All the kings men, p.24
All the King’s Men, page 24
Commissions for officers were still bought and sold, usually for sums far in excess of the official price recognized by the secretary-at-war. A lieutenant-colonelcy in the 1st Foot Guards, for example, might cost upwards of £20,000 (£2 million in today’s money); a captaincy in a line battalion was a more modest £1,000. Prices were generally higher in the Guards than in ordinary foot battalions, and more in the cavalry than in the infantry. Those without money or patronage were promoted slowly – particularly in peacetime, when there was neither the possibility of battlefield casualties nor personal acts of gallantry to achieve a step in rank – and in some regiments there were grey-haired lieutenants serving under the young sons of rich and noble families. Rare indeed was the officer who, like Wolfe, had risen chiefly on merit.
The basic pay of a private soldier had not risen since the seventeenth century: 8d. a day, with money deducted for ‘off-reckonings’ and subsistence, and little left as a result. Inevitably recruits were hard to come by, though some were attracted by the smartness of the uniform with its thick red coat and buttoned-back lapels, stock, handsome gaiters and dashing tricorne hats. Yet the uniform was, in reality, tight fitting and uncomfortable, and the recruits were no more impressed by the greased, powdered and clubbed pigtails that army regulations required them to wear. A soldier of the late Georgian period, John Shipp of the 87th Foot, recalled his first acquaintance with the military ‘queue’:
A large piece of candle-grease was applied, first to the sides of my head, then to the hind long hair; after this, the same kind of operation was performed with nasty stinking soap … [Next] a large pad, or bag filled with sand, was poked into the back of my head, round which the hair was gathered tight, and the whole tied round with a leather thong. When I was dressed for parade, I could scarcely get my eyelids to perform their office; the skin of my eyes and face drawn so tight by the plug that was struck in the back of my head, that I could not possibly shut my eyes; and to this, an enormous high stock was poked under my chin, so that, altogether, I felt as stiff as if I had swallowed a ramrod, or a sergeant’s halberd.21
Discipline was as harsh as it had ever been, with offenders confined in dark, cramped cells for hours on end, beaten with sticks or belts, made to run the gauntlet of two rows of soldiers who struck them as they passed, or forced to sit on a wooden hump-backed horse with weights tied to their feet. Even minor offenders were flogged, and more serious crimes could still be punished by sentences of up to 2,000 lashes, though it was rare for more than 250 to be inflicted on any one day. A week would then elapse before the next flogging. Not for nothing did Americans call British soldiers ‘bloody-backs’ and ‘lobsters’.
In 1775 the average recruit for the British Army was at least 5 feet 6½ inches tall, and certified by a surgeon as having ‘no rupture nor ever troubled by Fits … and no way disabled by Lameness’. But, as the war progressed, and ever more recruits were required, standards were allowed to drop: recruits of 5 feet 3 inches were acceptable, and all convicted smugglers, ‘all disorderly Persons who could not, upon Examination, prove themselves to exercise and industriously follow some lawful Trade or Employment’ and ‘incorrigible rogues … convicted of running from and leaving their Families chargeable upon the Parish’ were liable to be forcibly enlisted by press-gangs.22
With officers and men drawn from such polar opposites of the social spectrum, it is hardly surprising that the attitude of civilians to the profession of soldiering was so ambivalent. It was summed up best in a 1776 conversation between Samuel Johnson – the great poet, critic, essayist and lexicographer – and his companion and biographer James Boswell:
JOHNSON: The character of a soldier is high. They who stand forth the foremost in danger, for the community, have the respect of mankind. An officer is much more respected than any other man who has as little money. In a commercial country, money will always purchase respect. But you find, an officer, who has, properly speaking, no money, is every where well received and treated with attention …
BOSWELL: Yet, Sir, I think that common soldiers are worse thought of than other men in the same rank of life; such as labourers.
