Sir J. W. Fortescue

CHAPTER I

1660.

The restoration of the Stuarts had been to all outward semblance effected, Charles had been escorted through the streets of London by the horse of the New Model, and yet the power which had practically ruled England since 1647 was still unbroken. The problem which the Long Parliament had treated with such disastrous contempt in that year was still unsolved; and there could be no assurance of stability for the monarchy until the Army should be disbanded. As to the manner in which this most difficult task must be accomplished the events of 1647 had given sufficient warning, for an army of sixty-five thousand men was even less to be trifled with than the comparatively small force of the second year of the New Model. Disbandment must not be hurried, and all arrears of pay must be faithfully discharged. Still the work could not but be both delicate and dangerous, requiring good faith and a tact that could only be found in a soldier who understood soldiers and a man who understood men. Fortunately such a man and such a soldier was to hand in the person of George Monk.

1661.

His scheme was soon prepared and adopted by Parliament. The regiments were to be broken up gradually, the order of disbandment being determined by lot, with the reservation that Monk's own regiments of horse and foot, together with two others that had been taken over by the Dukes of York and Gloucester,[202] should be kept until the last. An Act copied from an Ordinance of the Commonwealth was passed, to enable discharged soldiers to engage in trades without preliminary apprenticeship, and thus to facilitate their return to civil life. By extraordinary exertions the needful money was raised, and the work proceeded apace. It seemed as if the close of the year 1660, according to the old reckoning which began the new year on the 25th of March, would have seen it completed, for by the first week in January the hand of disbandment had reached Monk's regiment of horse.

There however it was stayed. On the 6th of January an insurrection of fifth-monarchy men, a fanatical sect which had felt the might of Cromwell's repressing arm, not only saved the last relic of the New Model, but laid the foundation stone of a new Army. The rising was not suppressed without difficulty, not indeed until the veterans of Monk's regiment of foot, to whom such work was child's play, came up and swept it contemptuously away. The outbreak showed the need of keeping a small permanent force for the security of the King's person. The disbandment of this regiment and of the troop of horse-guards which had been assigned to Monk on his first arrival in London was thereupon countermanded, and the King gave orders for the raising of a new regiment of Guards in twelve companies, to be commanded by Colonel John Russell; of a regiment of horse in eight troops to be commanded by the Earl of Oxford; and of a troop of horse-guards, to be commanded by Lord Gerard. The Duke of York's troop of horse-guards, the same which he had led to an unsuccessful charge at Dunkirk Dunes, was also summoned home from Dunkirk.

The first stones of the new army being thus laid, there remained nothing but formally to abolish, in accordance with the letter of the Act of Parliament, the last remnant of the New Model. On the 14th of February, 1661 Monk's regiment of foot was mustered on Tower Hill, where it solemnly laid down its arms, and as solemnly took them up again, with great rejoicing, as the Lord General's regiment of Foot-Guards. But to England at large this corps had but one name, that which still survives in its present title of the Coldstream Guards. Though ranking second on the list of our infantry, this is the senior regiment of the British Army. Other corps may boast of earlier traditions, but this is the oldest national regiment and the sole survivor of the famous New Model. Well may it claim, in its proud Latin motto, that it is second to none.

Colonel Russell's regiment, being the King's own regiment of Guards, and raised specially for the protection of his person, obtained precedence not unnaturally of its earlier rival, and presently, by absorbing the handful of gallant men who had refused to surrender at Dunkirk Dunes, established its claim to represent the defeated cavaliers, as the Coldstream represent the victorious Roundheads, in the long contest of the Civil War. It is the regiment once called the First Guards, and now the Grenadier Guards, and it has known little of defeat since it ceased to fight against its countrymen.

1661-1662.

The two troops of Life-Guards—the first the King's, commanded by Lord Gerard, the second the Duke of York's own—took precedence in like manner of Monk's Life-Guard; and after long existence as independent troops, blossomed at last into the First and Second regiments of Life-Guards that now stand at the head of our Army list. They were composed of men of birth and education, and for more than a century were rightly called gentlemen of the Life-Guards. Cromwell too had possessed such a guard, for he knew the value of gentlemen who had courage, honour, and resolution in them. Thus they stood apart from Lord Oxford's regiment of horse, which is still known to us from the colour of its uniform by its original name of the Blues. This corps was almost certainly made up of disbanded troopers of the New Model, of which there was no lack at that time in England;[203] while its colonel brought to it traditions of still earlier days in the honoured name of Vere.

But there was yet another regiment to be gathered in from the battlefield of Dunkirk Dunes, this time not from the defeated but from the victorious army. In view of the peril of the King from Vernier's insurrection, Lewis the Fourteenth was requested to restore to him the regiment of Douglas, the representative of the Scots Brigade of Gustavus Adolphus; and this famous corps, having duly arrived in the year 1662, became the Royal or Scots regiment, and took the place which it still occupies at the head of the infantry of the Line under the old title of the Royal Scots. It returned to France in 1662 and did not return permanently to the English service until 1670, but it retained its precedence and it retains it still.

1661,
October.

So far for the King's provision for his own safety. But it was also necessary for him to provide himself with money, and this he did in the simplest fashion by marrying an heiress, Catherine, Princess of Portugal, who brought him half a million of money, Bombay and Tangier, to say nothing of promises of pecuniary aid from Lewis the Fourteenth, who encouraged the match for his own ends. Tangier being in constant peril of recapture by the Moors was a troublesome possession, and required a garrison, for which duty a regiment of foot and a strong troop of horse were raised by the Earl of Peterborough, the recruits being furnished mainly by the garrison of Dunkirk. These corps also survive among us as the Second or Queen's regiment of Foot, and the First or Royal Dragoons.

1661-1665.

Concurrently in this same year 1661 an Act was passed for the re-organisation of the militia. The obligations to provide horse-men and foot-men were distributed, following the venerable precedent of the statute of Winchester, according to a graduated scale of property, and the complete control of each county's force was committed to the lord-lieutenant. To him also were entrusted powers to organise the force into regiments and companies, to appoint officers, and to levy rates for the supply of ammunition. Finally, the supreme command of the militia, over which the Long Parliament had fought so bitterly with Charles the First, was restored to the King, together with that of all forces by sea and land.

1665,
February.

So much was accomplished in the first two years of Charles the Second. It sufficed for two years longer, when English commercial enterprise involved the restored monarchy in its first war. In truth it is hardly recognised how powerfully the spirit of adventure and colonisation had manifested itself under the Stuarts. The Empire indeed was growing fast. In 1661 England already possessed the New England States, Maryland and Virginia, as well as, for the time, Acadia, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. Off the American coast the Bermudas were hers; in the Caribbean Archipelago Barbados, Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Kitts, and Jamaica were settled; while Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Tobago, though not yet wrested from the Caribs, were reckoned subject to the British Crown. In 1663 one Company received a charter for the settlement of Carolina, and another, the Royal African, which enjoyed the monopoly of the trade in negro slaves, had fixed its headquarters at Cape Coast Castle. Nor must it be omitted that the East India Company, originally incorporated in 1599, received in 1660 a second charter conferring ampler powers, most notably in respect of military matters.

