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| Napoleon Bonaparte |
An earlier French invasion of Ireland was said to
have been thwarted in 1796, when atrocious weather conditions were thought to
have scattered a large French fleet that had tried to land troops in Ireland,
during which many thousands of French soldiers and sailors were said to have
drowned, when their vessels were wrecked or simply inundated by the heavy seas.
As has been previously noted in the chapter relating to Ireland’s long history,
the British authorities there were thought to have been well aware of the
intentions of the United Irishmen and were generally well prepared to deal with
any sort of rebellion that might occur. However, it was only some two months
after the bloody uprising began that French troops were finally despatched to
Ireland, with an estimated one thousand soldiers, under the command of General
Humbert, landing at Kilcimmin in County Mayo, where they met a five thousand
strong rebel force on the 22nd August 1798. Unfortunately, even
though this mixed force was said to have enjoyed limited initial success
against the British and Loyalist forces that stood against them, within three
weeks the rebel army was said to have been met and defeated by an extremely
large British force commanded by Lord Cornwallis, the same military leader who
had previously surrendered Yorktown in America.
Although most of the French troops who were
captured, were subsequently returned to France, many of the Irish born rebels
were not so fortunate, with many of their leaders being hunted down and
executed for their part in the rebellion, with a few others managing to avoid
capture and continue to oppose British rule in Ireland for the remainder of
their lives. It was also said to have been the same year that Britain and Austria
began to raise a new European military alliance to confront France, the
previous military coalition having collapsed, although from a British
perspective her most active campaigns against the French continued to be fought
at sea, with few land troops being committed to the cause until 1801, when
British and Ottoman troops were used to force the French out of Egypt. However,
by 1802 and with both Britain and France both becoming exhausted by the ongoing
dispute, the new First Consul of France, Napoleon Bonaparte was reported to
have begun negotiations with the British government that ultimately resulted in
the Treaty of Amiens being signed by both sides in 1802.
Even though both parties were thought to have
regarded the Treaty of Amiens as a temporary arrangement, one that might allow
them to reorganise and reinforce their individual armed forces, between 1802
and 1804 soldiers of the British East India Company were said to have continued
to undermine French interests on the Indian subcontinent, largely through the
military suppression of those native tribesmen that were regarded as being
favourable to France and its new national leader, Napoleon Bonaparte. It was
said to be during this period that Major General Arthur Wellesley, later the
Duke of Wellington, first began to fashion the military career that would
eventually bring him to national prominence in England.
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| Duke of Wellington |
Representing the first significant involvement of
British land troops in fighting the French forces of Napoleon Bonaparte, the
Peninsula War was said to have begun in 1807, when French troops were reported
to have crossed into Spain, on their way to suppress Portugal, which as one of
the two remaining neutral European nations of the time, had refused to adopt
Napoleon’s clearly stated trade sanctions on British goods. Although in the
first instance, the Spanish authorities had made no objections to the French
invasion of Portugal, largely because they expected to benefit from the
occupation, when elite French troops were subsequently sent into Spain, with
orders to seize a number of the country’s most important fortresses, it quickly
became apparent to the Spanish leadership that Napoleon intended to occupy the
entire Iberian peninsula, not just Portugal.
With the Spanish monarchy almost immediately put
under threat by French intrigues, which ended with Napoleon’s older brother,
Joseph Bonaparte, taking the Spanish throne, most of the Spanish army was said
to have been left leaderless and generally scattered, preventing it from
offering any sort of meaningful resistance to the highly efficient and
professional French troops that were taking control of their country. Although
some Spanish troops and local guerrillas were able to resist the French
occupiers, for the most part, these full-time forces were said to have been
fairly widespread; and so it was left to the large urban populations to
demonstrate Spanish resistance to the invasion of their country, instances
which were often suppressed in the most brutal fashion. Eventually though, some
form of command and control began to be organised between the scattered Spanish
forces, resulting in a much more structured resistance movement to develop,
which saw regional and provincial Spanish units, publicly declare war against
Napoleon and his occupying armies.
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| Admiral Lord Nelson |
Initially under the command of Lieutenant-General
Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, British troops, along with
their Portuguese allies, were reported to have halted French advances in large
parts of the country, although their destruction was said to have been
prevented when Wellesley was replaced as British commander by a much less
determined officer, who allowed the French forces to withdraw from Portugal
without them suffering significant loss. In neighbouring Spain, local Spanish
forces were also reported to have made significant gains over the French, to
the extent that Napoleon himself was said to have become increasingly concerned
over the fate of the country, forcing him to return there to take personal
command of his armies in order to secure the country once and for all. In part,
the French leader was said to have been aided by problems within the Spaniard’s
own ranks, with social divisions beginning to appear amongst the various
Spanish forces and logistical problems besetting the British army based in
Portugal, all of which allowed Napoleon to secure much of Spain and its main
cities by the end of 1808.
At the same time that an estimated two hundred and
fifty thousand French troops were suppressing Spain, in neighbouring Portugal,
the new British commander, General Sir John Moore, was said to have been making
preparations for bringing his relatively small British army, of around
thirty-odd thousand men across the shared border into Northwest Spain.
Ostensibly a move to try and save the surviving Spanish nationalist forces, by
distracting the larger French army with the British incursion, ultimately the
strategy proved to be a failure, as not only was Moore forced to withdraw to
the Spanish coast, where his army had to rescued by the Royal Navy, but the
Spanish forces he had tried to save were subsequently destroyed anyway, making
the thousands of British casualties an extraordinary and unnecessary sacrifice
in the overall scheme of things.
However, the actions of Moore’s forces, those of
his Spanish allies and the resistance of the remaining Spanish cities which had
refused to surrender to Napoleon were all thought to have bought valuable time
for the Portuguese army and the other British troops that were busily preparing
themselves for the inevitable French assault on Portugal. While Napoleon’s army
had been crushing all opposition in Spain, Portugal’s armed forces were said to
have been completely restructured by a cadre of British officers, who had not
only rebuilt a regular army of some twenty thousand men, but also raised and
trained various local militias numbering a further thirty-odd thousand
soldiers, which would help to confront the seasoned French army that would
almost inevitably be sent against them. In March 1809, the first of Napoleon’s
forces were reported to have crossed the frontier, intent on re-establishing
French control over Portugal, but were said to have met with stiff resistance
from the Portuguese defenders who were able to prevent the French troops from
extending their influence much beyond the north of the country.
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| General Sir John Moore |
During the 24 hours that De la Cuesta had delayed
his troops, the French army of Marshall Victor, was said to have not only been
reinforced by other military units, but had also been allowed time to re-deploy
his forces so that they could more easily attack the British and Spanish
flanks. Initially the allied forces were reported to have come under sustained
pressure from the highly experienced French troops, although towards the end of
the first day, the equally disciplined British force was said to have
re-established its control over its area of the battlefield, forcing the enemy
to retire to its previous position. However, at the beginning of the second
day’s fighting, Napoleon’s troops once again attacked the allied positions, but
were finally repulsed when British infantrymen moved forward to carry out a
bayonet charge against the advancing French soldiers, causing their lines to
break and their men to retire.
With their soldiers repulsed, the French
commander’s were said to have employed cannon to try and reduce the allied
ranks, a bombardment that was said to have lasted from noon right through to
the early evening and into the night, when the French made one final attempt to
take the British and Spanish positions using their ground troops, an assault
that was once again repulsed by the allies. During the later part of the
evening, both sides were thought to have used their field guns to try and
reduce each others armies, although by the following morning it quickly became
evident to both Wellesley and De la Cuesta that the French cannon fire had
actually been a ruse, to allow their main body of troops to retire, leaving
only artillery units and wounded soldiers in the field, who were subsequently
taken prisoner by the allied forces.
During the Battle of Talavera, Wellesley’s British
forces were reported to have suffered significant losses with anything up to
25% of his soldiers, some five thousand men, being killed or wounded by the
French opposition, who were themselves said to have lost over seven thousand
troops. As it turned out, a fast moving column of British Light Infantry,
numbering some three thousand men, had been sent to reinforce Wellesley’s
command and having famously marched some forty miles in just over twenty four hours,
they were able to replace some of the losses that the British forces had
suffered at the Battle of Talavera.
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| Marshall Michel Ney |
Although Wellesley and his British troops were
thought to have continued campaigning in Spain for several months after the
battle at Talavera, the relationship between the two sides was said to grown
increasingly tense, often because Spanish commanders failed to deliver the
military and logistical support that they had promised to the British. It was
said to be because of these problems, the shortage of supplies and continuing
pressures from the large French armies that eventually forced Wellesley decided
to withdraw his troops back to Portugal in the closing months of 1809, in order
that they might be rejuvenate themselves for the spring campaigns of the
following year.
Fearing that the French might attempt yet another
invasion of Portugal, Anglo-Portuguese commanders were reported to have begun
the construction of a highly fortified defensive position, the Lines of Torres
Vedras, which was composed of a series of blockhouses, redoubts and trenches,
designed to repulse any sort of large scale enemy incursions. In July of 1810,
the French duly fulfilled the allied expectations by crossing the border into
Portugal, where they were said to have achieved some notable gains during the
first months of their campaign, although by October their advance was
permanently stopped at the Lines of Torres Vedras, which had only just been
completed. With the French forces contained, the Anglo-Portuguese armies were
said to have been substantially strengthened by the arrival of fresh regular
troops from Britain, allowing the allies to begin their own successful
offensive against the French, which resulted in Napoleon’s forces being pushed
back into Spain by May 1811.
