Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814

by Mark S. Thomson

  It is likely that part of the reason for tightening up the entrance requirements was to reduce the time the cadets would take to complete their studies and therefore to be able to turn out officers faster. The length of study at the Academy varied from one month to the maximum of five years. The duration depended primarily on the prior education, intelligence and application of the cadet, but also on the demand for officers by the Ordnance.13 In 1810, the entry fee for the Royal Military Academy was twenty guineas (£21). This amount was very small compared with the cost of buying a commission, which was around £400 in a line regiment and £900 in the Guards.14

  In the period immediately after the foundation of the Academy, ‘the cadets were under no discipline worthy of the name; they wore no uniform, and were so outrageous in study, that one of the occupations of the officer on duty … was [to] prevent the Masters from being ill-used, and even pelted.’15 Discipline was a major problem through the whole period and there were many documented cases of bullying for the purpose of stopping the studious cadet from embarrassing his less industrious peers.16 Many cadets were dismissed for their behaviour. The attitude to study was seriously affected by the demand for cadets. Throughout the Napoleonic wars the demand far outstripped the supply. This had two effects. Firstly there was pressure on the Academy to speed up the education process, which led to pressure to reduce the examination requirements. Secondly, the cadets knew the situation and on occasions had seen cadets commissioned without having to take the examinations, which had been first introduced in 1764 and were held annually, attended by senior officers of the Ordnance.17 At that time, the gentlemen cadets had to be:

  examined and found to be qualified in Arithmetic and logarithms; Algebra as far as Quadratic equations; the first four books of Euclid; Mensuration including trigonometry and heights and distances; practical geometry; the general principles of fortification the construction of the three systems of Vauban the definition and explanation of artillery in general and the construction of a piece of ordnance, illustrated by 24 drawings; they must also be able to read and translate French.18

  The Napoleonic Wars made demands on the supply of officers that the Academy could not meet. From 1794 to 1811, the public examination of cadets was suspended and the syllabus of the examinations varied as the demand rose and fell. The demand for officers was so great that on occasions exams were held on an individual basis as soon as a cadet felt himself competent. In 1795, the inspector was asked to recommend without examination, those cadets ‘who may appear likely to prove useful at this moment as officers’.19

  I am directed to inform you, … that the … service requires an immediate supply of officers from the Royal Military Academy; his lordship therefore desires that … you will recommend to him for promotion such of the cadets … as may appear likely to prove useful at this moment as officers … However as the persons you are now required to propose are wanted for immediate service, a certain degree of height and manliness will be indispensably necessary, and you are not to recommend any one … who has not attained the height of five foot four inches.20

  In June 1798, a change was made to the way commissions were awarded. Previously, all commissions were awarded into the Royal Artillery, with officers stating their preference to be transferred to the Royal Engineers:

  The Master-General … thinks it more advisable that a limited number of such cadets as may be found to have a turn for the profession should (after being duly qualified at the Academy) be sent to some station where they may improve themselves … by acting as Assistant-Engineers until vacancies occur for them in the Corps.21

  The custom was that cadets wishing to join the Royal Engineers would remain at the Academy for a further six months to improve their knowledge. On 1 March 1803, the Lieutenant-Governor proposed that candidates for the Royal Engineers ‘instead of remaining at the Academy an extra six months … were to be sent to the Royal Military Surveyors under the direction of Major Mudge, to be instructed in surveying’.22 This had the dual benefit of getting the junior engineers some practical experience, while also providing a trained resource for the urgent task of mapping the southern shores of England, threatened by a French invasion.

