A History of the British Cavalry, 1816–1850 Volume 1: 1816–1919

By The Marquess of Anglesey

In-depth coverage of the Charge of the Light Brigade, and the numerous colonial campaigns of the period.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 14, 1993
• ISBN: 9781473814981

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A HISTORY OF THE

BRITISH CAVALRY

1816 to 1919

VOLUME I

1816 to 1850

By the same author

THE CAPEL LETTERS, 1814–1817 (CAPE, 1955)

ONE LEG (LEO COOPER, 1996)

SERGEANT PEARMAN’S MEMOIRS (CAPE, 1968)

LITTLE HODGE (LEO COOPER, 1971)

A HISTORY OF THE BRITISH CAVALRY, 1816–1919

VOLUME 2: 1851–1871 (LEO COOPER, 1975)

VOLUME 3: 1872–1898 (LEO COOPER, 1982)

VOLUME 4: 1899–1913 (LEO COOPER, 1986)

VOLUME 5: EGYPT, PALESTINE AND SYRIA

1914–1918 (LEO COOPER, 1994)

VOLUME 6: MESOPOTAMIA, 1914–1918

(LEO COOPER, 1995)

VOLUME 7: THE CURRAGH INCIDENT AND THE

WESTERN FRONT, 1914 (LEO COOPER, 1996)

VOLUME 8: THE WESTERN FRONT, 1915–1918,

EPILOGUE, 1919–1939 (LEO COOPER, 1997)

A HISTORY OF THE

BRITISH CAVALRY

1816 to 1919

THE MARQUESS OF ANGLESEY

VOLUME 1: 1816 to 1850

First published in Great Britain, 1973, by Leo Cooper

Reprinted in 1998 by Leo Cooper, an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Limited

47 Church Street, Barnsley S70 2AS

© The Marquess of Anglesey 1973, 1998

A CIP record for this book is

available from the British Library

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

ISBN 085052 112 2

Printed by Redwood Books Ltd

Trowbridge, Wilts.

DEDICATED, WITH PERMISSION, TO

D. W. KING, ESQ.

O.B.E., F.L.A.

CHIEF LIBRARIAN OF THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

LIBRARY

THE MILITARY HISTORIAN’S

FRIEND AND MENTOR

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The dedication of this volume bears testimony to my gratitude for the ever willing and never failing help given me by the Library of the Ministry of Defence and its Chief Librarian. Other institutions without whose assistance I could not have proceeded include the London Library, the India Office Library (Mr S. C. Sutton, Chief Librarian, and Dr R. J. Bingle), the Library of the Royal United Service Institute for Defence Studies (Mr J. R. Dineen, Chief Librarian), the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons’ Wellcome Library (Miss B. Horder, Librarian), the Society for Army Historical Research and the National Army Museum.

To Mrs L. S. Bickford, Mr F. M. Delmar, Mr F. R. Hodge, Mr E. A. Lucas, Mr George Pearman, Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Unett, and the Home HQ of the 14/20 King’s Hussars I am very grateful for allowing me to see and quote from original papers in their possession.

Amongst the many people who have kindly answered my importunate questions, read through portions of the manuscript or given me invaluable advice (but who bear no responsibility for the results of their kindness) are Mr Brian Bond, Mr Hector Bolitho, Mr Roger Fulford, Professor H. T. Lambrick (Oriel College, Oxford) the late Mr T.D. McGuffie, Mrs Charles Morgan, Messrs Boris and John Mollo and Lieutenant-Colonel H. Moyse-Bartlett. To all of them and to my wife, whose patience has often been tried, I give my warm thanks.

Mrs H. St G. Saunders of Writer’s and Speaker’s Research has as always gone to extreme lengths to satisfy my appetite for facts and verification of sources, and Mrs Pat Brayne’s speed and accuracy in typing and re-typing have never failed me. My gratitude to both knows no bounds.

To my publishers, Mr Leo Cooper and Mr Tom Hartman, I give special thanks for the care and trouble they have taken at all stages, and I am also grateful to Mr Patrick Leeson for producing such excellent maps.

A list of abbreviations used in the footnotes and in the source notes (p. 308) appears on p. 301.

‘A soldier, cried my Uncle Toby,

interrupting the corporal, is no more

exempt from saying a foolish thing,

Trim, than a man of letters – But

not so often, an’ please your

honour, replied the corporal.’

