Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 (48 page)

His opportunity to remodel the Army arose out of the need for iight infantry. The French had won their battles with a horde of highly individualised skirmishers and sharpshooters going ahead

¹
Moore, I,
281.

²
Lady Cham wood,
An Autograph Collection,
115.

³
"A stranger contemplating his countenance," wrote Lord Scaton, who forty years after his death could not speak of his old commander without tears, " would have said, That man it is impossible to alarm." Moore,
II,
89.

of their dense half-disciplined columns and firing from every side into the rigid Teuton lines whose only reply were machine-like volleys, imposing on the parade ground but ineffective against such invisible and fast-moving targets. By the nine the columns came into range or the cavalry charged, the defenders were already demoralised, and the rather sketchy discipline of the former— strengthened by successive victories—was seldom tested. An antidote for the
tirailleur
had had to be found. At the outset the British, being almost without light infantry, had relied on hired German Jagers who were little more than armed gamekeepers and foresters. The exigencies of West Indian warfare, like those of American warfare two decades before, caused Genera
l Grey and his successors, Aber
cromby and Moore, to train special companies as protective and reconnaissance screens. The need for more of these being acutely felt during the brief invasion of the Continent in 1799, the Duke of York had ordered the formation of an Experimental Rifle Corps at Horsham to which fifteen regiments were ordered to send officers and men for courses of instruction. Trained in Windsor Forest by two brilliant leaders, Colonel Coote Manningham and Lieutenant-Colonel William Stewart, thes
e took part in the landing at Fe
rrol in October, 1800, fought by Nelson's side at Copenhagen and were formed in the
s
pring
of 1801 into the 95th Regiment of the Line— a Rifle Corps with distinctive green uniform and dark buttons and accoutrements. Disbanded at the end of the Revolutionary War, they were re-formed when the war clouds regathered, armed with the new Baker rifle—a weapon of high precision compared with the smoothbore musket of the heavy infantry—and in Octobe
r, 1802, consigned to Shorncliff
e Camp for special training under Sir John Moore. Here, facing across the Channel towards Napoleon's cantonments, they formed with the 14th Light Dragoons and the 52nd and 43rd Regiments—both reconstituted as light infantry—the spearhead of the force designed to repel invasion. For the next three years, until they passed overseas, they were trained by Moore in an amalgam of disciplined team-work and individual initiative unmatched since the days of imperial Rome. With the archers of Agincourt and the Brigade of Guards, they formed England's peculiar contribution to the art of land warfare.

Quite early in the Camp's history Philip Hammond of the Blues told Farington that General Moore's brigade was "thought the finest in respect of discipline that ever was formed in England."
¹
The 95th, 52nd and 43rd—the last entering the Camp in a very low state of morale—became models not only for light infantry but for

¹
Farington, IT,
565.

the whole Army. "It is evident," wrote Moore after an inspection of the 52nd, "that not only the soldiers but that each individual soldier knows what he has to do. Discipline is carried on without severity, the officers are attached to the men and the men to the officers."

The foundation of Moore's system was to treat soldiers as human beings capable of constant self-improvement. Experience had taught him to regard war as an activity demanding the highest physical, moral and intellectual qualities. Mechanical goose-stepping and the unthinking obedience which left men brutalised autom
ata were not sufficient to make
first-class soldiers. "The discipline of modern times," he wrote, " which consists of parades, firelock exercise, etc., is easy to the officer, as it takes up but an hour or two in the day. The discipline of the ancients consisted in bodily exercise, running, marching, etc., terminated by bathing. The military character of sobriety and patience would completely answer in this country; but officers and men in following them would be completely occupied with their profession and could pursue-no other object." It was this whole-hearted, craftsman's conception of a soldier's training that Moore instilled into the Light Brigade at Shorncliffe. "There," wrote William Napier the historian, then a subaltern in the 43rd, "officers were formed for command and soldiers acquired such discipline as to become an example to the Army and proud of their profession."

The goal was the "thinking fighting man." In the reconstituted 52nd—Moore's own regiment—officers, themselves taught their drill in the ranks, were encouraged to get to know their men as individuals, to study their particular aptitudes, to bring out the best of which each man was capable and teach him to think for himself. Wherever possible, he was to be shown the why and wherefore of things; to comprehend his duty instead of merely obeying it blindly out of fear or mechanical routine. Punishment, particularly of the "curse, hang and flog" kind that robbed a man of dignity, was discouraged. Its place was taken by a discipline of example and encouragement. Its object was the prevention rather than the punishment of crime. Medals and distinguishing badges were instituted for merit and good behaviour: self-respect, pride, comradeship, the desire to shine were enlisted to fit men for their duties. Physical fitness was held up as the hall-mark of a good soldier; instead of competing, as in other regiments, as to who could drink the largest number of bumpers, Moore's officers were made to race their commander up the hill from Sandgate to Shorncliffe, while the men were encouraged to leave the pothouse and dice-box for sw
im
ming and bathing, music, dancing and ball-playing, cricket and quoits. In an Army notorious for inability to fend for itself in the field,
¹
every man of the Light Brigade—taking a leaf from the book of the self-reliant French—was taught to cook and tailor and to take pride in living sparely against the day when he would have to depend solely on himself. Troops were trained for war under war conditions; when they marched, they bivouacked by the roadside instead of in town
or village. The formal brass, l
eather and pipeclay review so dear to military pedants was abandoned for the field-day— an exercise in which war conditions were reproduced as closely as possible.
²
Everything was made to serve the one-great end of reality: the defeat of Napoleon's invincibles.