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| Marshall Wm Beresford |
Because the French army of Marshall Marmont was
substantially larger than those at Wellesley’s disposal, initially the
Anglo-Portuguese army was reported to have been forced to withdraw, with their
enemy following behind, waiting for their chance to strike at the allied
forces. Fortunately for Wellesley though, the left flank of Marshall Marmont’s
forces was said to have become detached from the main body of his army,
offering the allied cavalry an opportunity to deliver a devastating blow to
these isolated French troops, which resulted in Marmont's left wing being
completely routed, at the same time that the French commander and his immediate
subordinate were both wounded by flying shrapnel. Although the French army’s
third in command, Bertrand Clausel, was said to have ordered an immediate
counterattack to the allied advance, Wellesley too was reported to have sent
reinforcements forward, which helped to repulse the French assault and forced
Clausel’s troops to retire.
Fought on the 22nd July 1812, the bitter
and bloody engagement that is often referred to as the Battle of Salamanca, was
reported to have cost the British some three thousand casualties, the
Portuguese an estimated two thousand men, whilst the French losses were thought
to have numbered around thirteen thousand troops, seven thousand of which were
simply taken prisoner, rather than being killed or wounded during the military
action. With much of their left wing annihilated, the main French force, under
the nominal command of General Bertrand Clausel, was said to have withdrawn,
being closely followed by Wellesley and his Portuguese allies, who were said to
have temporarily liberated the city of Madrid, as a direct result of their
victory, but were later forced to withdraw to Portugal once the French army had
been reformed and reinforced by its commanders.
Although the allied victory at Salamanca had gained
them little in terms of actual territory, the continuing see-sawing of the war
was said to have compelled the French leadership in Spain, to not only
reorganise their forces, but also to withdraw troops from less important
regions, such as Andalucia and Asurias, effectively handing them back to local
Spanish control. However, the most inexplicable French decision taken during
1812, was that of the Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, who committed the fatal
mistake of not only forcing his armies to fight on two separate fronts, but
also denuded the ranks of his army in Spain by an estimated thirty thousand
highly experienced soldiers, who were subsequently sent to reinforce his
ill-fated Russian adventure, a mistake that would be repeated some hundred and
thirty years later by another European dictator, one Adolph Hitler. With the
French army in Spain catastrophically weakened by the loss of these highly
seasoned troops, Britain and her Iberian allies were reported to have
re-doubled their efforts in Spain during 1813, slowly but surely pushing the
retreating French forces towards the Pyrenees, scoring a series of spectacular
military victories over the ever reducing ranks of Joseph Bonaparte’s army of
occupation.
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| Empress Josephine |
As the Peninsular War came to an end and both Spain
and Portugal looked forward to rebuilding their countries after the conflict,
so the battle against Napoleonic France moved into central Europe, where a
growing coalition of leading powers and subject states began to work together
to bring an end to Bonaparte’s vast European empire. Although the French
Emperor still had an estimated six hundred thousand troops under his nominal command,
in reality only about a quarter of a million men were under his direct control,
a number that was said to have been reduced each and every time that they
fought against a coalition of western nations that between them could often
muster several times that number. Despite these odd however, Bonaparte’s sheer
military brilliance and daring was thought to have turned a large number of
military engagements from a likely French defeat to an inevitable French
victory, often to the complete exasperation of those allied commanders who
believed that they were on the brink of defeating Napoleon on several
occasions, only to see events turned around by the strategy of the French
commander.
Throughout much of 1813, a number of pivotal
battles were fought which resulted in the French gaining either a tactical and
strategic advantage over their allied adversaries, many of which were
subsequently wasted by the limited abilities of Napoleon’s own commanders, who
failed to capitalise on the gains that their leader had given them. As a
consequence, over the period of the year, rather than managing to hold the
territories, which had cost the lives of so many French soldiers, Napoleon’s
armies were forced further and further back towards Paris, where on the 30th
March 1814 allied troops finally managed to enter the city to demand the
surrender of the French leader. The following month Napoleon was forced to
abdicate his throne, before being exiled to the island of Elba, after which the
coalition helped to restore the Bourbon heir Louis XVI to the throne of France,
before sitting down to initiate the Congress of Vienna and to redraw the map of
Western Europe.
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| Gebhardt Von Blucher |
For their part, Europe’s leading nations were
thought to have gathered an estimated three quarters of a million men in the
first instance, with the intention of increasing that number to well over one
million men under arms, as the campaign progressed. The first major engagement,
between the allies and the revived Napoleonic army was said to have taken place
in June 1815, when Bonaparte himself was said to have taken his ninety thousand
strong Northern Army to the Belgium border, with the intention of launching a
pre-emptive assault against the allied forces, which he assumed would still be
organising themselves in readiness for their own advance into France. As it
happened, the coalition forces were still scattered, giving Napoleon the
opportunity to engage the Prussian army first, before he turned his attention
to meeting the Anglo-Dutch army commanded by Arthur Wellesley.
Taking the main body of his army into battle
against the Prussian army, commanded by Gebhardt von Blucher, Bonaparte ordered
one of his most trusted lieutenants, Marshall Michel Ney, to detach his troops
from the left flank of the Northern Army, in order to prevent Wellesley and his
Anglo-Dutch forces from coming to Blucher’s aid. Although Ney was said to have
failed to prevent the Anglo-Dutch troops from advancing, when Bonaparte routed
the Prussians at Ligny on the 16th June 1815, Wellesley was thought
to have had little choice but to withdraw his troops, retiring them to a
defensive position that he had previously identified, just outside the small Belgium
town of Waterloo.
Intent on confronting Wellesley’s force, Bonaparte
was said to have brought his Northern Army reserves to the front, after
ordering another of his subordinates, Marshal Grouchy to detach his forces on
the right wing of the Northern Army and pursue the retreating Prussian troops
of Gebhardt Blucher, a strategic mistake that would ultimately prove to be
catastrophic for the French leader. Without realising it, Blucher’s Prussian
forces had already begun to regroup and were reported to have begun a fairly
leisurely and circuitous route to the town of Waterloo, where Wellesley had
already stationed his Anglo-Dutch army.
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| Coldstream Guards |
Marking a position that would allow its occupants a
clear field of fire against any French advance, the farmhouse and its
surrounding grounds immediately became a strategic target for Bonaparte, who
ordered a brigade of infantry to attack the position, in order that it could be
used as a firing position for French artillery and snipers. However, although
the French troops were said to have advanced through the chateau’s grounds
fairly easily, the heavy artillery and musket fire of the coalition defenders
within the main parts of the house was said to have caused enormous casualties
amongst the French infantry, who still managed to get close enough to the
allied redoubt, to force open the north gate of the defensive compound, leaving
its allied garrison open to further assaults. Fortunately for the British
troops and their coalition partners inside the chateau, although a party of
some thirty to forty French soldiers managed to break through to the central
courtyard of the farmhouse, an allied soldier subsequently managed to secure
the gateway once again, leaving the enemy troops at the mercy of the British
Guards, who were reported to have killed all but one of the trapped French
soldiers in fierce hand to hand fighting.
Although Napoleon’s forces outside of Château d’
Hougoumont continued their assault against the property, the later arrival of
additional British troops, including units of the Coldstream Guards was said to
have finally dispersed the first major French attack, although throughout the
remainder of the day the post continued to come under sustained attack by
Bonaparte’s forces. It was only when it became clear that his troops could not
take the house through the use of infantry alone that Bonaparte finally ordered
the chateau to be bombarded, to help drive the allied troops out of the building
once and for all, even though the attack itself was said to have destroyed most
of the house in the process. According to some historians, both Bonaparte and
Wellesley were thought to have regarded the Chateau d’ Hougoumont as being
pivotal to the outcome of the wider battle, so much so that both commanders
were said to have devoted significant human resources to either holding or
capturing the house. However, for other reporters of the engagement, the
fighting around Hougoumont was almost entirely a distraction which resulted
from Napoleon’s own limited view of the battlefield, which made him believe
that the building was of a far greater strategic value than it actually was,
causing him to waste valuable time and resources in capturing the position.
At the same time that Napoleon’s soldiers were
struggling to overcome the allied defenders at Hougoumont, in the centre of the
battlefield the French leader was unleashing his artillery against the main
body of Wellesley’s allied force that was occupying the Ridgeway, immediately
facing Bonaparte’s own army. Unfortunately for him, the French Emperor’s
decision making was said to have been heavily influenced by his own personal
opinion of Arthur Wellesley, who Bonaparte considered to be a less than adequate
leader, who commanded an allied army that was inferior to his own, a view not
shared by many of his generals, especially those that had first hand knowledge
of facing the British commander in the field.
