There was a decided feeling in some quarters that in the latter part of the 18th Century the British Army was in the grip of something which looked suspiciously like a Scottish mafia. While such an ungenerous view was undoubtedly coloured by the influence enjoyed by officers such as David Dundas, it is also clearly borne out by a study of the Army List for 1794, just at the outset of the great war with France.

The study is confined to the seventy-eight numbered regiments of foot, mustering a total of eighty-two battalions complete to establishment and ready for service. Not included are a further seven battalions which were then incomplete, the Footguards and two colonial units; the Queen's Rangers and the New South Wales Corps.

Each of the battalions in question normally had thirty line officers - units serving in the East Indies had more - and four staff officers; Chaplain, Adjutant, Quartermaster and Surgeon. For the purposes of this exercise only the line officers have been examined since neither the Chaplain nor Surgeon were 'promotable' and the others, particularly the Adjutant, tended to be additional appointments held by line officers.

Identifying the Scots amongst these officers is of necessity a crude process and the figures discussed below are certainly if anything underestimated. While it is reasonable to suppose that an officer named MacDonald or Campbell is a Scot, there may be doubts as to whether one named Hamilton or Maxwell is a Scot or an Ulsterman, and although someone named Smith is probably an Englishman he might just as easily turn out to be a Scotsman. Generally speaking however those counted as Scots bear either highland or other obviously Scots surnames such as Gordon or Forbes, or there is good reason to believe that they were born in Scotland rather than Ireland.

In all, at least 845 out of 2470 officers serving in the eightytwo battalions can be identified as Scots; a proportion of 34.2%. This is broadly in line with other estimates but the true proportion might actually be as high as 40%.

When the figures are examined in more detail some interesting facts emerge. Only 204 of the officers concerned, just 8.2% of the total were serving in Highland regiments and a further 79 were serving in other recognised Scottish units such as the Royals [later the Royal Scots] and the Cameronians, accounting for 11.5% all told and leaving the remaining 22.7% - nearly a quarter of all the officers serving in the line - scattered amongst 'English' regiments.

Only one battalion; the 8th Foot appears not to have had a single Scots officer on its books, while the 19th Foot [the Green Howards] had at least nineteen - an astonishing 68% of its officers, while the 9th and 57th were not very far behind with sixteen and seventeen Scots officers respectively.

Nineteen battalions had five Scots officers or fewer, thirtyfour [including the 60th Royal Americans] had between six and ten Scots officers apiece; and fifteen battalions boasted between eleven and fifteen Scots. The remaining thirteen battalions, including of course the highland regiments, had anything up to thirty-five Scots officers [the 74th] although the 42nd appear to be the only battalion with an all-Scottish officer list.

Formidable though these figures are, they still do not tell the whole story. Thirty-one regimental Colonels, 40% of the total were Scots and all of them of course were General officers with considerable powers of patronage which with few exceptions they appear to have wielded to the benefit of their fellow countrymen.

The fact that David Graeme had commanded the 19th Foot for upwards of twenty-five years doubtless accounts for the large number of Scots officers in that battalion, but others bid fair to achieve similar results in less time. James Grant's I I th Foot for example had eight Scots officers besides the Colonel in 1794, a modest enough number until it is realised that all of them were gazetted to the regiment in the wake of his appointment as Colonel in November 1791.

Moreover it was evidently a continuing process for by 1798 that number had doubled so that Scots accounted for 40% of the battalion's officers. Similarly the 8th Foot, which in 1794 had not a single Scots officer, boasted at least nine by 1798; 21% of the total and attributable no doubt to the appointment of Lieutenant General Ralph Dundas to command the regiment in July of 1794.

Conversely while 68% of the officers serving in the 19th Foot in 1794 were Scots, by 1798 the proportion had dropped to 47% following the replacement of David Graeme with Samuel Hulse in January 1797. The process can also be seen in a number of other regiments where the Scots officers are not found scattered haphazardly down the list but rather clustered together in little groups, bound together by seniority. These presumably joined their regiment at a time when it was commanded by a Scotsman and thereafter formed a sort of 'Class of ......

The patronage of certain General Officers could also extend sideways through the sometimes murky hands of the regimental agent; a gentleman who had rather more influence on the running of a regiment than might be supposed by those whose studying of military history is confined to blood and thunder.

Lord Adam Gordon, to name but one, was both Colonel of the Royals and Commander in Chief Scotland. His regimental agent was Meyrick, successor to the famous John Calcraft and it is no doubt significant that there was a tendency for Scots to enter other regiments managed by Meyrick for no apparent reason. Presumably where Lord Adam was unable to find vacancies for Scots in the Royals, or for that matter in the Scotch Brigade which he in large part sponsored, a friendly note to Meyrick may have sufficed to secure a place in one of the other regiments in his portfolio.

In short it seems clear from a basic analysis of the Army List [albeit on a small sample of two years] that Scots did indeed form a very distinct and disproportionate group within the British Army at the end of the 18th Century and that this had nothing to do with the growth of the highland regiments. Scots accounted for around a quarter of officers serving in English regiments and in some cases as many as half of them or even more. The 19th Foot in 1794 must have seemed to have been a Scottish regiment in all but name. Moreover, far from arising by accident this state of affairs was very clearly brought about in the majority of cases by patronage and indeed the existance of what can only be described as a Scottish mafia similar to, and indeed linked with, the one which existed within that other great imperial institution; the East India Company.