Death Before Glory!: The British Soldier in the West Indies in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars 1793–1815

By Martin R. Howard

Death Before Glory! is a highly readable, thoroughly researched and comprehensive study of the British army's campaigns in the West Indies during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period and of the extraordinary experiences of the soldiers who served there. Rich in sugar, cotton, coffee and slaves, the region was a key to British prosperity and it was perhaps even more important to her greatest enemy France. Yet, until now, the history of this vital theatre of the Napoleonic Wars has been seriously neglected. Not only does Martin Howard describe, in graphic detail, the entirety of the British campaigns in the region between 1793 and 1815, he also focuses on the human experience of the men the climate and living conditions, the rations and diet, military discipline and training, the treatment of the wounded and the impact of disease. Martin Howard's thoroughgoing and original work is the essential account of this fascinating but often overlooked aspect of the history of the British army and the Napoleonic Wars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781473871519

Martin R. Howard

Martin Howard is a hospital consultant and an honorary visiting professor at the University of York. He has a longstanding interest in the Napoleonic Wars with a particular focus on the human dimension of the conflict and the lesser known campaigns. His most recent books in the field are Walcheren 1809: The Scandalous Destruction of a British Army and Death Before Glory! The British Soldier in the West Indies in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars 1793−1815.

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ARMIES

Chapter 1

Dangerous Battalions: The British Army in the West Indies

Britain’s eighteenth-century army had three distinct functions. Beyond its obvious war role, it policed the population at home and garrisoned territories abroad. There were always regiments stationed in far flung places including the West Indies, which had British troops in attendance throughout the century. The absence of a national conscription system limited the size of the army and this impinged on the size of the Caribbean garrison which remained small for most of the period. Sporadic fighting might lead to reinforcements, but when peace intervened a ‘paltry handful of all-but-forgotten and neglected regulars’ was left to guard the islands. These troops were much criticised by their contemporaries. Indeed the British soldier was despised and distrusted by most of his countrymen and under-appreciated by his military and political masters. In 1761, Guadeloupe’s governor, Campbell Dalrymple, anticipated Wellington’s notorious verdict in describing his soldiers as ‘the scum of every county, the refuse of mankind’. During periods of inactivity the wretched West Indian garrison was dissipated by a lethal combination of fever and boredom. Conversely, when there was fighting to be done the private soldier might suddenly rediscover his motivation and regimental pride. At the storming of Mount Tartenson on Martinique in 1762, the troops were commended for their gallantry which was such ‘… to do honour to their Country and ever distinguish them as Britons.’¹

At the outset of the French Revolution in 1793 the British army was relatively weak, still feeling the effects of the reductions consequent on the peace of 1783. Britain was a wealthy and populous nation, but the Government was reluctant to spend money on an institution the power of which was resented and feared by Parliament. Only when the country lurched into a new war was the army suddenly expanded causing attendant problems in discipline, administration and recruiting. The army abroad numbered little more than 18,000 men, although by 1794 the demands of the new conflict, especially in the West Indies, led to its rapid growth to a force of 42,000. Many of these men were Scots and Irish; Scotland provided a fifth of the army’s manpower and close to half of the regiments added to the line in 1794 were of Irish origin.

The destructive nature of campaigning in the Caribbean and elsewhere meant that during the 1790s it was difficult to maintain regiments at full strength. Of the 55 regiments at home in 1796 for which we have returns, only eighteen had more than half their establishment of 950 privates and only five were even close to their full contingent. In the latter years of the wars, from 1808 onwards, the army raised men through both regular enlistment and transfer from the militia, reaching its peak in early 1814 with a strength of 230,000 operatives. The weakness of the army at the onset of hostilities in 1793 is perhaps best understood by comparing it with the force available at the end of the Peninsular War. Whereas there were only seven battalions of Guards and 74 battalions of Foot in 1793, there were 186 battalions of infantry in 1814.

