Fusiliers, page 18
For all the opprobrium and expressions of wounded honour that greeted Balfour’s appointment, Howe had undoubtedly chosen a singularly able officer. Lord Rawdon, for example, had recommended Balfour to his uncle as ‘one of my most intimate acquaintances … a very worthy man’.
Balfour was desperate for advancement, driven by family circumstances that few of his rivals could have guessed at. Although he had ties of marriage to the aristocracy of Galloway in south-west Scotland, a father who had been laird, and one or two valuable political contacts, none of these acquaintances was willing to buy him up the army or indeed to exert influence in Nisbet’s favour.
When General Howe sent the captain home with dispatches announcing the capture of Fort Washington in the autumn of 1776, it opened the way to promotion which might have been effected without purchase, for such was the customary reward for a man bringing good news to his sovereign. Howe, though, insisted Balfour pay full price for his majority. Balfour thus found himself being forced to borrow money at punitive rates in order to take advantage of the ‘honour’ his patron had given him.
The newly made major had evaded his creditors, and returned to the American war, telling one friend, ‘I believe I must keep out of England now, for fear of a confinement a little closer than Boston was.’ Being out of the country, in other words, he escaped the spectre of financial ruin and debtors’ prison. Howe belatedly realised his error in expecting such a man to pay the regulation price for a second promotion, and tried to make matters right by offering Balfour the lieutenant colonelcy of the 23rd at a knockdown price. ‘It will cost me but four hundred,’ wrote Balfour, ‘which with my last purchase will bring me monstrously in debt, but I must trust to fortune to clear me.’
Selling the command of the Royal Welch Fusiliers at a discount had irked Donkin and Ferguson beyond measure, but it was the only way for Howe to get the man he wanted in the job, since the Balfour family fortunes had been almost ruined by army service and the purchase system.
Balfour’s father Henry had died late in 1776 while serving as a major, and two of his three brothers had also died in the army. An ailing officer could sell out, redeeming his investment in commissions; a dead one could not. These three having perished in the service, the family had sunk thousands into military careers with Nisbet’s mother Katherine being unable to redeem a single pound. Anxious at her growing impoverishment and lonely existence at the Balfour seat in Dunbog, Nisbet had petitioned the American Secretary, asking him to provide a pension for her. There was no reply. Matters were only made worse by the fact that Henry had never actually married Katherine, and that Nisbet had no wife or heirs himself. The Balfour line thus confronted financial ruin and extinction.
Faced with such dire circumstances, Nisbet Balfour was guided by his own moral code as he piloted his way through the army, dodging death and the cold indifference of officialdom alike. His first rule was to do whatever was necessary to gain the right person’s patronage; as he wrote to one friend triumphantly, ‘You see what it is, to be well connected.’ Having succeeded in this aim, Balfour’s second rule was not to care too much about upsetting those without similar interest: ‘The friend you like, and the woman you love, are the only objects worth giving oneself a moment’s trouble about.’ Fuelled by ambition, bereft of doubt, Balfour exuded considerable presence.
Balfour’s choice of words about the woman one loved rather than married was revealing. Like his father, Nisbet never endured a church wedding, but did not allow this omission to prevent him siring children. Certainly, there was at least one daughter that he provided for.
The qualities that had gained General Howe’s notice were: bravery, as Balfour had shown in front of the rail fence at Bunker Hill and on several other occasions; total loyalty to his patron; sound political acumen; an apparently tireless application to official correspondence; and a fine eye for military detail. As a commanding officer of the 23rd, a junior dispenser of patronage in his own right, Balfour also proved to be an advocate of merit, finding innovative ways to advance those without fortune.
As for the man’s faults, certainly he had a fearsome temper. Of the two tales told against him about Germantown, that of him threatening to torch the villages for miles around seemed the more believable, the idea that he was too lazy to interview a prisoner less so. Balfour was a big man, broad too, and when in full flow was undoubtedly an intimidating presence. His greatest flaw though was that in playing the game to ensure he was ‘well connected’, Balfour entered rather too fully into the violent partisanship that characterised high-level army or parliamentary politics. He was ready to consider almost any step in support of his master.
On 31 January 1778 Balfour’s appointment was announced in General Orders, and for the first time in years the Fusiliers had an effective commanding officer. He wasted no time in getting to grips with his soldiers, many of whom he already knew, since his old regiment, the King’s Own or 4th Foot, had served in the same brigade as the 23rd in Boston. Balfour’s proximity to General Howe would have told him that, whatever strategy was resolved in London, the army would have to quit Philadelphia and he must therefore prepare his regiment for the campaign ahead.
Just twenty miles from the British soldiers in Philadelphia, Washington’s army occupied its winter quarters at Valley Forge. Arriving there on 17 December, in their tattered campaign clothes, his men had been obliged to construct their own camp on the frozen hillsides. One private from Connecticut wrote:
To build us habitations to stay (not to live) in such a weak, starved and naked condition was appalling in the highest degree … however there was no remedy, no alternative but this or dispersion … we had engaged in the defence of our injured country and were determined to persevere as long as such hardships were not altogether intolerable.
