other, they were only able to deploy a fraction of their strength. Incredibly, it was the British who took the initiative. Despite local checks it took them only three hours to drive the Mahratta army off the field with the loss of 6000 killed or wounded and 98 guns captured. British casualties amounted to 428 killed and 1156 wounded or missing, about one-third of their strength. Following a further defeat at Laswari, Scindia sued for peace.
In later years, Wellington described Assaye as his greatest victory, and proportionately the bloodiest action he ever witnessed.
● Naples, 1806. Having crowned himself Emperor of the French in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte began seeing to it that his relatives were nicely settled on other people’s thrones. The throne of Naples he gave to his brother Joseph. In 1806 a 5000-strong British force under General Sir John Stuart landed in Naples with the intention of helping guerrillas fighting in support of the deposed King Ferdinand IV. General Jean Reynier, commanding 6440 men, opposed Stuart near the village of Maida. The disciplined volleys of the British line blew the French attack columns apart and the French sustained further casualties as they broke and fled. Stuart’s losses amounted to 387 killed and wounded. French casualties included 1785 killed or wounded plus a large number of prisoners. As the anticipated guerrilla support was not forthcoming, Stuart withdrew his force to Sicily. Maida Vale in London takes its name from the battle.
● The West Indies, 1794-1810. The slaves on former French colonies (handed to the British at the peace of Amiens) thought that the revolutionary slogan of Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood applied to them, too. Understandably, they reacted badly when they learned it didn’t. In Haiti they reacted with such extreme violence that a large British force was despatched in the hope that it would restore some sort of order, as they didn’t want mayhem spreading to Jamaica and the rest of their islands, as this would destabilise the whole region. In the event, the British only achieved partial success. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars estimates claim that no fewer than 100,000 British soldiers lost their lives in the West Indies, the majority dying from tropical diseases.
● The South Atlantic, 1806-1807. Operations against Spain’s South American territories proved less than fruitful (Spain being allied to France at this time). In June 1806 a small British force made an unauthorised landing at Buenos Aires, but the local militia forced it to surrender. The following year General Joseph Whitelocke mounted a much larger expedition from the United Kingdom. It occupied Montevideo, in modern Uruguay, in July 1807, then descended on Buenos Aires. A popular uprising followed in which the British troops, unused to street fighting, were confronted by barricades and heavy firing from the rooftops, and were finally forced to surrender. There was no point in pursuing these adventures further, as Spain’s colonies were on the point of rebelling against their mother country anyway.