For much of the last decade of the eighteenth century Britain’s aspirations to maintain peace at home and to fight a global war meant that her precious regiments were thinly spread. A return for October 1795 shows them scattered through Britain and Ireland, the West Indies, the East Indies, America, Gibraltar, the Cape of Good Hope, Corsica and the French coast. There is not space here to detail the mechanism of the nation’s war machinery, but this infrastructure, ‘intractable and ramshackle’, was close to breaking point, military realities often subjugated to political convenience.

Whilst the navy was flexible and powerful enough to accommodate the Government’s expansionist policies in the Caribbean and elsewhere, the army was placed under severe strain. It was not, however, at least at the start of the conflict, an institution which evoked great expectations. The period of peace prior to 1793 had, in the words of military historian J.A. Houlding, left both officers and men unprepared for action.

…it is clear that the majority of regiments found themselves, on the eve of war, to be quite without, or almost innocent of, experience of large-scale mock action or brigade manoeuvres, to have had inadequate opportunities to conduct the training of the field days and the ‘excursions’, and to be only just adequately prepared to perform on a parade ground the regulation firings and manoeuvres together with a selection of movements drawn from the army’s store of customary practice.

It was widely accepted as late as 1800 that the British army was at best a clumsy weapon. Lady Holland’s assertion that it was ‘harmless against an enemy in battle array’ was not much contested. Sir Henry Bunbury, a soldier of the 1790s, refers to lax discipline, the lack of system and weak numbers. ‘Never’, he declared, ‘was a kingdom less prepared for a stern and arduous conflict’.²

There was undoubtedly some administrative corruption and neglect but the army of 1793 was not without hope. It has been argued that its shortcomings have been exaggerated to provide a convenient contrast to the later reforms of the Duke of York as commander-in-chief and the proficiency of Wellington’s Peninsular army. Improvements had already begun and in some ways the army was better prepared for the West Indian and other campaigns than it had been for earlier less demanding conflicts.

One of the foundations of this recovery was the adoption of a new drill manual, Colonel David Dundas’s Principles of Military Movement, published in 1788. Prior to Dundas’s work the army lacked a uniform approach to tactical training. Regiments on colonial service were frequently divided into smaller units and they became inward-looking, all regimental affairs determined by the whim of the colonel. Soldiers at home were also widely dispersed in billets and distracted by their policing duties. This lack of a coherent approach was potentially exacerbated by the views of the ‘American School’ of officers who, heavily influenced by the American War, believed in a shallow two-deep line with an emphasis on skirmishing and light infantry tactics. Dundas had little faith in the American experience and his tactical manual espoused the methods of the ‘Prussian School’ with a three-deep line and well practised manoeuvres designed to resist cavalry and deliver shock. Wellington once commented that in the British army new regulations were read in the manner of an ‘amusing novel’, but the Duke of York overcame resistance and ensured the necessary uniformity. It must be understood that this took time and that, as will be discussed in a later chapter, the jungles and mountains of the Caribbean campaigns were more suited to the flexibility of the American system than the rigidity of the German approach. In the Peninsula, Wellington won his battles by combing the close-order battle drill of one system and the skirmishing light infantry of the other.

The army officers of the period are too easily stereotyped as underachievers who bought their rank; some two-thirds of the commissions held in the British army were purchased. They were, admittedly, drawn disproportionately from the aristocratic, professional and landed classes and would have had to be regarded as ‘gentlemen’. However, significant numbers were of relatively modest origins and many had entered the service for life and had risen through steady and competent service. Some were ignorant of military matters but, as Bunbury points out, in the campaigns of the 1790s there was ‘no lack of gallantry’ among the officer class. The gentlemanly ideals of toughness, stoicism, fortitude and honour were well suited to the battlefield.³

The greatest challenge for the army was recruitment. The essential problem was that there were too few recruits to bring the force up to full strength and too many recruits in the serving army. By ‘recruits’ we mean soldiers with one year’s service or less. Methods of recruitment included voluntary enlistment and coercion. The former accounted for the majority of recruits; often men were captured by the recruiting parties who toured likely areas ‘beating up’ for volunteers. The demand for new blood was relentless. Between the mideighteenth century and 1795, the erosive effect of deaths, discharges, drafts and desertion and the need for periodic top ups meant that foot regiments had to recruit 1.5% of their strength every month in peacetime and just over 2% in wartime.