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| British Lines Waterloo |
With the main part of his force on the reverse
slope of the hill, initially the advancing French infantrymen were able to push
the allied soldiers back, not realising that as they did so, they were walking
towards the coalitions own guns. Having reached a particular point on the
ridge, allied commanders were then reported to have ordered their soldiers to
stand up and unleash a devastating volley of shot against the French infantry,
although this initial fusillade did not stop Napoleon’s troops, who not only
managed to return fire, but continued with their advance up the hill and moved
towards the waiting British troops. However, just as it seemed that the allied
lines would break, British heavy cavalry units were reported to have moved
forward in support of the infantry, driving the French soldiers back down the hill
and continuing their charge along the lines of the still advancing enemy
infantry, until they found themselves confronted by hastily formed defensive
squares, which their horses would not approach. With the British cavalry having
put themselves at risk, by galloping too far ahead of their own lines,
Bonaparte was said to have ordered his own highly experienced and well equipped
Dragoons and Lancers forward to confront the allied horsemen, who were reported
to have suffered heavy losses at the hands of the mounted French troops.
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| French Dragoons |
Charging towards the coalition’s lines with an
estimated five thousand cavalrymen, on seeing their approach allied commanders
simply ordered their troops to form into defensive squares, which provided them
with the sort of protection that was used against enemy cavalry charges. Time
and time again Ney’s horsemen tried to break the allied squares, but without
the support of artillery or infantry they were unable to break through the
almost impenetrable lines of musket ball and bayonets, yet all the time the
numbers of French cavalrymen were reduced by the highly disciplined volleys of
allied gunfire. Seemingly unable to comprehend the futility of his mounted
assault, rather than withdrawing, Ney was reported to have simply ordered even
more cavalry units to sacrifice themselves against the allied square, until at
last the final French cavalry units had wrecked themselves on the coalition
positions. Each and every time Napoleon’s horsemen retired to regroup for yet
another charge against the battle squares, so allied gunners would rush out to
reload their guns and decimate the approaching lines of French horsemen,
wreaking carnage amongst the ranks of horses and riders alike, leaving the
battlefield littered with the dead and dying, in scenes that shocked even the
most hardened professional soldiers. Rather belatedly, French commanders were
said to have arranged for a combined attack by cavalry, infantry and artillery,
which initially proved to be highly effective, causing significant losses
amongst a number of allied regiments, although ultimately the casualties
suffered by the French forces earlier in the battle eventually began to tell on
Napoleon’s limited resources.
By four thirty in the afternoon, the first units of
Field Marshal Blucher’s Prussian forces had begun to arrive in the area,
helping to reinforce the left flank of the allied army and attempting to attack
the rear of Bonaparte’s battle line. With the arrival of these fresh coalition
troops, Napoleon had little choice but to send out more of his own limited
forces to try and neutralise this emerging Prussian threat, beginning yet
another engagement which was centred around the settlement of Plancenoit and
that would involve successive assaults on the town by both sides. However, by
around seven thirty in the evening and having sent some twenty thousand
infantrymen to secure the township, Napoleon determined that this was the
perfect opportunity to launch one last major offensive against Wellesley’s centre,
with the intention of rolling it back and forcing his coalition allies to
withdraw from the battlefield.
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| Napoleon & Guard |
According to some sources, most French troops were
said to have made for Bonaparte’s headquarters which was based around the
village of La Belle Alliance, where the two remaining regiments of Old Guards,
who were the Emperor’s Imperial bodyguards, were still located. As the French
retreat turned into a rout, Bonaparte still hoped to rally his remaining forces
behind his Old Guard, although eventually even he was persuaded by members of
his retinue that the battle was lost and that he should retire to Paris,
leaving his soldiers to make whatever peace they could.
The Battle of Waterloo was said to have cost Arthur
Wellesley an estimated seventeen thousand men, killed, wounded or missing, of
which around two and a half thousand were said to have died during the battle
itself, with hundreds of others dying in the following days and weeks. Unlike
his main ally, the Prussian commander, Field Marshal Blucher, Wellesley did not
hurry to pursue the remnants of the French Army back to Paris, but instead was
reported to have allowed his own troops to regain their strength, before
marching them across the border into France. Despite believing that he could
still defeat the coalition, eventually Napoleon was eventually forced to accept
that his own position was now untenable and he agreed to abdicate his throne
for a second time, on the 24th June 1815, after which the Bourbon
monarch King Louis XVIII was once again restored as the ruler of France.
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| Captain Frederick Maitland |
With the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in June 1815,
the series of European conflicts that had dogged the continent for the best
part of twenty-odd years, were brought to an end, allowing much of Western
Europe to settle down into a period of comparative peace, during which Britain
was able to concentrate its efforts on overseeing and expanding its vast
overseas Empire. However, even though Europe itself remained relatively peaceful
from 1815, until the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853, Britain’s armed
forces were known to have been involved in a number of military conflicts,
especially in and around the Indian subcontinent, where British interests faced
an almost constant threat from native rulers, some or all of whom were
supported by agents of the Russian Empire, in what commonly became known as the
“Great Game”.
Unfortunately, apart from changes in tactics,
armaments and regimental titles, following the successful outcome of the Battle
of Waterloo, for the most part, very little was thought to have changed within
the ranks of Britain’s land forces and it remained a military service dominated
by squalid conditions, social inequality, overbearing cruelty and poor leadership.
Apart from the common soldiers who were required to serve in the most onerous
circumstances, in theatres from Ireland to Afghanistan, the widespread habit of
selling commissions to the sons of well-to-do families, regardless of their
abilities, ensured that very often the best troops might be led by the very
worst officers, creating levels of distrust and antipathy that doubtless had a
negative effect on the army’s overall morale and performance. Promotion within
the service was also said to have been earned on the basis of time served,
meaning that it was often the worst sorts of candidates, those who had nowhere
else to go, who were prepared to wait, or who had the right sort of
connections, who were often promoted above those that were far more capable
military commanders.
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| Native Sepoy |
Outside of Britain and in British India
particularly, regular army units were thought to have played a secondary role
to the private commercial forces of the British East India Company, which up
until 1858, was the body charged with administering the country, for and on
behalf of the British authorities. Apart from its own European officers and
men, who were generally recruited and trained in Britain, the East India
Company relied very heavily on the numerous native levies that were recruited
from the various regions and states of India, where the company already had
commercial interests.
Before 1858, military rule within India was
exercised by one or all of the Company’s three native armies, which were
centred round the organisations main commercial centres, or Presidencies, of
Madras, Bombay and Bengal. Even within these private armies though, the same
British class structures existed, with native soldiers being unable to progress
much beyond the ranks of NCO’s and the British officers who led these native
troops often acquiring their promotion, as a result of time served, rather than
through any sort of personal ability. However, having managed to secure large
parts of the country over the previous centuries, largely through political
manoeuvrings, military alliances and even plain bribery, by the start of the 19th
century, the British East India Company were not only eager to protect the
gains that they had made thus far, but were keen to continue their expansion in
the wider subcontinent. It was as part of these dual objectives and whilst
Napoleon Bonaparte was still exiled on Elba that the British company began a
dispute with the kingdom of Nepal, a conflict which would bring them into
contact with the Gorkha, or Ghurkha people, who would later go on to serve with
such distinction within the ranks of the regular British Army.
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| Gurkha Warrior |
Unfortunately, although the military leadership had
agreed to a peace settlement, the Nepalese national council was reported to
have failed to ratify the treaty by November 1815, causing the British to send
a second, larger military force into the country, once again made up mainly of
Indian Sepoy’s. However, rather than risk having to face the Ghurkha troops
head on, the British commander, Lord Moira, was said to have sent his forces in
a much more circuitous route, which allowed them to attack the Ghurkhas from
the rear, inflicting a heavy defeat on the native Nepalese army. With their
army defeated and the British forces being supported by other anti-Nepalese
factions, Lord Moira was able to successfully launch attacks on the Ghurkha strongholds
of Makwanpur and Hariharpur, at the same time threatening the capital of
Katmandu, which compelled the Nepalese national council to accept the earlier
peace treaty without further delay. It was said to be as a result of their
determined defence of their homelands that Ghurkha fighters had displayed
during their resistance to the Company forces that their martial abilities were
first recognised by British commanders, who were keen to recruit such high
calibre warriors into their own ranks and incorporated the right to recruit
Ghurkhas as part of the Treaty of Segauli in 1815. Initially founded as the
Nusseree Battalion under the command of a Lieutenant Ross in April 1815, these
first Ghurkha recruits later evolved into the 1st King George’s Own
Ghurkha Rifles and this force, along with subsequent Ghurkha regiments later
became an intrinsic part of the British Indian Army.
Securing and expanding its control within the wider
Indian subcontinent remained a priority for the British East India Company during
the first half of the 19th century and any possible threat to its
continuing commercial exploitation of the region was always likely to be
treated extremely seriously. Just as the Company had responded vigorously to
the perceived danger posed by the Gorkha people of Nepal, so the growing
influence of the expanding Russian Empire in both Afghanistan and Persia was
thought to have caused enormous concerns in India, where the British
Governor-General, Lord Auckland, was said to have become increasingly anxious
about the intentions of Russia and its envoys.
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| Lord Moira |
Using this incident to support his own claims that
Russia represented a direct threat to British India, Auckland was reported to
have ordered some twenty thousand Company troops into Afghanistan to not only
drive out the Persian and Russians forces, but at the same time install his
preferred pro-British candidate, Shuja Shah Durrani, as the new ruler of
Afghanistan. Arguing that Durrani was a legitimate candidate for the Afghan
throne, Auckland publicly refuted any suggestion that his actions represented
an unwarranted invasion of Afghanistan and stated that British forces would be
withdrawn from the country once Durrani was successfully installed as its new
ruler.