England, however, had abundance of rivals in distant adventure, whereof none was more jealous and more powerful than the Dutch federation which her own good arm had created. Cromwell had read the Dutch a lesson in 1653, and had imposed upon them restrictions which, if observed, would have checked their encroachments on English trade; but the Dutch not only evaded these obligations, but added to this delinquency wanton aggression both on the Guinea Coast and in the East Indies. The African Company at once commenced reprisals on the Gold Coast, and an expedition against the New Netherlands of America captured New Amsterdam and gave it its now famous name of New York. Meanwhile the complaints of English merchants were willingly heard by both King and Parliament. Charles had received no great kindness in his exile from the oligarchical faction which dominated the Dutch Republic; and now that the same faction had stripped the House of Nassau of its high dignities, to the prejudice of his nephew William, he was not sorry for the opportunity of revenge. Parliament voted liberal supplies for the war. A new regiment, called the Admiral's regiment, was raised by the Duke of York for service on board ship; large drafts were taken from the two regiments of Guards for the same purpose, and on the 3rd of June, James, Duke of York, won with them a great naval action off Lowestoft.

But there were English soldiers outside England who were troubled by this war. The descendants of the volunteers, who had followed Morgan in 1572 and had won an imperishable name under Francis Vere, were still in the Dutch service and were now comprised in seven regiments, three of them English and four Scotch, numbering in all three-and-fifty companies. As soon as war was declared the Pensionary De Witt forced upon the United Provinces a resolution that the British regiments must either take the oath of allegiance to the States-General or be instantly cashiered. This was the reward offered by the Dutch Republic to the brave foreigners who, with their predecessors, had done her better service than she could ever repay. Dismissal from the service meant ruin to the unfortunate officers, and want and misery to the men. Many Dutchmen were ashamed of the resolution, but they passed it; and it remained only to be seen whether British loyalty would stand the test. The English officers hesitated not a moment. They refused point blank to swear fealty to Holland, and were ruthlessly turned adrift. By the help of the English Ambassador, however, they made their way to England and were presently formed into the Holland regiment, which now ranks as the Third of the Line and is known from the facings which it has worn for more than two centuries, by the honoured name of the Buffs.[204]

The Scottish regiments behaved very differently. Though Charles was a Stuart and a Scot, only two officers had the spirit to follow the English example. The rest, who at first had made great protestation of loyalty, remained with their Dutch masters and, like all shamefaced converts, professed exaggerated love for the Dutch service and extravagant willingness to invade Great Britain if required. A century hence these regiments will be seen begging in vain to be received into the British service, and only accepted at last, after enduring sad insult from the Dutch, in time to become not the Fourth but the Ninety-Fourth of the Line. The corps finally ceased to exist in 1815, while the Buffs are with us to this day. It was a hard fate, but there is a nemesis even for unfaithful regiments.

1666.

In the following year Lewis the Fourteenth, seeing therein an opportunity for furthering his darling project of extending his frontier to the Rhine, threw in his lot with the Dutch and declared war against England. The time is worthy of remark. For a century England in common with all Europe had abandoned traditional friendships and enmities, and sought out new allies by the guidance of religious sentiment. All this was now at an end, and the old jealousy of France was strong throughout the nation. But though the people were in earnest, the King was not; the policy of keeping France in check was after two years abandoned, and Charles, like a true Stuart, sold himself to Lewis the Fourteenth. False, wrong-headed, and unpatriotic, the dynasty was already preparing for itself a second downfall.

1672.

The next step was a declaration of war by France and England against Holland. One hundred and fifty thousand men, under the three great captains, Turenne, CondÉ and Luxemburg, with Lewis in person at the head of all, swept down upon the United Provinces, mastered three of them almost without resistance, and actually crossed the Rhine. Six thousand English, grouped around a nucleus from the Guards, served with them under the command of James, Duke of Monmouth, and among the officers was a young captain named John Churchill. He had been born in 1650, less than three months before Dunbar, had been page to the Duke of York, and had received through him an ensigncy in the King's Guards. He had seen his first service, as became an English officer, in savage warfare at Tangier; he now enjoyed his first experience of a scientific campaign under the first General of the day. Soon he became known to Turenne himself not only as the handsomest man in the camp, but as an officer of extraordinary gallantry, coolness, and capacity. As Morgan had won the great captain's eulogy at Ypres, so did young Churchill at Maestricht; and it is worthy of note that on both of the two occasions when an English contingent served under Turenne the most brilliant little action of the war was the work of the red-coats.

But on the Dutch side also there was a young man, born in the same year as Churchill, who was to show lesser qualities indeed as an officer, though, as his opportunity permitted him, perhaps hardly inferior qualities as a man. William of Orange, long excluded by the jealousy of faction from the station and the duties of his rank, with firm resolution and unshaken nerve assumed the command of the United Provinces, and began the great work of his life, the work which was to be finally accomplished by the handsome English soldier in the enemy's camp, of taming the insolence of the French.

1674.

It is unnecessary to dwell further on the story of this campaign. The courage of William sufficed to tide Holland over the moment of supreme danger; and, the crisis once passed, Austria and Spain, alarmed at the designs of Lewis, hastened to her assistance. Charles made peace with the Dutch in 1674, and, while declining to withdraw the English troops in the French service, promised to recruit them no further. Churchill came home to be colonel of the Second Foot; and from the troops disbanded at the close of the war, were formed three English regiments for the service of the Prince of Orange. Among their officers was James Graham of Claverhouse. We shall meet with him again, and we shall see two of the regiments also return in due time, like their prototype, the Buffs, to take their place in the English infantry of the Line.

1680.
1684.

With the treaty of 1674 the wars of Charles the Second came to an end. It was not that the people of England were unwilling to fight. They were heart and soul against the French; and the Commons cheerfully voted large sums for army and fleet while the war lasted, asking only that the money might be expended on its legitimate object. But the crookedness and untrustworthiness of the King were fatal to all military enterprise, and indeed to all honest administration. Though the military force of England was far too small for the safety of her possessions abroad, Parliament never ceased to denounce the evils of standing armies, and to clamour for the disbanding of all regiments. In the days of Cromwell the burden of the red-coats had been grievous to be borne, but Oliver had at all events made England respected in Europe. Charles sought to impose a like burden, but without sympathy for England's quarrels, and without care for England's glory. He made shift, nevertheless, to keep his existing regiments throughout his reign, and in 1680 even to add another to them for the service of Tangier. In 1684 that ill-fated possession, having cost many thousands of lives and witnessed as gallant feats of arms as ever were wrought by English soldiers, was finally abandoned; though not before the English had learned one secret of Oriental warfare. In March 1663, after long endurance of incessant harassing attacks from the Moors, the Governor, who had hitherto stood on the defensive, took the initiative and launched the Royal Dragoons straight at them. So signal was the success of this first venture that it was repeated a fortnight later by the same regiment, and renewed on a grander scale after two months by a sally of the whole garrison, which after desperate fighting ended once more in victory. So much at least must be recorded of this first long lost settlement in Africa.[205] The new regiment, which had arrived too late for fighting, came home to take rank as the Fourth of the Line and to remain with us to this day.

In truth the little Army, which Parliament so bitterly hated, was busy enough from the day of the King's accession to the day of his death. In regiments or detachments it fought in Tangier, in Flanders, and in the West Indies; it did marines' duty in four great naval actions, one of them the fiercest ever fought by the English, and it suppressed an insurrection in Scotland and a rebellion in Virginia. The reign gave it a foretaste of the work that lay before it in the next two centuries, and showed good promise for the manner in which that work would be done.

1685.

