Fusiliers (13 page)

Britain’s strategic concept carried an aroma of insult in that it assumed the surest way to bring the Americans to bay was through emptying their pockets, rather than by defeating their ideology, but such thinking was not restricted to the King’s advisers. Washington shared the view that it would be a disaster for his cause if the colonies were cleaved along the Hudson line and knew also that his political masters would insist he defend the city of New York, even if the army was not ready to do so. This offered Howe the prospect of defeating the American army in battle, and, after all, if the Americans proved incapable of defending their rebellion, how could they claim they were ready for independence? It would take months, though, before General Howe could launch this strategy, while he awaited reinforcements and re-made his army.

At dawn on 3 April, the troops in Halifax bay got their first proper view of the town. Their transports had come in to anchor the previous evening, the sailors, to their credit, performing the operation in darkness. The prospect on that morning was pretty dreadful. It was bitterly cold, with stiff winds. Streams as well as ponds were frozen over and the streets of the little garrison town remained icy. The land itself seemed barren, a wilderness of pine and rocks – the army’s horses, once disembarked, had to be taken thirty-eight miles from Halifax to find some grass. In the days that followed, there were several storms,
throwing everybody about in their cramped berths on the transports and carrying off several longboats left tethered to the ships’ sterns.

Halifax itself was a miserable little town of a few thousand souls whose lives were defined by its function as a military base. There was a dockyard, some works, a couple of taverns and whorehouses. Once the senior officers and Boston civilians had been disembarked there was scarcely any room for the soldiers, most of whom would remain on their transports for months to come.

General Howe, though, was determined to use his time in this apparently sterile place to nurture the growth of a new spirit and discipline in his army. After Gage’s ineffectual management of affairs, many officers looked to their new commander-in-chief to grip his army, curbing its wayward soldiery. Captain Lord Rawdon spoke for many when writing before the departure from Boston: ‘This winter will improve them much in [discipline], as General Howe is very strict.’ Within days of anchoring in the harbour, a constant shuttling of regiments to and from the transports began.

On 14 April the Light Infantry was landed, to be drilled by Major General Percy. Eleven days later it was the turn of the 23rd, 44th and 64th Regiments for the same treatment. Percy supervised the practice of these regiments in manoeuvres, and instructed them in General Howe’s orthodoxies. This process, of hard days spent marching, deploying, falling back, on the shores of Nova Scotia would continue for weeks, with each regiment getting chances to exercise its men repeatedly.

The general also wanted to get regiments used to working together, so he established several brigades for the campaign of 1776. Each would be commanded by a brigadier or major general and have its own staff. This development was to provide Frederick Mackenzie with his path out of regimental service, for he was appointed major of brigade, running the little staff of the 6th Brigade, while in Halifax, a recognition of his zeal and attention to detail. Mackenzie would not serve with the Fusiliers in the field for the remainder of the war, but his new job would pay him more and make him a spectator to the doings of higher command.

There had been some thought given to the questions of how to fight dispersed enemies operating in loose formations behind cover, how to manoeuvre on American battlefields and even whether the soldiers were wearing the right clothes. The formal evolutions that Mackenzie or Serjeant Major Keens could remember from Blackheath or
Wimbledon Common, or the ideas on uniform that owed more to fashion than practicality, would be superseded.

Major General Burgoyne, back in England by this time, had jotted down his thoughts about the American enemy. He could see that their way of fighting exploited the high motivation of ordinary soldiers engaged in their cause, noting:

Every private man will in action be his own general, who will turn every tree and bush into a kind of temporary fortress, from whence, when he hath fired his shot with all the deliberation, coolness, and certainty which hidden safety inspires, he will skip as it were, to the next, and so on for a long time till dislodged either by cannon or by a resolute attack of light infantry.

Neither Howe nor Burgoyne believed in aping American tactics exactly. Rather they sensed that an enemy spread out, fighting behind cover, could be conquered easily enough by redcoats exploiting their superior organisation or cohesion, to get around or outflank their American adversaries or rush them before they could re-load. Burgoyne argued: ‘Light infantry therefore in greater numbers than one company per regiment, ought to be an essential part of the general system of our army.’