Enthroned as the new Afghan ruler in August 1839,
Durrani and his British supporters were reported to have been deeply unpopular
with the majority of the native tribesmen; making the remaining eight thousand
Company troops feel increasingly anxious about their ability to retain control
of the vast and generally lawless country. Although the former ruler, Dost
Muhammad and his supporters attempted to drive the British garrison out of the
country, ultimately his tribal army was no match for the much more effective
Company forces and having been captured by the British in 1840 was subsequently
exiled to India shortly afterwards. With such a large military garrison to
support, rather than risk housing their troops in a number of existing Afghan
forts, British commanders were reported to have ordered the construction of one
single large military encampment on the outskirts of Kabul, which was said to
have been so extensive that it was virtually impossible for its inhabitants to
fully protect the entire perimeter.
As time passed and with the Company troops becoming
more and more disenchanted with their enforced occupation of the country, the
British agent in Kabul, William Hay MacNaghten was said to have granted
permission for his soldiers to bring their families to Kabul, in an attempt to
stave off the loneliness and tensions that such prolonged separations were
likely to cause within the military ranks. However, by 1841, nearly two years
after the British had first arrived in Afghanistan; the country was still
thought to have remained generally unsettled, with increasing numbers of local
tribal leaders choosing to support the cause of Dost Muhammad’s son, Mohammed
Akbar Khan, who continued to oppose the rule of Durrani, who he regarded as
simply a puppet of the British East India Company. It was reported to be in
November 1841 that this deep-seated native resistance to the British presence
in the country first exhibited itself, when a British officer and his aides
were killed by an angry mob in Kabul, although MacNaghten’s subsequent failure
to hand out any sort of communal punishment for the deaths was said to have
merely emboldened local resistance fighters.
 |
| Dost Mohammed |
The man in charge of the British armed forces in
Afghanistan, Major General William Elphinstone, a sixty-year-old Company
officer, was not thought to have been widely respected by most of his immediate
subordinates, many of whom regarded him as totally unsuitable for the post that
he held, with some reports describing him as incompetent, weak and indecisive,
personal qualities which were exacerbated by a generally sickly disposition. By
the time that William Hay MacNaghten and his three aides had been murdered by
Akbar Khan on the 23rd December 1841, Elphinstone was already said
to have lost control of some of his troops, a contributing factor in the death
of MacNaghten, when British soldiers assigned to protect the envoy simply
failed to arrive, leaving him and his small party defenceless. However, even
following MacNaghten’s murder, Elphinstone failed to take any sort of
retribution against the Afghan tribesmen, but instead agreed to a form of
surrender that forced him to hand over all of his army’s gunpowder reserves,
their very latest muskets and most of their cannons, in return for being
granted safe conduct out of the country.
As his garrison assembled itself on the 6th
January 1842, to begin its journey back across the border into British India,
Elphinstone was said to have headed a column of some seven hundred British
soldiers, three and a half thousand Indian Sepoys and over twelve thousand
civilians, including large numbers of women and children, the families of the
Company’s troops, who had been allowed to come to Kabul by MacNaghten. Any
wounded Company personnel who could not undertake the retreat were reported to
have been left behind in Kabul, on the understanding that they would be cared
for by Akbar Khan and his followers, although in reality, as soon as
Elphinstone left the city virtually all of those who were left behind were
killed and their bodies disposed of.
Intending to take his garrison to the city of
Jalalabad, some ninety-odd miles from Kabul, even as the long journey began,
Elphinstone was reported to have failed to take proper measures in order to
fully protect his troops and their dependants, by neglecting to put out scouts
that might forewarn him of any potential danger. In addition to this obvious
failure, the British commander was also thought to have allowed the column to
travel at such a slow rate that any enemy wishing to pursue them, could have
done so quite easily, which was exactly what happened later in the day. As they
travelled towards the Khord Kabul Pass, which marked the route through to
India, large numbers of Afghan tribesmen were said to have passed the British
column and taken up position in the hills and settled down to await the arrival
of the slow moving refugees.
 |
| Gen William Elphinstone |
As the refugee caravan grew weaker and more
desperate, so Akbar Khan was said to have sent out envoys to try and persuade
the British members of the column to surrender themselves, promising them fair
treatment, in return for their use as hostages in any future negotiations. On
the 11th January, some five days after they had been forced to leave
Kabul, a large number of the women and children were said to have been
surrendered to the Afghan leader’s care, although it later transpired that only
the European families survived, as they had some intrinsic value, unlike those
of the Indian Sepoys, whose families were not and were subsequently murdered as
a result. Later the same day, Elphinstone himself and his second-in-command,
Major Shelton were also reported to have surrendered themselves to Akbar Khan,
in the mistaken belief that this would guarantee their own lives and those of
the surviving column, which it did not. Kept as a prisoner for a number of
days, the extremely ill and completely disillusioned British commander was said
to have survived until the 23rd January 1841, when he finally died,
still a prisoner of his Afghan adversary.
What remained of the British column was said to
have continued on, trying to reach Jalalabad, although as they approached the
village of Gandamack, they were reported to have faced a large force of Afghan
tribesmen, who were blocking their way, forcing the Company troops to fight a
bloody advance that claimed many more of their numbers. Only around forty men
were thought to have survived this bitter engagement and those that did quickly
found themselves surrounded by a large body of enemy fighters, who demanded
that they should surrender and be taken prisoner. Being aware of the fate that
awaited them, despite a desperate shortage of food, water and ammunition the
British officer leading this last surviving contingent was reported to have
rejected the Afghan calls for their surrender and carried on fighting.
According to some reports, only nine men survived this final encounter, all of
whom were subsequently captured by the Afghan tribesmen who then took them as
hostages.
 |
| Lord Auckland |
The chief architect of the Afghan invasion, the
British Governor-General, Lord Auckland was said to have collapsed from a
stroke upon hearing the news that nearly seventeen thousand men, women and
children had been annihilated by the Afghan leader and his tribal supporters.
Almost immediately, Auckland’s successor, Lord Ellenborough, put plans in place
to raise an “Army of Retribution” that would be sent into Afghanistan to exact
full revenge against those who were deemed to be responsible for the action, an
army that was already on the move by August 1842. Under the command of
Generals Nott and Pollock, two heavily armed British military columns were said
to have set out from Kandahar and Jalalabad heading for Kabul, where they
quickly overcame Akbar Khan’s forces. Having secured the release of the few
remaining British hostages, those who were fortunate to have survived the
massacre, Nott and Pollock set about levelling Kabul as an act of vengeance
against the Afghan people.
Although Khan himself escaped being killed by the
British, in 1847 he was reported to have died in fairly mysterious
circumstances, possibly as a result of his being poisoned by his father, Dost
Muhammad who was released by the British authorities at the end of 1842, after
they had already decided to play no further part in the country’s internal
power struggles. According to some reports, Akbar Khan was said to have incited
his tribesmen to kill every member of the retreating British garrison, even
though he must have known that the British authorities would send a second,
much larger military expedition to avenge such an atrocity. However, the fact
that William Elphinstone was deemed to be the main culprit behind the disaster,
which had led to one of Britain’s most humiliating and catastrophic defeats,
ensured that British reprisals were quite restrained; bearing in mind the
losses that had been suffered by the East India Company in the first place.
 |
| General Sir Geo Pollock |
Having withdrawn all of their forces from
Afghanistan by the end of 1842, the British East India Company were reported to
have continued to expand their sphere of influence within the subcontinent,
bringing them ever closer to the borders of the independent Sikh kingdom of the
Punjab. Ruled by the Maharaja Ranjit Singh until his death in 1839, up until
that time relations between the East India Company and Ranjit Singh were said
to have been cordial, but cautious, with the Sikh ruler maintaining a
relatively strong native army in order to defend his kingdom from all potential
enemies, including the British, if that ever became necessary. However, Ranjit
Singh was not simply content to hold and defend his existing territories, but
like other native rulers was always ready to exploit any obvious weakness
amongst his immediate neighbours, which might allow him to annexe additional or
disputed lands. During his reign, Ranjit Singh was reported to have conquered
and incorporated a number of disputed regions into his own Punjabi kingdom,
including the Afghan province of Peshawar and the neighbouring states of Jammu
and Kashmir, all of which helped to further enlarge his already powerful and
expansive independent kingdom.
However, when he died in 1839, he was said to have
been succeeded by his legitimate heir, Kharak Singh, who was said to have been
so ineffective and unpopular that within a matter of months he had not only
been overthrown, but had also died in fairly mysterious circumstances. Replaced
by his own son, Kanwar Singh, he too was reported to have died quite suddenly,
leaving the kingdom without any sort of legitimate royal heir to succeed to the
throne, as a result of which an illegitimate son of Ranjit Singh, Sher Singh,
was said to have been put forward as the most legitimate candidate.
Unfortunately, his ascension to the Punjabi throne was thought to have divided
the kingdom, allowing extremists and zealots within the extremely powerful
Punjabi army to take control of certain units and bring the entire country to
the brink of almost complete anarchy.
