Fusiliers (4 page)
The officers who ran the 23rd, its captain lieutenant, seven full captains, major and lieutenant colonel, had, excepting the most recently promoted captain, grown old in their rank. In an age when a gifted and well-connected officer could aspire to a lieutenant colonelcy by the age of twenty-five, Bernard and Grove were well into their forties and other captains in their late thirties. Even some of the subalterns present that evening cut the forlorn figure of middle-aged men with grown-up children living on the pittance of a lieutenant’s pay – Frederick Mackenzie, the adjutant, being only the most shocking example, having served in this lowly rank for nearly half of his forty-four years.
Those men, who knocked back toast after toast, understood that the keys to promotion were money and patronage. None of them was heir to a title, although some were only one or two degrees removed from the aristocracy by family connection. Quite a number, like Bernard himself, were the sons of officers, and lacked money. Those who raced up the army in this epoch were those who combined cash with ‘assisting friends’. One or two of the officers could call on considerable reserves of family cash, but were not well connected. Donkin, on the other hand, had some powerful friends, but lacked the money for his next step of rank. Lieutenant Colonel Bernard backed Donkin’s claim for advancement, and was also favourably disposed towards William Blakeney (the grenadier company commander) – the three men forming an Anglo-Irish bloc in the regiment – but he had shown himself to have limited influence in the higher reaches of the army.
Several of the officers partaking of that Saint David’s Day feast not
only doubted that their pretensions to promotion were about to be gratified, but suspected instead that the coming of war would bring an influx of wealthy young bloods who had sidestepped the tedium of garrison service but would be spoiling for the opportunity of distinction in battle. Good manners and a sense of their own lowly status would have prevented these officers making their case directly to General Gage over dinner, but just three days later captains Grove and Blakeney joined with ten other officers in sending their commander-in-chief an impassioned letter.
‘Many young officers lately acquired the rank of major by purchase,’ the old captains complained, adding that others who had only recently become captains ‘are likely soon to succeed to the same preferments’. Could not the general do something about their claims for promotion after such long service? Another hard-done-by captain who had written to the general complained that ‘nothing is more mortifying to an old soldier, than to be commanded by a number of inexperienced young boys (which is often the case on our service)’. Gage, it would transpire during the following weeks, did nothing to address the concerns of these old warriors. Instead the eighteenth-century promotion bazaar would get under way in earnest with the first shots of war, and the fears of the ‘hard bargains’ would prove justified, for it would be a case of every man for himself.
As for the wives and children of those officers who risked life and limb in the name of their sovereign and parliament, they were not present that evening. Across Boston, in the candlelit parlours of modest rented rooms, Major Blunt’s Molly or Captain Blakeney’s Sarah found their own suppers. Lieutenant Mackenzie’s wife, Nancy, ‘Mrs Mac’ as he affectionately called her, was expecting a late addition to their family. Dozens of soldiers’ wives too awaited the expected campaign. Any fears they may have stifled – that they would soon be called upon to wash their husbands’ wounds as well as their shirts, and to follow the drum, acting as the army’s unpaid auxiliaries – were about to be realised.
The Saint David’s Day dinner followed its ritual late into the night. The spurs of Toby Purcell, the second in command who had stepped into action when his commander was killed during the Irish campaign of the Boyne back in 1690, were toasted, and honours done to Shenkin ap Rice, by legend a simple soldier of the regiment.
Matters came to a noisy and inebriated climax when the regimental
goat, its mascot, decorated with appropriate garlands, was brought into the dining room, led by the drum major and with a drummer boy mounted, rather unsteadily, on his back. It was the drum major’s solemn task to lead this unlikely pair three times around the table, while the room resounded to the acclamations of the company. Alas, in 1775 he did not make it. One of those present recorded that ‘the animal gave such a spring from the floor, that he dropped the rider upon the table, and then bouncing over the heads of some officers, he ran to the barracks’. Some of the ensemble spilled out into the cool New England night hallooing and cheering the goat, passers-by joining in. The officers of the 23rd had marked their special day and retired to the comatose sleep of over-indulgence, while those who despised the army’s presence in Boston prepared their rebellion.