Charles died on the 6th of February 1685. His brother James, who succeeded him, was a man of stronger military instincts than any English king since Henry the Eighth. He had served through four campaigns under Turenne and through two more with the Spaniards, and his narrative of his wars shows that he had studied the military profession with singular industry and intelligence of observation. Nor was he less interested in naval affairs. He had commanded an English fleet in two great actions without discredit as an Admiral, and with signal honour as a brave man. Moreover, he felt genuine pride in the prowess alike of the English sailor and the English soldier. Finally he had shown uncommon ability and diligence as an administrator. The Duke of Wellington a century and a half later spoke with the highest admiration of the system which James had established at the Office of Ordnance, and actually restored it, as Marlborough had restored it before him, when he himself became Master-General. The Admiralty again acknowledges that his hand is still felt for good in the direction of the Navy. In fact, whatever his failings, James was an able, painstaking, and conscientious public servant, and as such has no little claim to the gratitude of the nation.

So far then the succession of a diligent and competent administrator to the shrewd but incorrigibly idle Charles promised advantages that were obvious enough. But there was another side to the question. Parliament had requited James's services to the public by excluding him as an avowed Catholic from all public employment, whether civil or military; and James was a narrow-minded, a vindictive, and, like all the Stuarts, essentially a wrong-headed man. Though valuable as the head of a department, he was totally unfit to administer a kingdom; though not devoid of constancy and patience in adversity, he was swift and unsatiable in revenge; though ambitious of military fame, proud of English valour, and not without jealousy for English honour, he saw no way to the greatness which he coveted in Europe except by the overthrow of English liberty. He longed to interfere effectively abroad, but with England crushed under his heel, not free and united at his back.

So he too sold himself to France, hoping to consolidate his power by her help and to turn it in due time to her own hurt; and meanwhile he sought to strengthen himself by the maintenance of a standing Army. For this design Monmouth's insurrection of 1685 afforded sufficient excuse.[206] The opportune return of the garrison of Tangier had already added two regiments of Foot and one of Horse to the English establishment; and James seized the occasion of the outbreak to summon the six British regiments, three of them Scottish and three English, from Holland. These, though they presently returned to William's service, secured for two of their number on the invasion of England in 1688 the precedence of Fifth and Sixth of the Line. Simultaneously twelve new regiments of infantry and eight of cavalry were raised under the same pretext. Of the foot the first was an Ordnance-regiment, designed like the firelocks of the New Model to act as escort to the artillery, and was called from its armament the Regiment of Fusiliers. It is still with us as the Seventh of the Line. The remainder of the foot, some of them formed round the nucleus of independent garrison-companies, also abide with us, numbered the Eighth to the Fifteenth.[207] Of the cavalry six were regiments of horse, and are now known as the First to the Sixth Regiments of Dragoon Guards; the remaining two, which are now numbered the Third and Fourth, after having been successively dragoons and light dragoons, have finally become the two senior regiments of hussars. Add to these thirty independent companies of foot, borne for duties in garrison, and it will be seen that King James's army was increasing with formidable speed.

The King himself found genuine delight, not in the sinister spirit of an oppressor but in the laudable pride of a soldier, in reviewing his troops. In August 1685 he inspected ten battalions and twenty squadrons which were in camp at Hounslow, and wrote to his son-in-law, William of Orange, with significant satisfaction of their efficiency. In November he met Parliament, and required of it the continuance of the standing Army in lieu of the militia. The courtiers had received their cue, and pointed to the flight of the western militia before Monmouth's raw levies as proof sufficient of its untrustworthiness. The fact indeed was self evident. But Parliament was not disposed to welcome a royal speech which submitted no further measures than the maintenance of a standing army and the admission of popish officers to command therein. The memories of Oliver and of his major-generals was still vivid, and the revocation of the edict of Nantes was but a month old. Red-coats as saints had been bad; red-coats as papists would doubtless be worse. Edward Seymour, the head of that historic house, put the matter as Englishmen love to put it. The militia, he confessed, was in an unsatisfactory state, but it might be improved, and with this and the navy the country would be secure; but a standing army there must not be. Then as now, it will be observed, the House of Commons never stinted the navy, nor doubted its ability to repel invasion; and then as now it refused to remember that the British possessions are not bounded by the British Isles, and that a successful war is something more than a war of defence. But unfortunately it had but too good ground for opposing the King in this case. The debate lasted long. James had asked for £1,400,000 for the Army; the Chancellor of the Exchequer expressed his willingness to accept £1,200,000; the House voted £700,000, and even then declined to appropriate the sum to any specific purpose.

December.
1686,
June.
1686-1688.

James was greatly annoyed. He answered the note of the Commons with a reprimand, and prorogued Parliament; nor did he summon it again during the remainder of his reign. He then concentrated from thirteen to sixteen thousand men at Hounslow Heath, and kept them encamped there for three years in the hope of overawing London. Never did man make a more complete mistake. The Londoners, after their first alarm had passed away, soon discovered that the camp was a charming place of amusement. A new generation had sprung up since a Parliamentary colonel had held a sham fight to compensate the people for the loss of the sports of May-day, and there was a certain novelty in military display. Hounslow camp became the fashion, and the lines were thronged with a motley crowd of all classes of the people; for then as now the women loved a red-coat, and where the women led the men followed them. The troops were doubtless well worth seeing, for James flattered himself that they were the best paid, the best equipped, and the most sightly in Europe.

Still, merry as the camp might be, there were not wanting signs of a graver spirit beneath the new red-coats. There were early rumours of quarrels between protestant and catholic soldiers, ominous to the catholic officers whom James had set in command against the law. Agitators scattered tracts appealing to the Army to stand up in defence of the liberties of England and the protestant religion; and the Londoners perceived, what James did not, that consciences cannot be bought for eightpence a day, nor flesh and blood extinguished by a red coat and facings. The Buffs had been the earliest English volunteers in the cause of liberty and protestantism; the Royal Scots had rolled back papistry under the Lion of the North, and, as if one presbyterian regiment were not sufficient, there was another, just brought into England for the first time from Scotland, and known by its present name of the Scotch or Scots Guards. Again, monks in the habit of their Order were among the visitors to the camp; and it was easy to ask how long it was since such men had been seen in England, and what was the cause of their disappearance. Cromwell's soldiers had made short and cruel work of monks in Ireland; yet soldiers, only one generation younger, were to be called upon to fight against their kith and kin for a king who openly favoured them, a king, too, who in the face of all law openly thrust papists into all places of authority.

1688,
June.

It was not long before the seed sown by the agitators began to bear fruit. When the seven bishops who had refused to read the declaration which suspended the penal laws against catholics were committed to the Tower, the guards drank their health; and when the news of their acquittal reached Hounslow Heath, it was received by the Army with boisterous delight. In alarm James broke up the camp and scattered the regiments broadcast over the country. Having thus isolated them he attempted to work upon them separately, and selected as the first subject for this experiment Lord Lichfield's Regiment, known to us as the Twelfth Foot. The men were drawn up on Blackheath in the King's presence, and were informed that they must either sign a pledge to carry out the royal policy of indulgence towards catholics, or leave his service forthwith. Whole ranks without hesitation took him at his word, and grounded their arms, while two officers and a few privates, all of them catholics, alone consented to sign. James stood aghast with astonishment and disgust. Dismissal meant something more than mere exclusion from the Army; it carried with it the forfeiture of all arrears of pay and of the price of the officers' commissions, but neither men nor officers took account of that. James eyed them in silence for a time, and then bade them take up their arms. "Another time," he said, "I shall not do you the honour to consult you."