As the Punjab teetered on the edge of the abyss,
which would result in an out and out civil war between the various rival
factions, the assassinations of various military and political leaders in the
region, was said to have compelled the British East India Company to station
increasing numbers of its own troops along the border of the Punjab, ostensibly
to ensure that the conflict did not spread into British India itself. However,
even though the East India Company was thought to have lacked the resources to
simply invade the Punjab and to take control of the country, the very fact that
it had stationed large numbers of troops and military equipment on the edges of
the kingdom was thought to have caused even greater tensions to arise within
the royal courts.
 |
| Sir Hugh Gough |
Forced to wait for a full two days, for a second
British division to arrive, by the 21st December 1845, both Gough
and Hardinge were said to have been convinced that they now had the forces to
overcome the enemy position and in the late afternoon of the 21st
began their advance towards the Punjabi village of Ferozeshah. As they
approached in the dimming light, the British troops were reported to have come
under sustained attack by the well trained Punjabi artillery units, which
caused significant casualties amongst the British and Indian troops who were
advancing against their gun emplacements. However, despite the shot rained down
on them, the British infantry continued on and by nightfall some units were
even said to have overcome the Punjabi artillery’s forward positions, even
though other British infantrymen had been forced back to their own lines. By
the next morning though, Gough and Hardinge were able to encourage their men
forward once again, until this time they were able to force the Punjabi army
from the field once and for all.
Even though he and his men were exhausted by the
bloody battle, Sir Hugh Gough was determined to hold his ground, until such
time as his position was reinforced by additional British troops, which is
exactly what he did, despite repeated efforts by the Punjabi army to dislodge
him from his position and sever his lines of communication.
Whilst the British managed to rest their troops and
consolidate their position, awaiting even more reinforcements from British
India, the defeated Punjabi army units were said to have withdrawn further west
to a place called Sobraon, where they too, were reported to have been joined by
additional troops, including a number of their most formidable soldiers. Intent
on constructing an insurmountable obstacle to the British forces that would
subsequently attempt to conquer the whole of Punjab.
 |
| Sir Henry Hardinge |
Although initially achieving some level of success,
Dick’s forces were eventually driven back by the Sikh troops and the British
commander killed, causing his men to fall back even further. However, the
British advance was said to have been resumed as Bengali, Ghurkha and British
troops began to successfully assault the entire Punjabi line, breaking through
in several places and forcing the Sikh soldiers to withdraw back towards the
pontoon bridge over the Sutlej River. Unfortunately, as the retreat turned into
a rout, the increasing numbers of Sikh and other Punjabi troops on the already
weakened crossing point was said to have caused the bridge to collapse,
allowing it to be swept away and trapping some twenty thousand of their troops
on the same side of the river as the advancing British forces. Left with little
option but to either surrender, or to fight to the death, most of the Sikh
units were reported to have chosen the latter, although large numbers were also
said to have tried to swim across the river to safety and were subsequently
swept away, or simply shot by the British troops positioned along the river
bank. Whichever choice these Punjabi troops made, according to some
contemporary reports of the Battle of Sobraon, an estimated ten thousand Sikh
and Punjabi soldiers were said to have been killed or wounded during the
engagement, as opposed to the two thousand or so British troops, who were
reported to have died or been injured.
In the aftermath of the Battle at Sobraon, the
Punjabi army was said to have been largely destroyed, even though significant
numbers of Sikh troops were thought to have survived beyond the disaster to
continue the conflict, had they been ordered to do so. However, the Punjab’s
native leadership, in the form of the Lahore “Durbar” or council was reported
to have chosen to seek terms with the British, rather than risk seeing their
kingdom utterly destroyed by an even larger British army that would almost
certainly result from continuing native resistance. As part of the Treaty of
Lahore, which was signed by both sides on the 9th March 1846, the
kingdom of Punjab agreed to surrender certain vitally important agricultural
lands to the British East India Company, reimburse the company for its
financial losses and permit British agents to be stationed in all of its major
cities. Unfortunately, as was often the case with generally unequal peace
treaties of the time, almost inevitably they would be refuted by one or other
party, either because the terms of the agreement were thought to be too severe,
or otherwise too lenient.
So it was with the Treaty of Lahore that was signed
in 1846, which not only allowed the British East India Company to place agents
in every major city within the Punjab, but also ensured that a British Resident
was installed in Kabul, who could essentially dictate the policy of the entire
country. This loss of native power was said to have been exacerbated by the
loss of the Kashmir region to the Maharajah of Jammu, Gulab Singh, who was
reported to have paid seven and a half million rupees for the territory, all of
which was said to have been paid to the East India Company, as part of the
Treaty of Amritsar, which was signed in March 1846. With the Company holding
almost complete control of the country and the running of the Punjab left
almost entirely in the hands of British officers and agents, resentment towards
British rule was said to have increased steadily after 1846, to the point that
individual tribal leaders were reported to have begun conspiring together to
rise up against the Company and force them out of the Punjab.
 |
| Lord Dalhousie |
Although other British East India Company officers
were said to have taken steps to put down the initial outbreak of disorder,
when the two British officers were murdered, it was said to have taken several weeks
for the Company forces to fully confront the rebels and even then some of the
rebellious Sikh troops were said to have withdrawn to the fortified city of
Multan, where they were beyond the reach of the British soldiers. However, the
uprising in and around Multan was said to have finally compelled the British
Resident in Kabul, Sir Frederick Currie, to take some form of affirmative
action in response to the unrest, although even then he was said to have simply
contented himself with contacting Sir Hugh Gough, the military commander in
Bengal, requesting additional Company units to be sent into the region.
Unfortunately, given the time and money involved in launching such a major
military expedition, both Gough and his immediate superior, the Governor-General,
Lord Dalhousie, both refused to despatch any sort of large scale force into the
region and settled for a much smaller contingent of Bengal troops to be sent in
to the Punjab to support Currie.
Commanded by a General Whish, this mixed force of
British and native troops were reported to have made their way to Multan to
join the siege of the city fortress, although it quickly became clear that the
rebellion had the potential to become a much wider ranging dispute, if it was
not handled in the most effective and judicious manner. In several other towns
throughout the Punjab, other potential rebellions were reported to have been
prevented, or at least delayed, by the proactive approach of local British
officers, who were thought to have had the experience and initiative to carry
out pre-emptive actions against potential rebels, thereby preventing the
possible rebellion from engulfing the entire Punjab.
The two main leaders of the Sikh rebellion were
reported to have been Chattar Singh Attariwalla, the Sikh Governor of Hazara
and his son, Sher Singh, both of whom were members of the Sikh nobility and
experienced military commanders, who felt aggrieved about the continuing
control of their country by the British East India Company and its agents. In
the months following the murder of the two British officers at Multan in April
1848; and before any significant Company forces could be brought into the
Punjab to suppress the wider rebellion, large numbers of Sikh commanders and
soldiers were said to have joined Sher Singh’s rebel army, which was reported
to have been rallying in the centre of the Punjab. It was only towards the end
of 1848, after the seasonal monsoons had ended that Sir Hugh Gough was able to
bring elements of his Bengal Army into the Punjab in order to try and confront
Sher Singh and his still growing native army, although this did not prove to be
as straightforward as British commanders had first hoped.
 |
| Chattar Singh |
Upon hearing about the surrender of the garrison at
Attock, the British Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, immediately sent word to
Gough to locate and attack Sher Singh’s army, before it could grow into an even
greater threat to the Punjab. In the late afternoon of the 13th
January 1849, the British commander was reported to have unexpectedly stumbled
across Sher Singh’s formidable army, but rather than wait until the following
day to launch his assault, the rather “bullish” Gough was said to have ordered
his forces to advance, just as the light was beginning to fade. The resulting
Battle of Chillianwala turned out to be something of a disaster for the British
forces, which were said to have been sent forward through fairly dense
undergrowth and into well prepared enemy defences, which included artillery
positions that decimated the British ranks with round after round of grapeshot.
At the forefront of Gough’s assault against Sher
Singh’s positions was the British infantry brigade, the 24th Foot,
which had only just arrived in the country and although they were reported to
have reached the Sikh positions, such were their casualties that they were
subsequently forced to withdraw. Not only were they thought to have lost over
five hundred of their number, either dead or wounded from enemy actions, but
were also said to have lost their regimental colours, which was a humiliating
loss for any British infantry unit. Although some of Gough’s cavalry forces
were thought to have successfully breached the Sikh lines, the failure of other
supporting units to achieve similar successes, was said to have allowed the
Sikh’s to reorganise themselves and drive back the British horsemen, some of
whom were reported to have fled with great haste. Seeing that his main assault
was largely unsustainable, Gough was thought to have ordered a general
withdrawal to his own lines, leaving many hundreds of British troops, both
British and native, wounded and abandoned in the surrounding undergrowth, many
of whom were reported to have been subsequently murdered by roving bands of
Sikh fighters, who were scouring the surrounding countryside. By the end of the
battle, both sides were reported to have retired to their initial positions,
although sometime during the following hours, Sher Singh was said to have
withdrawn north to meet up with his father, Chattar Singh, while Gough’s troops
were said to have maintained their positions for the next few days, as they
tried to recover their dead and wounded from around the battlefield.
 |
| Sir Frederick Currie |
As it turned out though, by the time that Villiers
had been despatched from Britain, to take over command of the army in the
Punjab, Gough had already been reinforced by troops who had previously been
employed in the Siege of Multan, which General Whish had successfully
completed, bringing the city and its fortress back under British control. With
these additional forces at his disposal, Hugh Gough, then advanced in pursuit
of Sher Singh, who had already moved north to link up with the Sikh troops commanded
by his father Chattar Singh, who had previously escaped from Hazara, with the
help of the Afghan ruler Dost Muhammad. Father and son were reported to have
joined up at Rawalpindi, but quickly found their large force was unable to find
sufficient stores in the area that might sustain them for any period of time,
forcing Sher and Chattar Singh to contemplate facing their enemy once again, in
the hope of defeating them once and for all.