–STERNE, Tristram Shandy

        (Book viii, chapter 19)

PREFACE

The cavalry is dead. Today, except for ceremonial purposes, for a squadron or two in the Angolan part of the Portuguese army and in the mountains of Switzerland, horsed soldiers are employed nowhere in the world. Yet half a century ago they were still an essential component of virtually every nation’s land forces.

In the British army, indeed, one of the largest assemblies of cavalry ever seen was successfully engaged in the Middle East towards the end of the First World War. Others were concentrated at the same date behind the Western Front and took part in the final victorious advance which ended the conflict. Even the start of the Second World War saw numerous cavalry formations still in being. Some of these, notably those of the Polish army, went into action before being decimated or replaced by armoured units.

     *     *     *

The objects of this present work – a more or less definitive history of the final phase of the British cavalry – are many. I wanted, for instance, to fill a gap by providing a chronicle of the use of the mounted arm in peace and war over the century which followed the defeat of Napoleon; to show in some detail how it fulfilled its policing functions at home and overseas, and how it played its part in the frequent small wars which were so characteristic a feature of the British Empire in its heyday.

     *     *     *

There are obvious difficulties, especially when describing battles, in separating one arm from the others. This is most clearly demonstrated in the present case by the horse artillery, which so often worked closely with the cavalry. My approach to this special problem has been to avoid going into any detail, except where it was necessary for an understanding of the part played by the cavalry.

     *     *     *

The question of what to leave out is always particularly harrowing for the writer who professes to be definitive. I have tried to steer between the tedium of a catalogue and the risk of being charged with omitting matters which might be considered worthy of inclusion. The tendency has been to concentrate in the case of military actions upon those which are well documented and to enter fully into those where an element of controversy or special interest appears. This has meant, of course, that certain minor engagements have not been mentioned at all, and that others have only been touched upon.

     *     *     *

Another difficulty common to all military historians is the question of the accuracy of casualty figures, particularly in Indian campaigns. In nearly every engagement related in the present volume the figures given for killed and wounded amongst the enemy come from the British alone. They are almost certainly exaggerated, sometimes outrageously. Where, rarely, an Afghan or Sikh source quotes a figure it is at least equally suspect. Suspicion must also rest on nearly all the estimates, official and unofficial, of the numbers of the enemy engaged.

     *     *     *

In prefacing this first volume of the work by an extended Prologue, I have tried to paint a very general picture of the history of cavalry, with particular reference (from the seventeenth century onwards) to the British cavalry, up to and inclusive of the Waterloo campaign. This part of the book does not pretend to be complete, nor is it based upon primary sources. It may appear to military historians unnecessarily lengthy, especially as regards the historical background to the wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For the general reader, however, I have felt that a more detailed resume of the campaigns in which the cavalry regiments of the British army took part may be of use. Those readers whose general knowledge of these earlier periods is substantial are advised to omit the Prologue altogether.

     *     *     *

The three volumes which are planned to follow the present one will be designed to be read independently of their companions, each seeking to present a more or less complete image of the period covered. The chief exception to this is that campaigns which took place in South Africa before 1850 have been excluded from the present volume. Instead they will be presented as a prelude to the larger conflicts in that part of the world which took place at later dates, and will therefore appear in a subsequent volume.

     *     *     *

The 10th Hussars and the 12th Lancers went out to Portugal in 1827 as part of an expedition sent there by Canning in support of the Regency of Queen Isabella. Neither regiment saw action, and both were soon recalled. I have therefore not dealt with that episode. Nor have I discussed either the four-year post-Waterloo occupation of France or the three years spent in Canada by the 1st Dragoon Guards and the 7th Hussars during and after the Rebellion of 1838. In the latter period the two regiments were engaged in duties similar to those of peace-keeping in the industrial areas at home or in Ireland, though at times (see Fig. 16, facing p. 192) in much lower temperatures

     *     *     *

It would not have been possible to contemplate a work such as this without the indispensable backing of Sir John Fortescue’s History of the British Army. Though he was not always accurate in details and sometimes unduly biased, his grasp of the broad sweep of events and his capacity for condensing a vast mass of facts into highly readable prose place all those who work in this field of history permanently in his debt.

     *     *     *

In the spelling of Indian proper names I have been undogmatic, perhaps even at times erratic. For well-known places, such as Bhurtpore, I have usually preferred the more familiar and generally accepted forms to the more modern or scholarly. When quoting from contemporary accounts I have not altered the original spelling.

     *     *     *

Except where I have thought them especially interesting, startling or amusing, I have resisted the temptation to describe details of the uniforms worn by officers and men. Numerous lavishly illustrated books dealing exclusively and fully with the subject have appeared in recent years.

