The Making Of The British Army Read online

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  The relationship between the warrior and society, between war and civilization, is intimately and personally explored in a little book called Fusilier by the late Reverend Professor John McManners, sometime Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, fellow and chaplain of All Souls, and alumnus of the theological college in which I was studying before I decided to join the army. In 1945 Jack McManners was a temporary major in the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, one of the toughest infantry regiments the army has ever mustered. He had joined straight from Oxford in 1939 with a first in history, and was soon in action with the grenade and the bayonet in North Africa. Indeed, he was in action more or less continuously until the end of the war. In 2002 he turned his lifetime’s ‘recollections and reflections’ on the war into Fusilier, in which he writes:

  People tell academics and clergy to look at what the ‘real world’ is like. By this they mean dictating letters, selling and buying shares, instituting manufacturing processes, tapping information into computers. But behind their world is the real world they have forgotten: the battlefield. Here is the ultimate reason of the social order written in letters of lead and shards of steel.

  The Making of the British Army is about the battlefield, the place where, ultimately, the peace of ‘the social order’ is decided: and it is indeed written in letters of lead and shards of steel.

  The First Dry Rattle of New-drawn Steel

  Edgehill, 23 October 1642

  ROBERT BERTIE, EARL OF LINDSEY, LAY IN AGONY ON A PILE OF STRAW WHILE his son, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, tried to staunch the flow of blood. Veteran of many a battle on the Continent, the earl was now a year short of sixty, bald and gaunt, but keen-eyed still. The musket ball was lodged deep in his thigh. Seeing his father fall Lord Willoughby had rushed to his side, only to be taken prisoner with him. It was evening, pitch dark and bitter cold. Outside the dimly lit barn which served as a Parliamentarian dressing station, 4,000 men lay dead or wounded on the gentle Warwickshire hillside near the little village of Radway: ‘The field was covered with the dead,’ wrote one who survived; ‘yet no one could tell to what party they belonged.’ The cold was a blessing, some were saying: it would make the blood congeal, save them from bleeding to death. But Lord Willoughby could do nothing to stem the haemorrhage, and he doubly despaired that it should have come to this: the noble earl of Lindsey, who had begun the morning as the King’s general-in-chief, felled in the mêlée by a common musket!

  There had not been a pitched battle on English soil for 130 years. 1There had not been much of a battle anywhere for an English army in all that time. There was no English army. When it came to pushing the Scots back across the border, or putting down the Irish, as occasionally it did, the King would drum up a scratch force, engage officers who had gained a bit of experience with one of the continental armies, hire foreign mercenaries (Italian cavalry had fought against the Scots at Flodden in 1513) – and, when the job was done, quickly pay them off again. Standing armies were expensive. When war with France or Spain threatened, it was the navy to which the nation looked for the safeguard of the realm. Britain was the ‘sceptred isle’, and doubly blessed by her geography: only Denmark and the Kingdom of Naples had so favourably short a land border with their nearest neighbour as that between England and Scotland. Most of the inhabitants of the British Isles never saw a musket, let alone carried one.

  And so in the opening moves of the Civil War, King Charles I had mustered a scratch army, derisively called Cavaliers, to do battle with Parliament’s scratch army, derisively called Roundheads, on a bright October morning in the green and pleasant English countryside between Stratford-upon-Avon and Banbury. The cores of both armies were the ‘trained bands’, the county militias under the lords lieutenant. But trained they scarcely were – certainly not well trained – except for some of the London bands, for the half-century since the Armada had been years of military decline. ‘Arms were the great deficiency,’ wrote one Royalist eye witness at Edgehill, ‘and the men stood up in the same garments in which they left their native fields.’ They stood, indeed – both sides – in the ancient line of battle, as the Greeks and Romans had, the Royalists at the top of the grassy slopes of Edgehill above the Vale of the Red Horse, many ‘with scythes, pitchforks, and even sickles in their hands, and literally like reapers descended to the harvest of death’. Without so much as the customary sash to show their allegiance, it was little wonder that when they fell ‘no one could tell to what party they belonged’.

