All the King’s Men Read online

  SAUL DAVID

  All the King’s Men

  The British Soldier from the Restoration to Waterloo

  VIKING

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  List of Maps

  Prologue

  1. The Restoration Soldier

  2. The ‘First’ Churchill

  3. William’s Wars

  4. The War of the Spanish Succession

  5. The March to the Danube

  6. Blenheim

  7. The Two Georges

  8. James Wolfe

  9. The Seven Years War

  10. Quebec

  11. The Heights of Abraham

  12. The Blunted Sword

  13. First Shots

  14. The Lost Opportunity

  15. Brandywine and Saratoga

  16. The Honourable Arthur Wellesley

  17. Sepoy General

  18. Retreat to Corunna

  19. The ‘Cautious System’

  20. Escape from Elba

  21. ‘The nearest run thing’

  Illustrations

  Author’s Note

  Bibliography

  Notes

  Epilogue

  By the same author

  NON-FICTION

  Churchill’s Sacrifice of the Highland Division

  Mutiny at Salerno

  The Homicidal Earl

  Military Blunders

  Prince of Pleasure

  The Indian Mutiny

  Zulu

  Victoria’s Wars

  FICTION

  Zulu Hart

  Hart of Empire

  For my darling Molly

  Illustrations

  Section One

  1. ‘Fifteenth, or the Yorkshire East Riding Regiment 1685’, hand-coloured print by C. H. Hodges, after Edward Dayes

  2. ‘Captain Robert Parker, The Royal Regiment of Ireland, c. 1720’, oil on canvas by Alexis Simon Belle

  3. ‘Marlborough in Armour’, hand-coloured copper engraving by John Bowles, 1722.

  4. ‘Glorious Battle of Blenheim, August 13th 1704’, hand-coloured engraving by G. Scotin after Antoine Benoist

  5. ‘Blow Your Match’, from The Granadiers Exercise of the Granade, by Bernard Lens, 1735

  6. ‘Throw Your Granade’, from The Granadiers Exercise of the Granade

  7. ‘The March of the Guards towards Scotland in the year 1745’, coloured engraving by Luke Sullivan after William Hogarth, 1750

  8. ‘The Battle of Culloden, 16 April 1746’, coloured engraving by R. Sayer and J. Bennett, c. 1780

  9. William, Duke of Cumberland, oil on canvas by David Morier, c. 1750

  10. ‘A View of the Taking of Quebec, 13 September 1759’, hand-coloured engraving by Carrington Bowles, 1795

  11. ‘Death of General Wolfe’, oil on canvas by Benjamin West

  12. ‘British Grenadier and Country Girl, c. 1760’, colour plate by Seymour Lucas, 1790

  13. ‘The King’s Shilling’, oil on canvas by unknown artist, c. 1770

  14. ‘The Military Contrast’, coloured etching by unknown artist, 1773

  15. ‘Retreat of the British from Concord, April 1775’, hand-coloured engraving by James Smillie after Alonzo Chappel

  16. ‘The Battle of Bunker Hill’, photomechanical print after E. Percy Moran, 1909

  17. ‘Sir William Howe, Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s Forces in America’, coloured mezzotint by John Morris after Richard Purcell, 1777

  18. ‘George Washington Crossing the Delaware River’, photomechanical print after Henry Mosler, c. 1912

  19. ‘The Battle at Princeton’, hand-coloured engraving by J. Rogers after John Trumbull, 1857

  20. ‘Encampment at Valley Forge: Washington and His Wife Visiting the Troops’, hand-coloured engraving by A. B. Walter after Christian Schuessels, 1860

  21. ‘English Barracks’, coloured aquatint by T. Malton after Thomas Rowlandson, 1788

  22. ‘A Field Day in Hyde Park’, coloured aquatint by T. Malton after Thomas Rowlandson, 1789

  23. ‘Soldiers Attending Divine Service’, coloured aquatint by Schutz after Thomas Rowlandson, 1798

  Section Two

  24. ‘Wellington’s First Encounter with the French, c. 1785’, chromolithograph after G. W. Joy

  25. ‘Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington’, miniature watercolour on ivory by Richard Cosway, 1808

  26. ‘The Storming of Seringapatam, 3 May 1799’, watercolour Robert Ker Porter, 1799

