Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket. Richard Holmes
in the KGL than in a British unit It was reduced in size after the peace of 1814, as many non-Hanoverians were discharged in preparation for the return of the whole corps to Hanover, where it was to form the nucleus of the new Hanoverian army. However, Waterloo intervened, and the KGL fought there with distinction, with the defence of the farm complex of La Haye Sainte by Major George Baring’s 2nd Light Battalion KGL adding fresh laurels to an already distinguished reputation. The KGL was disbanded after the Napoleonic Wars, though many of its officers and men went home to serve in the Hanoverian army while a few transferred to other British units.
The KGL was held in wide respect. On the battlefield its performance was undoubtedly in the first rank. In 1812, at Garcia Hernandez, near Salamanca, KGL cavalry broke a French battalion in square, drawn up on ground well-suited to infantry, without the assistance of other arms, one of the few recorded examples of such an achievement. Afterwards Sergeant Edward Costello of the 95th Rifles watched the Germans ride past with their prisoners and testified that their courage was matched by magnanimity.57
I never before saw such severe-looking sabre cuts as many of them [the prisoners] had received; several with both eyes cut out, and numbers had lost both ears…The escort consisted chiefly of the Germans that had taken them prisoners, and it was pleasing to behold these gallant fellows, in the true spirit of glory, paying the greatest attention to the wants of the wounded.
Off the battlefield, KGL cavalry was renowned for its outpost work. The KGL dragoons developed a warm relationship with the Light Division – which they called the ‘Lighty Division’ – and it was axiomatic that, while a British dragoon might hurtle through camp without occasioning comment, if a German galloped up men stood to their arms and looked to their priming, because it was bound to be a serious matter.
Edmund Wheatley was commissioned into the 5th Line Battalion KGL in 1813, although he came from nowhere more Hanoverian than Hammersmith. He thought that:
The Germans bear excessive fatigues wonderfully well, and a German will march over six leagues [18 miles] while an Englishman pants and perspires beneath the labour of twelve miles; but before the enemy a German moves on silently but mechanically, whilst an Englishman is all sarcasm, laughter and indifference.
He felt, however, that relations between officers and men were not as good as in the British army, partly because: ‘The officers do not hesitate to accompany a reproof with a blow and I cannot imagine any man in so dejected a situation as to bear patiently corporal chastisement.’58
Yet there could be no doubting these officers’ personal bravery. At Waterloo, Wheatley’s commanding officer, Colonel Baron Ompteda, was given a suicidal order by the Prince of Orange. He told his second in command to ‘try and save my two nephews’, who were serving with him, and led his battalion in a gallant but impossible charge against French infantry in the garden of La Haye Sainte, the farm complex in Wellington’s centre. His action was so brave that French officers struck up their men’s muskets with their swords to prevent them from shooting him. But he jumped his horse over the garden hedge and laid about him: ‘I clearly saw his sword strike the shakoes off,’ remembered Captain Charles Berger. Wheatley was knocked out in the hand-to-hand fighting: ‘I looked up and found myself, bareheaded in a clay ditch with a violent headache. Close by me lay Colonel Ompteda on his back, his head stretched back with his mouth open, and a hole in his throat.’59
KGL cavalry were skilled horsemasters. In the Peninsular War Lieutenant George Gleig of the 85th Regiment watched a party of cavalry ride past:
consisting of the 12th and 16th Light Dragoons, and two regiments of heavy Germans; nor could we help remarking that though the 12th and 16th Dragoons are both of them distinguished corps, the horses of the foreigners were, nevertheless, in far better order than those of our countrymen. The fact, I believe, is that an Englishman…never acquires that attachment for his horse which a German trooper experiences. The latter dreams not, under any circumstances, of attending to his own comfort till after he has provided for the comfort of his steed. He will frequently sleep beside it through choice, and the noble animal seldom fails to return the affection of his master, whose voice he knows, and whom he will generally follow like a dog.60
Captain Cavalié Mercer of the Royal Horse Artillery agreed, writing of the Waterloo campaign that:
Affection for, and care of, his horse, is the trait, par excellence, which distinguishes the German dragoon from the English. The former would sell everything to feed his horse; the latter would sell his horse itself for spirits, or the means of obtaining them.61
It was entirely typical of the period that during the fighting in Spain the KGL sometimes found itself fighting Germans serving in units of Napoleon’s ally, the Confederation of the Rhine. On one occasion a member of the KGL was shocked to discover ‘mine own broder’ among the enemy dead. And as Napoleon’s star fell, some German princelings ordered their men to change sides: in December 1813 Colonel August von Kruse, acting on secret instructions from his sovereign, took his 2nd Nassau Infantry Regiment into the British lines and announced his change of allegiance.62
But for all the foreign corps, good, bad and indifferent, the redcoated heart of the army was British. At the time of the American War of Independence, 60 per cent of its rank and file were English, 24 per cent Scottish and 16 per cent Irish. Officers were more evenly distributed, with 42 per cent English, 27 per cent Scottish and 31 per cent Irish.63 In this context the description English subsumes Welsh as well, and from the early eighteenth century the 23rd Regiment proudly styled itself Royal Welsh Fusiliers (the spelling was letter changed to the distinctive Welch). However, in March 1807 only 146 of its 991 NCOs and men actually hailed from Wales. This did not prevent the regiment from celebrating St David’s Day in style, and having a regimental goat traditionally ridden into the officers’ mess at the climax of the St David’s Day dinner by the smallest of the drummers. Thomas Henry Browne, commissioned into the 23rd in 1805, fought in the Peninsula first as a regimental officer and then on the staff, and died a general in 1855. On 1 March 1808 he celebrated St David’s Day at sea on his way to Canada ‘in the best manner our situation would permit’. He observed that normally each officer was required to eat a leek:
The older Officers in the regiment, and those who have seen service with it in the field, are favoured only with a small one, and salt. Those who have before celebrated a St David’s day with the regiment, but have only seen garrison duty with it, are required to eat a larger one, without salt, and those unfortunates, who for the first time, have sat in Mess, on this their Saint’s day, have presented to them the largest leek that can be procured, and unless sickness prevents it, no respite is given, until the last tip of its green leaf is enclosed in the unwilling mouth; and day after day passes before the smell and taste is fairly got rid of…We could not of course, on board our little ship, render all the honours due to the day, but we had every thing dressed in Onions, and drank an extra glass of grog on the occasion.64
As far as the Royal Artillery was concerned, over the period 1741–1815 it was only during 1776–79 that a bare majority of artillery recruits came from England. Both before and after this more came from Ireland: 42 per cent in 1795–1810, for instance, at a time when another 21 per cent was Scottish.65 The high percentage of Irish recruits is surprising when one considers that between 1763 and 1801 there was a separate corps in existence, the Royal Irish Artillery, in which Englishmen were not allowed to enlist. The worsening economic situation in Ireland increased the proportion of Irish recruits towards the end of our period: in 1830 42.2 per cent of the army was Irish and 13.6 per cent Scots. This meant that not only were the fifteen infantry regiments which actually bore Irish affiliations composed largely of Irishmen, but several ‘English’ regiments