A HISTORY OF THE

BRITISH CAVALRY

1816–1919

VOLUME I

1816–1850

‘No faith and honour is found in men who follow camps.’

LUCAN, De Bello Civili, Bk. x, 1, 407

‘Everyman thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier.’

DR SAMUEL JOHNSON, BOSWELL, Life, 1778

‘At the same time that nothing can be more useful in the day of battle than a body of disciplined cavalry, nothing can be more expensive, and nothing more useless than a body of regular cavalry half and insufficiently disciplined.’

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON in 1804

(Wellington (D), II, 679)

‘I have always considered the cavalry to be the most delicate arm that we possess. We have few officers who have practical knowledge of the mode of using it, or who have ever seen more than two regiments together…. You will see the necessity of keeping the cavalry as much as possible en masse, and in reserve, to be thrown in at the moment when an opportunity may offer of striking a decisive blow.’

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON in 1811

(Wellington (D), VII, 375)

PROLOGUE

‘The history of the use of the horse in battle is divided into three periods: first, that of the charioteer; second, that of the mounted warrior who clings to his steed by pressure of the knees; and third, that of the rider equipped with stirrups.’

White, Lynn, Medieval Technology

and Social Change, 1962, p. 1

(i)

Cavalry from the earliest times to the end of the Civil War

The relative importance of cavalry and infantry has shifted through the ages, but cavalry can be said to have been the predominant arm from the time of Alexander the Great to the early fifteenth century.*

This came about as the result of certain technological inventions, the chief of which was that of the foot-stirrup. Presumed to have been invented in China, this revolutionary aid to horsemanship was in common use there by the middle of the fifth century A.D. In Western Europe it did not appear, it seems, until the beginning of the eighth century.

It made possible for the first time speedy and powerful shock combat. Before its advent the rider was always insecure in his seat. To some degree the simple saddle provided stability, while bit and spur helped to control his mount, but at best he was no more than a rapidly moving bowman, swordsman or hurler of javelins. Without stirrups, the spear, javelin or lance depended for its delivery solely upon the strength of the rider’s shoulder and biceps. With stirrups he could deliver his blow using the combined weight of himself and his charging horse. Equally, the mounted swordsman when taking ‘a good broadhanded swipe at his foe, had only to miss to find himself on the ground.’¹ In short, the stirrup was an important invention which welded horse and rider into a single unit capable of an unprecedented violence. The Franks under Charles Martel and his sons in the eighth century were probably the first to realise its full significance in terms of shock combat.

     *     *     *

In Europe, for a thousand years from the end of the western Roman empire, the art of war was little attended to in the chaos of the dark ages. The ascendancy of horse over foot, however, remained, and even grew. The teutonic feudal system, which spread over Christian Europe, gradually excluded all but the rich and powerful from the ‘noble’ trade of war. The concept of the common man as a warrior became obsolete. The disciplined infantry mass became a thing of the past. Only knights on horseback, encased in armour (a legacy from the Romans), engaged in combat. ‘The feudal class of the European Middle Ages existed to be armed horsemen, cavaliers fighting in a particular manner which was made possible by the stirrup.’² The rabble of retainers which accompanied them on foot was no more than their maintenance staff, neither equipped nor required to fight.

The heyday of the armoured knight was reached under Charlemagne, who held his huge empire together through polygot armies, the nucleus of which was the heavy cavalry. By then the Latin word for soldier, miles, was already losing any meaning except that of noble horseman or knight. Caballarius, chevalier and caballero, which originally meant any horseman, had become, by the eleventh century, titles of nobility. This implied not only that none but nobles could be military horsemen, but also that every noble was, by definition, a military horseman.

Where, as in north-west Europe, infantry was to some degree still relied upon, it was ill-armed and powerless against armour-protected, mobile horsemen. Its sole resource when attacked in open country was the palisade, behind which, as at Hastings in 1066, it found static protection. Hastings was virtually ‘the last attempt made for three centuries by infantry to withstand cavalry’.³ Harold possessed no fighting horsemen. The only horses he had were used as transport, while the Norman force consisted mainly of cavalry assisted by archers and a few Flemish pikemen.

The institution of knight-service, which followed the Norman invasion, laid the foundation of the British cavalry. The English man-at-arms, who emerged over the next three centuries, was trained from youth in the handling of the lance, sword, dagger and shield, but his standard of horsemanship, compared with that of later ages, was low. This was due, perhaps, as much to the weakness of his bit and the unwieldiness of his saddle, as to the weight of his armour, which was not as great as is commonly supposed.