The difficulties this posed are most clearly exposed at regimental level. Historian Roger Norman Buckley quotes the case of the 68th Regiment, which suffered heavy losses in the West Indies between 1794 and 1796. The few remaining fit men were drafted into another regiment and the beleaguered unit arrived back in England in September 1796 with only ten officers and twenty-seven other ranks. Despite the efforts of 13 beating up parties the regiment was still 955 men short of its establishment of 1,000 rank and file in March 1797 and it did not start to recover until 1800.

A poor harvest, such as occurred in the summer of 1795, might provide a fillip to the recruiting parties, the unemployed and starving driven into their hands, but more drastic means were sometimes employed to fill the ranks. Insolvent debtors and those guilty of more serious misdemeanours could escape prison and even the hangman’s noose if they ‘volunteered’ for the army. Probably more numerous among those pressed into service were men who had committed no actual crime, but who fell into the disparate group of ‘all such able bodied, idle, and disorderly persons who cannot upon examination prove themselves to exercise and industriously follow some lawful trade or employment’. Enlistment was generally for life, although from 1806 there was a scheme for limited service.

The use of duress was likely to be necessary to recruit directly to those parts of the world which were regarded as a death sentence. Strategies for recruitment to West Indian expeditionary forces included the use of foreign auxillary formations, the embodiment of regiments of black troops and the filling up of regiments with criminals and others judged not to be gainfully employed. The number of hardened criminals in British regular regiments was almost certainly fewer than is generally perceived. Most convicted men sent to the West Indies were only accepted into penal corps such as the Royal West India Rangers. The majority of men in the regular ranks were decent individuals forced into the army by economic circumstances.

Michael Durey has cogently argued that many of the ‘culprits’ despatched to the Caribbean were not Englishmen awaiting trial on common law charges, but Irishmen guilty of political offences. Following the collapse of the Rebellion of 1798, the Irish Government had to tackle the problem of dealing with thousands of Irish rebel prisoners. In Dublin, the military prisons and public buildings overflowed with them. A number of solutions were suggested, none of which were straightforward. In the words of a contemporary British officer, ‘Our aversion to Blood, or putting to death a great number of people indiscriminately after they have surrendered themselves Prisoners leaves Government in a very embarrassed situation’. Drafting the rebels into the army and sending them to a deadly theatre such as the West Indies was a possible way forward, although this risked spreading disaffection in the ranks. Undersecretary John King expressed the view of many, alarmed at the prospect of a Caribbean army constituted of black soldiers ‘…and the Whites composed chiefly of prisoners and the worst of His Majesty’s subjects!’

Despite the opposition, there was no viable alternative and between 1799 and 1804 five drafts of rebel prisoners were sent to the West Indies from Ireland, as many as 2,400 men. More may have reached the region by circuitous routes via the army depot at Chatham or Gibraltar. These were the most reluctant of all recruits, described as ‘white slaves’ by an Irish-American radical. Measures were taken to limit the deleterious effect on the wider forces in the West Indies. On the voyage out the drafts were accompanied by sizeable numbers of regular troops and on arrival they were spread thinly among as many regiments as possible. These efforts to turn the rebels into good soldiers were not entirely successful. Many of the first draft arriving at Jamaica deserted and fled into the mountains where they joined bands of natives and French and skirmished with British search parties.⁴