  27. ‘The Battle of Corunna, 17 January 1809’, aquatint by M. Dubourg after W. Heath, undated

  28. ‘Royal Artillery Drivers’, aquatint by J. C. Stadler after Charles Hamilton Smith, c. 1812–15

  29. ‘British Riflemen’, aquatint by J. C. Stadler after Charles Hamilton Smith, c. 1812–15

  30. ‘The Battle of Salamanca, 22 July 1812’, coloured aquatint by R. Lawrie after William Heath, 1821

  31. ‘The Battle of Vitoria’, coloured etched caricature by and after George Cruikshank, 1813

  32. ‘Camp Scenes’, etching by and after W. H. Pye, 1803

  33. ‘Soldiers on a March’, coloured etching by G. M. Woodward after Thomas Rowlandson, 1811

  34. ‘Napoleon as First Consul’, coloured engraving by unknown artist, c. 1801

  35. ‘Napoleon Entering Paris, 20 March 1815,’ hand-coloured etched caricature by unknown artist, 1815

  36. ‘Narrow Escape of Prince Blücher’, watercolour by Charles Turner Warren, 1818

  37. ‘The Duke of Wellington and the Most Distinguished Officers at the Battle of Waterloo’, coloured aquatint by W. T. Fry and T. Sutherland after William Heath, 1817

  38. ‘Interior of Hougoumont during the Battle on the Glorious 18th of June, 1815’, coloured aquatint by T. Sutherland after ‘A. M. S.’ (unidentified artist), 1816

  39. ‘The Battle of Waterloo, June 18th, 1815’, watercolour by Franz Joseph Manskirch, 1815

  40. ‘Clash of Prussian and French Infantry’, watercolour by Charles Turner Warren, 1818

  41. ‘View of the Village of Waterloo, the Day after the Battle, 19 June 1815’, coloured aquatint by Thomas Sutherland after ‘A. M. S.’ (unidentified artist), 1816

  42. ‘The Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch’, oil on wood by David Wilkie, 1822

  Illustration Acknowledgements

  The author and publishers are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce the following illustrations:

  National Army Museum for nos. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 21–4, 27, 28, 29, 31–3; Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection for nos. 3, 4, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19, 20, 26, 30, 34–41; Library of Congress for nos. 16, 18; private collection/ Phillips, Fine Art Auctioneers, New York, USA/ The Bridgeman Art Library for no. 11; Apsley House, The Wellington Museum/Bridgeman Art Library for no. 42; The Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum for no. 25

  Maps

  1. Battle of Sedgemoor, 6 July 1685

  2. The March to the Danube, May to July 1704

  3. The Schellenberg, 2 July 1704

  4. Blenheim, 13 August 1704

  5. The Siege of Quebec, June to September 1759

  6. Quebec and the Heights of Abraham, 13 September 1759

  7. Lexington and Concord, 19 April 1775

  8. New York and Environs, August to October 1776

  9. Howe’s Philadelphia Campaign, December 1776 to August 1777

  10. Battle of Brandywine, 11 September 1777

  11. Burgoyne’s Northern Campaign, June to October 1777

  12. Wellesley’s Indian Campaigns, 1799 to 1805

  13. Siege of Seringapatam, April to May 1799

  14. Battle of Assaye,
23 September 1803

  15. The Peninsular War, 1808 to 1813

  16. Battle of Vimeiro, 21 August 1808

  17. Battle of Talavera, 27 to 28 July 1809

  18. Battle of Salamanca, 22 July 1812

  19. Battle of Vitoria, 21 June 1813

  20. Waterloo and Environs, June 1815

  21. Battle of Waterloo, 8 p.m., 18 June 1815

  Prologue

  In the early hours of 6 July 1685, as the Earl of Feversham’s royal army slept in its camp on the field of Sedgemoor in Somerset, a large rebel force crept ever closer, determined to murder the king’s soldiers in their tents. The rebels – most of whom were solid West Country dissenters – were led by the handsome and staunchly Protestant Duke of Monmouth, the 36-year-old illegitimate son of the late King Charles II and his mistress Lucy Walter. An experienced soldier who had served with distinction in the Third Anglo-Dutch War of 1672–4, Monmouth had long maintained that his parents were married at the time of his birth, making him and not his uncle, the openly Catholic James II, the rightful heir to the throne.