Foiled in England, James turned, as his father had turned before him, to Ireland. The Irish speak of the curse of Cromwell; they might more justly speak of the curse of the Stuarts, for no two men have brought on them such woe as Charles and James. Already, in 1686, the King had sent a degenerate Irishman, the Earl of Tyrconnel, to ensure popish ascendency at any rate in Ireland; and no better man could have been found for such mischievous work than lying Dick Talbot. The army in Ireland consisted at the time of his arrival of about seven thousand men: within a few months Tyrconnel, by wholesale dismissal of all protestants, had turned it upside down. Five hundred men were discharged from a single regiment on the ground that they were of inferior stature, and their places shamelessly filled by ragged, half-trained Irish, beneath them both in size and quality. In all four thousand soldiers were broken, stripped of the uniforms which they had bought by the stoppage of their pay, and dismissed half-naked to go whither they would. Three hundred protestant officers shared a like fate in circumstances of not less hardship. Many of them had fought bravely for the Stuarts in past days, the majority had purchased their commissions, yet all alike were turned adrift in ruin and disgrace. The disbanded took refuge in Holland, whence they presently returned under the colours of William of Orange, with such feelings against the Irish as may be guessed.

But James did not stop here. He now conceived the notion of surrounding himself with Irish battalions, and of moulding the English regiments to his will by kneading into them a leaven of Irish recruits. When we reflect that it was just such an importation of Irish that had turned all England against his father, we can only stand amazed at such folly. The English held the Irish for aliens and enemies; they knew them as a people who for centuries had risen in massacre and rebellion whenever the English garrison had been weakened, and that had sunk again into abject submission as soon as England's hands were free to suppress them. They did not know them, in spite of their occasional gallant resistance to Cromwell, as a great fighting race. They had not read, or, reading, had not believed, the testimony of Robert Munro to their merits as soldiers.[208] Lastly and chiefly the Irish were catholics and the English protestants.

The resentment against the new policy soon made itself manifest. The Duke of Berwick, the King's natural son, who had been appointed colonel of the Eighth Foot, gave orders that thirty Irish recruits should be enlisted in the regiment. The men said flatly that they would not serve with them, and the lieutenant-colonel with five of his captains openly remonstrated with the Duke against the insult. They had raised the regiment, they said, at their own expense for the King's service, and could procure as many English recruits as they wanted; rather than endure to have strangers forced upon them they would beg leave to resign their commissions. James was furious. He tried the six officers by a court-martial, which sentenced them to be cashiered; but the culprits none the less received the sympathy and applause of the whole nation. The prevalent feeling against the Irish found vent in a doggrel ballad, known, from the gibberish of its burden, by the name of Lillibulero. Partly from the nature of its contents, still more probably from the rollicking gaiety of its tune,[209] it became a great favourite with the Army, and if we may judge from Captain Shandy's partiality for it, was the most popular marching song of the red-coats in Flanders.

But meanwhile William of Orange had received his invitation to come with an armed force for the delivery of England from the Stuarts, and for some months had been making preparations for an invasion. It was long before James awoke to his danger, but when at last he perceived it he hastened to strengthen the Army. Commissions were issued for the raising of new regiments, of which two are still with us as the Sixteenth and Seventeenth of the Line, and of new companies for existing regiments. Four thousand men in all were added to the English establishment; three thousand were summoned from Ireland, and as many more from Scotland; and James reckoned that he could meet the invader with forty thousand men. On the 2nd of November William, after one failure, got his expedition safely to sea, and by a feint movement induced James to send several regiments northward to meet a disembarkation in Yorkshire. These regiments were hastily recalled on the intelligence that the armament had passed the Straits of Dover steering westward, and fresh orders were given for concentration at Salisbury.

In a short time twenty-four thousand men were assembled at the new rendezvous, but before James could join them, he received news that Lord Cornbury, the heir of his kinsmen the Hydes, had deserted to the enemy. Cornbury had attempted to take his own regiment, the Royal Dragoons, and two regiments of horse with him; but officers and men became suspicious, and with the exception of a few who fell into the hands of William's horse and took service in his army, all returned to Salisbury. Before setting out for the camp James summoned his principal officers to him—Churchill, since 1683 Lord Churchill, and recently promoted lieutenant-general; Henry, Duke of Grafton, colonel of the First Guards; Kirke and Trelawny, colonels of the Tangier Regiments. One and all swore to be faithful to him; and the King left London for Salisbury.

Arrived there, he learned from Lord Feversham, his general-in-chief, that though the men were loyal the officers were not to be trusted. It is said that Feversham proposed to dismiss all that he suspected and promote sergeants in their stead. His suspicions proved to be just. Within a week Churchill, Grafton, Kirke, and Trelawny had all deserted to the Prince of Orange. Other officers were less open in their treachery; and it is said that one battalion of the Foot Guards was led into William's camp by its sergeants and corporals. The desertion of his own children finally broke the spirit of James. On the 11th of December he signed an order for the disbandment of the Army, and took to flight; and on the 16th he returned to London to find on the following night that the battalions of the Prince of Orange were marching down St. James's Park upon Whitehall. The old colonel of the Coldstream Guards, Lord Craven, though now in his eightieth year, was for resistance, but James forbade him. The Coldstream Guards filed off, and a Dutch regiment mounted guard at Whitehall. Five days later James left England for ever.

CHAPTER II

Before entering on the reign of William we must pause for a time to study the interior administration of the Army. The reign of the two last Stuarts is rightly considered as marking the end of a period of English general history—the final fall of the old monarchy first overthrown with King Charles the First. But in regard to military history the case is different. It is a critical time of uncertainty during which the Army, a relic barely saved from the ruins of a military government, struggled through twenty-eight years of unconstitutional existence, hardly finding permission at their close to stand on the foundation which Charles and James, using materials left by Cromwell, had made shift to establish for it. Precarious as that foundation was, it received little support for nearly a century, and little more even in the century that followed, thanks to the blind jealousy of the House of Commons. It will therefore be convenient at this point to examine it once for all.

Beginning, therefore, at the top, it must be noted that the first commander-in-chief under the restored Monarchy was a subject, George Monk, Duke of Albemarle. His appointment was inevitable, for he had already held that command as the servant of the Parliament over the undisbanded New Model, and he was the only man who could control that Army. Charles, in fact, lay at his mercy when he landed in 1660, and could not do less than confirm him in his old office. The powers entrusted to Monk by his commission were very great. He had authority to raise forces, to fix the establishment, to issue commissions to all officers executive and administrative, and to frame Articles of War for the preservation of discipline; he signed all warrants for expenditure of money or stores, and, in a word, he exerted the sovereign's powers as the sovereign's deputy in charge of the Army. On his death in January 1670, Charles, by the advice of his brother James, did not immediately appoint his successor, and though in 1674 he issued a circular to all officers of horse and foot to obey the Duke of Monmouth, yet he expressly reserved to himself many of the powers formerly made over to Monk. Finally, when in 1678 he appointed Monmouth to be captain-general, he withheld from him the title of commander-in-chief. On Monmouth's disgrace in 1679 Charles appointed no successor, but became his own commander-in-chief, an example which was duly followed by James the Second and William the Third. Thus the supreme control of the Army, with powers far greater than have been entrusted to any English commander-in-chief of modern times, continued at first practically the same as it had been made by Oliver Cromwell. It was exclusively in military hands.

