The Unknown Warrior (24 page)

What set this man's skeleton apart from those of other individuals is that it both displays weapon injuries and comes from a securely dateable context, to a most violent single event in the English Civil War. Unfortunately, apart from the skull, there were no other elements of the skeleton that would enable further statements about the individual, though the material recovered revealed much.

SIX

The Revolution of Industry: Soldiers of the Nineteenth Century

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ‘Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?'
But it's ‘Thin red line of 'eroes' when the drums begin to roll, –
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's ‘Thin red line of 'eroes' when the drums begin to roll.

(Rudyard Kipling, ‘Tommy')

The nineteenth century must surely have been one of the periods in which the lot of the infantryman changed most. Industrialisation ensured that the potential for them to kill or be killed increased exponentially – in greater numbers and at greater distance than before. Where ‘industrialised' forces met those of more ‘traditional' societies, slaughter could be huge; though not always of the latter. Training of troops was more commonplace, and, by the close of the period, the wounded private could at least expect a reasonable chance of good medical treatment for wounds afflicted or maladies suffered on campaign.

As literacy of the common man increased, so do our opportunities to study their written thoughts of campaigns, army life and privations. Further to this, we are also able to read accounts of their opponents. The infantryman's life and death are also covered in greater immediacy than ever before – in paintings and poetry, and by the new medium of photography. For the first time, images of the dead were available for mass consumption on the home front, and the role of the press would change forever.

It should also be remembered that not all those who served in nineteenth-century armies were male. The muster-out rolls of the Union armies in America, referred to by William Fox in 1889, included the following individuals:

Forty-sixth Pennsylvania, Company D: Charles D. Fuller; detected as being a female; discharged, date unknown.

One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Pennsylvania, Company F: Sergeant Frank Mayne: deserted Aug. 24, 1862; subsequently killed in battle in another regiment, and discovered to be a woman; real name, Frances Day.

Second Michigan, Company F: Franklin Thompson; deserted. (Charge of desertion removed by the House Committee on Military Affairs, Washington, Feb. 1887, the soldier having had a good record and had fought well in several battles, but proved to be a woman; real name was Miss Seelye.)

(Fox, 1889)

Since the nineteenth century is, in archaeological terms, very close to our era, we have much evidence, including upstanding fortifications, parade grounds, spreads of battlefield detritus and the remains of the combatants. In this chapter we shall examine some of these strands to evaluate the nature of the evidence for the life of the infantryman.

WEAPONRY

The soldier could now kill at a greater range and with greater speed. The nineteenth century saw a change from the standard use of musket to rifled breech-loading and, ultimately, bolt-action weaponry. Industrialisation enabled vast quantities of munitions to be used, which are still traceable on the battlefields of the era. Musket balls, bullets, and cartridge cases have been recovered from Waterloo to Khambula, Antietam to Spion Kop. Thus the fairly new discipline of battlefield archaeology is enriched. For example, although fundamentally a cavalry action and not in the remit of this book, movements of individual soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry are traceable through studies of the ballistics evidence retrieved from the site of the Little Bighorn battlefield (Custer's Last Stand, 25 June 1876) in the United States (Scott
et al.
, 1989).

The study of the infantry through scatters of munitions is not without its problems. Recent examinations of the Crimean War battlefield at Balaclava (25 October 1854) have found not only spent munitions of this period, but also ammunition from the Second World War rendering metal-detecting spatial analysis surveys difficult to say the least (P. Freeman, pers. comm.).

Before we left Lisbon we had served to us, seven day biscuit, five day meat, and two day wine. Each man's kit consisted of one blanket, one watchcoat, two shirts, two pairs stockings and two pair boots, one pair of soles and heels, besides all other little etceteras, necessary to make up the soldiers kit. Sixty rounds of ball cartridges in the pouch … (Wheeler, 1999: 51)

As the account of his kit, written by Private Wheeler, light infantryman in the 51st Regiment in the Napoleonic period (from 1809), shows, the early nineteenth-century soldier had large quantities of musket balls available to him. Vast amounts of these were expended in the campaigns of the Peninsular War (1808–14) and also at celebrated set-piece battles such as Waterloo (18 June 1815). To date, relatively little systematic study of battlefields such as Waterloo has occurred, though much by way of spent musket balls has been retrieved, British musket balls being of .75 calibre while the French were of .69 (Pericoli, 1973: 73).