JOHNSON: Why, Sir, a common soldier is usually a very gross man, and any quality which procures respect may be overwhelmed by grossness … But when a common soldier is civil in his quarters, his red coat procures him a degree of respect.23
On a separate occasion in 1778, discussing war with Boswell, Johnson gave one of the best – and arguably the most quoted – explanations as to why so many males are drawn to the military life:
Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea … Were Socrates and [the great commander] Charles the Twelth of Sweden both present in any company, and Socrates to say, ‘Follow me, and hear a lecture on philosophy,’ and Charles, laying his hand on his sword, to say, ‘Follow me, and dethrone the Czar,’ a man would be ashamed to follow Socrates … The profession of soldiers and sailors has the dignity of danger. Mankind reverence those who have got over fear, which is so general a weakness.24
13. First Shots
Even as William Howe and his fellow major-generals crossed the Atlantic, the British Army was fighting a running skirmish with Massachusetts rebels that would set the template for much of the war. It took place between Lexington and Concord, on 19 April 1775, and marks the start of what became the American War of Independence.
The immediate cause of the bloodletting was a second dispatch from Lord Dartmouth to General Gage, of 2 March, informing him that more reinforcements (including senior officers) were on the way, and ordering him to occupy or destroy all rebel fortifications, to seize their stores and to arrest leading rebels so that they could be tried for treason, either in Boston or London. Within days of receiving these orders, Gage had devised a plan of action. According to his latest intelligence, two of the principal Massachusetts rebels, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, were lodging at Lexington, a hamlet 12 miles north-west of Boston, while a rebel cache of arms and powder was located at Concord, a further 5 miles to the west. His plan, therefore, was for 700 of his best men – two flanking battalions of grenadiers and light infantry, formed of companies taken from the various corps at Boston1 – to march through the night to Lexington and apprehend the rebel leaders, before continuing on to Concord, where they would destroy the rebel arsenal. Well aware that speed and surprise were essential if they were to avoid a serious confrontation with minutemen, Gage ordered his men to begin their march by midnight so that they could be safely back in Boston by noon the following day.
The British troops involved were delighted to have the opportunity to prove themselves against the rebels. Only three weeks earlier a column of British infantry had arrived at a bridge over the Charles River, near Boston, to be met by two loaded cannon. But a bloodbath was averted when the rebels chose discretion and ran off, leaving their unfired cannon behind them. It seemed to confirm the opinion of most British soldiers that the colonists were too cowardly to fight. ‘Never did any nation so much deserve to be made an example of to future ages,’ wrote one of Gage’s subalterns to his father, ‘and never [was] any set of men more anxious to be employed on so laudable a work.’2
Gage’s plan for 19 April, however, soon began to unravel. Rebel spies got wind of his intentions and, even before the British column began its march, a dispatch rider named Paul Revere had left Boston to alert Lexington and Concord. The element of surprise had been lost, though the soldiers did not know it yet, and speed was next sacrificed at Boston’s Back Bay, where the Royal Navy had provided too few boats to transport the column across the Charles River. The delay meant it was gone four in the morning, and already light, by the time the column’s advance guard – six companies of 240 men, commanded by Major John Pitcairn of the Royal Marines – neared the outskirts of Lexington. Their quarry, alerted by Revere, was long gone. Instead they found their way barred by a single company of Lexington militia – mostly dairy farmers – under the 46-year-old Captain John Parker. Pitcairn, a no-nonsense Scot in his early fifties, saw them as no threat. He rode forward and shouted: ‘Lay down your arms, you damned rebels!’3
Aware that he was heavily outnumbered, Parker ordered his men to withdraw but not disarm. As they began to move back, the redcoats moved forward menacingly, shouting and cheering. Then a shot rang out, possibly fired by a jittery militiaman, prompting a crashing British volley in response. Some colonials returned fire, but most fled, hotly pursued by British soldiers, who, by now, had lost all discipline. At this point the column commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Smith, a corpulent infantry officer in his fifties, appeared on the scene. ‘Finding the Rebels scamping off (except those shut up in houses),’ recalled Smith, ‘I endeavoured to the utmost to stop all further firing, which in a short time I effected.’4 Eight militiamen lay dead and a further nine were wounded. The only British casualties were a private, shot in the leg, and Pitcairn’s horse.