  The Royal Engineer officers who served in operational theatres throughout the Napoleonic Wars were the officers who passed through the Royal Military Academy during the period when public examinations were stopped and private examination requirements were variable. The most senior officer who served in the Peninsula, Richard Fletcher, was commissioned in 1790, at the start of this period. The other senior officers who served in the Peninsula were commissioned between 1793 and 1800, and all the captains by 1804.23

  There is no doubt that the Royal Military Academy was concerned about the level of education that was being given to the cadets. There is no doubt that demand outstripped supply throughout the period, but there is also no doubt that even the partial training of an Ordnance officer at the Academy was far in excess of anything that was given to a regular army officer at that time. Until the Royal Military College started producing its first recruits after 1800, there was no other source of officers with some education and technical training.

  The Royal Military Artificers, and the School of Military Engineering

  The formation of the Royal Military Artificers (RMA) was discussed earlier in the book. By the start of the nineteenth century it was recognised by some that garrison-based staff did not meet the Army’s requirements. This was one of the reasons why the Royal Staff Corps was formed. The intention behind the formation of the RMA was to provide skilled workmen at the main Ordnance locations around Britain, Europe and eventually the globe. There was never an intention that these troops would be mobile and available to travel in significant numbers with an army. Lacking their own officers, they were never properly managed and were allowed levels of freedom which should never have been tolerated in any military organisation. Captain Charles William Pasley commented on the soldiers ‘going grey’ in the corps, while stagnating in the same location.

  When Pasley took command of the Plymouth Company in 1811, not one of the RMA companies had been employed as a unit on active service. In a letter to a fellow officer, he wrote:

  The command of the Company here gives me a greater insight into the nature of our establishment … There is no guard except of a Sunday at the Barrack gates, which breaks up at eleven o’clock … The … backward spirit amongst the Non Commissioned Officers is very great, and their ideas of subordination are exceedingly lax … I think these companies will not be worth much till they are changed every two or three years, and go upon actual service bodily, not by detachments.24

  Pasley’s role in the advancement of the RMA will be described further below. Another famous engineer from the period, John Thomas Jones, wrote:

  After … observing how very much the want of Sappers and Miners prejudiced every siege operation in Spain, it will be learnt with surprise that, … England paid, fed, clothed, and lodged a very large body of engineer troops, … These … composed chiefly of mechanics, were considered as more intimately intended for permanent works; and the most limited number were reluctantly spared for field service, it being difficult to make it understood how mechanics could be required in any great number with an army.25

  Although it had been known for some years that the Ordnance could not easily put together troops for active operations, the start of the Peninsular War highlighted this serious inadequacy both in the numbers available and the quality of the soldiers’ training. Throughout the early years of the war, the Corps struggled and the sieges of 1811 brought home the fact that the current situation could not continue.

  The problem had been recognised at home. Steps were being taken, but they would not bring immediate changes. One significant step was taken in May 1811 when the size of the RMA was increased to four battalions of eight companies, with a total strength of over 2,800 men. At the same time it was decided that in future the RMA companies would be rotated around
the locations and would move as a whole body rather than in small detachments.26

  The deficiency in the field was known to many of the engineers and Jones made reference in his diary in April 1811 to ‘an arrangement made for instructing the RMA and the younger officers in the manner of forming a sap’.27 A group of RMA artificers had just arrived at Elvas, under the command of Captain Ross, and since they had no previous training in operational activities, it was decided to begin training them.28 Over the following days, Jones’ diary noted that the General Order allocated 100 men from the ranks who had artificer skills, being brigaded with the RMA and being trained in siege works. The instructions they received included physically digging a sap to learn what was required. Clearly, all this preparation was for the first siege of Badajoz, and occurred before the training referred to above by Burgoyne.29 This method of training troops from the ranks was tried during the first and second sieges of Badajoz, but with very limited success. Training troops from the line regiments at the point of need was not going to provide the skills and dedication that was required. The training also required the continuous involvement of the engineers and the troops, both of which proved very difficult. Although Burgoyne was first asked to train troops in July 1811, the order was repeated in November that year,30 showing how difficult it was to provide any consistent form of training due to interruptions caused by operational movements. Burgoyne’s diary through this period, makes almost no mention of the instruction of troops, but makes frequent mention of part or all of the 3rd Division being moved. There is no mention of instruction between the first entry on 15 August 1811 and the repeat order in November, this period of course being when Marmont was manoeuvring in front of Ciudad Rodrigo. There is then no further mention in Burgoyne’s diary up to the end of the year. It is very unusual that Burgoyne did not mention the training in his diary if it was happening, some comment, whether positive or negative, would be expected. Burgoyne does not mention the training in any of his letters before his long letter criticising the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, dated 12 February 1812. This lack of comment suggests that little training was in fact carried out.

