Fit to command? The Surprising Truth of British Army Officers of the Napoleonic Wars

I mean to give the French a damn good thrashing the Napoleonic Wars the first Great War an era that saw the British army come of age but how much do you know about the officers at the Forefront of the war oh my God sou fall back fall back were they all aristocratic buffoons like Henry simmerson in the sharp series were most commissions and promotions paid for what sort of training did they receive and were Battalion commanders actually younger and more Dynamic than their counterparts in other armies we are going to be busting plenty of myths today the answers to these questions really surprised me and I think you may be shocked really now's your [Music] time today's guest is Steve Brown he spent years researching regimental and Italian commanders of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars his book fit to command is now out and can be purchased from helon books there's a link in the description below I started off by asking Steve how a man became an officer in the first place a young gentleman wishing to become an officer mely had to apply in writing to the commander-in-chief via the commander-in-chief's military secretary the and the letter of of application must contain a letter of from an imminent person and ideally a um an army officer if possible or if not some person who's imminent in society recommending the young officer for a post in his Majesty's Army together with the cost of the purchase of a commission and sit back and wait and then eventually what young officers found out their Destiny by referring to the Gazette you know your typical entry would say young Master whomever is hereby appointed end in in the you know fourth mudguards or whatever effective date of you know today's date uh and that's how they found out people with an earlier copy of The Gazette obviously can run around knock on the door and say hey congratulations so that's really how it happened hence why young officers were gazetted because that's actually how they found out what they were up what they were what lay in store for them which is um a word that even sort of remains today even though I'm not sure that um promotions appear in the position it anymore I'm going to briefly interrupt here for a moment because I have a video coming up soon that takes a deep dive into the purchase system and how officers paid for their rank as you can imagine it's a complicated and controversial subject and therefore I thought it was worthy of its own film be sure to subscribe if that sounds interesting okay let's pick up with Steve explaining what sort of training officers would have had well certainly for the first well let's call it first 10 years of the war and when I talk about the war I'm talking about the great war with France which was considered to have existed from 1793 early 1793 till late 1815 with a a 14mon intermission between 1802 and 1803 when they were all able to go into the foyer and buy ice creams and lollies and things before they could go back to action again F the first um sort of 10 years of the war everything was strictly um on the job training there was nowhere a young officer to go to Lear other than tunning up and square Bash and being put through their Paces by the adant and the sergeant major along with a batch of other young officers uh and having to learn a the standing orders for the unit which are usually written by the commanding officer uh and also having to learn uh the fa inFAMOUS or famous uh David Dundas drill manual which ranted something like 350 pages of all the evolutions there were expected to um carry out or or be capable of of making their troops carry out um and um yeah day in day out uh that was what they did um possible exceptions to that were um particularly under John Moore's tutelage at Shan Cliffe with the light infantry regiments particularly the 43rd and the 52nd um he actually made his young officers um put on packs pick up muskets and train with the men you know every so often he'd make them run up a big hill and back down again you know sort of shades of Band of Brothers to weed out those who weren't suitable and those who weren't fit enough um and all that kind of stuff went on so that was very much the sort of light infantry sort of ethos a formal training academy didn't really exist until um well really after 1800 when uh you know the celebrated Cavalry commander uh Jean marant um created or put forward to the Duke of York the idea for a um a Staff College uh which was created in the en rented rooms at the rear of the antelope in in high Wickam um which then later evolved into a a senior school and a Junior School a senior school being a place to train uh existing serving offices usually of the rank of Captain or above for roughly 18 months two years worth of higher Staff training I guess you'd call it and there's also a Junior School designed to attract 16 and 17 year olds to put them through a effectively a staff training College which when discharged they could then straight from there to the regiments and join his enzen straight from uh the Royal Military College and obviously um somewhere along the line and I think it was about 1820 both uh branches of the college merged and took up new residents at Sandhurst of