The special branch of military administration in the hands of the commander-in-chief was that relating to the men. The care of material of war was committed to the ancient and efficient Office of Ordnance. At the Restoration the old post of Master of the Ordnance was revived with the title of master-general; and in 1683 the Department was admirably reorganised, as has been seen, by the Duke of York. At the head stood, of course, the master-general; next under him were two officers of two distinct branches, the lieutenant-general and the surveyor-general. The lieutenant-general was charged with the duty of estimating the amount of stores required for the Navy and the Army, and of making contracts for the supply of the same; he was also responsible for the maintenance of marching trains for service in the field, and for the general efficiency of the artillery both as regards guns and men. His first assistant was named the master-gunner. The surveyor-general was responsible for the custody and care of all stores, and for all services relative to engineering; his first assistant was called the principal engineer. Transport of ordnance by land was the care of a waggon-master, transport by water of a purveyor. The laboratory was committed to a fire-master, whose duties included the preparation of fireworks for festive occasions. The only weak point of the office was the exclusiveness of its jurisdiction over artillery and engineers, which was carried to such a pitch that all commissions in the two corps were signed by the master-general, though that functionary and his staff received their own commissions from the commander-in-chief.

I turn next to the department of finance. Here in place of the old treasurers at war there was created a new officer called the paymaster-general. Parliament, I must remind the reader, never recognised the existence of the Army under the Stuarts, nor voted a sixpence expressly for its service. The force was paid out of the King's privy purse, or, in the case of James, out of sums intended for the payment of the militia. Thus the House of Commons through sheer perversity lost its hold upon the paymaster-general, and when it came to examine his office a whole century later, found, as shall be told in place, a system of corruption and waste which is almost incredible. The first paymaster-general, Sir Stephen Fox, received a salary of four hundred pounds a year, but this he soon supplemented by becoming practically a farmer of a part of the revenue. Knowing that Charles was chronically deficient in cash, he undertook to advance funds on his own private credit for the weekly pay of the Army, in consideration of a commission of one shilling in the pound. At the end of every four months he applied to the Treasury for reimbursement, and if his claims were not immediately satisfied, he received eight per cent on the debt owing to him, thus making a very handsome profit. This system was discontinued in 1684, but the deduction, or poundage as it was called, was still levied on the Army, for no reason whatever, for a full century and a half. For the care of all other military expenses there was an office called by the old title of Treasurer of the Armies.

So much for the broad divisions of the administration, under the three heads of men, military stores, and finance. It is now necessary to trace the rise of a new department, which was destined to give to civilians the excessive share that they still enjoy in the direction of military affairs. While Charles the Second was yet an exile in Flanders in 1657, he had appointed a civilian, Sir Edward Nicholas, who had been Secretary of Council to Charles the First, to be his Secretary at War. It was not uncommon for such civilian secretaries[210] to be attached to a general's staff, and we have already seen John Rushworth taking the field with the New Model as secretary to the Council of War. After the Restoration, and within six months of the date of Monk's commission, one Sir William Clarke was appointed to be secretary to the forces. Though a civilian, he received a commission couched in military terms, which were preserved for fully a century unchanged, bidding him obey such orders as he should from time to time receive from the King, or the general of the forces for the time being, according to the discipline of war. In effect he was a civilian wholly subordinated to the military authorities and subject to military discipline so far as that discipline existed; little more, indeed, than a secretary to the commander-in-chief. His services were not estimated at a very high rate, for he received at first but ten shillings, and after 1669 one pound a day, as salary for himself and clerks. The appointment was of so personal a nature that Clarke accompanied Monk to sea in 1666, and was killed in the naval battle of the 1st of June, the first and last secretary at war who has fallen in action.

Monk then applied for the services of one Matthew Lock, whom he knew to be a good clerk, and Lock was appointed to be Clarke's successor with the title of sergeant or secretary at war. There is not a letter from him to be found in the State Papers until after Monk's death, which is sufficient proof that he was a person of no great importance; but in 1676, when there was no longer a single commander-in-chief, he was entrusted with the removal of quarters, the relief of the established corps, the despatch of convoys, and even with authority to quarter troops in inns, all of which duties had been previously fulfilled by military men. Thus early and insidiously arose once more that civil interference with military affairs which had with such difficulty been thrown off at the establishment of the New Model. The system was wholly unconnected with any question of Parliamentary control, for Parliament would have nothing to do with the standing Army. Most probably it was due simply to the indolence of the King, who would neither do the work of commander-in-chief himself nor appoint any other man to do it for him. Thus the Army was placed once and for all under the heel of a civilian clerk.

The staff at headquarters was based on the model of that which had prevailed under Cromwell, though of course on a scale reduced to the minute proportions of the Army. The duties must, at first, have been within the scope of a very few officials, and it is probable that Monk required little assistance. There was, however, a commissary of the musters, to whom in 1664 a scoutmaster-general, or head of the intelligence department, was added. The business of foreign intelligence in all its branches, diplomatic, naval, and military, had been conducted with admirable efficiency during the Protectorate by the Secretary of State, John Thurloe, but Pepys remarked a sad falling away in this department after the Restoration, due, as he admits, to the scanty allowance of funds allotted to the service. Charles was not the man to face the difficulties of establishing a great administrative office on a sound basis. James, on the other hand, began to grapple with them very early after his accession. He strengthened the staff by the addition of adjutants and quartermasters-general of horse and foot, and strove hard to improve the efficiency of the office; but his time was too short and his distractions too manifold to permit him to do the work thoroughly. Had he reigned for ten years, his familiarity with the system of Louvois and his own administrative ability might have reduced our military system once for all to order. It is not too much to say that his expulsion was in this respect the greatest misfortune that ever befell the Army.

Even he, however, would have found it a hard task to overcome the obstacles raised by Parliament, namely, the difficulties of regular payment of wages and of maintaining discipline. It was impossible to enforce military law on the troops, since Parliament steadily withheld its sanction to the same.[211] Nothing therefore remained but the civil law. A soldier who struck his superior officer or got drunk on guard could legally only be haled before the civil magistrate for common assault or for drunkenness, while if he slept on his post or disobeyed orders or deserted he was subject to no legal penalty whatever. Parliament never seems to have been the least alive to the danger of such a state of things, nor to have weighed it against its fixed resolution not to recognise the standing Army. As a matter of fact, however, military offences seem to have been punished as such throughout the reign of Charles, though without ostentation; and discipline appears to have been maintained without serious difficulty. The number of the troops was, after all, but small; many of the men were already inured to obedience; the traditions of Oliver and of George Monk were still alive; and the men probably accepted service with a tacit understanding that they were subject to different conditions from the civilian. But when the three regiments returned from foreign service and savage warfare at Tangier, and Monmouth's rebellion had brought about a multiplication of regiments, the situation was altogether changed. James, who knew the value of discipline, determined to arrogate the powers that Parliament denied to him, but, like all weak men, endeavoured to effect his purpose by half measures. To secure the punishment of certain deserters he packed the Court of King's Bench with unscrupulous men; and though the culprits were hanged, discipline was only preserved at the cost of the integrity of the courts of law, a proceeding which damaged him greatly both in the Army and the country at large. It will presently be seen how this question of discipline was forced upon Parliament in a fashion that allowed of no further trifling.