The West Indian garrison and expeditionary forces between 1793 and 1815 had a unique character, characterised by significant numbers of black and local colonial troops, foreign auxiliary units and the disproportionate influx of criminal and rebel elements into the ranks. It is, however, important to stress that the bulk of the force in the region throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period was made up of regular British regiments. Between 1793 and 1801, 69 line regiments served in the West Indies and another 24 followed between 1803 and 1815. In 1795, half of all British regiments serving abroad (52 of 105) were either in the Caribbean or on their way to the islands. We can compare this show of force with the 65 line regiments who served in the Peninsula or the 28 at Waterloo. The numerical strength of the West Indian garrison underlines the scale of the British effort in the region. This varied considerably between 1793 and 1815, peaking at 22,000 in 1795. For much of the wars it remained around 17−18,000 falling to 13−15,000 between 1811 and 1815 when there was the decisive push in the Peninsula culminating in victory at Waterloo. Even during the final years of the conflict the manpower provided to support Britain’s colonial wars in North America and the Caribbean was surprisingly large; between 1809 and 1813, the average annual manpower commitment was approximately 30,000 compared with 50,000 in the Peninsula. When the commitment to Spain and Portugal fell to nothing in 1815 the North American and West Indian forces remained little changed.

The weak state of the army at the onset of the conflict has been alluded to and the state of Britain’s West Indian forces reflected the service’s wider issues. It would be easy to over-generalise regarding the quality of an army which operated in the region for 22 years under numerous commanders and against an ever-changing enemy. We can, however, make some tentative judgements. In the early years, the British soldier fighting on West Indian soil was the target of much opprobrium. John Fortescue, in his magisterial History of the British Army, weighs in repeatedly against the poor-quality drafts sent out in 1795, soldiers who were ‘raw and untrained’, many sick and some only boys. The weaker units were not only ill-equipped, but were also decimated by disease before they even reached the Caribbean. Ministers such as Secretary of State Henry Dundas had to admit that the worst battalions were too undisciplined to fight and too unfit to ‘encounter the fatigues of a West Indian campaign’. The men lacked the confidence of their own commanders. General John Graves Simcoe, in Saint Domingue in 1797, believed the state of his troops to be ‘a great blow to English military honour’ whilst John Moore, one of the preeminent British officers of the era, variously described his men on St Lucia in 1796 to be ‘mere recruits’, ‘undependable’ and ‘very bad’.

Conversely, there is evidence that some British regiments fighting in the Caribbean were of high quality and that they performed well in the most difficult circumstances. Sir Charles Grey’s army which attacked Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1794 was, in Fortescue’s words, ‘small and efficient’, the troops performing admirably. The force included many veterans of the American War and the elite flank companies of all the regiments in Ireland. It was a superb strike force, possibly the best assembled in the whole war. Even where there was criticism of the bulk of the army, individual units might maintain higher standards. Saint Domingue often received poor-quality regiments, the better units reserved for the Windward Islands. They typically lacked cohesion and camaraderie and were, according to an army surgeon, ‘men radically ill-calculated for soldiers’. In the midst of this mediocrity the Royals were the ‘neatest looking men’ in Port au Prince and the newly arrived 82nd Regiment, disembarking in August 1795, actually impressed the locals, the first reinforcement they had encountered which looked like a ‘corps régle’.

This mix was found in Sir Ralph Abercromby’s army. It contained regiments which could be expected to be ‘steady under arms’, but others which were undermanned and underprepared. When the commander inspected his expeditionary force at Southampton in the summer of 1795 he was forced to remove many old men and boys from the ranks. George Beckwith’s force which attacked Martinique in 1809 appears to have been of good quality, no doubt reflecting the wider regeneration of the army which had taken place since the start of the nineteenth century. Despite the fatigues of the campaign discipline was well maintained and deaths from disease were unusually few.

The officers who served in the West Indies have also polarised opinion. As has been noted, it is easy to stereotype this group of men. Just as for the ranks, the officer class of the early years of the Caribbean conflict received little praise from their contemporaries or later historians. It was difficult to induce men to serve in the region and many regiments were well short of their full complement of officers. Outspoken officers were exasperated by the incompetence of some of their fellows. John Moore is merciless in his criticism; the officers on St Lucia in 1796 were ‘young, and without either zeal or experience’. Elsewhere in his journal, we find that, ‘the officers and men are, unfortunately, so bad, that little dependence is to be put on them’ and that ‘I have hardly an officer capable of taking care of his corps…’ Moore’s words are widely quoted and used to vilify the whole officer cadre, but the reality was more complex. Moore was an example of an exceptional officer serving in the West Indies and men who fought with him, such as John Hope and John Knox, could also be trusted by Abercromby. The broader reforms of the British army, which improved the quality of the rank and file after 1800−1801, also brought benefits to its officers. The Duke of York’s programme, including changes in the purchase and promotion system and better education, meant that the troops could expect to be better led.⁵