The basic administrative unit was the constabulary, consisting of as few as 25 or as many as 80 men-at-arms. In a campaign varying numbers of constabularies were grouped in a tactical formation known as a banner, commanded by a banneret. The usual method of going into battle was in a large unwieldy wedge-shaped mass of hundreds of closely-packed knights. The speed of a charge was almost certainly no more than a trot, and the room for manoeuvre slight. As time went on the wedge gave way to the haie, or thin line, which made speedier evolutions possible.

There were two lesser types of armed horsemen: the more lightly armoured pauncenars (from panzer, the German for coat of mail) who fought with a lance; and the light cavalry left over from pre-Conquest times, who originally patrolled the coasts. These were called hobelars from the hobbies or ponies they rode. They wore no body armour and were armed with swords. Their chief employment was in skirmishing and reconnoitring.

     *     *     *

The total contempt which the chivalry of Europe showed for foot soldiers is nowhere better demonstrated than in the Crusades. For the two and a half centuries of their duration, infantry, as such, hardly existed. The lack of cohesion, central direction and tactical skill of the heavy cavalry of the Christian knights, ‘who hated the very name of subordination’,⁴ when pitted against the light horse of the Saracens, was partly made up for by the self-contained protection of their armour, and partly by their religious fervour. Under a really distinguished leader, such as Richard the Lion Heart, they could accomplish great things, as witness his march from Joppa to Jerusalem, and his victory at Arsouf in 1191. Though, on occasion, the knights fought on foot, their resemblance to infantry proper was limited.

If the dark ages and the Crusades present a picture of the military art at its feeblest, something like the opposite can be said of the great Mongol invasion. Genghis Khan was, perhaps, the most formidable cavalry leader of all time. His highly organised armies, and those he bequeathed to his heirs, were almost totally devoid of infantry. The defeat of the heavy Polish cavalry at Lignitz by Subotai (a first-class general in his own right) in 1241, fourteen years after Genghis Khan’s death, well illustrates how superior were the flexibility and mobility of the light and intangible Mongolians. It was their ‘sudden and unexpected return to the charge’⁵ when apparently in retreat – a manoeuvre calling for cool control – which most disconcerted the unwieldy Poles.

     *     *     *

In Western Europe, meanwhile, the end of feudal chivalry, and with it the end for all time of cavalry as the predominant arm, came gradually into sight. Three nations, each employing different means, were the agents of this revolution in warfare. By the time the English, Swiss and Bohemian foot-soldiers had humbled the gallant, insubordinate men-at-arms of France, Austria and Germany, the conception of war as the ‘noble’ art in which the masses took only a menial part was becoming obsolete.

It was as much a social as a military revolution. The Hussite Bohemians, nationally roused to throw off their German yoke, found a man of genius in Jan Zizka. It was he who brought to perfection the tactics of the laager (anglicized to ‘leaguer’). Against these, which consisted in the speedy formation of wagons into mobile forts, the German knights contended in vain. At the same time, and for nearly 200 years from the beginning of the fourteenth century, the free herdsmen of Switzerland, armed with pike and halberd, and formed in phalangeal order, nearly always got the better of the German and Austrian knights who came against them.

During the same period the gradual perfecting of the bow and crossbow gave the English an ascendancy over the chivalry of France.

‘It is certainly not the least curious part of the military history of the period’, wrote Sir Charles Oman, ‘that the commanders who made such good use of their archery had no conception of the tendencies of their action. Edward the Black Prince and his father regarded themselves as the flower of chivalry, and would have been horrified had they realised that their own tactics were going far to make chivalrous warfare impossible. Such, however, was the case; that unscientific kind of combat which resembled a huge tilting match could not continue if one side persisted in bringing into the field auxiliaries who could prevent their opponents from approaching near enough to break a lance.’⁶

In the English wars against the Scots, the terrible slaughter of Edward IPs 3,000 horsemen at Bannockburn in 1314 showed that by that date cavalry was already declining as the chief arbiter of battle. At Falkirk, in 1298, Edward I beat the infantrymen of William Wallace by a well-timed attack of archers and horsemen combined. Indeed the English were ahead of the rest of Europe in the blending of horse and foot. Baliol’s and Beaumont’s defeat of the Earl of Mar at Dupplin Muir in 1332 was an early example of the success which could attend an intelligent combination of bow, pike and lance.

