Howard admits that his unit was sometimes returned to headquarters as the terrain was unsuitable for its deployment. Most of the islands were unfavourable for the use of cavalry regiments and many contemporary observers talk down their usefulness. Major General Gordon Forbes, writing to Dundas from Saint Domingue in 1796, declared a newly arrived cavalry contingent to be ‘absolutely ineffective’ for any offensive operations. Colonel Charles Chalmers agreed; the plains of the colony were ‘exceeded at least twenty to one by mountains which seem almost inaccessible to cavalry’. David Stewart of the Black Watch believed the same to be true on Guadeloupe, St Lucia, St Vincent and Grenada. The terrain of all these islands was more rugged than his native Highlands and the cavalry regiments were ‘totally useless’, their horses dying in such numbers that they struggled to even carry dispatches.5
The infantry were the warriors of the Caribbean campaigns. Some aspects of their organisation have already been addressed in the introductory and campaign chapters, but here we will consider in a little more detail the tactics on the ground, including the use of light infantry and the human experience of fighting in the West Indies. Organisation and tactics varied during the years of conflict, but we can make some generalisations. Larger forces, designed to capture a major island such as Martinique or Guadeloupe, were normally organised into divisions, brigades and regiments. Thomas Beckwith’s army for the attack on Martinique in 1809 was broadly divided into two divisions, each of which was subdivided into three brigades or two brigades and a reserve. The brigades were each composed of three or four regiments, although at least one of these might be reduced, perhaps made up of only four or five companies or only the flank companies. Two divisions of approximately 5,000 men, making up a total strike force of 10,000 operatives, was not unusual. Field artillery (discussed below) would be attached to the division independent of the brigades. Foreign regiments and black native troops might be outside the brigades and be returned as separate contingents. Similar organisational units were used by Grey and Abercromby.
Grey’s tactics for his West Indian campaigns of the 1790s were drawn from his earlier experience in North America in the 1770s. His reliance on the bayonet had earned him the soubriquet of ‘no flint Grey’. In 1777, Grey’s troops were praised for their steadiness in charging without firing a single shot. The general’s orders for the assault on Martinique in 1794 do not suggest any great evolution in his thoughts. His men were instructed that they were to march in two files to adapt to the narrow roads and that, when they attacked the enemy, judged to be weak and demoralised, they were to employ the bayonet to force them into precipitate flight. This was especially the case for night assaults, as they could then manoeuvre without revealing their position or strength and the risk of casualties or disorder caused by friendly fire was nullified. He also emphasised the importance of surprise; a classic Grey attack would be made with the bayonet in the night against a stuporose enemy. Abercromby, whose troops were in general much rawer than Grey’s, appears to have followed suit, directing his charges at St Lucia in 1796 to preserve their fire and to be ready to follow through an attack with the bayonet until their foe retired.
The exact formation adopted depended much on local geography. For the assault against Morne Chabot on St Lucia, well related by John Moore, the troops were divided into two columns with the light companies and grenadiers at the head. That any formal arrangement was subjugated to the vagaries of the local ground is confirmed by Moore’s comment that his column was soon marching in single file. Only when the path opened out close to the enemy were six or eight of the grenadiers able to form up.
Questions arise as to what extent ‘light infantry’ were used in the West Indian campaigns and whether colonial warfare was an essential catalyst for the growth of this arm in the British service, the feared Light Division playing a central role in the Peninsular War. The Black Rangers and West Indian Regiments have been discussed in the first chapter; these were de facto ‘light infantrymen’ despite never being formally designated as such. They were ‘special battalions designed for a particular type of irregular warfare’. It is difficult to make such a generalisation with regard to the indigenous British regiments. Some sources suggest that Grey, influenced by his American experience, schooled some of his troops in light infantry procedures following their arrival in Barbados in 1794 (as described in Chapter 4). He was, apparently, straining to recreate the ‘perfection of light infantry that was attained during the American War’. He made organisational change, joining his grenadier and light companies together to form new battalions.