Having fortified their camp, and built log cabins – each to accommodate twelve soldiers – the Continentals set about dealing with a complete collapse of their supply system. Washington directed his men to forage the surrounding countryside, taking by force if necessary the food and clothing they needed to survive. ‘Such procedures’, he warned the President of Congress, ‘may give a momentary relief but if repeated will prove of the most pernicious consequence … not only ruinous to the inhabitants but in many instances to the armies themselves.’
So great were the hardships of the army’s winter at Valley Forge that around one quarter of the 10,000 men billeted there were lost to their regiments. Many died from smallpox and other diseases that ravaged the encampment while others wandered off, unable to bear it any longer.
Although British troops threatened Valley Forge on a couple of occasions, the loss of direction in Howe’s army and news of the supercession of that general meant Washington’s quarters were never seriously in danger.
As 1778 got under way and weather improved, a thoroughgoing programme of training was instituted: ‘it was one constant drill’. With such a large proportion of the Continental Army united in one place, the perfect opportunity presented itself for imposing some standard procedures and manoeuvres. Washington’s bitter experiences with the militiamen of New England or New York led him to believe in a professional army, and he strove to make the troops at Valley Forge fully as proficient as the redcoats. He aped some of their practices, too, creating light infantry companies in each regiment that might be banded together into larger corps. In this way Howe’s success in creating his light battalions, a step taken in response to American tactics, was itself so successful that it prompted Washington to imitate it.
One of those being marched about the training ground of Valley Forge as the longer days began to ease winter’s grip on the land was William Hewitt who had deserted the 23rd Fusiliers in Boston three years earlier. Hewitt had settled initially in Ipswich, New Hampshire, where he had joined the militia. By early 1778 he had forsaken civilian life and joined the 7th Company of the 1st New Hampshire Regiment. Hewitt undoubtedly felt there was justice in the Patriot cause, but was this all that had caused him to resume the harsh life of a soldier?
For many of the men at Valley Forge, their motives for service were undoubtedly similar to those of British foot-sloggers: the army offered them booze, food and clothing, as well as affording the prospect of adventure. Payment was always a source of difficulty, since the paper money issued by Congress continually depreciated. Some men were lured by the promise of land when the war ended. That perhaps was one of the American army’s secrets: it provided its privates with just enough to keep them going, but continually held out the prospect of a brighter future; of a thumping backlog of pay, of land, and of course of ‘Liberty’.
The men who were serving at Valley Forge were, therefore, for the most part very different to the yeoman farmers or tradesmen who chased Percy’s brigade back to Boston in April 1775. They were closer to the margins of society, more similar to the rank and file of the British army. For this reason, the traffic of deserters became more of a two-way phenomenon. New corps formed from American loyalists began to harvest hundreds of deserters from the Patriot cause.
If the American army became more like those of European powers in its recruitment, so Washington sought to impose discipline in the customary manner. His men became subject more often to the gallows and the lash. The election of officers might still take place in some militia regiments, but in the Continental Army its chief had instilled a system of regular military subordination. This, combined with the intensive tactical training given them during that winter meant that Washington felt confident that his regiments would be ready to attack the British when they quit Philadelphia.
The scene that unfolded on the Delaware on the night of 18 May 1778 proved sensational – Philadelphians would talk about it for decades and it even produced calls for an inquiry in the House of Commons. General Howe was that night brought up the river in an open barge with his suite; Sir Henry Clinton – his successor – was likewise afloat, as were Lieutenant General Knyphausen, the ranking Hessian officer, and numerous other grand personages. The guest of honour was taken from a jetty through a triumphal arch garlanded with flowers and into handsome gardens where a medieval spectacular, called the Mischianza or Medley, had been laid out.
Mingling about the gardens were officers dressed as knights, with flowing capes, feathered helms and shields bearing ancient family arms. Local damsels, similarly accoutred in lavish fancy dress, gave tokens to their champions who enacted jousts in front of them. Nothing was stinted in laying on the finest music, wines and food that could be procured.
Captain Smythe, who had been out on a fighting expedition with the light infantry until just a couple of days before, wandered through it all in fancy dress, eyes wide in wonderment. Smythe called it ‘a most pompous piece of pageantry and parade, the expense reckoned three thousand guineas’. Four officers, among them two of the Guards and Howe’s engineer, Captain Montresor (who would later plead impoverishment), footed most of the bill.
‘I do not believe’, wrote Major John Andre of Howe’s staff, ‘there is upon record an instance of a commander-in-chief having so universally endeared himself to those under his command.’ Balfour might have agreed, but many would have differed. The fireworks that boomed over America’s principal city that night sounded the end of Howe and his misguided idea that threatening Philadelphia would produce a decisive battle or indeed that taking it would provide a mortal blow to the prestige of the revolutionary leaders.