  The cavalry were not much better found, although the Royalist horse, whose élan became synonymous with the very word ‘Cavalier’, were superior to Parliament’s. They were led by Prince Rupert of the Rhine, King Charles’s nephew, dashing and ardent, who at only twenty-three had seen more recent service, in the Netherlands and Germany, than any officer in the field that day. Of artillery – ‘with which war is made’, as Napoleon Bonaparte would famously pronounce a century and a half later – there was pathetically little: just forty-odd guns between the two sides, neither manœuvrable nor able to throw a great weight of shot. It wasn’t that the country lacked the industrial base and technological know-how: since Tudor times there had been fifty iron foundries in the Kent and Sussex Weald capable of producing cannon as good as any in Europe, and of late the output of the gunpowder mills had been increasing in both quantity and quality. It was the skill to use the means of modern, continental warfare that was lacking. In Henry VIII’s day every able-bodied nobleman had been blooded; now, not one in five had seen a battlefield. England, declared the fury in the Court’s Twelfth Night masque of 1640, the last of Charles I’s reign, was ‘overgrown with peace’.

  And so 28,000 men would do battle at Edgehill, with their officers scarcely knowing what they were about. Few on either side had any illusions about their situation, however. Sir Edmund Verney, the royal standard-bearer, confided to his son in a letter the night before: ‘Our men are very raw, our victuals scarce and provisions for horses worse. I daresay there was never so raw, so unskillful and so unwilling an army brought to fight.’ He did not live to receive a reply. The same was true of the Parliamentarian army, although a certain religious zeal enlivened the ranks, like the rum ration of later wars.

  Matters were made worse on the Royalist side by disputes among the senior officers. As King Charles’s serjeant-major-general, 2 Jacob Astley, began his duty of forming up the infantry, a row broke out over what that formation should be. Astley, who had seen service with both the Dutch and Swedish armies, favoured the Swedish model of three ranks. 3 But his general-in-chief, Robert Bertie, the earl of Lindsey, favoured the Dutch model in which the infantry stood five ranks deep at least – a formation that was not able to cover as much ground but which was more solid and easier to control, especially with inexperienced troops. And Lindsey wanted also to keep the cavalry in close support, for the Parliamentary commander, the earl of Essex, had fought alongside the Dutch too; and Lindsey fancied therefore that he knew how Essex would fight.

  Prince Rupert disagreed. Serjeant-Major-General Astley had once been his tutor, and so he, too, favoured the Swedish model – not least in using the cavalry independently of the infantry. As the lieutenant-general Rupert was not just in command of the cavalry, he was second-in-command of the army; and since King Charles himself was at its head, he would answer only to the King. When Charles deferred to his nephew, Lindsey resigned his empty command and took his place instead at the head of the regiment he had raised in his native Lincolnshire. The earl of Forth, whose service had been with the great Swedish soldier-king Gustavus Adolphus, assumed the appointment, and the ‘Swedish’ troop dispositions were made.

  There are better ways to begin a battle than with squabbling among senior officers and making infantrymen change their dispositions and then change back again. But to fight a battle without a common understanding of tactics is asking for trouble, then as now. It was what happened when armies were brought together only on the eve of battle, and when officers received their training – some of it by no means up to date – in very different schools. These things were only avoided by having a professional, standing army. Did Charles wish for such an army, now, as he faced the earl of Essex’s men? Perhaps. But what if the standing army had sided with Parliament instead? After all, Britain was an island, the Scots were manageable and the Irish, for all their intractability, did not threaten the peace of England. Best leave professional armies to the continental powers, for see how they had fuelled a war of religion across Europe for the past twenty-five years! 4