Grey was not alone in trying to impose the views of the ‘American school’ on his West Indian army. Abercromby and Simcoe both stressed the importance of light infantry work. Beckwith created rifle companies on Martinique and Guadeloupe. More junior officers – Walpole on Jamaica, Moore on St Lucia – came to regard light infantry tactics as central to achieving their objectives against an irregular enemy secreted in the mountains and forests. It is no coincidence that men who subsequently played a prominent role in the training of Britain’s light infantry, officers such as Moore and Coote Manningham, served extensively in the Caribbean.6
West Indian islands were won a few feet at a time in hand-to-hand fighting. Perhaps the apotheosis of this close-quarter warfare was on Jamaica where Walpole trained his men to share the carrying of their weapons to allow them to clamber across the rocky slopes of the Cockpits. There are, however, many other examples. In Saint Domingue, Phipps Howard relates many skirmishes with the brigands in the woods. On one occasion, in July 1796, a clash involved a small advanced detachment and an indeterminate number of the enemy. After exchanging musketry for two hours, the British are forced to fall back; ‘The Brigands seeing them retreating in rather a disorderly manner followed them with a ferocity scarcely to be conceived & absolutely pushed several with their Bayonets down the Mountain…’. The men were only saved by the intervention of artillery.
The best eyewitness accounts of active operations in the West Indies during the Revolutionary era are penned by John Moore. His words bring us as close as possible to the realities of the fighting. In his diary entry for 25 May, 1796 we find a prolonged description of the desperate defence of a post on Morne Fortune, the following being a short excerpt.
After a short time the enemy ceased to molest us, and I went back to make my report to the General [Abercromby] and to hurry on the working parties. I found him in one of the batteries. Whilst I was speaking to him we observed a body of [enemy] men marching out of the fort [Charlotte] and advancing towards the post I had just taken. Orders were immediately sent to the most commanding batteries to fire upon them. I ran to the post, which was attacked almost immediately. The ground and some houses in our front favoured the enemy’s approach. I sent a detachment to reinforce a party I had posted on the left flank, but they were never able to form so as to occupy the ground I directed. The fire from the enemy was brisk and well-directed. They had the means of covering themselves, and they were clever in availing themselves of it; our men were falling fast. I ordered the Grenadiers and Light Infantry to advance and charge them. Colonel Drummond headed them, cut down an officer with his sword, drove them with the bayonet, and followed them some way; they suffered on their return from grape-shot. Drummond had scarcely returned when the enemy were reinforced and returned a second time. I ordered another company to advance and line a hedge to my left. This order was, however, only very imperfectly carried out. The fire from the hedge would have swept a valley, or rather a dip, by which the enemy could advance under cover within twenty yards of me. The second attack was more spirited than the first. The enemy took advantage of the hedge not being properly lined, and advanced close to us with great boldness. The front I could present was small. Many officers and men had already been knocked down; more were falling every moment. The regiment [27th] showed great spirit but the enemy’s force was superior to ours. The ground was so confined that the whole of our men could no
t be brought into action or to support each other, and if the men continued to fall so fast, it was to be dreaded they might give way.
Moore was eventually able to bring up another two fresh companies to save the vital post.
The later campaigns were characterised by many small scale clashes of arms. Companies of men fought at close quarters in confined spaces. On Martinique in 1809, Drummer William Bentinck relates an action on the Heights of Sourier. The numbers involved were not insignificant but this was still an intimate form of war, dictated as much by the terrain as by early nineteenth-century tactics.
The red blazes from their muskets played as unflinchingly and so nearly as to dazzle the eyes of the British, who as before had to fire at random into the dense jungle in which the foe was posted on every bund. A general charge with the bayonet effected some clearance, but at a great sacrifice, as our men had as much as they could do to force a way through the cane-break and many were actually put to the bayonet as they were fast entangled in the immense briars and creepers. The combat was muzzle to muzzle.