Instead the failure of the 1777 campaign produced a worldwide crisis for the British Empire. It had emboldened France, then Spain and the Netherlands, to join the onslaught against England’s colonies and interests. As the army prepared to quit Philadelphia, the wisdom of driving into the continent had been demolished but the strategy that Howe’s critics had advocated as an alternative, that of crippling the rebel economy through sea-based raiding, had begun to look dubious too.
Powerful French and Spanish fleets were preparing to contest the high seas. Ministers in London knew that a great portion of the army in America would have to be sent to the Caribbean to protect Britain’s spice islands there. This was the dismal strategic panorama opening up for Henry Clinton, the new commander-in-chief, as he downed his wine or chewed over his beef at the Mischianza.
Through most of the preceding winter Smythe and others had regarded imminent peace as ‘the constant topick’. It had not come, and with the spring thaw the young Fusilier captain began thinking about the host that ‘Mr Washington’ had gathered and re-trained at Valley Forge, wondering when and where that general intended to ‘collect the formidable army that is to be offensive’. Smythe was right to be concerned.
What the campaign of 1778 promised the British army was a fight against dramatically worse odds. Within months the 23rd would see action both against Washington’s army and the French. Under their new commanding officer, the Royal Welch Fusiliers had at least been given someone able to lead, someone able to complete its resurrection as a fighting regiment.
THIRTEEN
British Grenadiers
Or How Corporal Roger Lamb Declined American Hospitality
Colonel Henley, the American commandant, was known to the inmates of Prospect Hill barracks as a tyrant. True, his job was not the easiest, superintending thousands of British soldiers taken at Saratoga, for they frequently gave little signs of their disdain for the American nation. But Henley returned their contempt with interest, as well as showing himself capable of brutality. One winter’s morning, Henley arrived on horseback at the guardhouse.
The inmates of the makeshift brig, one dozen redcoats including two corporals, were lined up for inspection. Colonel Henley approached them while still mounted, and asked one of the guards why the first man, Corporal Reeves, had been locked up. It was for abusing a Continental officer.
‘What was the reason of your abuse?’ Henley asked.
Reeves replied that he had been in liquor at the time so could hardly remember, was very sorry, and anyway could not recognise the man in question as an officer. Was this a dig at the authority of the man Reeves had sworn at? What followed escalated quickly into a violent confrontation between men speaking the same language but who had grown in a couple of short years to consider themselves utterly different.
COLONEL HENLEY: ‘Had it been me [you had abused] I would have run you through the body. I believe you are a rascal.’
CORPORAL REEVES: ‘I am no rascal but a true Briton and by God I will stand up for my King and Country until the day I die!’
COLONEL HENLEY: ‘You are a good lad for keeping up for your King and Country, I don’t blame you, but hold your tongue.’
At this point, the American commandant tried to end this tense confrontation, turning his attention to the next detainee, Corporal Buchanan of the 9th.
CORPORAL REEVES (to Buchanan): ‘Why don’t you stand up for your king and your country?’
COLONEL HENLEY: ‘Be still.’
CORPORAL REEVES: ‘God damn them all! I’ll stand up for my King and country while I have life; if I had arms and ammunition, I would soon be with General Howe, and be revenged of them.’
At this point, Colonel Henley exploded in anger and ordered one of his guards to run through Reeves with his bayonet. Nobody obeyed this command. Seeing his men struck immobile, Henley leapt from his horse, grabbed one of their muskets and levelled it at Reeves’s chest.
COLONEL HENLEY: ‘You rascal, I’ll run you through or I’ll blow your brains out if you don’t hold your tongue!’
CORPORAL REEVES: ‘By God I’ll stand up for my King and Country, and if you have a mind to kill me, you may.’
The Colonel lunged forward with the musket, stabbing the bayonet into Reeves’s chest. The prisoner started back to save himself, so the blade did not go deep.
COLONEL HENLEY: ‘If you do not hold your tongue, I’ll run you through!’
As Reeves repeated his defiance again, Henley tried to make good his threat with a further lunge, but Corporal Buchanan grabbed the weapon and parried it. Thwarted, Henley ordered the prisoners taken back to their cells.
Matters came to a head once more on 8 January 1778. Henley had paraded the guard at Prospect Hill fort. There were about seventy American soldiers lined up. An audience of 300 or so redcoats had watched the proceedings and began as a crowd to move closer to their custodians until they were actually pressing in on them. The incident with Corporal Reeves had evidently gone around the camp and whetted the appetite for confrontation. When the Americans tried to grab one of the Britons from the crowd, the inmates hauled him back, which produced ‘a good deal of laughing and jeering’. Henley ordered the guard to load their muskets and level them at the men just a few feet in front. He called out that he would blow out the brains of anyone who attempted another rescue, commanding them to disperse.
The British soldiers began to trudge away from Henley’s men but not without some jeering of ‘damn Yanks’ and other insults. Nettled once more, Henley rushed forward ordering them to move faster. When his command was unheeded by the truculent soldiers he attacked them with his sword, plunging it so hard into the arm of one corporal that he bent the blade. There were further volleys of derision while Henley knelt and, comically, tried to straighten his sword blade over his knee.