When speaking of ‘light infantry’ these generals, in essence, meant troops who could move faster. The orders already given out respecting the use of two ranks and spaced files would help. American veterans of the Seven Years War like Howe knew that the 18-inch separation between files was just a start – if soldiers had to charge into woods or occupy a particular piece of ground, a regiment could be stretched to twice its usual frontage, opening gaps as big as two or three feet – or even more – between each pair of soldiers. But further steps could be used too: getting the men to conduct their manoeuvres faster, advancing at the trot or even running, rather than walking, forward at the regulation pace and by changing the nature of those evolutions. General Howe believed that starting all the changes from the centre of each company or battalion was more efficient than beginning from the left or right (as the 23rd had done at Lexington). If a small company, say thirty-six men, occupied a front 24 yards across, forming from one end would place the last file or pair of men 23 yards from those who had begun the manoeuvre – starting from the centre would leave nobody more than 11 yards away, meaning less margin for error and a swifter movement.

General Howe, once in Halifax, grouped all of his light infantry into battalions that would work and train together constantly, deploying as his elite advanced guard brigade in combat. But this did not answer Burgoyne’s point that more light infantry relative to the number of regiments was needed. Burgoyne himself, once in command of several British battalions in Canada, would eventually convert the lot to light infantry, training them all to perform their manoeuvres at the double and dressing all of them as light troops.

Howe did not go quite this far; nevertheless, he ordered all regiments to form two deep and learn how to manoeuvre from the centre. He also used a couple of picked regiments which he thought capable of matching the pace of the light infantry to bolster his
corps
d’élite
. Howe did not order all of his men to dress as light infantry, but instead accepted many practical improvements in that area.

The dress regulations stipulated the soldier’s ideal appearance, but there were other texts available to guide the colonel upon the delicate matter of producing the most genteel and distinguished-looking body of men possible. Bennett Cuthbertson’s work was particularly influential, gaining hundreds of subscribers including thirteen officers of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, among them Lieutenant Colonel Bernard, Thomas Mecan and Frederick Mackenzie. On matters of appearance, Cuthbertson was a pedant whose inclinations showed the short distance that sometimes separates the military camp from its theatrical variety.

Cuthbertson felt the coat should be tailored, ‘always be tight over the breast (without restraint) for the sake of showing his figure to more advantage’; the soldier’s breeches ‘must be made to fit smooth and tight upon the thighs’ and, as for socks, ‘the greatest uniformity should be observed in the colour of the stockings, through a regiment, as nothing more offends the eye’. Adding to the general constriction, a tight collar, the stock, was fastened about the neck, half gaiters (with rows of buttons) were fastened over the shoes, and the hair scraped back, pulled tight across a metal ball, tied and then powdered.

Soldiers of line regiments wore a black felt hat which had the brim stitched up in such a way as to give it a fore-peak and two corners. Three regiments designated ‘fusiliers’ (the 7th, 21st and 23rd) were given by the regulations the distinction of wearing bearskin caps. In fact, the men of the Royal Welch had donned these prized hats when parading before the King five years before, but rarely (if ever) since. Their grenadiers continued to wear the (slightly taller) bearskin cap
that distinguished these troops, officers in the 23rd often acquired fusilier caps at personal expense and wore them, and some may have been kept for General’s Guards and other special detachments. But the workaday headgear of the 23rd was the black cocked hat, just like other regiments.

Quite a few officers had commented before 1775 that this regulation dress was completely impractical for campaigning. One general, writing two years earlier, had denounced the cocked hat as ‘extremely incommodious’, likely to be knocked off in woods, and predicted the long coat tails would snag on undergrowth; and he was disgusted at the traditional practice of dressing the hair, which he argued was likely to produce ‘stagnated humours, which break out into scabs and ulcers’. He suggested instead a small leather cap on the head, ‘the common tight light jacket’, and one-piece trousers. This was close to the dress of the Light Infantry battalion in Wolfe’s army (which William Howe had commanded) and it should therefore be unsurprising that in the first half of 1776, a similar-looking soldier emerged in his own host.