The subject of pay opens a melancholy chapter in the history of English administration. It has already been related that Charles the Second let out the payment of the Army to a contractor for a commission of a shilling in the pound. This commission of course came out of the pockets of officers and men; they paid, in fact, a tax of five per cent for the privilege of receiving their wages, and this not to the State, to which the officers still pay sometimes an equal amount under the name of income-tax, but for the benefit of a private individual. If the mulcting of the Army had ended there, the evil would not have been so serious, but as a matter of fact it was but one drop in a vast ocean of corruption. I have already alluded to the immense service wrought by the Puritans towards integrity of administration, and towards raising the moral standard of the military profession. The destruction of the old traditions and the substitution of new principles was a magnificent stroke, but it was unfortunately premature. The new principles might indeed have endured had they but been cherished and encouraged for another generation, but unfortunately no man better fitted to starve them could have been found than the merry monarch. His difficulties were doubtless very great, but he brought but one principle to meet them, that come what might he must not be bored. His indolent selfishness was masked by an exquisite charm of manner, and being a kind-hearted man, he always heard complaints with a sympathetic word; but to redress them cost more trouble than he could afford. Any man who would save him trouble was welcome; any shift that would stave off an unpleasant duty was the right one. There was abundance of deserving suitors to be provided for, still greater abundance of importunate favourites to be satisfied; administration was a bore and money was sadly deficient. All difficulties could be solved by the simple process of providing alike the impecunious and the greedy with administrative offices, or, in other words, with licences to plunder the public. If they chose to purchase these offices for money, so much the better for the royal purse. Thus the whole fabric built up during the Commonwealth was shattered almost at a blow.

The effect on the Army was immediate. A great many of the returned exiles, including Charles and James themselves, had served in the French army, where the system of purchasing commissions had never been abandoned, and where the abuses which had been shaken off by the New Model were still in full vigour. The old corrupt traditions had not been killed in thirteen years, and, reviving under the general reaction against Puritan restraint, they sprang quickly into new life. The old military centralisation of Oliver, upheld for a time by Monk, rapidly perished, and what might have still been an army sank into a mere aggregate of regiments, the property of individual colonels, and of troops and companies, the property of individual captains. Every civilian of the military departments hastened to make money at the expense of the officers, and every officer to enrich himself at the cost of the men. The flood-gates so carefully closed by the Puritans were opened, and the abuses of three centuries streamed back into their old channel to flow therein unchecked for two centuries more.

At its first renewal the system of purchase was carried to such lengths that the very privates paid premiums to the enlisting officers; but the practice was speedily checked by Monk in 1663. In March 1684 the system received a kind of royal sanction through the purchase by the King himself of a commission from one officer for presentation to another. Then nine months later Charles suddenly declared that he would permit no further purchase and sale of military appointments. Whether he would have abolished it if he had lived may be doubted, but it is certain that the system continued in full operation under James the Second, gathering strength of course with each new year of existence.

Let me now attempt briefly to sketch the organised system of robbery that prevailed in the military service under the two last of the Stuarts. The study may be unpleasant, but it is less pathological than historic. First, then, let us treat of the officer. On purchasing his commission he paid forthwith one fee to the Secretary at War, and a second, apparently, to one of the Secretaries of State. After the institution of Chelsea Hospital, as to which a word shall presently be said, he paid further five per cent on his purchase money towards its funds, the seller of the commission contributing a like proportion from the same sum to the same object. He then became entitled to the pay of his rank, but this by no means implied that it was regularly paid to him. In the first place, his pay was divided into two parts, termed respectively his subsistence and his arrears, or clearings. The former sum was a proportion of the full pay, which varied according to the grade of the officer, it being obvious that an ensign, for instance, could not subsist if any large fraction was deducted from his daily pittance, whereas a major could be more heavily mulcted and yet not starve. This subsistence was therefore paid, or supposed to be issued, in advance from the pay-office and to be subject to no stoppage. The balance of the full pay, or arrears, was paid yearly after it became due, and after considerable deductions had been made from it. First of these deductions came the poundage, or payment of one shilling in the pound, to the paymaster-general, and the discharge of one day's full pay to Chelsea Hospital. These stoppages were more or less legitimate. Then the commissary-general of the musters stepped in to claim from the officer, as from every one else in the Army, one day's pay, a tax which caused much discontent, and was in 1680 reduced to one-third of a day's pay. Then came a vast number of irregular exactions. Every commissary of the musters claimed a fee, amounting sometimes to as much as two guineas for every troop or company passed at each muster, which, as musters were taken six times a year, was sufficiently exorbitant. Next the auditors demanded thirty shillings, or eight times their legal fee, for each troop and company on passing the accounts of the paymaster-general. Finally, fees to the exchequer, fees to the treasury, fees for the issue of pay-warrants, fees, in a word, to every greedy clerk who could make himself disagreeable, brought the tale of extortion to an end. Let the reader remember that this system of subsistence and arrears, with the same legitimate deductions and almost equal opportunities for irregular pilfering, was still in force when we began the war of the French Revolution, and let him not wonder that officers of the Army will still cherish unfriendly feelings towards the clerks at the War Office.[212]

Now comes the more distressing examinations of the officers' methods of indemnifying themselves. For this purpose let us study the pay of a private centinel, as he was called, of the infantry of the Line. This consisted, as it had been in Queen Mary's time, and was still to be in King George the Third's, of eightpence a day, or £12 : 13 : 4 a year. Of this, sixpence a day, or £9 : 2 : 6 a year, was set apart for his subsistence, and was nominally inviolable. The balance, £3 : 0 : 10 a year, was called the "gross off-reckonings," which were subject of course to a deduction of five per cent, or 12s. 2d., for the paymaster-general, and of one day's pay to Chelsea Hospital, whereby the gross off-reckonings were reduced to £2 : 8s. This last amount, dignified by the title of "net off-reckonings," was made over to the colonel for the clothing of the regiment, an item which included not only the actual garments, but also the sword and belt, and as time went on the bayonet and cartridge box. The system, as will be remembered, dated from the days of Queen Elizabeth, when half a crown a week was allowed to the men for subsistence and a total of £4 : 2 : 6 deducted for two suits a year. It is sufficiently plain that the sum now allowed for clothing was insufficient, and that a colonel who did his duty by his men must inevitably be a loser. Moreover, this was not his only expense. The clerical work entailed by his duties demanded assistance, for which he was indeed authorised to keep a clerk, but supplied with no allowance wherewith to pay him. This clerk presently became known as the colonel's agent, and though a civilian and the colonel's private servant, virtually performed the duties of a regimental paymaster.

The results of such an arrangement may easily be guessed. It was not in consonance with military tradition, certainly not in accordance with human nature, that colonels should lose money by their commands, and it is only too certain that they did not. The contractor was called in, and the door was opened wide to robbery at the expense of the soldier. Colonels took commissions or even open bribes from the contractors; the agent took his fee likewise; and in at least one recorded case a colonel actually accepted a bribe from his own agent to give him the contract. It may easily be imagined how the soldiers fared for clothing. But the mischief did not end here. The subsistence-money, though in theory subject to no deduction, was practically at the mercy of the colonel and his agent, who, under various pretexts, appropriated a greater or smaller share of the poor soldier's sixpence. As an additional source of profit, it was not uncommon for colonels to abstain from reporting the vacancy caused by an officer's death, to continue to draw the dead man's pay and to put it into his own pocket.