Unfortunately, Sher Singh’s original plan to flank
the British column and attack it from the rear, proved to be impossible, as the
Chenab river, which they intended to cross, was too swollen to allow them safe
passage and was also being patrolled by British native cavalry. With few other
options open to him and his army, Sher Singh was said to have withdrawn his
Sikh army to the city of Gujerat, where he hoped to draw Gough and his forces
into another well laid trap, assuming that the British commander adopted his
usual headlong rush to attack. Unfortunately for the Sikh leader, Gough’s
approach was thought to have been tempered by the disaster at Chillianwala and
no doubt stung by the criticism he had received within India, from Lord
Dalhousie and the decision to replace him with Charles Villiers, which had been
taken back in London. Rather than employing his ground troops to assault the
Sikh positions at Gujerat, instead Gough determined to attack his enemy with
the artillery pieces that he had brought with him and the large siege guns that
had previously been employed in breaching the fortress walls at Multan.
Even though Sher Singh had his own cannons, which
had been used to great effect at Chillianwala, this time they were not only
outranged by Gough’s heavy siege guns, but also outnumbered by them, so that by
the end of the three hour artillery exchange, the Sikh gunners had been forced
to abandon their cannon and retire from the battlefield. With Sher Singh’s
artillery neutralised, Gough was reported to sent his infantry forward, quickly
followed by his artillery, which once again began bombarding the Sikh positions
further back, until eventually they broke and began to retire at speed. With
his foot soldiers being used to overcome the Sikh lines, Gough was then
reported to have ordered his cavalry units and Dragoons forward to pursue the
Sikh troops who were said to have fallen back over a significant distance.
During the next ten days or so, Sher Singh’s forces were thought to have been
ruthlessly pursued by Gough’s British troops, until eventually both Sher and Chattar
Singh were left with little option but to surrender themselves and their
remaining troops to the British East India Company.
 |
| Duleep Singh |
Although India was and remained the Jewel of
Britain’s vast overseas empire, British forces remained committed to other
parts of the world, including neighbouring Europe, where the continent had been
regularly convulsed by numerous wars and conflicts for hundreds of years.
However, by the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, much of Europe had remained
relatively peaceful, as international conventions and treaties were employed to
bring about some semblance of peace to the many and varied states, which had
first been conquered and then freed by military might. It was said to have been
the nephew of the first Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte,
who began the next great European conflict, when he initiated a coup d’etat
against the government of the Second French Republic in 1851, before declaring
himself and ascending the French throne as Emperor Napoleon III on the 2nd
December 1852. Intent on being granted sovereign authority over all of the
Christian places in the Holy Land, which were then controlled by the Turkish
Ottoman Empire, Napoleon III was said to have applied significant diplomatic
pressure to the Ottoman leadership, even though previous treaties had granted
the same authority to the Russian Empire, in the form of its own Orthodox
Christian Church.
However, not to be refused, Napoleon was said to
have used bribery and even the threat of military force to try and persuade the
Ottoman ruler in the region, Sultan Abdul Mecid I, to grant him control of the
various vitally important Christian sites, including the Church of the
Nativity, which the French ruler intended to pass into the care of the Roman
Catholic Church. Under enormous pressure, eventually the Ottoman Sultan agreed
to a new treaty that would place the shrines into Napoleon’s care, with the
result that Tsar Nicholas I put his own military forces on alert. Prepared to
confront the Ottoman Empire through force of arms if necessary, Nicholas was
keen to ensure that in the event he attacked the Ottoman’s over the issue, then
neither Britain, nor France would interfere in the conflict, or indeed ally
themselves together to attack Russia. Despite their best efforts to find a diplomatic
solution to the increasingly escalating situation, as tensions rose between the
French, Ottomans and Russians, Britain’s apparent refusal to deploy Royal Navy
assets to help reduce any threat of armed conflict was thought to have
convinced the Tzar that Britain would not interfere in any future conflict. On
that basis and in the belief that Austria would have no real objections to him
seizing the Ottoman controlled regions of Moldavia and Wallachia, along the
Danube, Nicholas was reported to have sent Russian troops into the two areas,
ostensibly on the basis of forcing the Ottomans to restore the Russian Church’s
protection of Christianity’s most holy places.
 |
| Sultan Abdulmecid I |
Ordering his Ottoman forces to attack Tzar
Nicholas’ troops along the Danube and in the Caucasus, in these initial
engagements the Ottoman’s were reported to have achieved some degree of
success, largely as a result of two notable military commanders, Omar Pacha
along the Danube and Imam Shamil in the Caucasus. However, the Russian leader,
seemingly undeterred by these early setbacks was said to have ordered a number
of his warships to attack and destroy Ottoman naval patrols in and around the
Black Sea, in what became known as the Battle of Sinop which occurred on the 30th
November 1853. It was thought to have been the destruction of the Ottoman
frigates, which gave Britain and France the basis for declaring war against
Russia, although it was only when Tzar Nicholas refused to withdraw his forces
from Moldavia and Wallachia that the two countries finally lost patience with
the Russian Emperor and formally declared war on his country. Unable to rely on
the neutrality of other European states, which might just ally themselves to
the French, British and Ottoman cause, Nicholas was said to have relented and
withdrawn his troops from the disputed territories along the Danube, including
Moldavia and Wallachia, essentially removing the cause of Britain and France’s
declaration of war.
Unfortunately, having compelled the Tzar to comply
with their initial demands, the two allies were then reported to have issued
even more demands for the cessation of hostilities, some of which the Russian
ruler found to be completely unacceptable, thereby setting the Crimean War in
motion.
The first overtly hostile action that took place
between British and Russian forces was said to have occurred in March 1854 when
Russian guns, based in the port of Odessa, fired on the Royal Navy frigate HMS
Furious, which was patrolling the waters just outside of the harbour. Returning
fire, the Royal Navy fleet was reported to have caused considerable damage to
the port and its surrounding buildings, before withdrawing back into the Black
Sea to resume its task of protecting and re-supplying allied forces in the
region. British naval units were also reported to have helped transport land
troops to the Bulgarian city of Varna in June 1854, although with Russian
forces having been withdrawn from that particular area around the same time,
most of these same British forces were later re-embarked and transported to the
Crimea, to begin a siege of Sevastopol.
 |
| Lord Raglan |
Having taken several weeks to construct their siege
works, by the middle of October 1854, the allies were thought to have had well
over one hundred heavy guns to begin bombarding the city, although the Russian
defenders were said to have had at least three times as many, most of which had
been taken from their naval vessels that the Russians had previously scuttled.
Beginning on the 17th October 1854, the siege of Sevastopol began
with devastating artillery barrages fired by both sides, but within a matter of
days, was said to have developed into the sort of grinding trench warfare that
would only be repeated some sixty years later, on the battlefields of Flanders.
At the same time that British and French engineers
were building their siege works outside of Sevastopol, additional British
troops commanded by Lord Raglan, were reported to have been making their way
further south, well to the east of Sevastopol, in order to position themselves
for an attack on the city’s southern defences and to take advantage of the other
regional port facilities that would allow them to be re-supplied. As they made
their way south however, Raglans forces, along with the accompanying French and
Ottoman troops were said to have been badly affected by the oppressive heat,
shortage of fresh water and regular outbreaks of cholera, all of which were
thought to have been endemic to this particular region. Moving towards the
relatively small port of Balaclava, the entire allied force was said to have
been too large to be accommodated there, so the British, French and Ottoman
commanders decided between themselves who would occupy Balaclava and the nearby
ports of Kasich and Kamiesch, with Lord Raglan being advised to choose
Balaclava.
As they settled down to await the final
construction of the siege works at Sevastopol, Lord Raglan and the other allied
commanders set about securing the immediate areas surrounding their own
positions, apparently aware that the main Russian army, which had previously
been withdrawn from Sevastopol, was stationed to the east of their own
positions and therefore posed a significant danger to the allied army which was
now accommodated at the three southern Russian ports. Unfortunately for Raglan,
having chosen Balaclava as his main port, the fact that it lay furthest east
and therefore closer to the Russian army quickly began to dawn on him, forcing
him to establish additional defensive positions and draw upon his dwindling
forces, in order to protect his British troops from a direct enemy attack.
 |
| Lord Cardigan |
Beginning at around six o’clock in the morning, the
outlying village of Kamara and a number of other allied sentry posts were
assaulted by the first elements of the Russian force and it was only the quick
reactions of one or two sentries who managed to signal the enemy attack, which
prevented the Russian advance going unnoticed until it was far too late. These
early warning, not only allowed some of the outlying sentries to retreat to the
much more formidable defensive redoubts, but also gave sufficient notice to the
British commanders back in Balaclava that a large scale enemy attack was
underway. As the Ottoman guns on the hills overlooking the port, opened up on
the advancing Russian troops, British commanders in Balaclava, including Lord
Lucan, the commander of the British cavalry, were reported to have mustered
their forces in order to repulse the enemy assault. Taking command of his Heavy
Brigade, Lucan was said to have ordered his mounted troops forward in an
attempt to discourage the Russian attack, but seeing that his attempt at
intimidating the enemy soldiers was having no real effect, Lucan simply wheeled
his men around and rode back to his original starting position, close to the
Light Brigade.