  John Squire wrote to Pasley in March 1812:

  Every event in this country proves more and more the necessity of our having an establishment of Sappers and Miners … Lately at Ciudad Rodrigo we succeeded in taking the place more from its own weakness, than from any means we possessed of approaching nearer with success. I really should dread to attack a regular fortress: – we have no men fit for the operation, and if we attack Badajoz again, which is something like a regular place, depend upon it, that our loss in officers will be severe: – it must be so, until we have men drilled to this particular service. Your efforts at Plymouth do you the greatest credit … However, persevere in the noble work you have begun, and it is probable that their eyes may be opened, and they may be convinced.31

  The noble work referred to by Squire, was Pasley’s proposal to form a school to train soldiers in military engineering, who could effectively support the Royal Engineer officers in the field.

  The Formation of the School of Military Engineering

  The start of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of a new breed of engineer who faced challenges that British engineers had never done before. These engineers cut their teeth in sieges in Egypt, Turkey, South America and the Low Countries. They had seen first-hand the consequences of not having trained specialists to help with the attack and defence of places and had started calling for this situation to be rectified. Initially, these comments were addressed to each other, but the more forward-thinking, and in some respects, braver, officers started writing to their superiors making suggestions on how the corps could be made more effective. Their views did not always receive a good reception from some of the senior officers in the corps. ‘Some of the old officers such as General Mercer; who objected that they could not see why this innovation should be introduced, since they themselves experienced no difficulties in the American War.’32 General Morse, the Inspector-General of Fortifications ‘threw cold water on it [the proposals] from the first in all its stages’.33

  The need to make changes became more public, primarily due to the actions of two men. The first was the Duke of Wellington, who suffered through four sieges in 1811 and early 1812, and wrote home on a number of occasions expressing his view that changes in the engineering service were required. On 11 February 1812, Wellington wrote to Lord Liverpool:

  I would beg to suggest to your Lordship the expediency of adding to the Engineer establishment a corps of Sappers and Miners. It is inconceivable with what disadvantage we undertake anything like a siege for want of assistance of this description … we are obliged to depend … upon the regiments of the line; and although the men are brave and willing, they want the knowledge and training which are necessary. Many casualties among them consequently occur, and much valuable time is lost at the most critical period of the siege.34

  Wellington’s letter after the third siege of Badajoz, in April 1812, made his views explicit and could not be ignored any longer. This letter, which was addressed privately to the Earl of Liverpool was lost for many years and was not printed in Wellington’s dispatches. It was found in 1889, amongst Liverpool’s papers:

  My dispatches of this date will convey the account of the capture of Badajoz, which affords as strong an instance of the gallantry of our troops as has ever been displayed. But I anxiously hope I shall never again be the instrument of putting them to such a test as that to which they were put last night. I assure your lordship that it is quite impossible to expect to carry fortified places by vive force without incurring great loss and being exposed to the chance of failure, unless the army should be provided with a regular trained corps of sappers and miners. I never yet knew a head of a military establishment or of an army undertaking a siege without the aid of such a corps, excepting the British Army … I earnestly recommend to your lordship to have a corps of Sappers and Miners formed without loss of time.35

