Notes on the English Midlands Regiments in the Peninsular War
I was recently asked to address a meeting of Warwickshire familiy history researchers, and so I took this as an excuse to look a little further into just what the regiments of the English Midlands actually did during the Napoleonic wars, and in particular during the Peninsular War. I am personally new to the Midlands, you see, and welcomed the chance to familiarise myself with its local military history, even if it does mean I have to eat humble pie with people like Joe Park or George Nafziger, who always castigated me for being excessively biaised against 'OB' studies...
The exact title I took for my talk was THE HEART OF ENGLAND, firstly because the heart of England is of course the Midlands, but secondly because the expression 'The Heart of England' can stand for the mythically celebrated British steadiness under fire; 'British Beef', if you will, or the stalwart qualities of the 'Thin Red Line'. My aim in the talk was to use the Midlands regiments as a representative sample or cross-section of the British infantry - with 17 battalions, they made up about 8.5 % of the total of about 200 in service - by which the combat steadiness (or lack of it) of the whole might perhaps be judged.
I will spare EEL readers my general prolegomenon about how the British infantry has generally been portrayed as 'solid and immobile in defence', from Agincourt to Mons, but how this stereotype is actually misleading in the case of Wellington's infantry in the Peninsula, which often used to counter-attack aggressively after only one or two musket volleys (for those unfamiliar with the point, see my book Forward Into Battle). The 'firepower' or 'musket counting' approach, first popularised by Sir Charles Oman, is very satisfying for the modern mind, since it is an explanation based on technology and mathematics. But if we think about just how untechnological society really was in the early 1800s, I suggest we start to get a rather different picture. The muskets were not good enough for heavy firepower to be dependable, especially since the high troop density in close formations interfered with accuracy; nor could they be fired fast enough after the initial volley to guarantee sustained heavy fire.
In only a few exceptional cases, such as Hoghton's brigade at Albuera or the Guards at Waterloo, did British infantry really go in for prolonged toe-to-toe musketry slugging, and in both cases it turned out to be hideously expensive in casualties. In most other cases the British regiments won more cheaply, by a rapid initial volley followed by a swift counter-attack with the bayonet.
Now, all this is all very well, regardless of whether you happen to believe in the original Oman theory or in the Griffith counter-attack. But it struck me that no one has ever looked in detail at a 'local' or otherwise 'random' cross section of the regiments involved. In general attention has tended to be focussed upon a particular set of units trained or formed by a particular commander - usually an élite outfit (eg 'Craufurd's Light Division' or 'Picton's Third Division') - or at least upon a particular troop type (eg 'Riflemen', 'Light Infantry', 'Highland Infantry', 'Fusilier Regiments' &c). One can get into some very heavy clan loyalties very quickly, if you take this approach (eg even though I had just edited a book on Wellington, I was once told that I knew less about him than a colonel of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, simply because the good colonel's regiment was, ah, Wellington's! And yes, I did indeed resent that very bitterly!).
Anyway, for what it is worth I here present details of the Napoleonic service of what I have called 'The Midland Regiments' - ie the ones that technically hailed from Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutlandshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire. Of course the story is badly incomplete since some of them actually took their recruits from quite different areas (e.g. the 'awful' 1/6th Warwickshire' mostly came from Liverpool, whereas in 1807 the 2 / 24th Warwickshire took 220 men from Westminster, 63 from Lincolnshire, 59 from Norfolk and 43 from Berkshire - and only 52 from Warwickshire itself). However, as a representative or 'typical' group of regiments I don't see that this 'Midland' selection is particularly tainted by its disparate origins. And many of these regiments did in fact draw a significant proportion of their recruits from their 'home' areas, anyway, even if Cardwell would later designate them to some completely different area altogether (For the 24th Warwicks, the ultimate humilation must have been to be remembered by history as the 'Rorke's Drift South Wales Borderers').