Bringing their own heavy guns to bear, the Russian
artillery were thought to have targeted the allied guns that were firing on
them from the hills, as well as the allied redoubts that were blocking the
route to Balaclava, both of which were said to have suffered significant damage
from the Russian gunners and riflemen, who were firing on their positions. It
was thought to be as a result of the much heavier Russian guns that the Ottoman
and British artillery were very quickly damaged or forced to withdraw, leaving
those allied troops who were charged with holding the forward redoubts
vulnerable to enemy assaults, which began at around seven thirty in the morning
and by eight o’clock had forced the allied troops to retreat back to Balaclava.
With all of the forward redoubts and trenches
having been captured or abandoned, the allied forces at Balaclava, as well as
those besieging the southern suburbs of Sevastopol, were now at risk from the
advancing Russian army, forcing Lord Raglan to order infantry units from
Sevastopol to march eastward, in order to help support the remaining allied
troops at Balaclava. Unfortunately, given the distances involved, these British
infantry units would have to complete a gruelling two hour march to relieve
Balaclava, during which time, the beleaguered allied troops at the port,
comprising just over two thousand men, would have to defend Balaclava as best
as they could.
 |
| Lord Lucan |
At the northern end of the valley, the Russian
commanders were said to have watched as the allied forces repositioned
themselves ready for their assault and having identified the position of the
British Highland infantry regiment, which had been posted to prevent the enemy
advance, some four hundred Russian Hussars were ordered forward to attack the
British infantry line. As the Russian cavalry thundered towards them, the
Highlander’s commander, Colin Campbell was said to have informed his troops
that there would be no retreat and that if necessary they must die where they
stood, compelling one observer of the scene to describe the legend of the “thin
red line”, a view of British troops that eventually achieved almost mythical
status in later years.
However, even though several hundred mounted Russian
Hussars were bearing down on them at speed, Campbell’s men never threatened to
break, but merely fired volley after volley into the advancing Russian line,
until at last, it was they that broke, retiring back up the hill in some
disorder. At the same time that the Russian Hussars withdrew, so the remainder
of the Russian cavalry, thought to have comprised around two thousand horsemen,
plus a number of field guns, were finally identified by the commander of the
British Heavy Brigade, General James Scarlett. Ordering his four mounted
regiments into two lines facing the Russian cavalry, once they were in perfect
alignment, Scarlett was said to have instructed his trumpeter to sound the
charge, sending his two lines of heavy horse towards the enemy positions.
However, as the British mounted troops advanced, so their Russian adversaries
began to move towards them, ensuring that neither force were riding at full
speed when the two sides finally met in the field. With their superior training
and more than an element of good fortune, as the opposing cavalrymen struggled
for dominance over one another, slowly but surely, Scarlett’s British
cavalrymen began to gain control of the engagement, cutting and hacking their
way through the Russian ranks, until finally the first few enemy Hussars began
to fall back, until eventually it became a full scale retreat. As the Russians
retired, many of their men were reported to have passed close to the British
Light Brigade, commanded by the Earl of Cardigan, who rather than ordering his
troops to attack the enemy cavalry, was said to have instructed them to
maintain their positions, thereby allowing the Russians to escape the field
relatively intact.
Considered by many of the British officers in the
field as a missed opportunity, Cardigan’s decision not to inflict even greater
casualties on the retiring Russian cavalry by attacking them with his Light
Brigade, was reported to have caused much criticism of him as a military
leader, although it was his actions later on in the day, which would guarantee
his being regarded as one of the most incompetent British commanders of the
age.
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| Colin Campbell |
Informing Lord Lucan, the commander of the cavalry
that his forces were to advance with the support of infantry, which was still
to arrive from Sevastopol, Raglan’s order was thought to have been so ambiguous
that it caused confusion amongst British cavalry commanders, who assumed that
they should first move forward, but then wait for infantry support, before
engaging the enemy directly. However, as the Heavy Brigade were positioned to
move forward in one direction and the Light Brigade in another, Russian
movements on the hills overlooking Balaclava forced Raglan to issue yet another
vague command, this time instructing Lord Lucan to move his cavalry forward to
prevent the Russians removing the allied guns that had been abandoned on the
hilltop redoubts. Unfortunately, by the time the message had been delivered to
Lord Lucan, the precise location of the guns being referred to was unclear and
with no artillery in plain sight, it was reported to have been Raglan’s
messenger who pointed Lucan in the direction of the Russian gun emplacements at
the far end of the valley, rather than those guns that were still being dragged
away from the top of the hills.
As he looked down towards the Russian positions,
which had guns to the front and on both sides of the valley, Lucan knew that
for cavalry to attack such a position was likely to be a suicidal task, but
despite his reservations, he was reported to have ridden over to the Light
Brigade’s position and spoke to its commander, the Earl of Cardigan. Both men
recognised the dangers of such an assault, although believing that this was
what Lord Raglan had intended, were prepared to follow their orders, regardless
of the risks involved. Forming his Brigade up into two lines of attack facing
the enemy guns, at around eleven o’clock in the morning of the 25th
October 1854, Cardigan ordered his Lancers and Dragoons to move forward,
beginning their journey into what later became known as the “Valley of Death”.
For those British observers watching Cardigan’s
advance from an elevated position, it quickly became clear that the Light
Brigade were intent on charging the Russian batteries at the far end of the
valley, rather than pursuing the captured allied guns, which were still being
removed from the hilltops, but by then, it was far too late for anyone to
prevent the suicidal cavalry assault. With Cardigan’s horsemen breaking into a
trot and then into a canter, there was little anyone could do, other than to
watch as the British Brigade rode into the shellfire, which began to rain down
from the equally astonished Russian gunners positioned on the sides of the
valley. As the Light Brigade moved forward, Lord Lucan then ordered the men of
his own Heavy Brigade to begin their advance and almost immediately began to
receive fire from the same enemy gunners and sharpshooters that had already
devastated Cardigan’s troops. Fortunately for Lucan’s force, the timely
intervention of French cavalry, who attacked and overran a number of the
Russian positions, helped to limit the damage to the Heavy Brigade, but far too
late to prevent hundreds of British Lancers and Dragoons being blown to bits as
they steadfastly advanced towards the Russian batteries waiting at the end of
the valley. However, the saving grace for Lucan’s Heavy Brigade, was the
British commander himself, who was said to have finally realised the futility
of the British assault, which had already cost the lives of the Light Brigade
and might very easily cost him every one of his own men. Bringing his Heavy
Brigade to a sudden stop, Lucan was thought to have looked down the valley,
perhaps momentarily regretting that he could not offer any further support to
those surviving members of Cardigan’s Brigade, who even then were beginning
their final charge towards the waiting Russian ranks.
 |
| Charge of the Light Brigade |
With no reinforcements to bolster their position
and with the Russian’s quickly realising that they outnumbered the Light
Brigade by some margin, Cardigan and his surviving troops were left with little
option but to escape along the same perilous route that they had previously
advanced down. With Russian Lancers and Hussars now blocking their line of
retreat; and enemy sharpshooters firing down on them from the nearby hills, the
British cavalrymen were left with little choice but to fight their way out of
the Russian trap, in an attempt to get back to the safety of their own lines.
Such was the valour of the members of the Light Brigade that even those men who
were wounded refused to surrender to the Russians and as a result dozens of
them were said to have perished, rather than be taken prisoner by the enemy.
By the time the last members of the Light Brigade
had managed to get back to the allied lines, less than an hour after their
initial advance had begun, just under a half of the unit were reported to have
been lost, having been killed, wounded or taken prisoner during the engagement.
Quite apart from representing a completely useless waste of life, given the mix
up between Raglan, Lucan and Cardigan, the loss of the Light Brigade as an
effective fighting unit was said to have limited Raglan in his attempts to
force the Russian army to retire and compelled him to use his much needed
infantry units from Sevastopol to guard the allied lines against further
Russian assaults.
Interestingly though, none of the three British
commanders involved in the disastrous charge was publicly held accountable for
the loss of life, with Cardigan seen as being generally blameless, as he had
simply been following orders given to him by his immediate superior, Lord
Lucan. Lord Raglan and Lucan were reported to have blamed one another for the
disaster, although ultimately neither of them was publicly censured for their
part in the event, but Lucan was never to see active service again, despite
being promoted to the rank of General and then Field Marshal in later life.
 |
| Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
Instituted in January 1856, the Victoria Cross
outranks any other medal awarded by Britain’s Armed Forces and since its
inception has been awarded just over thirteen hundred times. During the
previously mentioned Charge of the Light Brigade alone, some nine Victoria
Crosses were subsequently awarded to members of the British Light and Heavy
Brigades, including John Berryman, Alexander Dunne, John Farrell, James Grieve,
Joseph Malone, James Mouat, Samuel Parkes, Henry Ramage and Charles Wooden. As
a matter of record, the first man to officially receive the new Victoria Cross
was Charles Davis Lucas, an Irish born sailor, who was serving aboard HMS Hecla
in the Baltic during June 1854, when a live enemy shell landed on the deck of his
ship, threatening to cause significant damage to the vessel and its British
crew.
