Fusiliers (2 page)

In the course of searching for letters, I encountered some great runs of them from men not in the 23rd: Richard Fitzpatrick, a foppish Guards officer; Francis Hutcheson, a lugubrious staff man; or Richard Dansey, a fire-eating light-infantry officer. Their insights have been used to illustrate more general points about service in that army.

The result of this research is an account that I hope readers will find quite different from any published before, providing depth in getting under the skin of one regiment as well as breadth in consulting a great range of testimony. I tried in setting out on this task to read every firsthand British military account of the American War of Independence that I could find. Of course some more may lurk in archives, but I pursued every journal or letter I became aware of. When examining the 23rd’s campaigns, naturally I used primary accounts from the American side too or from the point of view of Britain’s German mercenaries. Nevertheless, this is unapologetically a British-army-centred version of these events.

Inevitably there are differences of perspective between a Briton and an American investigating this conflict. Its history has usually been written by the victor. The story of the revolution is a font of national mythology for writers in the United States. Sadly, even the better ones tend to stick to the enemy-image of the redcoat as a brutalised robot, marching on inept orders. They tend to overestimate British military efficiency at the beginning of the war, and underestimate it at the end. Inventive leadership, enthusiasm, and bravery are virtues that many American writers expect to find only in the ranks of Washington’s army. Consequently they have never looked particularly hard for material in the British archives that challenges their stereotype of the enemy. Certainly, I found myself frustrated during years of searching for a book that addressed the redcoats’ experience of the war, telling me about the fortunes of a single group of men or the effect of this long painful fight on the army’s development.

As for the distortions in British telling of this history, these tend to emerge from political and class dynamics. Since the war was a cause supported enthusiastically only by ultra-Tories it has often been portrayed by the Whig or liberal school of history as a gigantic act of folly. More recently, social antagonism has guaranteed a ready reception for representations of the British officer-class in this period as useless upper-class twits. All of this ignores the subtle workings of the eighteenth-century army. The story of the 23rd reveals them – how senior officers arranged the promotion of those who could not afford to purchase higher ranks or that the dividing line between the ranks and commissioned class was a good deal more fluid than it became later, in Wellington’s times.

When writing I was at first tempted to quote these protagonists with their eighteenth-century spelling intact, but at length I realised it would just be too confusing. I have allowed myself the odd exception, such as ‘serjeant’ rather than the ‘sergeant’ more widely used today. The 23rd’s title provides a case in point about inconsistency in period spelling. Some spelled it ‘Welsh’, whereas others used the archaic ‘Welch’ that the regiment considers correct today. As for ‘Fusiliers’ it can be found as Fuziliers, Fuzileers and even Fusileers. My editor did not share my early enthusiasm for giving this book the title ‘Fuziliers’.

Unearthing the story of this regiment has required a far larger archival research project than that needed for the 95th Rifles. Those kind members of the Royal Welch Fusiliers regimental family – Major General Jonathon Riley, Major Nick Lock, as well as archivists Brian Owen and Anne Pedley – who wanted to help could only do so to the limited extent that the archive at their disposal permitted. Instead I would have to investigate dozens of archives, and in some cases rely on a legion of researchers to undertake those tasks that geography or time prevented me from carrying out in person.

Those that I engaged professionally were: Brendan Morrissey (an author on this period in his own right, who collated the information in the 23rd’s regimental muster lists for me); Susan Ranson, who copied out the important finds in the Verney Papers; Ellen Poteet, who spared me the journey to the important Clements collections in Ann Arbor Michigan; Jayne Stephenson, who worked on Lancashire records; and Roger E. Nixon, who topped up my research at Kew. I must thank Sir Hugh Verney and the Clayton House Trust for giving permission to reproduce those important Harry Calvert finds.

A further contingent gave freely of their expertise: John Montgomery at the RUSI Library; John Spencer; Gary Lind; William Spencer; Duncan Sutton; David Brown; Donald Graves; Scott Miskimon; Ron McGuigan; and James Collett-White. During my visit to the 23rd’s southern battlefields Charles and Judy Baxter were fabulous hosts; Nancy Stewart, Diane Depew and Chris Bryce also gave generously of their time. Among that great band of living history enthusiasts in the States, Will Tatum, Jay Callaham, Robert Sulentic and Don Hagist gave great support.

In getting the job of writing done Peter Barron was very helpful allowing me leave from
Newsnight
, Jonathan Lloyd did his magic as my agent, as did Julian Loose and Henry Volans at Faber and Paula Turner. Behind the scenes, trying to talk the author out of his study and back into the twenty-first century were my beloved wife Hilary, daughters Isabelle and Madeleine and son Sol.

 

ONE

 

Or the Anxious Mission of the 23rd Fusiliers

It was around 9 a.m. when the long column of redcoats snaking its way out of Boston crossed the Neck. The British were late and, in the business they had been ordered to do that day, an hour might make the difference between success and disaster.

Soon they were over the Neck and into the rebellious hinterland, leaving behind their base, a city almost surrounded by its watery moat where they had come to feel secure. They were plunging into a country where alarm bells rang, calling thousands of men to arms, ready to oppose the King’s troops.