The men were re-formed on the green, ‘but with some difficulty’, recalled a subaltern, they ‘were so wild they could hear no orders’. Some were shouting that the rebels were firing from houses, but Smith was l0th to let them search Lexington’s homes, ‘knowing if the houses were once broken into, none within could well be saved’. He also knew, from the presence of the militia, that the rebel leaders must have received advance warning of the column’s approach and left long ago. With more opposition inevitable, some of his officers advised him to abandon the march to Concord. Smith refused. He had his orders; but he did send Gage a request for reinforcements.
At 9 a.m. Smith continued his march to Concord, sending his light infantry into high ground to protect his right flank. Apart from one or two stray shots they entered Concord unopposed an hour later. The local militia had mustered, but they were unwilling to fire first and, unsure of British numbers, had gathered in hundreds on the slopes of Punkatasset Hill to the north of the village to await developments. Taking advantage of their absence, Smith used his grenadiers to search for arms, while two detachments of light infantry guarded bridges to the north and south of the town, and a third advanced a mile beyond the North Bridge to the home of the local colonel of militia, a 64-year-old miller called James Barrett. It was empty.
Soon after, the British lost a second man when a lone grenadier sentry was captured on the outskirts of the village; the minuteman responsible was Sylvanus Wood, a shoemaker by trade, who had followed the British from Lexington. ‘I cocked my piece,’ remembered Wood, ‘and run up to him, seized his gun with my left hand. He surrendered his armor, one gun and bayonet, a large cutlash [cutlass] and brass fender, one box over the shoulder with twenty-two rounds, one round the waist with eighteen rounds. This was the first prisoner that was known to be taken that day.’5
In the village, meanwhile, the grenadiers found and spiked three cannon and burned their wooden gun carriages. They also uncovered some powder, which they dumped in the river, and cut down the village’s Liberty Pole and flag. But an act not authorized by Smith, and one that triggered more bloodshed, was the burning of the Town House, the village’s main public building. Accident or not, its flames were visible on Punkatasset Hill, where word quickly spread that the British were burning the town. Barrett ordered his men to advance on the North Bridge, driving its defenders back across it and inflicting many casualties, including four out of eight officers. Inexplicably, the militiamen failed to secure the north end of the bridge, and so enabled the most advanced detachment of light infantry, hurrying back from Barrett’s house, to withdraw across it to safety.
With his column now re-formed in a single body, Smith ordered a return to Lexington. But hundreds of militiamen now lay between them and safety, and Smith’s men were forced to fight a running battle against an enemy they could barely see. ‘They hardly ever fired but under cover of a stone wall, from behind a tree, or out of a house,’ wrote an officer, ‘and the moment they had fired they lay down out of sight until they had loaded again.’6
As before, the light infantry were used as flank protection while the grenadiers moved along the road. ‘We at first kept our order and returned their fire as hot as we received it,’ wrote Lieutenant Henry de Bernière of the 10th Foot’s light company, ‘but when we arrived within a mile of Lexington, our ammunition began to fail, and the light companies were so fatigued with flanking they were scarcely able to act.’7
With no sign of the long-expected reinforcement, Smith’s men lost their discipline for the second time that day. ‘We began to run,’ recalled de Bernière, ‘rather than retreat in good order.’ At Lexington Green several officers tried to restore order by running ahead of their men and threatening them with death if they continued their flight. They were only partially successful, and just when it seemed that the whole column was about to dissolve into an unruly mob, the relief force appeared over the next ridge and quickly formed a line of battle on either side of the road. It consisted of 1,100 soldiers of four battalions, including the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers (the regiment that had fought so well at the battles of Dettingen and Minden), and was commanded by Brigadier-General Lord Percy, the 33-year-old son of the Duke of Northumberland.