The quality of British regular regiments might have improved in the later stages of the Caribbean campaigns but they made up a smaller proportion of the total force in the region than was the case in the 1790s. The constant drain of men, largely attributable to disease, and the ongoing difficulties pertaining to recruitment, meant an increasing reliance on foreign mercenary corps to plug the gaps in home forces. The number of foreign troops in the whole British army increased by approximately 60% between 1808 and 1815 compared with the 25% growth in British troops. Some foreign units, notably the King’s German Legion and some émigré regiments, were employed alongside British regiments in Europe, but there was a tendency to send the less trusted foreign corps to more peripheral theatres such as the West Indies. Their use in distant places was also encouraged by the suspicions of politicians at home; as late as 1812, Lord Palmerston, Secretary for War, had to remind the Commons that the ‘employment of foreigners’ was necessitated by Britain’s limited population.

The foreign contingent was remarkably heterogeneous, including Corsicans, Swiss, Belgians, Russians, Albanians and Poles. The nationalities most commonly recruited for West Indian service were French Royalist émigrés, Germans and Dutch. The émigré corps were made up of refugees from the French Revolution and included old soldiers from the French Royalist army. The German troops were drawn from the German states, especially Hannover and Hesse-Cassel, and the Dutch mostly assimilated from captured Dutch colonies.

German corps were the most numerous and units which featured most prominently in the fighting included Hompesch’s Hussars and Light Infantry, Lowenstein’s Chasseurs, La Tour’s Royal Étranger and the York Hussars. Hompesch’s Corps was raised between 1794 and 1796. The Hussars were sent to Saint Domingue, where they were annihilated by disease, and the unit had dissolved by 1797. The Light Infantry arrived in Martinique in 1797 and participated in the capture of Trinidad before eventually being absorbed into the 60th Foot. Lowenstein’s Chasseurs or Legion were raised in Germany in 1794, the officers being mostly French émigrés and the men mostly Prussian or Russian, or French deserters, or Germans who had previously served in German regiments in French service. The corps was sent to the West Indies in 1796 as part of Abercromby’s force. La Tour’s Royal Étranger or Royal Foreigners was over a thousand men strong and was sent to St Lucia and Grenada in the same year. The York Hussars was another predominantly German unit, although they were originally raised in Poland in 1793. Arriving in Saint Domingue in 1796, it was, like many of the foreign regiments, soon decimated by fever and it was eventually evacuated to Jamaica before being disbanded in 1802.

Among the Dutch units in British service was the York Light Infantry Volunteers, formed in Barbados in 1803 from the soldiers captured after the fall of the Dutch colonies of Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice. Many of the officers were British and the depleted ranks were later filled with French deserters from Spain. The regiment saw action in the attacks on Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1809 and 1810. We will finally mention Bouillé’s Uhlans Britanniques, who typify the mixed nature of some of the foreign corps. Essentially an émigré cavalry unit, it was composed mostly of Germans and, after arriving at Saint Domingue, it was soon incorporated into a local colonial regiment.

A significant number of foreign units had either French émigré or British officers. Thus the Royal Foreign Artillery, formed from a number of independent artillery units in 1803, had many German and Dutch troops but the officers were mainly French émigrés. British officers were encouraged to lead foreign mercenary units with offers of double pay and rapid promotion. Thomas Phipps Howard, who has left one of the better accounts of the fighting in Saint Domingue, entered the York Hussars as a lieutenant in 1794 and remained in the regiment until 1802 when it was dissolved. Howard was promoted to captain whilst in the West Indies and the duration of his service suggests that he valued the rewards of being a British officer in a foreign corps.

