History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, Vol. 1. Duncan Francis
the end for Port Royal was approaching, an end which was to mean defeat, but was to ensure a lasting peace. In 1709, news reached the Governor of an intended attack on a large scale in the ensuing spring by the English; and as his garrison had recently been much reduced by disease, he wrote, strongly urging its reinforcement either from France, or from the French post at Placentia, in Newfoundland. Apparently, his request was not complied with; and after a gallant, and almost heroic resistance, Port Royal capitulated in the following year to the expeditionary forces under the command of Colonel Nicholson, comprising regular troops from England, militia from New York, and a strong train of Artillery, – the whole being supported by a powerful fleet. On the 2nd October, 1710, the capitulation was signed; and, out of compliment to the Queen, the name of the village was changed to Annapolis.
A fortnight after the expedition left England for New York and Boston, en route to Port Royal, a Royal Warrant was issued establishing a Train of Artillery to garrison Annapolis. It will thus be seen that so confident was the English Government of the success of the expedition, that the new name for Port Royal had already been fixed, and arrangements made for a permanent garrison. The acquisition of Newfoundland followed; the French garrison of Placentia were allowed with many of the inhabitants to go to the Island of Cape Breton, where they fortified a place which will occupy a prominent part in this volume, Louisbourg; and the year 1713 saw, by the Treaty of Utrecht, Acadia or Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland formally surrendered to the English.
The train of Artillery formed to garrison Annapolis, and its adjunct ordered three years later for Placentia, were two of the permanent trains used as arguments in 1716 for establishing a fixed Artillery Regiment which could feed these foreign garrisons – arguments which in that year brought into existence the Royal Regiment of Artillery.
The Artillery garrison ordered for Annapolis in 1710, comprised a captain, a lieutenant, a surgeon, 4 non-commissioned officers, 11 gunners, 40 matrosses, an engineer, a storekeeper, 3 bombardiers, and 2 armourers.
That for Placentia was smaller and differently constituted. It consisted of an engineer, a master-gunner, 20 gunners, a mason, a smith, a carpenter, and an armourer.
The cost of the Annapolis train was 1964l. 18s. 4d. per annum: that of the Placentia train was 1259l. 5s. After the Regiment was created, these two trains or garrisons were generally furnished by the same company, and mutually met each other's deficiencies or demands. For many years, these places appeared in the Ordnance estimates, not merely as items in the expense of maintaining the Artillery and Engineers, but also as requiring considerable sums for fortifications. Occasionally the number of men was reduced, as in 1725, when at Placentia there were only 1 lieutenant and 8 gunners; and at Annapolis, 1 lieutenant, 2 bombardiers, 4 gunners, and 7 matrosses. But the amount spent on the fortifications remained for years very considerable. Up to the year 1759, the average spent on this item annually at the two places was 3000l. and 1000l.; but in 1747 and 1748, evidently exceptional years, the expenditure rose to 10,000l. and 6000l. respectively. In 1759, a large sum appears to have been spent in transporting to Nova Scotia the guns and stores taken from the French at Louisbourg. After 1759, Annapolis gradually dwindles down as a military station, being dwarfed by Halifax, whose Artillery expenses in that year alone amounted to nearly 40,000l.
For a century longer, Annapolis retained the special distinction of giving the title of Governor, with a considerable income, to the officer commanding the troops in the maritime provinces of British North America. But its martial glory has now altogether faded; gradually diminishing in numbers, its garrison at length consisted of the solitary barrack sergeant, who is the "last man" of every military epic; and now even he has departed. The old Fort is a ruin, the barracks crumbling and unsightly; but, in spite of the pain one feels at first witnessing this modern indifference to ancient story, – this forgetfulness of the memories which in stately procession troop through the student's mind, – this feeling is soon obliterated as one turns to gaze on happy homesteads and blooming gardens, and on contented faces which meet one at every turn as one wanders over the fertile country, away even to that "Bloody Creek," where, in one of their many engagements, some thirty Englishmen met a cruel death, by an unexpected attack made by some Indians.
Where are the Indians now? A few drunken, demoralized creatures hang about some of the towns; two or three only have retained their love and instinct for the chase; and before many years shall have passed away, Acadia shall know the Mic-mac no more!
CHAPTER VII.
The Birth of the Regiment
The hour had come, – and the man! The Duke of Marlborough was again at the head of the Ordnance, and was both capable himself of detecting the faults of the existing system, and of critically comprehending any suggestions for its improvement which the Board might lay before him.
Never had the old system so completely broken down as during the rebellion in Scotland in 1715. The best practical Artilleryman in the pay of the Ordnance had been sent in command of the train – Albert Borgard; but two years' rust since the peace of Utrecht had so tarnished any brightness which Artillery details in England had gained in the friction of the preceding campaigns, that Borgard's task was a hopeless one. Suspicions have been cast upon the loyalty of the Duke of Argyle, who commanded the King's forces in Scotland, and certainly, at first sight, his contradictory orders to the Artillery excite astonishment. But it is more probable that the key to his management of this arm lay in the impossible task of creating order out of what Borgard himself described as "such confusion as cannot be expressed." In the month of December, the train was ordered to Scotland; it was February before they anchored in the Firth of Forth. The first orders received by Borgard from Argyle, were to send his ships and guns away to Innerkithen, and march his officers and "artillery people" to Stirling. On arriving there, he was ordered to take command of a very confused train of field-pieces, which had been ordered up from the Castle of Edinburgh. Part of this train he succeeded in getting as far as Dundee, where orders were sent him to take the whole back again to Edinburgh by water. In the following March, his enforced idleness was brought to an end by orders he received to send back his vessels with the guns, which had never been unshipped, to London. He and his men were then to be available for other service.
Such a gross case of inability to furnish, within any reasonable time, Artillery for service in the field, followed by such uselessness and confusion, could not be overlooked, nor allowed to pass without an effort at improvement for the future. Public admission of defects in a Department cannot be expected; and when consciousness of their existence is present in the minds of the officials, their manner is to suggest a remedy, but to evolve the evil, which the remedy is to cure, either from other sources, or from their own imaginations. The student, who turns from the ghastly tale of incompetence and blundering in 1715, to see what steps the Ordnance Board took to prevent its recurrence, need not, therefore, be surprised to find a very slight allusion to their own blunders, and a gushing catalogue of the benefits which will result from the adoption of their new suggestions. In fact, in their letter of 10th January, 1716, to the Master-General, the members of the Board use language of virtuous and indignant protest; and instead of alluding to the recent failures, they talk of the hardships which the existing system had wrought upon their office. It is, perhaps, ungracious to criticise too closely the language used when suggesting a really important and valuable innovation; but when we find the foreign establishments of Annapolis and Placentia, of Gibraltar and Port Mahon, quoted as the arguments in chief for a change, which would probably never have been suggested but for the conspicuous failure of the preceding year, the temptation is irresistible to draw the mask from the face of complacent officialism.
Summing the case up in a few words, it may be said that the annual cost of that part of the military branch of the office of the Ordnance which the Board proposed gradually to abolish at this time, including the foreign establishments at the places above mentioned, amounted to 16,829l. The Regimental establishment, which it was now proposed to substitute by degrees, consisting of four companies with an adequate staff, would, on the Board's calculation, cost only 15,539l.
The main reduction was to be obtained by allowing the North Britain establishment, which cost annually 1200l., gradually to become extinct, the duties to be performed by the new companies. The