Fusiliers (57 page)

48 ‘
the rascals called out to us several times to surrender
’: a letter from Lenthall to Lt Col James of the artillery, dated 15 August 1775. It is reproduced in Downman. This letter is the prime source for the description of this action but it is referred to in Williams and a letter home from Stuart in Wortley.

49 ‘
We burnt Penny Ferry House
’: Lenthall in Downman.

50 ‘
gave a general fire of small arms
’: Williams’s journal.

51 ‘
sentenced to receive
500
lashes
’: details of the court martial of Husthwaite (of the 4th) are in a General Order of 26 July 1775 in
General Sir William
Howe’s Orderly Book 1775–1776
, collected and edited by Benjamin Franklin Stevens, London 1890.

— ‘
rumours about poor Lieutenant Hull
’: referred to in Williams’s journal.

— ‘
the detachment I was with succeeded
’: Clinton,
American Rebellion
.

— ‘
had forgot to bring any combustibles
’: letter of Major Francis Hutcheson to Major General Haldimand, in the general’s papers, bl add ms 21680. The Hutcheson letters are a full and extremely useful account of life in Boston under siege (and beyond).

52 ‘
The entrance to the harbour
’: Harris in Lushington.

— ‘
Dozens of redcoats’ wives had been pressed into service
’: General Orders, Stevens.

53 ‘
every inhabitant that can get away is going
’: Hutcheson letters.

— ‘
If you will quit the service
’: the seditious pamphlet was reprinted in the July 1775 edition of
Scots Magazine
.

— ‘
Machin, a soldier of Blunt’s company
’: details from tna: pro wo 12/3960 and Williams.

— ‘
This fellow will give them good intelligence
’: Williams.

54 ‘
The next campaign will be be carried on
’: Rawdon’s letter of 13 December 1775 in Bickley.

— ‘
an Ugly Club at the Bunch of Grapes
’: details from the court martial of one of those officers in
TNA: PRO WO
71/80.

54 ‘
most scandalous drunkenness at this critical time
’: General Order quoted by Barker.

— ‘
There was an order of this kind
’: Barker.

55 ‘
The principal failure that day, was in the officers
’: Washington’s letter to the President of Congress of 20 July 1775 in vol. 3 of Fitzpatrick.

— ‘
an unaccountable kind of stupidity
’: Washington to Richard Lee, 29August, in vol. 3 of Fitzpatrick.

56 ‘
it took more than one year for a proper scheme of punishments
’: the issue is discussed in detail in
The Morale of the American Revolutionary Army
, by Allen Bowman, Washington 1943.

— ‘
the enemy, by their not coming out, are, I suppose afraid of us
’: Washington to his brother, 13 October 1775, vol. 4 of Fitzpatrick.

— ‘
far more wealth to their name
’: New York officers like Philip Schuyler and Peter Gansevoort belonged to Dutch families with huge estates, similarly many regimental officers in the Maryland and Virginia forces were reckoned wealthy.

57 ‘
the dependents on the present commander
’: Hutcheson letters.

— ‘
In November 1775
’: these changes were announced in General Orders, Stevens.

— ‘
an establishment of more than 850 men
’: the establishment was first set out in a letter of 31st August from Lord Barrington to General Gage, in
TNA
:
PRO
30/55/1.

58 ‘
one, worthy but penniless old officer
’: this was Robert Douglas, details in
TNA: PRO WO
4/273.

— ‘
the second recruiting
captain’s
job
’: went to Thomas Gibbings,
TNA: PRO
WO
12.

— ‘
pleases them not a little
’: Hutcheson.

— ‘
the price of a chicken
’: from a letter of Captain Evelyn’s.

— ‘
pay the unfortunate fellow
’: Hutcheson letter of 14 December. The broken officer was called William Haughton.

59 ‘
He had been commissioned from the ranks
’: details in
TNA: PRO WO
27 and
WO
12. Many letters from him in Portsmouth are in
WO
1 files.