There was much needle-and-thread work going on between the cramped decks of the army’s transports as they lay at anchor in Halifax, and it would go on throughout the coming campaign too. The ranks of the regiment always contained a few tailors, so these and other dab hands earned some coppers from their mates as they altered their clothes.

The results, as they moved away from regulation appearance, varied from one regiment to another, but the general trend was looser, shorter garments made more practical, as well as the jettisoning of adornment. Black felt hats were cut down or unstitched so they were less likely to be knocked off, more able to shade the eyes.

While dealing with all these pressing matters of army administration at Halifax, Howe found himself conducting an interview of the most delicate personal nature. Henry Blunt had come to the general with a problem that affected him both as commander-in-chief and colonel of the 23rd. Blunt had left the Fusiliers the previous summer on purchasing the lieutenant colonelcy of the 4th Regiment. The acquisition of this rank – the highest that could be bought and sold – set in train a chain of transactions or ‘succession’ that rippled down the regimental hierarchy with someone buying the vacant majority,
who in turn sold his captaincy and so on. Since this sequence of deals could involve many thousands of pounds it had to be carefully timed. The officer who could not afford to buy his lieutenant colonelcy outright (regulation price
£
3,500) had to borrow. Blunt’s undoing was that he had sold his majority in the 23rd but was so heavily overdrawn that he still could not raise the money to complete the purchase of his higher rank in the 4th.

Many officers skirted the shoals of insolvency as they bought their way up the army, but Blunt had wrecked himself. He could not go back to the 23rd as major, since that door had closed behind him when another officer, William Blakeney (still on leave in England), had bought the post. General Howe could not elbow Benjamin Bernard aside as lieutenant colonel of the Fusiliers either, since that invalid officer insisted he could still serve and, in any case, Blunt had shown suspect judgement in his transactions. What was more, the former major of the 23rd was close to Gage and other members of a set that were discredited in Howe’s eyes. Blunt pleaded with the general to be allowed to return to England to raise some additional money so that he might escape the shameful limbo in which he found himself. Howe agreed, and in doing so aroused the King’s displeasure: why was the commander-in-chief allowing the commanding officer of one of his regiments to go home when a vital campaign was about to begin? Howe explained it ‘from a knowledge of the inextricable difficulties in [Blunt’s] private affairs arising from the purchase of his present commission’.

As it would transpire, Blunt failed to find the extra cash at home and was forced to sell out of the army. He had allowed ambition to blind him to the fact that he could not really afford the promotion he craved. William Howe might have protected Blunt from this fate by allowing him acting or brevet rank on the staff or in command of the 4th but chose not to. Howe could advance those he valued without any money changing hands – thus he had obtained Thomas Mecan a captaincy and given Nisbet Balfour the prestigious job as one of his aides-de-camp. He could also facilitate back-room deals of the kind brokered for Lieutenant Haldimand. It was simply a matter of the general’s whim. Little wonder that some nervous old officers decried the ‘despotic power of Commanders in Chief abroad’.

Had General Howe wanted to advance the interests of his own regiment or its officers, he would have done so with the stroke of a
pen. But as the grumbling old captains of the 23rd soon discovered, few of its men apart from Thomas Mecan had caught their chief’s eye. What was more, Howe showed every symptom of being that species of colonel far more interested in what he could get out of a regiment than what he could put in.

When presented with the colonelcy of the Royal Welch, Howe had let it be known that he did not want it and would rather have a regiment of heavy cavalry. The high prices of commissions, uniform, horses and saddlery all allowed the colonel of such a corps to make a larger profit. Having accepted the Fusiliers with such ill grace, Howe then got into an argument with the widow of the regiment’s previous colonel over which of them should pay for the 1776 issue of uniforms. To be clear, Howe
wanted
to pay since he did not want to be denied the chance to profit on the business.