BRITISH OTHER RANKS IN THE FRENCH REVOLOUTIONARY AND NAPOLEONIC WARS - PART THREE
KING GEORGE’S SOLDIERS – PART THREE
Once the recruit had been formally attested, he was marched to his regimental depot, or if an ex-militiaman direct to his regiment if it was in the United Kingdom, or to a holding unit to await drafting if it was overseas. The standard of training in depots varied widely. In some it was very good, staffed by officers and NCOs who knew their business, in others it was at best rudimentary and at worst brutal and uncaring and staffed by rejects, invalids and those who wished to avoid active service. The man had to learn military discipline, to obey orders without question, to perform tactical movements, to maintain his equipment, to march carrying around forty pounds’ weight in addition to his weapon and ammunition[*], and to handle his weapon. Unlike European armies, the British paid serious attention to musketry with regular range practice both as individuals and in platoon firing.
A man who proved himself capable, loyal and professionally competent could be promoted to Non-Commissioned Officer rank. There was one sergeant major in a battalion. Equivalent to the RSM of today, he was the most senior NCO[†] in the battalion, and the commanding officer’s right-hand man in all matters dealing with welfare and discipline and promotion of Other Ranks. The establishment of a company included one colour sergeant, three sergeants and three corporals. The rank of colour sergeant was instituted in 1813 and he was the equivalent of today’s company sergeant major and company quartermaster sergeant rolled into one. Although colour sergeants supposedly acted as escorts to the colours in battle, this task was more usually delegated to sergeants who had annoyed the sergeant major, as it was one of the more dangerous positions to hold in action. The British had copied the French method of indicating rank by chevrons, but in the British case with the point downwards. The sergeant major wore four chevrons on his upper arm; the colour sergeant a single chevron surmounted by crossed swords, the union flag and the royal crown; the sergeant three chevrons and the corporal two. The rank of lance corporal had not yet been introduced, although many regiments recognised a need for a transitional stage between private and NCO and had appointed what were known as ‘chosen men’, who acted and were paid as senior privates but would become corporals when a vacancy arose.
The pay of a soldier varied depending upon what arm of the service he joined. The cavalry were paid more than the infantry and the Guards more than the line. Annual rates of pay for the infantry of the line – the bulk of the army – at the time of Waterloo were:
Sergeant Major: £54.75
Colour Sergeant: £42.55
Sergeant: £32.92
Corporal: £23.94 to £26.93 depending on length of service
Drummer: £20.54
Private: £17.95 to £20.95 depending on service
Soldiers in the Guards got an extra old penny per day (£0.41 or £1.49 per year) and corporals and privates in the cavalry were paid around double that of the line infantry.
To put those pay rates into perspective, in 1815 a shipwright in Plymouth might earn £86 a year, a mason in London £82 (but in Glasgow only £51), a skilled carpenter £45.50, a cotton weaver in Belfast £35 (but a linen weaver in England £19.50), a fully trained merchant seaman £33 and an unmarried farmhand £15.33. These figures do not, however, tell the whole story, for they assume that the man was employed for the entire year. In fact the wages of carpenters and masons were expressed as daily rates, so from the salary given Sundays and any days not worked must be deducted. Similarly some occupations – farmhand or sailor, for example – were provided with free board and lodging and agricultural workers were normally paid a bonus over the harvest. Nevertheless, after deductions for his food (£2.33 per year) and ‘necessaries’ – those items of clothing and equipment not provided free by the service – (£2.93 per year), and one shilling or £0.05 per year towards the upkeep of Chelsea Hospital, a private soldier (who was paid for Sundays and was accommodated) was not badly off compared to his peers in civilian life. Unlike his peers he could qualify for a pension of £7.50 a year after fourteen years’ service, and, depending on rank, anything between £36.50 for a sergeant major to £18.25 for a private after twenty-one years. Men invalided out of the service through wounds before reaching pension point got from £3.72 a year to £11.20 depending upon the degree of disablement .