60 ‘
permitted to sell out extra quick
’: a sad letter concerning Williams by the regimental agent is in
TNA: PRO WO
1/994 and a letter allowing his selling out in
WO
4/273.

61 ‘
necessary he should live with the corps
’: Hutcheson.

— ‘
Late in November, he sold out
’: this is announced in a General Order in Stevens, and its date, 23 November, the same as that of Haldimand’s transfer into the 23rd, linking the two events.

62 ‘
The explosions in the night
’: these descriptions of events during 5–24March are based on the Hutcheson letters, Barker and the journal of Captain William Bamford, ‘Bamford’s Diary’, in
Maryland Historical Magazine
, vols 27 and 28, 1932 and 1933.

63 ‘
A drill book … 1764
’:
A New Manual and the Platoon Exercise: With an
Explanation
, by Edward Harvey, Adjutant General, London 1764.

64 ‘
Orders were given on 5 March … not to load their weapons
’: Barker.

— ‘
had done its best to form three deep
’: the best evidence of this is actually the sketches of Amos Doolittle, an American soldier at the battle who subsequently sold prints of what he had seen, and the fact that the formation in two ranks on 17 June was a subject of comment.

— ‘
there would be 18-inch gaps between each “file”
’: Howe’s General Order of 29February 1776, in the
Journal of Stephen Kemble, 1773–1789; and
British Army Orders
, New-York Historical Society Collections for 1884.

— ‘
Rumours ran around the men
’: best recorded by Bamford.

65 ‘
I am not one of those bloody-minded people
’: Harris (evidently quite a moderate) in Lushington.

— ‘
Britain’s best option lay in a war of naval raiding
’: both Harris and Hutcheson fall into this category.

66 ‘
I confess I should have thought it
’: Percy’s letter of 28 July 1775 to General Harvey, in Bolton.

— ‘
At dawn on 3 April
’: many details in this passage drawn from Bamford and Hutcheson’s letters.

67 ‘
This winter will improve them much
’: a letter of 13 January 1776 to his Uncle, in Bickley.

— ‘
On 14 April the Light Infantry
’: these details from General Orders kept by Kemble.

— ‘
provide Frederick Mackenzie with his path out of regimental service
’: Brigade Majors were appointed by General Order of 17 May 1776, in Kemble.

68 ‘
Every private man will in action be his own general
’: Burgoyne’s memo is undated but reckoned to have been penned early in 1776, in De Fonblanque.

— ‘
18-inch separation between files was just a start
’: British troops on the Plain of Abraham in 1759 were said to have formed with three feet between files; see, for example,
Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America
, Captain John Knox, Toronto 1914.

— ‘
General Howe believed that starting all the changes from the centre
’: this is clear from his 1774 ‘Instructions to Light Companies’, included for example in
The Elements of Military Arrangement; Comprehending the
Tactick
,
Exercises, Manoeuvres, and Discipline of the British Infantry
, by John Williamson, London 1781.

69 ‘
training them all to perform their manoeuvres at the double
’: the breathless British exercises are described with horror by Captain George Pausch, of the Hesse Hanau Artillery,
Journal of Captain George Pausch
, New York 1971.

— ‘
He also used a couple of picked regiments
’: these were usually the 33rd or 42nd, brigaded with the Light Infantry and Grenadiers.

— ‘
Bennett
Cuthbertson’s
work was particularly influential
’:
System for the
Compleat Interior Management and Oeconomy of a Battalion of Infantry
, Dublin 1768. Cuthbertson was a former captain of the 5th.