Large monuments, like the ‘Butte du Lion', have irrevocably altered the landscape and made specific cluster studies more problematic. In many cases, the presence of an action is visible, in terms of buildings or trees pockmarked with musket-ball holes or stray munitions, but little else can be inferred from the artefacts. On other sites spent munitions indicate the areas of the line that came under pressure through attack.

Although rifles, including the Baker Rifle, were used by some Light Infantry regiments, such as the 95th Regiment, the standard weapon for the British Napoleonic infantryman, both in regiments of the line and in garrisons, was the ‘Brown Bess' musket. It was muzzle loaded, the charge and ball being forced down by a ramrod, but its accuracy was poor, and, although the rate of fire was higher than a rifle to a ratio of around 3:1 or 4:1, the main tactic with their utilisation was to provide an overwhelming volley at point-blank range. There would be no need to aim – simply to produce a maelstrom of lead through which opposing cavalry and infantry could not pass unscathed. Excavations of a Victorian cottage close to the Berry Head Forts in Devon yielded artefacts associated with the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century activity locally, including a hammer from a Brown Bess musket (Armitage, 2004: 6).

The Crimean War (1853–6) was not just fought at well-known sites like Balaclava; many actions took place further afield. The massive Russian fortress of Bomarsund, on the Ålund Islands between Sweden and Finland, was bombarded by British warships and assaulted by
c.
12,000 French troops. In 1982, at the Notvik tower, rubble was cleared away and archaeological research carried out. Several finds relating to the infantry garrison were recovered, revealing information as to the weaponry used. Musket and rifle bullets (mostly spherical lead balls of diameter 16.5–17.5mm and up to 21mm) were uncovered, as was evidence for use of Belgian-made Lüttich smoothbores. Perhaps most interesting were the finds of two broken musket butts and at the bottom of a cistern, cartridges with paper wrappings and gunpowder (Löndahl
et al.
, 2001: 217). So archaeology can reveal a change in type of firearm with cartridges now being seen to replace the powder flasks of preceding generations.

Recent archaeological work has given us further clues as to the nature of combat and the myths surrounding a number of engagements. Artefacts relating to weaponry are included in this. At the crossover of musket to rifle use there are an increasing number of academically rigorous studies of fields of conflict by archaeologists such as Tony Pollard, on the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), and several individuals on the American Civil War (1861–5).

Excavations of American Civil War sites show the vast range of firearms available to both Confederate and Union infantrymen. More than 370 different types of guns and at least 65 different calibres, ranging from .220 to .858, were used throughout the war, and it was a taxing logistical challenge to keep all the weapons supplied with the proper ammunition (M. Espinola, pers. comm.).

At Brawner Farm (Second Manassas) on 28 August 1862, intense fighting around Brawner's House left many traces of the battle. About forty artefacts have been excavated from their original historic context here. The study by Potter
et al.
(2003: 14–16) revealed the presence of the following: fired and unfired percussion caps, both impacted and unfired .69 calibre musket balls, impacted .58 calibre three-ring bullets, impacted .54 calibre three-ring bullet, impacted .54 Gardner bullet, knapsack hook, Austrian Lorenze rifle-musket gun-tool and even a bullet carved as a chess piece. As we know from written accounts that their right flank was located around these outbuildings, it is inferred that the 4th Virginia Regiment was using all these weapon forms. The rings on the bullets mentioned above would have facilitated spinning of the projectile, enabling greater range and accuracy.