There were 1,200 soldiers in the British column. At its head, the brigade commander sat astride his horse. After him tramped two regiments of foot, a battalion of marines and, near the back, the 23rd Regiment, perhaps the most celebrated British corps on the American station, also known as the Royal Welch Fusiliers.

Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie, adjutant of the 23rd, was not in the best of moods that morning. Orders to assemble the brigade at 7.30 a.m. had in one case been delivered to the wrong officer, resulting in the marines arriving one hour late. Mackenzie did things by the book, a middle-aged officer confined in low rank but with all the wisdom of thirty years’ hard service. He knew how important the delay might prove, since they were being sent to support another British column that was already fifteen or sixteen miles away at a place called Concord, deep in territory controlled by their most ardent opponents.

The eight companies of Fusiliers marching beside Mackenzie that bright morning mustered around 350 men of all ranks. Two other
companies of the 23rd had left Boston the previous night on what was meant to be a secret mission. Mackenzie was already worrying that the preparations made to seize weapons from the rebels inland had been conducted so clumsily that the entire countryside would be alarmed.

Mackenzie’s fears were confirmed as the redcoats marched through Roxbury, the first village on their route towards Concord, for he realised that ‘few or no people were to be seen; and the houses were in general shut up’. Word had indeed been spread by the rebels of the impending British expedition to Concord, and the people of Massachusetts awaited the outcome with dread.

The soldiers passed white clapboard houses, pleasant groves of trees, duckponds and taverns. Their brigade commander, on a previous outing, altogether less fraught, had admired the landscape, believing that nature and hard work had produced something in New England that excelled even the work of England’s most celebrated gardener: ‘It has everywhere the appearance of a park finely laid out. Mr [“Capability”] Browne here would be useless.’

On this particular day, though, landmarks that had previously symbolised the bucolic idyll of this American scene took on a very different meaning. The many houses of worship dotted about the Puritan settlements were still except for those where a tolling bell signalled the alarm. Many preachers were that day far from their pulpits, out among the people stirring up rebellion. As for the village greens, more often the setting of peaceful assemblies, these had become the rallying points for militia companies. Farmers, mechanics or smiths arrived with hastily grabbed weapons, ready to put into action the drills and marksmanship they had spent months practising.

On the soldiers tramped, west to Brookline then turning north towards Cambridge. They crossed the Charles River without incident. Bridges were a source of concern to Earl Hugh Percy, the brigade commander. There had been several excursions into the countryside during the preceding months, for the British commander-in-chief wanted to improve his men’s stamina while getting the rural people used to the sight of marching troops, so that they might be complacent when the day for fighting arrived. But would a battle be necessary, that 19 April?

Less than three weeks before, the Americans had brought two cannon to one of the spans across the same river as Percy’s redcoats approached. For a few tense moments it had seemed as if they were prepared to massacre the soldiers as they were squeezed into that bottleneck. The rebels, though, had run off, leaving the loaded artillery pieces behind them. Percy knew as well that those seeking to thwart the King’s troops might also pull up the planking on bridges.

The brigadier, the thirty-three-year-old heir to the dukedom of Northumberland, was a highly professional officer, widely respected within the Boston garrison. Some of those marching behind him that morning were of a hotter disposition. They believed that incidents like that with the loaded cannon in March showed that the colonists were full of talk but would not fight. Among the regimental officers and soldiers there were quite a few who believed that the British army would smash any vagabond militia the rebels could bring against them. ‘Never did any nation so much deserve to be made an example of to future ages,’ one angry young officer of Percy’s brigade had written to his father, ‘and never [was] any set of men more anxious to be employed on so laudable a work.’

This bitterness had arisen by the spring of 1775, because the army
had been exposed to months of abuse and scorn. It took the form of seditious handbills, spitting or insults in the streets and the formation of militia or ‘minutemen’ companies in dozens of villages. On previous trips through the countryside, British soldiers observed these citizen soldiers armed, drilling and making ready to fight. Even six months earlier, in the autumn of 1774, Brigadier Percy had written to his father, ‘This country is now in as open a state of rebellion as Scotland was in the year ’45.’

While many soldiers favoured a Scottish solution to American disobedience – scourging the rebellion with fire and bayonet – such views did not hold sway in the higher command. By April 1775, however, even the moderates felt something had to be done. The smouldering tension around Boston had come to a head, as British generals ordered the seizure of rebel cannon in Concord.

Percy led his troops into the New England countryside with colours flying and bands playing. Whatever doubts or disagreement might lurk within the hearts of his officers, Percy wanted the brigade to make an imposing sight for the Americans. They knew they were being watched through shuttered windows or quiet orchards as they marched, so they pressed on proudly to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle’, a favourite with the redcoats, complete with its lyrics ridiculing the colonists.

Some of the Fusiliers, the grenadier and light companies, had gone to Concord with special battalions of the army’s picked troops. The main body of the regiment marched out to support them behind its two standards: the King’s Colour, a union flag, snapping and dancing in the spring breeze, and the Colonel’s Colour, with a union in one corner, but royal blue in its other three fourths and the Prince of Wales’ feathers in the centre. The Fusiliers’ allegiance was symbolised by these two flags – to their monarch naturally, and to the army in which their place was precisely fixed by the number, colour and badges on the Colonel’s Colour.