— ‘
the distinction of wearing bearskin caps
’: the issue of whether the 23rd actually wore these fancy hats on service is complex. The only evidence of the regiment as a whole parading in them during the 1770s was carried by a newspaper,
The Gazetteer
, reporting a review by the King on Blackheath Common on 5 August 1771 (cited by Cary and McCance), yet even when being given their annual review during the same week, the 23rd were wearing cocked hats (
TNA: PRO WO
27/18). In a letter of 12 December 1775, Hutcheson talks about Lieutenant Baily giving young Haldimand his ‘cap’, sword and sash, noting he will buy replacements in London. ‘Cap’ in this context can reasonably be inferred to be fur fusilier variety since Baily served on the regimental staff, not the light company which had leather caps. Doolittle’s drawings of Lexington and Concord show the British troops in cocked hats, and he was an eyewitness to these events.

70 ‘
One general, writing two years earlier
’: this book was published anonymously but was widely regarded as being by Major General Richard Lambart,
A New System of Military Discipline, Founded Upon Principle
, by A General Officer, London 1773.

— ‘
The results, as they moved away from regulation appearance
’: the most complete picture of Howe’s new-look British soldier comes from the anonymous ‘Letter of a Hessian Officer to the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel’ reproduced in
Militair
-Wochenblatt
, 18, Berlin 1833. He reports home that ‘the English have been clothed according to the hot climate, with very short and light coats, and long linen trousers down to the shoes’. He also notices the officers changing uniform; see also
The Diary of Lieutenant Bardleben
and other von
Donop
Regiment Documents
, translated by Bruce E. Burgoyne, Bowie MD 1998. The ‘jettisoned adornment’ included button lace, officers’ gorgets (metal plates that were a sign of rank), and halberds.

71 ‘
the former major of the
23rd
was close to Gage
’: in Hutcheson’s letters.

— ‘from a knowledge of the inextricable difficulties in [Blunt’s] private affairs’: this comes from a letter of the Secretary at War to Howe, 15August 1775, in
TNA: PRO
30/55/3. Other letters related to the Blunt affair can be found in wo 4/97, 98 and 99.

— ‘despotic power of Commanders in Chief abroad’: Montresor.

72 ‘
When presented with the colonelcy of the Royal Welch, Howe had let it be
known that he
didn’t
want it
’: Grant to General Harvey, 5 October 1775,
NAS GD
494/1/29. It is clear Grant hankered after the 23rd himself, but, as a friend and confidant of Howe’s, I find his remarks credible on this subject.

— ‘
Howe then got into an argument with the widow
’: the correspondence related to Mrs Boscawen and the 1776 uniform issue can be found in
TNA
:
PRO WO
4/95, and 96.

— ‘
I serve only for credit and not for profit
’: Percy to Northumberland, 12th February 1777, in the
DON
, the duke’s private papers at Alnwick Castle. These are, of course, the best source of information about how Percy ran the 5th, for dozens of letters touch on this theme. More accessible, though, is the appendix on Percy in the back of Evelyn’s memoir edited by Scull.

— ‘
Though his regiment is distinguished for its admirable discipline
’: anonymous soldier’s letter in the
London Chronicle
, 7–10 September 1775, cited in Scull’s edition of Evelyn’s memoir. Burgoyne in his letter home after Bunker Hill, opined that the 5th was the best regiment in action that day (De Fonblanque).

73 ‘
some of the 23rd’s older officers gravitated towards Earl Percy
’: interesting letters from Ferguson and Donkin can be found in the
DON
.

— ‘
the heir of that illustrious family
’: Donkin,
Military Collections
.

— ‘
illiterate and indolent to the last degree
’: this was the captured rebel Major General Charles Lee, in a letter to Benjamin Rush, 4 June 1778,
The Lee
Papers
, Collections of the New-York Historical Society, 1872.

— ‘
the soldiers that served last campaign at Boston
’: Bamford.

74 ‘
Officers went on trips ashore, hunting wildfowl and fishing
’: Bamford.

— ‘
John Browning, a rogue in
Evans’s
company
’: General Order of 6 June 1776 and
TNA: PRO WO
12.

— ‘
Three young officers caught gambling
’: Hunter reports this.