The effect that the arrow missile, projected at speed, could have on armour was early demonstrated at the siege of Abergavenny in 1182. The Welsh arrows, it was said, pierced an oak door four fingers thick.⁷ To defend himself against such penetration the knight was compelled to add plate armour to his mail shirt. This so increased his weight that he found it more difficult than ever to negotiate rough ground on horseback. His enemies, therefore, tried their best to meet him on such ground. Nor, however hard he tried, did the knight ever succeed in armouring his horse satisfactorily. At Poitiers in 1356 the French knights fought dismounted because ten years before, at Crécy, the English arrows had killed or maimed their horses. The knight deprived of his horse lost nearly all his tactical value.

The story was much the same at Agincourt where Henry V’s 6,000 men, a large majority of whom were archers, vanquished a French army three or four times more numerous. The lightly armed yeomen of England had the unwieldy knights of France, again mostly dismounted, at their mercy. First they decimated them with their arrows, and then, in close combat, ‘beat upon their armour with mallets, as though they were smiths hammering upon their anvils’.⁸

     *     *     *

Though gunpowder, which was first used with any effect at Crécy, gradually revolutionised the art of war, it was not the cause of the fall from pre-eminence of cavalry. For many years the power of the bow was so much superior to the power of the handgun that the impact of the new weapons was only gradually realised. Three cavalry reforms, however, slowly materialised under the new conditions.

First, armour, after an initial period in which it had been enormously strengthened, grew lighter. Second, an attempt was made to unite shock and fire power by placing cavalry amongst the infantry. This was first tried at the battle of Pavia in 1525, when the Marqués de Pescara inserted bodies of heavily armed musketeers in the intervals of his cavalry. His defeat of the French was thought to have been due to the success of this practice, which consequently gained ground for some years. It was a long time before it was realised that it was, in fact, fatal to deprive horsemen of the advantage which they derived from the speed of their mounts; that horsemen charging at a walk were more prominent targets than infantrymen, and that careful and steady aiming was more difficult from horseback than on foot. Third, the lance was increasingly replaced by portable fire-arms. The English lancers, for example, were first armed with pistols in 1599. In the long run, however, because they slowed down the speed of the charge, neither the mixing of horse and foot, nor the use of fire-arms by cavalry were developments which, in themselves, proved particularly successful.

As early as the second decade of the sixteenth century, Niccolo Machiavelli, in his Art of War, defined what might have been expected to be the role of cavalry in the age of gunpowder.

‘It is right’, he wrote, ‘to have some cavalry to support and assist infantry, but not to look upon them as the main force of an army, for they are highly necessary to reconnoitre, to scour roads, to make incursions, and lay waste an enemy’s country, to beat up their quarters, to keep them in continual alarm, and to cut off their convoys; but in the field battles, which commonly decide the fate of nations, and for which armies are chiefly designed, they are fitter to pursue an enemy that is routed and flying than anything else.’⁹

It is one of the surprises of modern warfare not only that the mounted arm was seldom confined to this limited rôle, but also that in a considerable number of European campaigns, for many years to come, cavalry sometimes still played the decisive part in battle. The chief reason, as has already been indicated, was that infantry fire-arms took a very long time to fulfil their early promise. For centuries the matchlock musket was the fire-arm most generally used. It was the least complicated, most trustworthy and easiest to maintain of available weapons, but it was slow-loading, and, especially in wet weather, uncertain. Its speed and efficiency were not materially improved until the percussion lock and cap, and the rifling of barrels, came into general use in the nineteenth century. In these circumstances, cavalry shock tactics enjoyed a success which would have astonished Machiavelli.

     *     *     *

Gustavus Adolphus’s victories in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) were partly due to his realisation that a reversion to shock tactics could make nugatory the power of the slowly delivered bullet. The Swedish King taught his horsemen, the depth of whose line he reduced from six to three or four, to eschew the universal habit of advancing cautiously upon the enemy, depending chiefly on the pistol. Instead, when he had softened up the opposing lines by artillery and musketry, he bade his horsemen ride forward, fire a single pistol volley and then charge home with the sword, coming to close quarters as soon as possible. It seems unlikely, though, that the charge was conducted at more than a sharp trot.

     *     *     *

In Britain, meanwhile, for many years past, the art of war had been little studied. As elsewhere in Europe, the practice of hiring mercenaries when needed was followed to the detriment of the training of native troops. Organised bodies of horse scarcely existed. In Henry VIII’s time, it is true, the Northern Horsemen, who for many years had helped to defend England’s Scottish border, grew into a not inefficient force of light cavalry and did good service in France in the