The congregation that filled the pews five days later on the sunny spring morning of Sunday, 6 March 1775, at the Old South Meeting House close by General Gage’s quarters was, to put it mildly, one of a more sober and serious disposition than that which had honoured Saint David. Many of the most articulate advocates of resistance to British power were there to hear the annual oration in commemoration of a confrontation five years earlier in which five locals had been killed by redcoats. This sad event had been dubbed the ‘Boston Massacre’ by enemies of the British Ministry or government.
Although the great majority of those attending this service were clad in their Sunday best, there were red coats too visible in the hall. The last ties of civility had not yet been cut between the King’s servants and their enemies, and indeed some of the officers, including Frederick Mackenzie, who had come to this puritan place of worship were the self-same men who had participated in the excess and hilarity of 1 March. These officers and their more ardent foes regarded one another with suspicion and dislike, expecting a riot might break out at any moment. Many concealed cudgels and sticks.
Joseph Warren, a noted Presbyterian minister and friend of Liberty, went to the pulpit. He began by reminding the congregation that their ancestors had come to America to escape persecution:
Our fathers having nobly resolved never to wear the yoke of despotism, and seeing the European world, through insolence and cowardice, falling a prey to tyranny, bravely threw themselves upon the bosom of the ocean, determined to find freedom or perish in the glorious attempt.
Outlining the colonists’ grievances against ministers in London, Dr Warren excoriated them for sending regiments to enforce their decrees on America, adding that ‘standing armies always endanger the liberty of the subject’. Warren could not openly call for revolt, for he must have suspected that some of those red-coated gentlemen were there simply to goad him into words that might see him clapped in jail charged with treason. Similarly the officers suspected that Warren might taunt them, in Mackenzie’s words, ‘to act improperly, and strike or lay hands on some of the party, which would have been the signal for a battle. It is certain both sides were ripe for it.’ Mackenzie was no fool though, far from it: he impressed superiors with his intelligence. His appearance also – strong brow, clear blue eyes, a beak of a nose – reinforced the sense of an experienced man who would not easily succumb to provocation.
Some of Warren’s statements produced hisses from the officers. As they looked around they could see John Hancock, president of the Congress challenging British power, and Samuel Adams, regarded by many of the officers as an uncouth, corrupt rabble-rouser, and certainly someone who longed for the revolt to begin. As Warren came to his peroration, he called for a new equality in the relationship between Britain and the American colonies, and his audience heard him come as close as he dared to publicly advocating rebellion:
if these pacifick measures are ineffectual; and it appears the only way to safety is through fields of blood, I know you will not turn your faces from your foes, but will undauntedly press forward until tyranny is trodden under foot.
Warren stepped down, having somehow harangued his divided audience without the expected riot. Sam Adams stood up and thanked him for the speech before proposing a vote on who should deliver the 1776 oration commemorating the ‘Bloody Massacre’. At this, several British officers signalled their disgust at this language by shouting ‘Fie!’ A general commotion ensued, as some of the congregation could hear the fifes and drums of a regiment marching nearby and thought the officers inside had called out ‘Fire!’
One British officer approached Adams to remonstrate that the captain commanding the soldiers in 1770 had been tried and acquitted. Adams tried to brush him off by saying he would settle the matter with General Gage. ‘You and I must settle it first,’ replied the determined redcoat, and at this moment violence might easily have broken out. Adams, however, backed down and made his way out of
the Meeting House. People dispersed and, for a matter of weeks at least, the sword remained sheathed.
Even during these fateful weeks, officers like Earl Percy remained on good terms with men such as Adams and Hancock, sharing dinner with them sometimes. It may be that they hoped to play upon the earl’s political sympathies, for they knew that, as Member of Parliament for Westminster, he had aligned himself with the Whig opposition that questioned the Ministry’s policy of sending troops to enforce the British writ in America.