  Writing the day after Wellington, John Squire, who was one of the senior engineers at the siege, said nearly the same: ‘This siege has served to confirm an opinion, which I have long since entertained – that constituted as our Corps is – we are decidedly not equal to the attack of a place … Sappers and Miners are as necessary to engineers during a siege, as soldiers to the General.’36

  The second person working for change was Charles William Pasley, a promising and intelligent young engineer officer who had seen service in a number of campaigns. He also had very strong views on what was necessary to make the Royal Engineers more effective. As a 29-year-old captain serving during the Walcheren campaign, he felt so strongly that he wrote to Colonel Fyers, Deputy Inspector-General of Fortifications, on 12 May 1809, enclosing his ideas ‘on making the Corps more efficient’.37 Unfortunately for his career, but luckily for the service, he suffered a serious back injury on 14 August 1809, at the siege of Flushing. After a lengthy period of convalescence, Pasley resumed duty in 1811, taking command of the Royal Military Artificer company at Plymouth. Pasley then set his mind to the task of improving the training and effectiveness of his company and over several months made huge improvements. He believed that artificers were required to support engineer officers on operational duty and the RMA in its current state was not capable of doing this. Pasley wrote bluntly and at length on his findings and proposed that a school should be set up to train soldiers who could be deployed with the army to assist in military engineering. In August 1811, John Rowley, Secretary to the Inspector-General of Fortifications, wrote to Pasley:

  On the subject of training the R.M. Artificers to their duties in the field … General Morse forwarded the letter you sent him, to the Master-General, with his recommendation … I … hope that his Lordship will think proper to call upon you to superintend and carry on the system of instruction you have so well pointed out.38

  Not waiting for any official sanction for his activities, Pasley continued with what
he believed was right, but kept his superiors informed of his actions.

  Since I last wrote to your lordship upon this subject, I have employed my spare time entirely in digesting a system of instruction for the use of the young officers of engineers and for the non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the department. When complete, it will be, to the engineer department, what General Dundas’ book is to the army. And, though I have no model to follow … I have practically proved the efficacy of it by the rapid improvement of the Royal Military Artificers under my command.39

  Considering that Pasley was only a captain, his correspondence verged on the insubordinate. Writing to Colonel Commandant Mann, the Inspector-General of Fortifications, in January 1812:

  I enclose a memoir upon the state of the engineers department, which will fully explain the grounds upon which I consider it the most inefficient department in His Majesty’s Service … Not long after the retreat … of the British troops employed under Sir John Moore, in a campaign, in which the defects of the department had been fully proved … Lord Chatham directed General Morse to give in a plan for forming an establishment of trained sappers and miners, with a view to render the Corps efficient in the Field … Major Lefebure had declined the command in Portugal when offered to him, on the avowed plea; that the engineer Establishment in the field was so imperfect, that the officers had nothing before them but a prospect of certain failure and disgrace in every operation of importance … At Copenhagen and Flushing, the most mortifying blunders, confusion and delays took place owing to the inefficiency of the department … At Badajoz … some of our most promising officers of the Corps, either suffered, or actually fell a sacrifice to the defects of the system. Captain Dickenson lost his life [at Badajoz], because he was obliged continually to expose himself on the top of a parapet, showing the men of the working party how to place and picket down fascines … As a proof of this I have learned since I wrote you last [sic], that Lord Wellington has lately adopted an expedient for obviating … the defective state of the Establishment. For two or three months past, a certain number of soldiers … have been trained to sapping and other field duties of the engineer department. If something of the same kind is not Established at home by authority of the Master-General from whom it will naturally be expected that all improvements of the engineer department should originate; I am sorry to say that I feel thoroughly persuaded that the Ordnance Department will soon sink into public contempt and that the consequences of the necessary measures just stated, to which Lord Wellington has been forced to resort for the safety of his army, may prove in the end highly injurious to the honour and interests of the Corps of Royal Engineers, and may tend to set aside the Royal Military Artificers altogether as an [sic] useless and contemptible description of troops which I know that they are generally considered.40