The quality of the foreign troops sent to the Caribbean was very variable. Some signed up with the sole intent of seizing the bounty and deserting as soon as possible. British troops’ attitude to West Indian service will be discussed in a later chapter. For German mercenaries, there was often little appetite for a posting in the tropics. Recruitment was difficult and the number of German troops actually arriving in the Caribbean was usually less than predicted; in a German unit raised to support Abercromby’s expedition in 1795, a third of the recruits deserted on the march from Hesse to the coast. Captain Lasalle de Louisenthal, a French officer in Lowenstein’s Chasseurs, comments that the officers and men in foreign units viewed British West Indian service as thankless and dangerous, something to be avoided if at all possible. They complained of their treatment by the British Government, the climate, the lack of proper accommodation, the shortage of wine and the murderous nature of the war. Unsurprisingly, morale remained a problem on active service, Abercromby complaining of large-scale desertion from Hompesch’s Hussars and the Uhlans Britanniques. The general wrote to Henry Dundas, expressing his exasperation; ‘I clearly see that the German Regiments raised by adventurers will not answer. They are at best to be compared to the condottiers [Italian mercenaries] of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’.

The better foreign regiments, such as the York Hussars and Lowenstein’s Chasseurs, gave good service during the campaigns. They were especially valued for their expertise as light infantry or cavalry, adept at skirmishing and irregular operations in the West Indian jungle and mountains. Abercromby, quick to criticise the foreign elements in his army, had respect for Lowenstein’s Chasseurs and, as will be seen in the description of the campaigns, he entrusted the Germans with several key actions. Lasalle de Louisenthal was proud of his regiment. He blamed British officers for the poor state of the Uhlans Britanniques, who had to be ignominiously re-embarked from St Lucia and sent to Saint Domingue.

These soldiers confirmed that they were rudely treated by their officers who stole their pay. The colonel and several officers were English little liked by the men. They were rude and brutal.

He says that he and his fellow officers were treated well by Abercromby and Moore. Other British officers offered them respect but little warmth; ‘Most of them hated us when we were out of action and valued us in front of the enemy’. Relationships between British soldiers and foreign mercenaries appear to have been mostly amicable, although Norbert Landsheit of Hompesch’s Hussars relates a fracas between German and British troops in Port au Prince in 1794 which was defused before there was bloodshed.⁶

The raising of the West India Regiments for regular service in the British army was one of the key developments of the war in the Caribbean during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period. The main driver for this initiative was, as for the use of foreign mercenary corps, the ongoing problem of recruitment and manpower. It was obvious to ministers at home that black troops were better adapted to the climate and terrain. In 1799, Dundas informed the commander in the Leeward Islands, Thomas Trigge, that black corps ‘are undoubtedly better calculated for those duties which are so apt to impair the health of European troops when engaged in active service in the West Indies’. British soldiers were soon exhausted by heavy physical work such as lifting and hauling ordnance. Many of those men shown as ‘sick in quarters’ in the returns were most likely simply debilitated. Black soldiers were more mobile in the heat, had intimate knowledge of the forest and mountain paths, and were hospitalised in much smaller numbers.

There were antecedents to the formal raising of the West India Regiments in 1795. Slaves had already been taken from the plantations, organised into units with European commanders and employed on several islands as what was effectively light infantry. These regiments, generally referred to as ‘Rangers’, did not appear on any official army list and were raised only for the duration of hostilities. Examples include Druault’s Guadeloupe Rangers, Malcolm’s Royal Rangers (raised on Martinique), the St Vincent Rangers, Loyal Black Rangers (Grenada), and the South American Rangers (Demerara). Another prototype body, the Black Carolina Corps, was formed in Saint Domingue. By October 1794, 3,600 blacks and mulattoes (of mixed black and white ancestry) were enrolled in British colonial corps of infantry, cavalry and artillery; we will further consider the various colonial mulatto and black corps later in the chapter. The number of black troops had risen to 2,630 by 1795.