  It took time to draw up 15,000 men in line, all but a couple of thousand of them on foot, especially the semi-feudal companies of countrymen with scythes, pitchforks and sickles. The trained bands, if not drilled as well as once they had been, were at least uniformly equipped with the matchlock musket and the pike – in a 3:1 ratio of pikemen to ‘the shot’. In some of the more poorly drilled county militias the proportion of pikemen was greater, for the matchlock was an unwieldy weapon, the barrel 4 feet long, so heavy, and so violent in its recoil, that it had to be fired from a rest driven into the ground. Inaccurate even over its short range, it was a crude device – in essence a steel pipe sealed at one end, with a thin bore-hole through to a ‘pan’ in which an initiating charge of powder was sprinkled and then sparked by a smouldering twist of rope (the slow match, hence ‘matchlock’) clamped in a trigger-operated lever. This fired the main charge – powder which had been poured down the barrel, with a lead or iron ball dropped in after it, all tamped tight by a ramrod. It was prone to misfire, for in rain the powder got damp and the match could go out. But with loose powder and glowing matches in close proximity, the risk of premature – and catastrophic – explosion was an even greater concern, and loading therefore proceeded at the pace of the slowest musketeer, to words of command more akin to a health and safety notice than to battlefield orders:

  A few of the dozens of‘words of command’ needed to get the musketeers of both Royalist and Parliamentary armies to handle loose gunpowder safely and to fire volleys.

  Take up your Match;

  Handle your Musket;

  Order your Musket;

  Give Rest to your Musket;

  Open your Pan;

  Clear your Pan;

  Prime your Pan;

  Shut your Pan;

  Cast off your loose Powder;

  Blow off your Powder;

  Cast about your Musket;

  Trail your Rest;

  Open your charge;

  Charge with powder;

  Charge with bullet;

  Draw forth your Scouring Stick;

  Shorten your Scouring Stick;

  Ram Home;

  Withdraw your Scouring Stick;

  Shorten your Scouring Stick;

  Return your Scouring Stick;

  Recover your Musket;

  Poise your Musket;

  Give rest to your Musket;

  Draw forth your Match;

  Blow your coal;

  Cock your Match;

  Try your Match;

  Guard and Blow;

  Open your pan;

  Present;

  Give Fire!

  With such deliberate drill the rate of fire was glacial, even with alternate ranks firing and reloading. It was fatal, not just ineffective, to discharge at too great a range, for if the fire fell short the enemy’s musketeers and pikemen would be able to close with them before another volley (fire by the entire line) could be got off. And if it were cavalry advancing against the line there was scarcely time to get off a volley at all before the pikemen needed to take post in front. At Edgehill the pike they carried was 16 feet long, making the line even more unwieldy to manœuvre, for the pikemen had to wedge the butts in the ground and brace themselves to make a solid wall of steel against cavalry or the enemy’s pikes. Little wonder, then, that even in the best-trained bands there were three of them to every musket.

  At Rupert’s urging, King Charles placed his cavalry – the ‘horse’ proper as well as the dragoons (who fought dismounted with sword and musket rather than from the saddle) 5 – on either end of the line to prevent his flanks from being turned, and to allow freedom of movement when the moment came to charge. And Rupert, in command of the stronger right wing of the cavalry, would be looking for just that opportunity, for in many a battle on the Continent he had seen the enemy’s line scattered by a well-timed charge.

  Opposite Rupert’s wing, three-quarters of a mile or so down the hill and beyond a hedge, the left wing of the Parliamentary cavalry was well supported by musketeers and cannon. Indeed, Parliament’s line, comprising three ‘tertias’ (brigades) of infantry, outnumbered the Royalists by 3,000 musketeers and pikemen; but this margin was less than the earl of Essex had hoped for (there were many stragglers behind him still after his rapid march from Worcester), and he therefore moved two cavalry regiments from his right to behind the infantry, leaving just one regiment of horse supported by dragoons and musketeers on that flank.