course which of course is where it is to these State the artillery had had actually had a military academy since uh I think about 1740 at wch um the royal royal Military Academy that and and you could not become an ordinance officer without um passing passing out of Royal Military Academy at wallich uh that was he passed to become a second leftenant in the artillery so it was kind of a it was kind of an evolving process um and the fruits of it were starting to become evident by about the time of waloo uh when a decent percentage of St officers and officers in some of the leading regiments were um effectively High Wickam or should I say Sandhurst graduates um starting to make a difference within the Army for the first time and of course you know um Sanders has existed and produced uh officers ever since Steve so obviously you've you've really looked at the data you've dived into the sort of backgrounds of these Battalion commanders what what has been some of the most interesting things you've learned in your research you know what can you tell us about you know their backgrounds what surprised you that sort of thing I think the backgrounds of the officer cardr that I've that I've looked at show some remarkably consistent elements and it shows some interesting demographic elements uh and it shows some very very interesting data about the backgrounds for example I looked at all of the field offices in the first lifeguards and you would imagine the first lifeguards to be a wash with Aristocrats in fact that was not the case yeah first lifeguards field offices between 1793 and 1815 there is only one Aristocrat and he's not he's the son of an Earl not actually an Earl himself so he's The Honorable um but you got a son of a merchant uh you've got a couple of Sons of MPS uh you got a few sons of Army and Navy officers and a few of them are the sons of what I would call landed Proprietors or the Esquire class who really were were I think the backbone of the army of this period um you know middling sons of landed families and when I say landed families that don't didn't have to have a castle or a Manor or hundreds of Acres they might have had five acres but they were really the the kind of the the backbone of the army that sort of class and when I say middling sons of course it was the old thing that you know the eldest son was going to inherit the estate the Second Son went into the Navy third son went into the army fourth son became a reverend it's amazing how often this is true and the wellis Le were followed that followed that formula exactly of all people um I also looked at a more typical line regiment well I'm not I'm sure the RO Fus Lees may not like themselves being called a typical lion regiment but they were the seventh foot um and you've got you know a lot of the same kinds of things lots and lots of Sons of landed Proprietors and former army officers because you know the sons following their dads into the army was always a popular thing um there was two officers who were the sons of um well actually one of them was the son of a former um PM um Cav dish bentin and one son of an ear and one son of a baron and then a whole bunch of outliers you've got a son of a US loyalist uh a son of a Hugo Refugee a son of a German Merchant and a former NCO was liutenant Colonel and the all F Le in this period so it's a real mishmash and I think overall if you sort of put it if you sort of analyz the data and sifted it through scientific methods you would end up with the inevitable bell curve that you've got you know the high point of the curve in the middle you've got your landed Proprietors and and middle class sons of army officers down the leftand end you've got a smattering of former rankers uh and at the right hand end again at the sort of skinny end on the right you've got um um you know Aristocrats or NE Aristocrats um but by and large the rump of the army was kind of middle class um sons of merchants sons of landed Proprietors sons of former army officers um sons of reverends were quite common sons of doctors you know that that was that was the that was the lifeblood of the officer class back then well I guess my next question leading on from that is kind of the ages of Battalion command Anders did you find there was a lot of talented younger guys or was it generally kind of you know guys in their middle age and so forth yeah I looked at uh 20 campaigns um between 1793 and 1815 and I looked at the total Co cohort for each of those campaigns and looked at their average ages how long they'd been in the Army how long they'd been in command uh and it showed a couple of very interesting things some of which were quite explainable by the time and the place that the campaign occurred and and mitigating factors that influenced it um but on the whole an amazing consistency came out between the the average age the average uh years of service of the officers um your typical liutenant Colonel I pretty much throughout the entire era and I'm sorry I'm just trying to look at some data here while we do this was about 37 to 38 years old typically with about 18 to 19 years of service in the Army um you're typical Brigadier and I include brigadiers here because Brigadier General back then wasn't a rank it was an appointment it only lasted for the duration of the campaign