Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket. Richard Holmes
purlieus, or its decay…’28 If Russell was subjective he was certainly not inventive: he told the truth. A medical officer also described the appalling conditions for the wounded, this time recalling the hospital at Varna.
No words can describe the state of the rooms when they were handed over for the use of the sick; indeed, they continued long after, from the utter inability to procure labour, rather to be fitted for the reception of cattle, than sick men. Myriads of rats disputed the possession of these dreadful dens, fleas were in such numbers that the sappers employed on fatigue refused to work in the almost vain attempt to clean them…29
In 1854, in response to the outcry inspired by Russell’s articles, the government appointed a specific Secretary of State for War, the Duke of Newcastle. Newcastle’s successor, Lord Panmure, combined the offices of Secretary of State for War and Secretary at War, paving the way for substantial reform. The Board of Ordnance was abolished and its military functions transferred to the commander-in-chief. Its civil functions went to the Secretary of State for War, whose War Department was now responsible for the whole of army administration, including the Commissariat and Medical departments. This reforming zeal soon lost its impetus, and in many areas it did not go far enough. But as far as the army’s central administration was concerned, it had ended the worst abuses of the system that had prevailed throughout the age of horse and musket.
The paymaster general survived. Originally a subordinate official, he was primarily responsible for issuing money to regiments to pay the officers and men held on their strength. It had once been easy for commanding officers to maintain fictitious soldiers on their regiment’s rolls by inventing spurious recruits known as ‘widow’s men’ or by failing to report deaths, and in the early eighteenth century muster-rolls were approved by the commissary-general of the musters before being passed to the paymaster general for payment. These abuses had become rare by the mid-eighteenth century, but they undoubtedly continued. On 27 July 1778 John Peebles complained: ‘I signed for an effective drummer that I know nothing about, the Col. caused him to be inserted.’30 Just as the Secretary at War evolved from official to politician, so too did the paymaster general, and by the time of the American War he was a member of parliament who assisted the Secretary at War in drawing up the army estimates and shared his responsibility for the yearly parliamentary approval of accounts.
Yet if the paymaster general was eager to stamp out financial irregularities within the army, he was often able to reap the considerable rewards of his own office. Fees could be charged for making payments, and, as a parliamentary commission reported in 1781, the fact that the Treasury gave the paymaster general his money in bulk, often without scrutinising his demands, enabled him to make enormous sums on the interest. The paymaster general was able to continue to use the money after leaving office until his accounts were finally passed. Henry Fox resigned in 1765 but his accounts had still not been audited in 1780, enabling him to draw an income of £25,000 a year on the paymaster general’s money.
The commander-in-chief was assisted by three senior officers. The adjutant general was responsible for personnel and the quartermaster general for the quartering and movement of troops. The military secretary, a civilian under Amherst, a field officer under the Duke of York and a general by the close of the period, initially dealt with the commander-in-chief’s correspondence, but his routine involvement with patronage meant that he assumed responsibility for officers’ careers. Lord FitzRoy Somerset, the future Lord Raglan, held the post from 1827 to 1852. He dealt with about fifty letters a day, on matters so varied as Major Champain’s claims to be ‘second lieutenant colonel’ of the 9th Regiment, a plea (sadly unsuccessful) from Lieutenant W. I. B. Webb’s mother for his reinstatement following cashiering for fraud; and the application (rather more fruitful) by ‘a poor officer’ of the 43rd for a post for his boy, ‘a junior clerk in a public office’.31 Although Somerset was affable and engaging, his was not an easy job, and his office was the scene of many a painful interview. Interestingly, when in 1837 Lieutenant General Sir Latimer Widdrington, who had failed to obtain the colonelcy of a regiment, protested to the Secretary at War that the military secretary and commander-in-chief had not treated him fairly, the Secretary at War replied that army patronage remained a matter for the commander-in-chief.
There was, though, one area where the commander-in-chief held no sway. The master-general of the ordnance commanded the ordnance corps – officers and NCOs of the Royal Artillery, officers of the Royal Engineers and other ranks of the Royal Sappers and Miners – whose personnel were financed by a parliamentary vote distinct from that of the army of a whole, and whose separateness was emphasised by its blue uniforms. The corps maintained its own medical department, paymaster-general and transport service. The civil side of the ordnance department supplied weapons and much equipment to army and navy alike, was responsible for defence works, barracks and military prisons, supervised the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, the Royal Laboratory and the Royal Carriage Works, and was charged (hence the Ordnance Survey) with military mapping.
The master general, generally a peer and a professional soldier, sometimes chaired the Board of Ordnance which met three times a week in summer and once in winter, in the ordnance office in Westminster, and later in Pall Mall. The Board of Ordnance – whose ambiguous initials BO were stencilled on a variety of equipment – responded to instructions issued by the king, privy council or one of the secretaries of state. The master-general often sat in the cabinet, providing the government with military advice. The board was jealous of its authority and notoriously ‘obnoxious and obstructive’. It once took three years for the Board to organise transport to England for a company of artillery in the Bahamas. In the interim, knowing that the unit would be coming home, the Board thoughtfully provided it with no new clothing. Its dead hand lay even on matters as minor as fences at Woolwich.
A fence happened to require repairs in front of the barracks, and its dangerous state was repeatedly pointed out by the Commandant. But not until years had passed and an officer had killed his horse, and broken his own collarbone, did any steps occur to the Board to remedy it. Even then, while they were brooding, accidents continued, coming to a climax one night when the Chaplain in walking home fell in and broke the principal ligament of his leg…32
Supply and transport were primarily the responsibility of the Treasury, and were in the hands of its officials, civilians holding appointments in the Commissariat, described by Wellington as ‘gentlemen appointed to their office by the king’s authority, although not holding his commission’. No qualifications were required of commissaries till 1810, and only in 1812 was an examination in English and arithmetic required. Although they were eventually uniformed, in sober blue, for many years they wore what suited them. Quasi-uniforms were popular, and one Peninsula commissary was unkindly described as wearing ‘an hermaphrodite scarlet coat’. Some were admirable: Assistant Commissary Brooke was killed at Talavera leading an ammunition convoy to the front line, and Assistant Commissary Dalton was to win a Victoria Cross at Rorke’s Drift in Zululand in 1879. Others were incompetent: Wellington complained that his commissariat was lamentable because ‘the people who manage it are incapable of managing anything outside a counting house’. And many were dishonest. Deputy Assistant Commissary General Thomas Jolly was court-martialled (officials of the commissariat were subject to military law when on active service) and cashiered for embezzlement in Spain in 1814. In Dominica in 1796 Commissary General Valentine Jones was estimated to have made £9,789 17s 6d on a single fraudulent transaction. It required great honesty to resist the temptation offered to commissaries. Havilland Le Mesurier, a West India merchant ruined by the collapse of his trade in the French Revolutionary War, gained a commissary’s post through his friendship with Pitt and was sent to establish a provision magazine at Bruges in 1793. He told his wife:
I am obliged to fight venality and corruption through all ranks, and overcome my feelings every day by turning out men who have large families and who have been negligent or corrupt in their duty. To convince thee, my love, of the necessity for this rigorous discipline, I need only say