The 23rd had arrived in America from England the previous July, 350 strong, and had since formed part of the Boston garrison with orders ‘to rout anybody (that shall dare to attack them) with their bayonets’.8 Their numbers included Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie, the 44-year-old adjutant who had served in the same rank for more than twenty years, and whose wife Nancy (‘Mrs Mac’) was expecting their latest child; Corporal Jeffrey Grimes, promoted after less than five years with the 23rd; and Drummer Robert Mason, nineteen, the son of a fusilier and therefore a ‘child of the regiment’. Despite its title, the 23rd was mostly made up of unskilled and illiterate Englishmen in their twenties, though a few had trades and could aspire to follow the example of Lieutenant Richard Baily, promoted from the ranks. Some had joined up to see the world. ‘My chief intention,’ claimed one soldier, ‘being to travel and traverse the seas occasioned my enlisting.’ But most did so out of financial necessity: to earn a wage or to escape creditors. A few could not adapt to the discipline and hardships of army life, and since arriving in America a sizeable number had deserted, some to join the rebels and fight against their former comrades.9
On the ridge above Lexington, on 19 April, Adjutant Mackenzie was impressed by the ease with which the brigade formed its line of battle, though ‘by reason of the stone walls and other obstacles, it was not formed in so regular a manner as it should have been.’10 Brigadier-General Percy had brought two cannon with him, and he now ordered these guns to open up on the militiamen pursuing Smith’s exhausted light infantry and grenadiers. ‘The shot from the cannon had the desired effect,’ reported Percy to Gage, ‘and stopped the rebels for a little time, who immediately dispersed and endeavoured to surround us, being very numerous.’11
It was now 2.30 p.m. and, to avoid being cut off, Percy ordered his expanded command to withdraw to Boston with Smith’s men leading the way and the 23rd bringing up the rear. He also sent out strong flanking parties from his own fresh battalions, ‘which were absolutely necessary, as there was not a stone wall or house tho’ before in appearance evacuated, from whence the rebels did not fire upon us’.
A lieutenant of the 4th (King’s Own) Foot remembered that ‘almost every house in the road’ had to be stormed, ‘for the rebels had taken possession of them and galled us exceedingly, but they suffered for their temerity for all that we found in the houses were put to death’. A minuteman who entered one such house found bodies everywhere and ‘the Blud … half over [my] Shoes’.12
The rearguard of the 23rd was, like most of the British Army, trained in Wolfe’s tactics of a massed volley followed by a bayonet charge. Such methods were useless against an enemy that fired from behind obstacles, and Adjutant Mackenzie would later bemoan the fact that his men ‘threw away their fire very inconsiderately, and without being certain of its effect’.13 Pressed constantly by the pursuing militiamen and running out of ammunition, they were relieved as rearguard halfway to Boston. But they still had to run the gauntlet of Menotomy village (now Arlington), where hundreds of minutemen fired on the retreating column. It was here that Lieutenant-Colonel Benjamin Bernard of the 23rd became the highest-ranking British casualty when his thigh was shattered by a round-shot.
Two miles further on, as the column approached Cambridge, Percy made the wise decision to take the left fork to Charlestown, rather than retrace his steps back across the Charles River. It was just as well because the rebels had dismantled the planking on the bridge over the Charles and were lying in wait. But still the sniping continued, and it was well after seven, and already dark, when the column finally reached the safety of the British lines at Charlestown, ‘very much fatigued with a march of above thirty miles, and having expended almost all our ammunition’, reported Percy. He added: ‘We had the misfortune in losing a good many men in the retreat, tho’ nothing like the number which from many circumstances I have reason to believe were killed of the rebels.’14
This was wishful thinking. The British had lost 65 men and officers killed, and 207 wounded and missing; American losses were 94, with 40 to 45 of those killed. In private, Percy admitted he was stunned by the ‘perseverance’ of the citizen-soldiers. Anyone who expected a New England army to be ‘an irregular mob’, he added, ‘will find himself much mistaken’.15
The following morning, grey and chilly, the British garrison at Boston woke to find themselves under siege by local militiamen. Over the next few days the siege army would grow to nearly 16,000 men as reinforcements arrived from New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut. It was nominally commanded by General Artemas Ward, forty-seven, the senior Massachusetts officer and a veteran of the French and Indian War, though political direction was provided by the Provincial Congress’s Committee of Safety – headed by a young Boston physician and firebrand called Dr Joseph Warren – which set up its headquarters in Cambridge. The consequence of Gage’s botched operation of 19 April, therefore, was that the rebellion had begun in earnest.