  But his father had failed to support his claim, causing Monmouth to throw in his lot with the ultra-Protestant Rye House plotters who had tried, in 1683, to assassinate both royal brothers and make him king. They failed and Monmouth was banished to Holland, remaining there until his father’s death on 6 February 1685. Determined to seize the throne, he landed at Lyme Regis on 11 June with barely 150 followers, proclaiming his uncle a Catholic usurper. West Country puritans rallied to his cause and at one point his army numbered 6,000 men. But after he had failed to take Bristol, and with his support ebbing away, he decided to risk all in the attack on the royal camp at Sedgemoor.

  Though his force had shrunk to just 600 cavalry and 3,000 infantry (in five colour-coded regiments), it still outnumbered the Earl of Feversham’s royal army of 750 horse, 1,900 infantry and 200 artillerymen sent to oppose it.* But in every other respect Monmouth’s force was inferior: it had fewer cannon, four to the royalists’ twenty-six; it was poorly armed with matchlock muskets and scythes on eight-foot poles, while almost all the royal troops had the latest flintlocks; and its men were mostly untrained amateurs, while Feversham’s soldiers were the cream of James II’s standing army, veterans of the recent wars against the French and Dutch. Monmouth acknowledged as much when, having spotted the colours of Dumbarton’s (later the 1st Royal Scots) Regiment of Foot,* a unit that had served under him in France, he exclaimed: ‘I know these men will fight and if I had them I would not doubt of success.’1

  Instead Monmouth had to overcome the Scots – and other crack units like the 1st and 2nd Foot Guards, the Royal Horse Guards (or Blues†) and the Royal Dragoons – and he knew his only hope was surprise. Hence the night attack on the royal camp at Sedgemoor, which, according to royal gunner Edward Dummer, was a strong position ‘bequirt [surrounded] with a dry (but in some places mirey) ditch … fronting the moor; a place copious and commodious for fighting’.2

  Feversham had taken few precautions, beyond posting sentries and cavalry pickets. No attempt had been made to fortify the royal camp and, recorded Dummer, a supine mood and ‘a preposterous confidence of ourselves, with an understanding of the Rebells that many days before had made us make such tedious marches, had put us into the worst circumstances of surprise: Our Horse in quarters, some near, some remote; our Artillery distant, and in a separate post to that of the camp – neither accomodable to generall resistance’.3 So unprepared were the royal officers, according to a member of the Blues, that most of them were ‘drunk and had no matter of apprehension of the enemy’.4