Bentinck’s company lost 35 men and officers from a strength of 100. Fighting could be on the smallest scale. Thomas Brisbane calmly recalls an episode on St Vincent in 1796 where he ended up on the floor grappling with the Carib chieftain Taquin.
As I was unarmed, I seized hold of his knife, which he made an attempt to grasp, and told him that if he did not remain quiet I would instantly despatch him; as he was still determined to escape, I was obliged to carry my threat into execution.
An assault uphill against an enemy stronghold was one of the commonest scenarios, repeated many times through the campaigns. Moore’s tactical approach to the storming of Morne Chabot has been discussed in Chapter 6. The culmination of the night attack is worth relating. Again, Moore’s words give a rare insight into the haphazard nature of such operations and the crucial importance of good leadership.
I was at a loss to know the ground I was going to attack. The guide was brought up and pointed it out. The ground was tolerably smooth in my front, and sloped gently to my left; close to my right was a thick hedge: I feared it might be lined with infantry. Exhorting the grenadiers not to fire but to use the bayonet, I ordered them to advance again. We followed the direction of the hedge for a couple of hundred yards. A wood then appeared in my front, a fence in the hedge to the right. The guide said that beyond the fence was the road. I directed the men to pull it down but it was too strong. I then ordered them to leap over it, and upon their hesitating showed them the example by getting over myself. They immediately followed and formed. The enemy were at this time drawn up crowning the hill. They fired upon us with great effect, and, notwithstanding every effort, I could not prevent our men from firing or induce them to advance with the bayonet. They received repeated discharges within twenty or thirty yards. Those in our rear began also to fire, so that no situation could be more distressing. The two companies were much broken. The obscurity of the night and perhaps the fears of the enemy prevented them from seeing our real situation. Our men were always rather gaining ground, though not in the order nor with the rapidity necessary. I was hoarse and exhausted with calling to them.7
The fog of war was as thick in the jungles and mountains of the Caribbean as on the battlefields of Europe. Moore’s energy prevailed, his men ‘putting to the bayonet’ some prisoners who had not had time to flee from the summit of the Morne. We have seen Grey’s predilection for the bayonet and Moore makes many allusions to the weapon, at one point noting that the French ‘who were superior to us in firing, could not stand the bayonet’. The utility of the bayonet in the wider Napoleonic conflict has been the subject of great debate, some historians quoting the apparent rarity of bayonet wounds and claiming that the 15-inch piece of steel was virtually useless. In the Peninsular War, a hand-to-hand fight with the ‘white weapon’ was a rarity, one of the very few instances occurring at the combat of Roncesvalles in 1813.
How then do we explain the ubiquity of the bayonet, the repeated emphasis on its employment in the general orders and eyewitness accounts of the West Indian Campaigns of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars? It appears that there were several reasons for the preference for the weapon. The bayonet had been used extensively in the American War and officers such as Grey were, to a degree, just carrying on the same. It was especially effective in mass attacks on an irregular or ill-trained enemy and had particular utility at night, as Abercromby explains in general orders in 1794.
The soldiers will bear in mind the use of the bayonet, which in possession of, they can have no excuse for retreating for want of ammunition, the bayonet being the best and most effective weapon in the hands of a gallant British soldier; in which mode of attack (the General assures them) no troops on earth are equal to them. In case of night attack, ammunition and firing are totally out of the question, and the bayonet is ever to be preferred and made use of.
The general further explains that men attacking with the bayonet do not reveal their numbers or situation by their fire. Beckwith’s general orders in 1809 also advocate the bayonet for night assaults.
We have no accurate data for the types of wounds inflicted on Britain’s enemies in the West Indian campaigns but even if, as in other theatres, there were few bayonet wounds, this would not necessarily undermine the case for the weapon being widely used and effective. Abercromby’s assertion that the threat of the weapon induced the ‘precipitate flight’ of the enemy is revealing. The bayonet charge was, in Rory Muir’s words, ‘a test of will and resolution: whose nerve would break first’. Most often, certainly in the West Indies, the examination favoured the British infantryman, the regular soldier and the aggressor.