If the Select Men – the colonists’ senior representatives at Boston – hoped that calling themselves Whigs and allying themselves with those who wanted to the limit the King’s powers in Britain or Ireland would help them divide the army and win their argument, they were mistaken. While it is true that quite a few officers in Boston in 1775 might have considered themselves, like Earl Percy, to be Whigs, they did not feel they had anything in common with those whom Dr Warren urged into ‘fields of blood’. Indeed, Percy’s familiarity with the likes of Warren, Hancock and Adams produced contempt for them, as he wrote home in blistering fashion: ‘The people here are a set of sly, artful, hypocritical rascals, cruel, and cowards. I must own I cannot but despise them completely.’ Indeed a suspicion of dishonesty on the part of the Americans tainted the views of many a British officer who might otherwise have been sympathetic.
Dr Warren had, during his oration on the 6 March, insisted that ‘an independence of Great Britain is not our aim’. Nonsense, thought Lieutenant Williams of the 23rd, an educated young officer with a lively interest in history who had toured Europe and painted well with watercolours in quieter moments. He believed the very origins of the Massachusetts colony, as a haven for religious zealots who had disturbed the peace of England in the seventeenth century, meant that ‘these people have not in the least deviated from the steps of their ancestors, always grumbling and unwilling to acknowledge the authority of any power but what originated among them. They certainly have long looked forward to the day of independency.’
One thing, though, could be divined clearly from Dr Warren’s words or those of his foes in British uniform. Violent language and vigorous debate would define the coming conflict because the protagonists were united by a common tongue. It would be a war of words from the outset, one of unending argument between those within each camp as
well as continuous attempts to convince those who tried to take a middle way.
In March 1775 Gage’s view about dealing with the increasing verbal violence of the King’s foes prevailed. The commander-in-chief pursued a policy of trying to persuade the colonists even as some prepared for armed rebellion. Earl Percy and many other officers felt that Gage’s approach simply emboldened the Americans to go further. Both sides struggled to convince the uncommitted by appearing righteous. Even a lowly, if shrewd, officer like Lieutenant Mackenzie had understood the importance of not striking the first blow on that Sunday at the Meeting House.
Many of the King’s men believed that the colonists, like Sam Adams on 6 March, would walk away from a fight if it was offered to them. Surely the martial prowess of the British army would still have the power to intimidate?
If the officers of the 23rd were uneasy about the coming fight, what about the other ranks? Most days the Fusiliers could be seen marching about the cobbled streets, returning from some work detail or going out to the quays to practise shooting at floating casks.
The Fusiliers defied easy generalisations. Few were Welsh, despite the regiment’s title, which derived from the patronage of the Prince of Wales. The bulk, something like three-quarters, were English and half of them were in their twenties. Although largely illiterate, with many labourers skimmed from the land, there were a good many who had formerly had trades. A small number, indeed, were highly intelligent men capable of scaling the ranks to become serjeant major or even follow the example of Richard Baily, a former ranker who served as a lieutenant in their regiment.
Why had they joined? ‘My chief intention’, wrote one soldier, ‘being to travel and traverse the seas occasioned my inlisting.’ Sometimes, a row or debt triggered the decision to join. One seventeen-year-old who later matured into a serjeant in the 23rd lost money gambling with dissolute friends and ‘afraid to return and tell my father of my indiscretions … I shrank from my best hope, parental admonition, and formed the resolution of entering for a soldier.’ Men who joined on impulse or when cornered drunk by the recruiting party at a tavern often bitterly regretted their decision. When put on transports for America, some tried to escape or even leapt to their deaths in the sea,
a shocking sight that, thankfully, had not afflicted the 23rd when it left Plymouth in 1773.
Scores of new recruits had been thrown into the ranks prior to the regiment’s sailing to America. The rank and file were certainly a more callow bunch than the officers. Fewer than one quarter of them had served long enough to be ‘Minden men’.