List #1: The 'Midlands Infantry Regiments' 1803 - 1808
Key: Bn = Battalion. CGH = Cape of Good Hope. PW = Peninsular War.
| Name in 1899 | No. & Name in 1803-15 | Battalion No. | Areas of Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Warwickshire Regt | 6th ("1st Warwickshire") | 1 / 6 | Canada, Home, PW to Corunna, Walcheren, Home, PW 1813-14, Canada |
| 2 / 6 | Raised 1804: Home, Disbanded 1815 | ||
| The Leicestershire Regt | 17th ("Leicestershire") | 1 / 17 | Home, West Indies from 1804 |
| South Wales Borderers (!) | 24th ("2nd Warwickshire") | 1 / 24 | Home, CGH from 1806, India from 1810 |
| 2 / 24 | Raised 1804: Home, PW 1809-14, Disbanded 1814 | ||
| The South Staffordshire Regt | 38th ("1st Staffordshire") | 1 / 38 | Home, CGH 1805-6, Montevideo '07, PW up to Coruna '09, Walcheren, PW 1812-14, Home, then arrived late for Waterloo. |
| 2 / 38 | Raised 1804: Home, PW 1809-12, Home, Disbanded 1814 | ||
| The Sherwood Foresters (1st Bn, Derbyshire Regt) | 45th ("1st Nottinghamshire") | 1 / 45 | Home, CGH 1807, PW to 1814, Home |
| 2 / 45 | Raised 1804, Home, Disbanded 1814 | ||
| The Northamptonshire Regt (1st Bn) | 48th ("Northamptonshire") | 1 / 48 | Home, Gibraltar 1805-9, PW to 1814, Home |
| 2 / 48 | Raised 1803, Home, PW 1809-12, Home, Disbanded 1814 | ||
| The Northamptonshire Regt (2nd Bn) | 58th ("Rutlandshire") | 1 / 58 | Home to 1805, Naples, Sicily (Battle of Maida 1806) Eastern Spain 1811-14; Canada |
| 2 / 58 | Raised 1804, Home, PW 1809-14, Disbanded 1814 | ||
| The East Lancashire Regt (2nd Bn) (!) | 59th ("2nd Nottinghamshire") | 1 / 59 | Home, CGH 1805-7, then India & Java |
| 2 / 59 | Raised 1804, Home, PW in Coruna, Home, PW 1812 - 14, Belgium 1815 (but missed Waterloo) | ||
| The Prince of Wales' (North Staffordshire Regt, 1st Bn) | 64th ("2nd Staffordshire") | 1 / 64 | West Indies 1803-12, Nova Scotia 1813-15 |
| The South Staffordshire Regt (2nd Bn) | 80th ("Staffordshire Volunteers") | 1 / 80 | India, 1803-15 |
Some additional points emerge from this list. Note, for example, the battalions' wide dispersal around the globe. Britain was a global power, and by no means obsessed with continental Europe. See how many of her battalions went to places like India, the West Indies, the Cape of Good Hope or Sicily... and the relatively few that served in the Peninsula (ie 10, or 58 % of all the Midlands Regiments). Of these, only 7 (ie 41 % of the total of Midlands Regiments) served for a majority of the Peninsular War, and only one (ie 1 / 45th Notts.) for all of it. Nor did any of them fight at Waterloo, although two narrowly missed it. One is forced to the conclusion that Waterloo was fought almost entirely by foreigners, and it must have been quite as much a trick for the Brits to subsequently grab the glory as it was for the Americans to grab the glory for 'winning the First World War' in 1918!
Linked to this is the fact that most of these battalions seem to have had a pretty peaceful time. Not a lot of them did very much hard fighting, even though they may have suffered heavily from disease or other sources of attrition in distant postings. They were generally being used in what we today see as the 'modern' use of armed forces - ie in peace-keeping roles that involve a minimum combat casualties, rather than in peace-making roles that necessitate a mountain of dead.
The exceptions to the above statement, however, generally lay in the specific case of the Peninsular War. The experience of the Midland regiments that were unlucky enough to be selected for that ordeal is summarised in List 2.
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