and a lot of cosos were plucked to be brigadiers for the for the duration so it was a fine line between you know where where does the co end and where does the Brigadier start your average Brigadier was about 42 years of age with about 25 years of experience um compared to um the counterparts as I've said the cosos in that age range were about 10 years younger than their counterparts in the Royal artillery were interestingly about the same age as cosos in French regiments I mean there's a tendency to think that fren French regiments must have been seos must have been younger and more vigorous but actually know they were about the same age um and seos in Prussian regiments were older by a couple of years and cosos in Austrian regiments were a lot older so not only did the British army have one of the younger um Co cohorts of any army in Europe but they were also extremely experienced I mean if you're 38 you've been in the Army for 19 years it's pretty much all you know uh and in 19 years you'd have seen a lot of campaigns um so the fact you people who think that you know perap some of these officers were sort of puffed up guys who jumped in and purchased the way up and hadn't been around that long in their commanding troops in battle with no experience the figures do not bear that out I have to say I mean I I I don't have these statistics in front of me but just at a guess I would say the average the average age of a liutenant colonel in the British army now is probably late late 30s early 40 I could be wrong there but I would say I looked it up it's almost identical right isn't that interesting talking of sort of Battalion commanders then during this era what would what would the sort of day-to-day life on campaign have been like for Battalion Commander what were their main sort of responsibilities and duties dayto day and then later on you know in combat well I think uh this slide perhaps will explain some of that I mean on campaign it was it was there would have been a lot of tedium boredom and going through the motions because you know the potentially War for example started in gosh what was it August 1808 and went till April uh 1814 so you know six years almost um and in some years the Army only fought a handful of battles so what were they doing the other 363 days of the year just going through the motions and managing the Battalion on a daily basis with trying to trying to deal with the day-to-day border m tedium that goes with it um and this slide here shows all of the things that by and large the co would have been responsible for although the co yes they were the person the back stops with but they would not be the person doing all of these things because the co would have been able to delicate all of these to you know two majors each one commanding half the Battalion and also so um uh commanding uh the drill sessions and the inspections the adant uh the young officer responsible for day-to-day uh Administration bookkeeping and all that kind of stuff the sergeant major who is the senior NCO of the Battalion uh the quartermaster responsible for stores and um picking out uh the stopping point for the next night and looking for accommodation and housing and um making sure all the trips are fed and all that sort of thing um um and the surgeon and who else I miss pay Master yes very important one pay Master responsible for ding out the cash to the Troops on payday um so a lot of them would have been uh responsible for this and a good coo would have pushed a lot of this or delegated a lot of this down to particularly the agitant and the two majors to make sure it happened and the agant would have been working in conjunction with a sergeant major uh the majors would then have been working in association with their company commanders because there was 10 companies therefore 10 company commanders usually captains uh to make sure that all of these things get done and this and you know for probably 16 hours a day we're just dealing with all of this uh kind of day-to-day stuff um before they could even think about you know picking up their muskets to go into action on the couple of days a year when there was actually battles on well let's let's drill down then into those you know two or three days a year where they might actually have seen some serious combat generally let's say you're lieutenant colonel in command of a battalion let's say maybe you've got five 600 men fit under your command in the battle would you have actually like what what decision making would you have been allowed to you know what decisions could you have made how much Freedom would you have been given you know were they able to show sort of tactical nouse or was it very much kind of you know top down do this do that and they didn't really get to show show their own talents unlike um perhaps uh Hollywood esque um Notions of commanding on the battlefield uh certain film that's coming up that involves um Napoleon drawing his sword and charging at the head of the Cavalry which actually never happened I'm sure once in his entire career but anyway let's not get into that um this slide I I particularly like because it shows two versions of the same action seen from two Vantage points um on the left we have a British Battalion I think it's the 50th foot uh advancing downhill