  Initially fortune smiled on Monmouth. A thick mist helped to obscure his march from Bridgwater, and as he moved down the east side of the moor he slipped between two royal patrols and would certainly have been discovered by a third at the Langmoor Rhine, a drainage ditch directly in his path, had it not recently been removed. Having reached the Langmoor, Monmouth gave his final orders. The cavalry, under Lord Grey, would use a ford to cross the final obstacle, a ditch called the Bussex Rhine, before entering the village of Westonzoyland, where they would kill and capture the royal horsemen in their beds; this done, they would attack the royal foot in their tents and attempt to capture the artillery. Meanwhile Monmouth, having formed the rebel foot and artillery into a single line, would sweep across the Bussex Rhine and take the panicked royal infantry from the rear. Or, as the royalist Reverend Paschall put it: ‘Their first orders were to fire and run over the ditch within which the camp was, it being presumed that the Lord Grey with his 500 Horse would have drawn the army in the camp into the town, by the alarm designed to be given from hence.’5 To succeed, Monmouth’s plan depended upon absolute surprise and thus far his luck had held. But as his men crossed the Langmoor Rhine in the misty twilight, a pistol shot rang out. A lone trooper of the Blues had spotted the rebels and, having raised the alarm, rode north to warn the commander of his patrol, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Francis Compton. On hearing the news, Compton sent a trooper to warn the camp and followed with the rest of his 150-strong patrol, colliding with the tail end of the rebel horse as it rode towards the Bussex Rhine. During the brief skirmish, Compton was shot in the chest and the royal horse withdrew. But the delay was compounded when Lord Grey, at the head of the column, missed the ford in the dark and instead led his horsemen along the north bank of the Bussex Rhine, effectively cut off from his objective by an obstacle that was impassable for riders.Meanwhile the alarm had been raised in the royal camp – with the trooper shouting ‘Beat your drums, the enemy is come; for the Lord’s sake, the enemy is come’ – and the six battalions of redcoated infantry were forming up between their tents and the Bussex Rhine.6 Only one, Dumbarton’s, was armed with the older matchlock and its location was clearly marked by the glow of match-cord as the corporals, whose job it was, lit their men’s matches. It was the rebels’ particular misfortune that, with Feversham still asleep in quarters nearby, the senior royal officer in camp at this moment was 35-year-old Major-General Lord Churchill, a talented soldier who had fought under Monmouth in France and who, as the Duke of Marlborough, would go on to win some of Britain’s greatest battlefield victories. The official account of Sedgemoor records Churchill ‘having command of the foot and seeing every man at his post doing his duty’.7Dumbarton’s Regiment was on the right of the redcoats’ line and it was across its front that the rebel horse first rode. But, fooled by the rebels’ cries that they were loyal militia horse, the Scotsmen held their fire; not so the men of the next two units in line, both battalions of the 1st Foot Guards (commanded by Monmouth’s illegitimate half-brother, the Duke of Grafton), who shot at Grey’s horse, as did part of the neighbouring battalion of the 2nd Foot Guards. Raked in the flank, Grey’s men fled back up the moor, colliding as they went with the two rearmost rebel infantry regiments, the Blue and White, who had just crossed the Langmoor Rhine. By now Monmouth’s foremost regiments – the Red, Yellow and Green – had reached the Bussex Rhine, where, supported by three light cannon manned by Dutch artillerymen, they opened fire on the right of the royal army’s line, barely 100 yards distant. Nathaniel Wade, commanding the Red Regiment, explained what happened:

  I advanced within 30 or 40 paces of the ditch being opposite to the Scotch batalion of the King’s [Dumbarton’s], as I learnt since, and there was forced to make a full stop to put the Batalion in some order, the Duke having caused them to march so exceeding swift after he saw his Horse runn, that they were all in confusion. By that time I had putt them in some order and was preparing to pass the ditch (not intending to fire until I had advanced these to our enemyes). Col. Matthews [commanding the Yellow Regiment] was come up and began to fire at distance, upon which the Batalion I commanded fired likewise and after that I could not gett them to advance.8

  In battle for the first time, many of the rebel musketeers fired high; but the Dutch gunners were more accurate and their case-shot – similar to the effect of a shotgun – tore great holes in the royal
battalions opposite, particularly Dumbarton’s, which lost all but four of its officers.

  Aware that his line was overlapped on the right by the rebel left, Churchill sent two troops of Royal Dragoons to support Dumbarton’s, and another to the lower of the two fords over the Bussex Rhine, ready to advance when required. He also ordered six light cannon to be brought from the artillery park nearby, though the panicked flight of the Ordnance Board’s civilian drivers with their teams meant that others horses had to be found. One account has the Bishop of Winchester, a royalist captain during the Civil War, using his carriage horses to tug at least one cannon into position. Once there, the guns soon silenced the rebel cannon and began to engage their infantry, supported by the steady volleys from Churchill’s disciplined foot.

  The time was ripe for a counter-attack. But Feversham, at last on the scene, was fearful of friendly-fire incidents and refused to order his men forward until daybreak. As a half-measure, however, he divided his horse and sent it across both fords of the Bussex Rhine to threaten the rebel flanks. The group on the right got ahead of itself until, badly mauled by both the remnants of Grey’s horse and a regiment of foot, it withdrew out of range.

  Churchill, meanwhile, had moved his two leftmost battalions, Kirke’s and Trelawney’s, to the right, where the fire was hottest. They had barely reached their new position when dawn broke, revealing part of the rebel army already in retreat. Feversham at once ordered his cavalry to charge and, as they did so, Churchill sent his elite grenadier companies across the Bussex Rhine in support. They scrambled over the ditch with a yell, wrote James II later, ‘which the Rebels seeing, ran before they came to bandy blows’.9 With their cannon quickly overrun, the rebel retreat became a panicked flight. ‘They stood near an hour and a halfe with great shouting, briskly fyring,’ recorded Edward Dummer, ‘and then, throwing down their armes, fell into rout and confusion.’10