After the initial exchange of arms and perhaps the fall of a key stronghold, the campaign often developed into a struggle marked by ambush and insurgency. Prolonged periods of attritional warfare occurred throughout the period and this was very much the nature of the fighting in the 1795 uprisings. On Grenada, British officers had difficulty coming to terms with a near invisible foe. Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell writes to Lord Cathcart in April 1795:
We seem entirely left to poke out our own way in the dark wilds, and fastnesses, not yet having found a guide who knows a yard beyond the beaten tracks, which are here improperly called roads, neither can you get for love or money a person who will venture a hundred yards to gain intelligence, consequently we either fall into ambuscade, or are led to error through false information.
The enemy might be ‘Banditti’, but these constant ambushes caused a demoralising number of casualties. William Dyott expresses similar sentiments a year later:
Our march for the last three miles was literally up and down precipices, half-way up the leg in clay, and through a wood where I believe no human foot had ever before stepped… they [the enemy] annoyed us all the evening with their bush fighting from the woods…
In Saint Domingue, Harry Ross-Lewin acknowledged the celerity of the Republican forces, particularly the native troops. ‘In a war against a savage enemy, there is nothing to be so much feared as surprise’. He and his comrades were harassed by repeated calls to arms during the night. On Dominica, soldiers of the 9th West India Regiment fell into a forest ambush laid by rebels; pits had been dug containing sharp stakes and disguised with foliage. On Jamaica, Balcarres also fought a jungle war. A secret pre-printed letter issued to officers in December 1799 directs them to enter the ‘negro homes belonging to the planters’ to seize all arms and round up all persons ‘of every description’ who had no clear role on the estate. They were to be confined until further notice.8
As inferred by the title of this book, the British soldier sent to the West Indies was more likely to die of disease than win a commendation or a medal. Nevertheless, there were notable examples of heroism, both by individuals and whole forces. Fortescue, whose magisterial and traditional work on the British army is vulnerable to criticism by modern academics, must take belated credit for almost single-handedly keep
ing alive the memory of some of these actions. Examples include Graham’s last-ditch defence of the Camp of Berville in 1794, the brave attack of the 46th at Chateau Belair on St Vincent in 1796, the defence of Morne Daniel on Dominica by the same regiment in 1805, and the valour of the 3rd and 8th West India Regiments on the Saints in 1809. Senior officers frequently led by example. In April 1794, Abercromby personally led the attack on Puerto Rico. According to Charles Stewart of the 53rd, ‘…he was the first who touched the shore, drew his little hanger [short sword], cheered and run in to a thicket like a Yager…’George Prevost’s leadership of his grenadiers at the assault on Fort Desaix on Martinique in 1809 was approvingly noted by his French opponents.9
We have discussed the role of infantry and cavalry, but have so far made only secondary references to the employment of artillery. The herculean efforts made to ship significant amounts of ordnance to the West Indies suggest that senior army officers believed that cannon, howitzers and mortars were vital in the conquest and defence of the islands. In practice, the role of the Royal Artillery was limited by the difficult terrain, the lack of horses and the variable quality and supply of guns and ammunition. Pieces of ordnance, especially the lighter guns, were theoretically manoeuvrable by men and horses, but keeping them up with the action was a constant problem. On Martinique in 1809, artillery officer James St Clair, the brother of Thomas, describes his men approaching the front around the Heights of Sourier:
Then indeed came the tug of war: up hill and down hill, through mud and through water did my poor fellows haul the weighty pieces of artillery after them; and, oft-times, these poor eager soldiers, anxious for a share in the fight, pulled on all-fours for hours under a burning sun, only to encounter disappointment; for no sooner was one height gained than another presented itself…
Death Before Glory Page 28