to meet a French column they are in two deep line which was the traditional way of well not traditional but certainly the the way that uh Wellington chose to employ the Army uh in the peninsula um each of the 10 companies are in a line the commanding officer or Captain commanding each company is on the right hand End of Line at the front uh with his covering Sergeant with a pike immediately behind him um somewhere close to the center of the Battalion you've got the two engin the two most Junior engines carrying the colors supported by six sergeants with a pike for the color party forming a loose third line behind them you have the other officers and sergeants uh they're mainly to push men back into the ranks uh and to keep to walk along behind them shouting and ment and then in another line behind them you have the drummers um and also in that sort of fourth line you also have the mounted officers only the lieutenant colonel majes and agitant were mounted not every company officer in battle uh the commanding officer was mounted at the rear of the color party so he can get a sense of the what the entire Battalion is doing he has his two Mages mounted as well and they are behind each of their wings so they are adding a kind of localized command and control as you can see the co is not out the front pulling waving his sword and charging at the enemy that's not that's not how they worked uh command and control was everything and he needed to be able to see what was going on and really the the dressing of the ranks and the way companies conducted themselves was the domain of the Mages commanding the wings and the captains commanding the companies but the intention was that a battalion in line advancing maintained as tight a front and as straight a line as humanly possible uh no gaps in the line if a gap created you'd have the officers and the sergeants in the third rank yelling close up close up uh or if they're coming to um grips with the Enemy and the front rank May in fact kneel to to to Fire and the rear rank remain standing of course the sergeants and the officers be walking up and down behind them saying choose your targets men aim carefully don't get too excited you know bit like color Sergeant Bourne you know it was spot on um you also notice on the leftand picture that on you can just see the 52 light infantry filing into position under their Co on the right hand side of the of the 50th Preparatory to delivering a um flank uh attack on the French column uh the 50c seem to be quite good at that I'm sure those who know about watero will immediately recognize that tactic uh and on the right hand side of this image of course you can see the French uh in their typical tactical arrangement of companies in three deep line in column so a gigantic mass of men this is not the Imperial Guard these were in fact converged grenadiers at a time when grenadiers and French army still wore uh bare skin hats and you can see the sergeant major behind each company but the company Commander marching along in front of each company which is a little bit different uh this battle was the first use of shrapnel and I can see you can probably see a couple of fellows on the right hand side there who are enjoying the exposure to it or not um and uh yeah uh you can tell that well this is at a time when a number of French regiments actually had white uniforms rather than blue and the French in summer in the peninsula habitually wore their great coats and they kept their blue uniforms rolled up in their pack because the gra Coats were a lighter material and looser and therefore cooler so uh hence why they look like they look like there but as you can see the sort of um a comparison of the two difficult sort of tactical doctrines of the two armies um so it's all about command control not getting out of hand uh and there are some instances where uh regiments or battalions did get out of hand not the least of which was the foot guards at um taliva or they Advanced too far got cut up uh and and the 23rd light drons at at the same battle sort of lost control so maintaining control was was Paramount on the battlefield and that was probably the CO's major other than motivating the man probably his his major responsibility and of course where where he where he stood in what he did in terms of um you know sort of higher level tactics was as dictated to him by his Brigadier so he would have been standing on the battle his Battalion was standing on the battlefield where his Brigadier told told him to stand and the Brigadier of course is receiving orders from the um divisional Commander usually a major general about moving your Brigade to the left or to the right so the a sort of chain of command thing was was ever present but it is today as well of course yeah so there would have been very few opportunities for for sort of full autonomy for these guys to really show what they were capable of yeah probably not huge amount um but there are obviously celebrated examples um and I did mention you know Co Bourne's flank attack on the 52nd at watero which of course is quite famous uh but there's also you know Henry Harding at um alera who on his own volition rode to the rear and brought up the um brought up a brigade uh to plug a hole in the line and I think he was only like a I think he was