Captains of companies, with such an example before them, were not slow to imitate it; and from them too the unfortunate soldiers suffered not a little. But their easiest road to plunder was the old beaten track of false musters, which was rendered all the easier by the corruption of the commissaries. Any vacancy in the ranks after one muster was left unfilled until the day before the next muster, and the captain drew pay for an imaginary man during the interval. Or again, the passe-volant, old as the days of Hawkwood, made his reappearance at musters and was passed, with or without the collusion of the commissaries, as a genuine soldier. Finally, Charles himself gave countenance after a manner to this fraud by reviving the practice of allowing officers so many imaginary men or permanent vacancies in each troop or company in order to increase their emoluments. And so the passe-volant became naturalised first as a "faggot," and later as a "warrant man" in the infantry and a "hautbois" in the cavalry, and survived to a period well within the memory of living men.[213] The remoter a regiment's quarters from home the grosser were the abuses that prevailed in it, and in Ireland they seem to have passed all bounds. Captains calmly appropriated the entire pay of their companies, and turned the men loose to live by the plunder of the inhabitants. It was a reversion to the evils rampant in Queen Elizabeth's army in the Netherlands, and, in justice to the officers, it must be added that those evils were brought about in both cases by the same cause. Officers were simply forced into dishonesty by the withholding of their own pay by civilian officials in London.

It must not be thought that these scandals passed unnoticed at headquarters. As early as 1663 orders were issued to put a stop to fraudulent musters, and two years later the salaries of the officers of the Ordnance were increased almost threefold to check the sale of places and to diminish the temptation to accept bribes. Similar orders were respectively promulgated from time to time, but with little or no effect; possibly they were issued mainly as a matter of form, to stop the mouth of criticism. The root of the evil is to be traced to the civilian paymaster-general, who from the peculiarity of his position was accountable to no one, and enjoyed total irresponsibility for full forty years. The King no doubt flattered himself that the men were regularly paid; the abuses took some time to attain to their height, and in the short reign of James the Second it is probable that his attention to military business did somewhat to improve matters. But while Charles was on the throne the paymaster-general did as he pleased. Though wages were nominally paid after each muster, they were often withheld for months, and even for years. Finally, when payment was at last made, it was discharged not in cash but in tallies or debentures which could only be sold at a discount; while the colonels' agents seized the opportunity to deduct a percentage in consideration of the trouble to which they had been subjected to obtain any payment whatever.

So the old foundations of fraud were renovated, and on them was built during the next century and a half a gigantic superstructure of rascality and corruption which is not yet wholly demolished. Let it not be thought that in the seventeenth century such malpractices were either new or confined to England. They were, as I have often repeated, as old almost as the art of war, and they were rampant all over Europe. The excuse of English officers for their dishonesty was always, "It is so in France," and in France, as the history of the French Revolution shows, the old evils endured and throve for another full century. But the sin and shame of England is, that though she had once put away the accursed thing from her, she returned to it again as the sow to her wallowing in the mire. In 1659 English soldiers were proud of their name and calling; in 1666 it had already become a scandal to be a Life Guardsman.[214] Recruits had been found without difficulty under the Commonwealth to make the military profession, as was the rule in those days, the business of their whole life; but after a very few years of the Stuarts the King was compelled to resort to the press-gang. The status of the soldier was lowered, and has never recovered itself to this day.

I turn from this melancholy tale of retrogression to contemplate the changes made in other departments of the service. Herein it will be most convenient to begin with the regimental organisation and equipment. First, then, let us glance at the cavalry, which at the Restoration appears definitely to have taken precedence as the senior service. The reader will remember that in the New Model the fixed strength of a regiment was six troops of one hundred men, which was reduced in time of peace to an establishment of sixty men. Setting aside the Life Guards, which were independent troops of two hundred gentlemen apiece, the regiment which first occupies our attention is the Blues, which began life with eight troops, each of sixty men. So far there was practically no change, but in 1680 the strength of the Blues was diminished to fifty men in a troop; and in 1687 the newly raised regiments were established at an initial strength of six or seven troops of forty men only. Finally, as shall presently be seen in the campaigns that lie before us in Flanders, the establishment of a troop for war sinks to fifty men, and the establishment for peace to thirty-six. Here, therefore, is Cromwell's excellent system overthrown. The troop of cavalry is so far weakened as to be not worth assorting into three divisions, one to each of the three officers, and the seeds of enforced idleness are sown, to bear fruit an hundredfold. Hardly less significant is the appointment, in 1661, of regimental adjutants to help the majors in the duties which they had hitherto discharged without assistance.

The equipment of the Horse was likewise altered. The trooper retained the iron head-piece[215] and cuirass, the pistols and the sword of the New Model, but he was now further supplied with a carbine, which was slung at his back, and with a cartridge box for his ammunition. The new equipment was served out to the household troops in 1663, and to other regiments of Horse in 1677. It marks a new birth of the futile practice of firing from the saddle, which has wasted untold ammunition with infinitesimal results. As regards horses it was still the rule, which had been little modified during the Civil War, that the trooper should bring with him his own horse; if he had none the King supplied him with one, at an average price, and the money was stopped, if necessary, from the trooper's pay.

The drill still bore marks of Cromwell's influence, for the men were drawn up in three ranks only; and though the attack was opened by the discharge of carbines and pistols, yet it was distinctly laid down that when the fire-arms were empty, there must be no thought of reloading, but immediate resort to the sword. Moreover, although the front was still increased or diminished by the doubling of ranks or files, there were already signs of the manoeuvre by small divisions that was to displace it.

Passing next to the dragoons, the reader will have noticed that this arm was not represented in the original Army formed by Charles the Second. Notwithstanding the high reputation which dragoons had enjoyed during the Civil War, it was not until 1672 that a regiment of them was raised, and then only to be disbanded after a brief existence of two years. The Tangier Horse, now called the First Royal Dragoons, was converted into a regiment of dragoons on its return from foreign service in 1684; and four years later there was added to the establishment a Scotch regiment which bears a famous name. It was made up in 1681 of three independent troops that had been raised three years before, and was completed by three additional troops, under the name of the Royal Regiment of Dragoons of Scotland. It now ranks as the Second regiment of the Cavalry of the Line, and is known to all the world as the Scots Greys.

Dragoons still preserved their original character of mounted infantry. Twelve men of each troop besides the non-commissioned officers were armed with the halberd and a pair of pistols, while the remainder were equipped with matchlock muskets, bandoliers, and, after 1672, with bayonets. In 1687 this equipment was improved by the substitution of flintlocks for matchlocks, of cartridge boxes for bandoliers, and of buckets, in addition to the old slings, for the carriage of muskets. The tactical unit of the dragoons was still called the company, though at the close of the Civil War often denominated the troop; but the tendency of dragoons to assimilate themselves to horse is seen in the substitution of cornet for ensign as the title of the junior subaltern. This tendency was perhaps the stranger, since the companies of dragoons, eighty men strong, must have presented a favourable contrast to the weak and attenuated troops of horse.

A new description of mounted soldier appeared in 1683,[216] in the shape of the Horse-grenadier. I shall have more to say presently of grenadiers, when treating of the infantry, so it is sufficient to state here that Horse-grenadiers were practically only mounted men of that particular arm, who as a rule linked their horses for action and fought on foot like the dragoons. There were in all three troops of Horse-grenadiers, which were attached to the three troops of Life Guards. Their peculiarity was that the two junior officers of each troop were both lieutenants, instead of lieutenant and cornet.