At the battle site of Ox Hill (Chantilly), fought on 1 September 1862 during a thunderstorm, numerous artefacts associated with Pender's North Carolina and Field's Virginia Regiments also serve to illustrate the plethora of available arms and multitude of suppliers. Italian Carcano bullets (frequently associated with North Carolina militia units), a Prussian .69 calibre bullet, a Belgian .69 calibre bullet and even an English .75 calibre (Tower Musket) ball were recovered (M. Espinola, pers. comm. – see also Nash, 2004, for this site). The problems encountered with these firearms are revealed by the findings of tools designed to correct faults. If powder was wet, as would have been the case in the storm at Ox Hill, then the gun would not function and powder and lead projectile would have to be cleared (wet powder could lead to battles being abandoned (see Holmes, 2001: 196)). One .69 calibre all-in-one gun-tool found here included a screwdriver, nipple wrench, and a vent pick to remove powder from the fouled touch-hole of the weapon. If this failed and the wet powder rendered the weapon useless as a firearm, there was no choice but to use the bayonet, or the butt of the gun as a club – a situation that occurred at Ox Hill.

A tool known as an Enfield ‘worm', which acted as a type of corkscrew to remove blocked projectiles, was also found. This could be fitted to the end of a soldier's ramrod and used to extract the bullet. In this case, a .58 calibre ‘minié' bullet was attached to the end of the worm and there were other bullets that seem to show that they have been pulled twice by a worm, having misfired both times (M. Espinola, pers. comm.).

During the salvage survey of the Ox Hill battlefield, unfired lead bullets were recovered that were discarded when the paper cartridges had become wet during the violent storm. The discarded wet paper cartridges, of which only the lead bullet remained, clearly outlined where the combatants had stood in their regimental line of battle. Even during the storm some of the weapons would still fire but after being gradually exposed to the rain, most of the ammunition in the soldier's cartridge box had become wet and unserviceable. Impact zones represented by groupings of fired bullets were also able to provide information on what parts of the battleline had come under fire and were under the heaviest attack. These groupings of fired bullets and the ‘bread trail' of discarded bullets were critical in determining where the combatants had been positioned. This was especially helpful in determining where the second Confederate battleline was established to stop the Union breakthrough on the Confederate centre and for identifying the previously unknown location of the battleline on the east side of the battlefield. (M. Espinola, pers. comm.)

Cornelison Jr has examined the archaeological potential of the battlefield of Chickamauga (18 September 1863), using metal-detecting surveys to evaluate the nature of retreat of Union units. Artefacts from this site included unfired minié balls, caltrops (iron spikes for use against cavalry), percussion caps, bullets of various calibres, an Enfield-type ramrod, iron rifle-band spring clips, a bayonet scabbard tip, 14 buckles (two of which came from a knapsack), and an army belt buckle (Cornelison, 2003: 298–300). The author concluded that the scatter of artefacts showed that, in retreat, some units were ‘stable' as they passed through the area, though other ‘individuals or units passed through the area in tactically unstable conditions with little to no semblance of military order' (
ibid.
: 304), their munitions and equipment being freely discarded with no clear evidence for a fighting retreat.

Sterling (2003: 324) also notes the wide range of firearms used by the American infantryman in the Civil War and the effectiveness of the new rifled weapons: ‘Minié's bullet design led to an increased effective range for the musket from a smoothbore's 100 yards to 400 yards for a rifled musket.' This could also have had its downside, as such development of firepower did not always go hand in hand with an updated style of battle plan; as Sterling (
ibid
.: 325) noted ‘the new rifle musket made Napoleonic tactics both obsolete and more deadly. The average Civil War infantryman suffered from the combination of technological improvements and the resistance of many field commanders to adopt tactics suited to the improved fire power and accuracy.'

The British Empire came into conflict with indigenous peoples across the globe as part of its nineteenth-century expansionism, wars against local forces in Africa being a case in point. In 1879, Imperial troops faced the Zulu warriors of King Cetshwayo in the Anglo-Zulu War and by the turn of the century were again engaged in South Africa – this time against the Boers (1899–1902).