a major or something at the time he was he was relatively Junior um but he completely off his own back Advanced an entire Brigade to plug a hole in the line which turned out to be crucial do you discipline my orders sir from all your research I'm guessing you read a lot of correspondence from these guys and so forth did they come across as quite a likable Bunch like do you come away from it thinking actually their their depiction you know especially in sort of modern films and TV shows is perhaps unfair and that these these seem like pretty decent bunch of BLS well there was a lot of them I mean I think I worked out that in the period I was looking at there was something like 4,000 field officers just trying to make broad generalizations is quite difficult but I think on the whole as a cohort they were extremely professional they were dedicated um and and like any group of people that's that big you got all sorts of characters and trying to S of paint them with one brush is is extraordinarily difficult I think uh I think they were a different um cohort than the cohort that followed them after 1815 because the Army changed quite a bit between 1815 and 1854 I think in the years after watero the Army became less middle class if that's the right term um and I looked at all the regiments that landed in the crier in 1854 and where their cosos came from and I compared them with exactly the same Reg regiments in 1815 and looked at the seos to see where they come from and there was actually quite a shift in the Army um I mean in in 1815 of the of the cohort that I looked at less than 20% were the sons of officers by 1854 nearly half were sons of officers so the Army had become very much a family concern um the land the the um representation of the landholding class offic had gone down from 40% to about a quarter uh because you know in the Victorian era I think heads of families were realizing that the Army's a career for their son was perhaps not as good a career choice as it had been you know before the Industrial Revolution with industry and commerce going the way it was in the Victorian era uh there were far better career choices than becoming an officer perhaps uh sons of arist Ry went up so there were more Aristocrats um in the Army um and I also had a look at sorry I'll just get the right slide here I also had a look at um the 33rd foot the Duke of W's regiment how it promoted its offices in 1815 versus how it promoted its offices in 1854 um and in 1815 about 40% % of all officers within the 33rd had gained their current Rank by purchase by 1854 it was 85% so most officers by Chom War were purchasing their purchasing their commissions where back in you know the time of Walo it was somewhere between a third and a half so it was a big change um and the Army became more exclusive more focused on purchase uh less representation from The Middle class it was really officed by you know the dandies the sons of aristocrats and particularly the sons from army families who had swelled enormously in number which I guess is understandable you've got the generations following watero the sons wanting to emulate their fathers who had who had done all those deeds between 1793 and 1815 so I guess you know that's kind of a natural reaction um but that was I thought that was quite interesting analysis um to see how the Army changed I guess coming back to the original question uh were they a likable Bunch um yeah I think so I quite enjoyed being in their company for the last couple of years um there's some good on there's some Badin um I think and and the perhaps never got a lot of press because a lot of sort of air time has been taken up by Peninsula and the waterl offices but I think in terms of the quality of the men involved D I think the CEOs of the regiments in India deserve a lot of credit uh they were a long way from home it was very hard for them to sail home again you know if you're a COO in Portugal it's it's a week to get home basically if you're in India it was six months and so cosos didn't generally sell home from India and the regiment served there for a long time so the officer officers the ncos and the men of the regiments in India formed very close bonds um and the cosos in particular were fighting in hard conditions uh with tenuous Supply trains against an enemy that's not fighting in the European tradition and doing things in an unconventional Manner and often quite ruthless manner um I think those men deserve a huge credit certainly a lot more than they've they've been been been giving in in the Press over the years and and they may just be perhaps um the best cohort of cosos in the British army at that time if you want to learn more about the British army of the Napoleonic and Victorian eras watch these films on screen now Steve will be back on the show soon to explain why the Great Richard Sharp was actually a slacker and an underachiever it'll all make sense when you watch it make sure to subscribe to find out why

Channel: Redcoat History

Views: 474,604

Keywords: military history, British army, redcoats, tactics, battlefield guide, history, documentary, history documentary, British military history, napoleon, Napoleonic Wars, Peninsular War

Id: 9XUBwtWqkKI

Length: 29min 25sec (1765 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023