In all this Moore worked with nature instead of against it. In the quick march which he and his assistants devised for the light infantryman, the constrained and rigid movements of the Prussian march were abandoned for a free and natural rhythm whose object was the maximum of speed with the minimum of fatigue. "To bring down the feet easily without shaking the upper part of the body," ran the Regulations of the Rifle Corps, "is the grand principle of marching." By being taught to move quickly men became habituated to thinking quickly. In the same way the art of fire was taught, not as an automatic contribution to a blind mechanical volley, but as a highly individualised application of the qualities of judgment, observation, vision and skill. Its object, Moore's pupils were told, was "to inflict death upon the enemy rather than to confound, astonish and intimidate." Armed with a rifle capable of great accuracy up to 300 or even—in the hands of a master—500 yards, the rifleman was taught, first at the butts and then in the field, to judge and use cover and varied ground, to fire always to kill and never to waste a shot. He was trained not as a machine but as a craftsman, the consciousness of whose skill—the best guarantee for his survival on the battlefield—gave him courage and self-confidence. So also the care of the rifle was strictly inculcated, and distinguishing green and white cockades awarded for marksmanship.

Above all, Moore's men were schooled in that art which, though repeatedly forgotten under the shock of successive inventions and weapons, is in all ages the ultimate arbiter of war: the combination of fire and movement. The essence of light infantry work was move-

¹
The German Commissary, Schaumann, -wrote of the difficulty of victualling a British army: "the men, together with their officers, are like young ravens—they only know how to open their mouths to be fed." Schaumann,
38.

²
For mere parade sartorial smartness Moore had a great impatience. "I recollect poor Sir John Moore getting into a scrape once," said Lord Seaton, "for saying, when asked if the hussars were to wear their pelisses,
¹
Oh, yes, and their muffs, tool' " Seaton,
219.

merit, whether in search of information or in the protection of the heavy infantry of the Line. And fire was taught as the concomitant of movement, so that at all times and in all places movement—with its manifold dangers—should be covered by accurate, well-timed and economical fire. A rifleman in battle was the instrument of an orchestra in which every change of position, whether of individual or unit, was, wherever possible, protected by co-ordinated fire, directed at the precise spot from which any interferen
ce with that movement might com
e. The Light Brigade's special system of drill was directed to this end. Taught to the recruit by word of mouth in close order on the parade ground, it was subsequently carried out in extended order by bugle, horn and whistle. It aimed at combining the action of highly individualised and rapidly-moving men and units, working together to destroy or outwit the enemy.

At the back of every rifleman's mind Moore" instilled the principle that the enemy was always at hand ready to strike. Whether on reconnaissance or protective duty, he was taught to be wary and on guard: to explore country, gather information, watch and question travellers and inhabitants, investigate and map-out roads, paths, fords and bridges. It was the pride of a light infantryman never to be caught napping; of a light infantry regiment or company never to have an outpost or piquet surprised. When attacked the latter were taught how to fall back without giving away the position of their main body; rules carefully devised, but always elastic and capable of infinite adjustment, were laid down for setting and relieving sentry lines and patrols by day and night, for defending approaches to villages, bridges and road junctions, for utilising hedges, woods and orchards and every inclination of the ground for cover and fire. The British army of the future was to be encompassed at all times and places by an invisible screen of marksmen, watching the enemy from behind every bush and stone, each one an alert and intelligent individual acting in close but invisible concert with his comrades.
¹

Before the Peninsular War the leaven of Moore's training had only begun to permeate the heavy, unthinking mass of the old Army. His own regiments were still recruited from the national rag-tag-and-bobtail; penniless, drunken I
rish peasants, village bad char
acters,

¹
The principal sources for Moore's system of training are J. F. C. Fuller,
Sir John Moore's System of Training
(1925);
Robert Jackson,
A Systematic View of the Formation, Discipline and Economy of Armies,
1804;
J. C. Moore,
The Life of Lieut.-General Sir John Moore,
1834;
The Diary of Sir John Moore
(ed. J. F. Maurice); Sir H. Bunbury,
Narrative of
Some Passages in the Great War with France,
1854;
Sir W. Napier,
The Life and Opinions of Sir Charles Napier;
Coote Manningham,
Regulations for the Rife Corps,
1800;
Military Lectures delivered to the officers of the
95M
Regt.,
1803;
Fortescue, IV,
352, 917-18;
Passages in the Early Military Life of General Sir George Napier,
1884,

slum bullies and pimps, balloted ploughboys with a penchant for drink and roving. Of such was the chimney-sweep who, in the taproom of the Red Lion at Rye, told the recruiting sergeant of the 95th that he was able to lick the best man in the room and that the only thing against his being a-soldier was his black face; him the sergeant scoured with water and filled with rum and, seeing that he looked a slippery customer, handcuffed to one of his men to make sure he should not think better of his bargain in the night.
¹
Everything came as grist to the mill; if the material had anything in it, the Light Brigade would sooner or later turn out a smart, well-trained, independent fighting man with a craftsman's self-respect and skill. The rest of the Army wondered at Moore's regiments, yet scarcely understood how their efficiency had been achieved. "The 52nd is at this moment," wrote Lieut.-Colonel Wilson, " indisputably one of the first corps in the Service in every respect. The cat-o'-ninetails is never used, and yet discipline is there seen in the highest state of perfection. In other corps continual punishments are taking place in the fruitless attempt of rivalling the 52nd
, whereas the very means employ
ed for ever prevent the possibility of their attaining even mediocrity."
²