Discipline in the army was regulated by the Mutiny Act of 1803 which gave a legal basis for the various Articles of War to be applicable in the United Kingdom and not just overseas as hitherto. On the face of it, the offences listed and the possible punishments were draconian: after a trial by court martial, a wide variety of offences ranging from mutiny to desertion, from plundering to striking a superior, from disobeying orders to aiding the enemy, could attract the death penalty, although some only if committed on active service. This would be inflicted either by firing squad or by hanging. The one organisation that could sentence a man to death and carry it out on the spot was the provost, the ancestors of the military police, if they caught a man in the act of committing a capital offence. In practice it was rare to inflict the supreme penalty. Wellington did not execute deserters, unless they took service with the enemy, nor did the provost often hang plunderers on the spot, however much Wellington would fulminate against looting (on the grounds that it would alienate the local population and turn them against the British). In the Peninsula one man was executed for buggery, and as this is an activity that requires two participants, we can assume that the other was a civilian and thus not subject to British military law.
The form of an execution was prescribed in great detail. The units of the man’s brigade were formed up in hollow square and a procession of a fatigue party carrying the man’s coffin, followed by the prisoner escorted by men of his own regiment, then a chaplain, then the firing party of (usually) twelve soldiers of the man’s regiment commanded by a sergeant, with the provost marshal bringing up the rear. The whole entourage paraded along the line of assembled troops while the band played the Dead March from Handel’s oratorio Saul. The prisoner was then placed on the open side of the square, his hands tied behind his back, blindfolded and ordered to kneel. Orders to the firing squad, positioned ten paces away, were normally given by hand signals and should the condemned not be killed instantly, he would be finished off by the provost marshal with a pistol. The body was then placed in the coffin and the whole parade slow marched past the body, with recruits ordered to be made to pass as close as possible to it – presumably as a warning to their future conduct .
While soldiers could be imprisoned, this was rare – a man in jail escaped duty and was out of danger, which may have been what motivated him to sin in the first place – and the most common punishment was flogging. Men could be sentenced to receive up to 200 lashes by a general court martial, 150 by a district court martial and 100 by a regimental court. Again, the man’s battalion was paraded and the miscreant tied to a ‘triangle’, originally made of sergeants’ halberds, but as by 1815 many sergeants no longer carried halberds, it was often purpose-made of wood. The sentence was carried out by drummers, using a ‘cat of nine tails’, a whip with a short wooden handle and nine knotted cords each sixteen inches long, and a medical officer was in attendance. The punishment was usually inflicted on the man’s back, but in the case of a man who had recently been flogged and whose back was in no state to take any more, it might be on the buttocks. The strokes were counted out loud by the drum major, and after every twenty-five lashes the drummer was changed. In some regiments the man flogged was required to pay for the cost of the cat used to lash him, and in the case of a really nasty recipient drum majors would alternate right- and left-handed drummers to administer the punishment more thoroughly.
British infantry soldiers wore scarlet tunics and light grey trousers. In practice, with contracts for uniforms let to contractors who submitted the lowest tenders, the quality varied enormously, and mostly it was bad. After a few weeks’ campaigning the scarlet tunic was more of a rusty brick red, and the trousers bore the stains of the scarlet dye that had begun to run in the first shower of rain. Boots were not issued as right or left boots but as boots, and the man made his own lace holes with a nail or an awl if he could persuade a cobbler to do it for him[‡]. Worst of all was the web equipment. It was a mass of straps and buckles that held the man’s cartridge pouch, bayonet frog, water bottle, bread bag and knapsack. It was made of white buff, and had to be kept white by applications of pipe clay. It looked very smart on parade but with its straps and crossbelts pulled tight it was hugely uncomfortable and restrictive in movement, unless worn loose, which in most units after years of war it was, at least when not on parade. The standard issue Trotter pack, called after its inventor, was made of lacquered canvas stiffened with leather. Although Mr Trotter, based in Soho, was a supplier to the army (and was hauled before various parliamentary committees on several occasions accused of corruption in regard to his methods and products), it was up to the colonel of the regiment to select a supplier, although all patterns were roughly the same as Trotter’s. All could be polished and made to look very smart indeed, but depending on the supplier ranged from merely uncomfortable to agonising to wear, and many old solders suffered from ‘Trotter’s Chest’, a respiratory ailment caused by long years of the chest being restricted by the straps of the pack. Old soldiers were also easily identified by pock-mark-like tiny black specks on the right cheek, caused by the ignition of the powder in the pan when firing the musket.
[*] About the same weight as is carried by an infantry soldier today, although today’s is much better distributed about the body.
[†] Not yet a Warrant Officer – that does not come until 1879.
[‡] One of the many scandals involving army procurement revolved around a consignment of boots delivered to the army in Spain which fell apart after the wearers waded a stream. The contractor had soled the boots with cardboard painted black.