Having been ordered to lay flat on the deck, in
order to escape serious injury, Lucas was said to have rushed forward, scooped
the shell up in his hands and then threw it overboard, where it exploded, just
before hitting the water. In recognition of his selfless action, Lucas was
granted an immediate promotion to Lieutenant and over the period of his
following career with the Royal Navy was reported to have achieved the rank of
Rear Admiral, as well as being recognised for his bravery with the receipt of
the Victoria Cross.
Although the Russians would make yet another
attempt to capture the British held port of Balaclava, in order to undermine
the allied siege of Sevastopol, ultimately their attempts to defeat the British
forces and to retain possession of their main base would prove to be
unsuccessful, as Sevastopol fell to the allied armies in September 1856, having
been blockaded and attacked for the best part of a year. During that same
period, the two sides were said to have fought one another in a number of
theatres, including the Baltic, Pacific, Caucasus and in Europe, although the
Russian’s largely conscript army, with its inferior training and weaponry,
ultimately struggled to cope with the generally professional and mainly
volunteer armies of the western allies.
 |
| Queen Victoria |
Unlike today, where nursing is generally seen as a
mainstream professional career and one that is governed by pay and conditions,
during the 19th century, medicine was very much regarded as an
entirely masculine area of expertise, with women playing very much a peripheral
role. On the battlefield, most casualties would have been treated by whatever
surgeon or male medical assistant happened to be available and only after a
battle had been lost or won, allowing the dead and injured to be transported
back to the nearest field hospital. Although female camp followers, or wives
and daughters are thought to have nursed injured soldiers for hundreds of
years, the first official female nurses employed by the British Army were the
thirty eight volunteers trained by Florence Nightingale and her aunt, Mai
Smith, who were asked to tend to those soldiers injured during the Crimean War,
by the British Secretary of State for War, Sidney Herbert, who was a close
personal friend of Nightingale.
Having taken the decision to become a nurse in
1844, when she was about twenty four years old, Florence was said to have
undertaken extensive studies to achieve her aim, including periods of training
in a number of medical institutions to gain practical experience. By 1853 she
was reported to have been appointed as the Superintendent of the Institute for
the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in London, where she began a nursing program to
train new nurses. It was said to be a number of these same nurses that she took
with her to Turkey in October 1854 to take care of the allied wounded who were
being held at the main military hospital in Scutari, which is now known as
Uskadar in modern day Istanbul.
Finding thousands of badly injured allied soldiers
being treated there, often in the most atrocious conditions, Nightingale and
her volunteers attempted to improve their situation by ensuring that the
patients were properly fed and that their surroundings were kept clean and
tidy. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, the lack of vital medication,
poor sanitation and ineffective ventilation meant that large numbers of men
continued to die, forcing the British authorities to send an inquiry team to
the camp, to try and identify the underlying causes. Having identified the
hazardous drains and poor ventilation as two of the major reasons for the
regular outbreaks of dysentery, typhus, typhoid and cholera, once these
problems had been resolved; death rates amongst the patient population began to
drop. Although the underlying causes of these highly communicable diseases had
been unknown to Florence and her nurses prior to their arrival in the Crimea,
in the aftermath of the Crimean War, the evidence that she and others
collected, very quickly identified poor sanitation as a major cause of the high
death rates, allowing her to incorporate this knowledge into her later training
programs back in Britain.
 |
| Florence Nightingale |
Even though she had offered her nursing services to
the British War Department when they requested volunteers for the Crimea, it
seems likely that because of her colour, she was refused any sort of employment
position or financial aid, simply because of the racial prejudice that existed
within the corridors of power at that time. However, not to be discouraged,
Seacole was said to have formed a partnership with a business acquaintance and
set out to establish what would later become the British Hotel, a place where
allied servicemen could buy themselves a range of goods, have a meal, or simply
a well earned rest, as well as receiving treatment for a range of medical
ailments. Not simply trying to profit from the conflict by selling commodities
to the thousands of soldiers who were posted around the region, according to
most reports Seacole would regularly travel around the various allied defensive
positions, helping to treat the injured soldiers, who had recently been
wounded, or those suffering from ailments that the military did not consider to
be serious enough to justify hospitalisation.
Unfortunately, when the war came to a sudden end in
1856, Seacole was said to have found herself in a fairly dire financial
circumstances, which resulted in her having to rely on her supporter’s
generosity to get her back to Britain, where she was said to have achieved a
degree of celebrity for the nursing work that she had undertaken in the Crimea.
Counting a number of Britain’s leading figures as personal friends and
acquaintances, in subsequent decades her humanitarian achievements during the
conflict were reported to have been largely overshadowed by the service of
Florence Nightingale and her nursing staff, although in recent years, the
selflessness of Seacole is finally beginning to be recognised by a much wider
audience.
Towards the end of the 19th century and
as a result of the British Army’s performance during the Crimean War and the
later Indian Mutiny of 1857, a full scale review of Britain’s land forces was
undertaken by a Royal Commission, which helped to produce what became known as
the Cardwell Reforms. Beginning in 1858, the intention of the Commission, led
by Jonathan Peel, the Secretary of State for War was to investigate the various
incidents of incompetence and malfeasance that were known to have occurred
during the two great events and to review the performance of Britain’s standing
army of twenty five thousand men, which had only just managed to fulfil its
role during the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, both of which had very
nearly brought Britain’s armed forces to near total collapse. Completed by
1862, the resulting report from Jonathan Peel, was reported to have produced no
real change in the short term, largely because of the efforts of both the
British East India Company which wanted to retain its own military forces and a
number of highly placed officers within the British Army, who felt that any
reform of the army was unnecessary and possibly dangerous.
On the basis of Peel’s report however; and the real
fear that Britain’s land forces lacked the numbers to withstand any future
military confrontation, Parliament was said to have authorised the enlargement
of the army by around twenty thousand men and an increase in the War
Department’s budget to cover the cost of these extra troops. However, the
report itself was thought to have produced no real reforms as to the treatment
and training of Britain’s soldiers, a fact that Edward Cardwell, the Secretary
of State for War from 1868 onwards was determined to introduce. Amongst the
reforms introduced by Cardwell, was the abolition of flogging during peacetime,
a measure that was strongly opposed by most officers, who believed that
corporal punishment was a necessary measure to retain discipline within the
ranks. In Cardwell’s opinion though, the outlawing of flogging during peacetime
would help to attract a better quality of recruit to the army, men that would
otherwise be dissuaded from enlisting if they thought that such brutality was a
normal part of everyday life within the service, although Cardwell was forced
to retain flogging as a regular form of punishment during wartime.
 |
| Mary Seacole |
In addition to the reforms introduced by Cardwell,
the Secretary of State for War, was also reported to have drafted two specific
pieces of legislation, which were not only designed to improve the lives of the
individual servicemen, but also to bring some sort of order to the actual
recruitment of Britain’s fighting men. The Army Enlistment (Short Service) Act
of 1870 was an attempt by Cardwell to rationalise the length of time that any
individual soldier was forced to spend in frontline service, which as a rule
could often be for a ten or twelve year period, perhaps longer if the man kept
re-enlisting after each period of service. As a result of such practices,
Britain’s army was thought to have been manned by large numbers of older
soldiers, who lives and health had often be blighted by years of arduous
service and who had few skills that would allow them to pursue a civilian career,
as and when their enlistment came to an end.
For many young potential recruits, the idea of
having to sign up for ten or twelve years of unremitting military service, half
of which would be served in foreign lands, was thought to have been such an unattractive
prospect for many of the country’s young men that only the very worst or most
desperate candidates would choose to enlist within the British forces. In
Cardwell’s view, the way forward was to offer new recruits the opportunity to
vary their terms of service, so that although they would still serve ten or
twelve years in the army, a significant part of that time might just as easily
be spent as part of a reserve force, where soldiers were paid a part time wage,
for their part time service, something akin to our modern day territorial army
services. Caldwell thought that such arrangements would not only help the
country to develop a fighting reserve, a force that could be called upon in a
national emergency, but also that these new “short term” enlistments would help
attract greater numbers of better quality candidates into the army’s ranks, a
view that later proved to be the case, as the number of new recruits climbed
steadily after the Act was passed in 1870.
The second piece of legislation, the Regulation of
the Forces Act 1871, was intended to address the problems caused by the
“General Service” employment status of all new military recruits, one that
failed to guarantee them a posting to a local regiment and which was thought to
have been a major concern for many young men, who might otherwise have
considered joining the British forces. In order to resolve this problem,
Cardwell proposed that the whole country should be divided into sixty six
regimental districts based around county boundaries and population centres,
within which the various military forces, including local militias, would be
amalgamated and reorganised to form a single regiment, composed of anything up
to three battalions. Each of these sixty six regiments were to be based at a
central training depot and were expected to recruit new troops from within
their own geographical area, helping to ensure that most new soldiers were
located in and around their home areas, retaining the social, cultural and
linguistic heritage that were so important to new recruits during their first
few months of service.
 |
| Edward Cardwell |