  But this, to Essex’s mind, did not matter, for Parliament was not going to attack first. After all, Charles had the advantage of the slope, and Rupert had a reputation for dash. Essex was not going to risk his infantry to the shock action of a cavalry charge as they advanced uphill. And so the morning passed with little but mutual jeering and a desultory and ineffective exchange of artillery. The battlefield was still a quietish sort of place until the lines came to close quarters; a man might say his prayers or play a game of cards until the moment came.

  In the early afternoon Astley knelt down and in the hearing of all prayed: ‘Oh Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me.’ Then he rose, and with a ‘Forward, boys!’ led the Royalist line in a steady march down the hill. Half a mile on they halted and the cannon on both sides opened fire; but the smoke and noise was greater than the harm, and the guns soon fell silent again.

  Essex, though dismayed by the passing of the day to no effect, and not least by Astley’s half-advance, was not going to be tempted into attacking. But neither was he going to wait idly on Charles’s whim. He decided to send dragoons to probe the Royalist right, following them up with horse and a few of the supporting musketeers from his left flank. It was about three o’clock, the sun was already low in the sky, and the Royalist right had little difficulty seeing them off. It was not exactly the opportunity Rupert had hoped for, but at this hour it was his best chance. He gave the order, and both wings of his cavalry began to advance, the plumed host surging forward at first in an amiable trot, for all the world like gentlemen taking their sport.

  There was a tactic much favoured by Spanish cavalry, the caracole, in which successive lines of horse would canter elegantly up to the enemy line, wheel to the left and discharge their pistols. But Rupert was having none of this: he would have his men go at a gallop, firing as they collided with the enemy horse. Then, seizing sword from scabbard, they would forge a path through the mass of horse by sheer momentum. It was how Gustavus Adolphus’s Swedes had borne down on so many of their German opponents. And there was only one way to deal with it – a counter-charge. 6

  Essex’s cavalry, trained (in so far as they were trained) after the Dutch model, awaited the attack with pistol and carbine rather than preparing for a counter-charge. But Rupert’s cavalry, confident men on powerful horses, with the hill giving impetus to their advance, were a terrifying sight to men who might ride to church of a Sunday, or drive a plough in spring and autumn, but had never heard the thunder of so many unfriendly hooves. They fired an ineffective volley, turned and fled the field.

  Rupert’s men spurred after them, quickly overrunning the cannon and muskets on both flanks of the Parliamentary line. Without cavalry to cover them, the line might indeed have been rolled up from end to end, but the Cavaliers, high on the thrill of the chase, instead galloped on in pursuit of the fleeing Roundheads until, some miles on, they came upon their baggage train, where in time-honoured fashion they fell out to loot. A century and a half later the duke of Wellington would still be complaining about the cavalry’s ‘habit of galloping at everything’.

  Seeing the collapse of the Parliamentarian flanks, the Royalist infantry now advanced boldly. But in the centre of the Parliamentarian line two brigades had stood firm, and with no Royalist cavalry in sight to oppose them, Essex counter-attacked with the two regiments of cavalry he had posted behind these stalwarts in the centre.

  The situation suddenly looked dangerous for the King’s side, for there was no mounted reserve, Charles having allowed his Life Guard to join Rupert’s charge. But ‘the foot soldiers stood their ground with great courage,’ as one chronicler wrote, ‘and though many of the King’s soldiers were unarmed and had only cudgels, they kept their ranks, and took up the arms which their slaughtered neighbours left to them’. 7

  In the ensuing ‘push of pikes’, a cosy term to describe brutish hand-to-hand fighting, the Parliamentarians were just too strong, and at length the Royalist centre gave way. Indeed for a time it looked as if Charles would have to concede, but both sides had been badly shaken by their crude initiation to battle, and were rapidly exhausted by the close fighting. At the last minute some of Rupert’s men came cantering back to put heart into the Royalists, and the earl of Essex prudently broke off battle. Neither side had achieved a decisive advantage. It was the dead and dying who were left in possession of the field.