The infantry, like the cavalry, suffered an alteration in the regimental establishments after the Restoration. The old strength of one hundred and twenty to a company was reduced to one hundred, and in time of peace sank to eighty, sixty, and even fifty men. The number of companies to a battalion was also altered. The First Guards began life with twelve companies; and though for a time the Coldstreamers and newly raised regiments retained the original number of ten, yet twelve gradually became the usual, and after the accession of James the Second, the accepted, strength of a battalion. It must be noted that after 1672 a battalion and a regiment of foot cease to be synonymous terms, the First Guards being in that year increased to twenty-four companies and two battalions, a precedent which was soon extended to sundry other regiments.

On the accession of James there was added to the twelve companies of every regiment an additional company of grenadiers. These were established first in 1678, and took their name from the grenade,[217] the new weapon with which they were armed. The hand grenade was simply a small shell of from one to two inches in diameter, kindled by a fuse and thrown by the hand. Hence it was entrusted to the tallest and finest men in the regiment, who might reasonably be expected to throw it farthest. The white plume, supposed to be symbolic of the white smoke of the fuse, was not apparently used at first as the distinctive mark of grenadiers. They, and the fusiliers likewise, wore caps instead of broad-brimmed hats, to enable them to sling their firelocks over both shoulders with ease. These caps, which were at first of fur, were soon made of cloth, and assumed the shape of the mitre which Hogarth has handed down to us. Another peculiarity of grenadiers was that they were always armed with firelocks and with hatchets,[218] and that both of their subaltern officers were lieutenants.

Another new branch of the infantry was the regiment of Fusiliers, so called from the fusil or flintlock, as opposed to the matchlock, with which they were armed. They were, in fact, simply an expansion of the companies of firelocks which formed part of the New Model in the department of the Train; they were borne for duty with the artillery specially, and therefore included one company of miners. Miner-companies were armed with long carbines and hammer-hatchets peculiar to themselves, and they had but one subaltern officer, a lieutenant. Like the grenadiers, the fusiliers did not recognise the rank of ensign, and their junior subalterns were therefore called second lieutenants.[219]

It is somewhat remarkable that so much should have been made of a weapon so familiar as the firelock. Men who, like Gustavus Adolphus, saw that the whole future of warfare turned on the fire of musketry, had long accepted its superiority to the matchlock; and George Monk, on marching into London in 1660, had at once ordered the Coldstreamers to return their matchlocks into store and to draw firelocks in their stead. Nor was this preference confined solely to military reformers, for we find the Assemblies of Barbados and Jamaica, remote islands in which old fashions might have been expected to die their hardest, uncompromisingly rejecting the matchlocks prescribed for them by the English Government and insisting on arming themselves with "fusees."[220] At home, however, jobbery and corruption were doubtless at work, for the Coldstream Guards reverted to the matchlock in 1665. Finally, after many compromises, the Guards were in 1683 armed exclusively with firelocks, while the other regiments carried a fixed proportion, probably not less than one-half, of the superior weapon among their matchlocks.

Correspondingly we find throughout these reigns a steady diminution in the use of the pike. In companies of grenadiers and regiments of fusiliers they were utterly abolished; in other corps the proportion, which had once been one-half, had already sunk at the Restoration to one-third, whence it speedily declined to one-fourth and one-fifth.[221] We find them, however, still in use during the wars of William the Third, and we shall see that they did not want advocates even at the close of the Seven Years' War, to say nothing of the part that they played in the French Revolution.[222] As a weapon for officers it survived for many generations under the form of the half-pike or spontoon,[223] even as the halberd prolonged its life as the peculiar weapon of sergeants. To the officers also was assigned by a singular coincidence the preservation of the memory of the armour which had once been worn by all pikemen; and the gorget survived as a badge of rank on their breasts long after corslet and tassets had vanished from the world.[224]

None the less the pike had received its death-blow through the invention of the bayonet. This new and revolutionary weapon had been invented in 1640, when it consisted of a double-edged blade, like a pike-head, mounted on two or three inches of wooden haft, which could be thrust into the barrel of the musket. In this form the bayonet was issued first to the Tangier regiment[225] alone in 1663, and to all the infantry and dragoons in 1673, but only to be withdrawn, until in 1686 it was finally reissued to the Foot Guards. It was not until after the Revolution that bayonets were served out to the whole of the infantry.

In the matter of drill there was little or no change. The front was still increased or diminished by the doubling of ranks and of files, and the file still consisted of six men. The reduction of the numbers of pikemen, however, greatly increased the homogeneity of the infantry and contributed not a little to simplify its movements. Moreover, although the file might consist of six men, it is not likely, considering how far the musket and bayonet had superseded the pike, that the formation for action was greater than three ranks in depth. The platoon is not mentioned in the drill books, the probable reason being that it was not favoured by the French School, in which Charles and James had both of them received their training. But for this, there is every reason to suppose that the army encamped on Hounslow Heath would not have been found behind the times in the matter of exercise and equipment if it could have been transported without change to the field of Blenheim.

Of the artillery there is still little to be said. Until 1682 gunners seem to have enjoyed their original distribution into small, independent bodies, in charge of the various scattered garrisons. Even such small organisation as appeared in the New Model seems to have been lost, and field-guns appear to have been told off to battalions of infantry, or to have been worked by such of the escort of fusiliers as had been trained by the few expert gunners. The artilleryman had long looked upon himself as a superior mortal,[226] but in 1682 he was brought under the Ordnance, subjected to military discipline, and regularly exercised at his duty. The time was not far distant when the organisation of the gunners was to be improved. Of engineers I can say no more than the few details already given when describing the Ordnance Office and the fusiliers.

A word remains to be said of the foundation of Chelsea Hospital. It has been told that Queen Mary was the first of our sovereigns who showed any care for old soldiers, and that Elizabeth was intolerably impatient of such miserable creatures. Two generations, however, had bred a softer heart in English sovereigns, and when Charles the Second had been twenty years on the throne, and England was again thronged with maimed and infirm soldiers who had served their time in Tangier, in the West Indies, or in the Low Countries, it was felt to be a reproach that faithful fighting-men should be left to starve or to beg their bread. Kilmainham Hospital in Dublin was the first-fruit of this sentiment, and was founded in 1680; Chelsea followed it in the succeeding year. Sir Stephen Fox, the paymaster-general, was the man who was foremost in the work, and it is to his credit that, having made so much money out of the private soldier, he should have chosen this method of repaying him. The scheme of the hospital was submitted to the King, who was asked to grant a piece of land for a building. Charles, always gracious, readily complied, and offered the site of St. James's College, Chelsea. "But odso!" he added, "I now recollect that I have already given that land to Mistress Nell here." Whereupon, so runs the story, whether true or untrue, Nell gracefully forewent her grant for so good a purpose; and Chelsea Hospital is the British soldier's to this day. It is painful to have to add that the officials of the pay-office seem to have begun at once to steal part of the money contributed by the Army to its maintenance, though the fact will astonish no reader who has followed me through this chapter. But the friends of the Army have always been few, and the best of them in former times, strange conjunction, were a queen and a harlot. Had they endowed a fund for supplying African negroes with Bibles, or even with mass-books, much would be forgiven them in England; but they thought more of saving old soldiers from want, so Mary Tudor is still Bloody Mary, and Eleanor Gwyn the unspeakable Nell.