The Rangers Regiments and black troops generally gave good service in the early campaigns. Rangers were frequently grouped into Legions of between 700 and 800 men. Major General Adam Williamson wrote to Dundas in August 1794 stressing their utility.

Indeed, I may in great measure attribute our success to them. It is impossible that regular troops can ever follow the Brigands into the mountains: they must have people somewhat of their own description to engage them.⁷

The Rangers fought well but their operational capacity was limited. This was confined to the defence of their own islands, it only being possible to remove them from their homes by the sanction of both metropolitan and colonial governments. Sir John Vaughan, appointed commander in the West Indies in October 1794, was convinced that the rapid establishment of regular and permanent black and mulatto regiments in the British Army was vital to safeguard the nation’s possessions in the region. The general informed the Duke of Portland, the Home Secretary, that he believed a new corps formed of a thousand blacks and mulattoes would be of more use ‘than treble the number of Europeans who are unaccustomed to the climate’. He pointed out that the enemy, Republican France, had already adopted a similar plan. Vaughan proposed that the corps would be organised just as for traditional British line regiments, with the usual compliment of commissioned and non-commissioned officers. It would be on a permanent footing but intended specifically for service in the Caribbean. The soldiers would be mainly drawn from the ‘ablest and most robust Negroes’.

There was much opposition to the new initiative, both in the West Indies and at home. Local planters and colonial assemblies regarded it at best a dangerous experiment, resenting both the extension of British Government power and the increased status of the black soldiers. The Jamaican Assembly warned that the men ‘would entertain notions of equality’ and would acquire habits pernicious to the welfare of the colony. It was accepted wisdom that a black soldier who had carried arms would never willingly return to plantation work. In Britain, a number of army officers railed against the idea, suggesting that these would be ‘dangerous battalions’ and that any black troops would be better dispersed through white regiments as pioneers. In the event the military imperative was such that Vaughan received government approval to raise what came to be known as the West India Regiments in April 1795.⁸

Vaughan was never to see the culmination of his considerable endeavours, dying of yellow fever later in the year. Eight West India Regiments were formed between April and September, each commanded by white officers and noncommissioned officers. In 1798, five more regiments were commissioned. The original plan had been to raise a sizeable force of almost 9,000 black soldiers, trained and equipped as for European regiments. Pre-existing Ranger corps were incorporated into the West India Regiments, but recruitment was slow and with reductions and disbandments the number of black troops in British service varied during the Napoleonic period. Nevertheless, by 1799 the proportion of black soldiers in the West Indian garrison was about one to every two white soldiers. Some posts in the Windward and Leeward Islands had a majority of black troops. In August 1807, the overall strength of the West India Regiments was just under 8,000 men; this had fallen to around 6,750 effectives at the end of 1810. This weakness of the force resulted from the attritional effects of fighting rather from any deliberate reduction. At the end of the conflict there were eight remaining regiments, the number reduced to a peacetime establishment of six in 1817.

The black units were organised along similar but not identical lines to British line regiments. They were initially made up of eight centre companies, each of 75 rank and file. In 1803/4, consistent with other British battalions of the period, they were increased to 1,000 rank and file (ten companies of 100 men), but the two additional companies had a centre company structure and were not formed as flank companies. The absence of the specially trained grenadier and light infantry flank companies probably reflected the West India Regiments’ primary role as light infantry troops, destined to fight in mountain and forest rather than in close order on a more open battlefield. For short periods, two of the battalions were authorised an 800 rank and file structure.

All West India Regiments had a lieutenant colonel (two after 1808), and two lieutenants and one ensign per company regardless of size. At the heart of each regiment was a cadre of white European sergeants, corporals and drummers. At least in the early years, there were some white soldiers in the ranks; muster rolls for the First and Fourth Regiments show men ‘enrolled in England’, but it is likely that the majority were Irish.

Recruitment relied both on the purchase of slaves and the enlistment of free blacks. Each island was expected to contribute a specified quota of slaves. On the arrival of the slave ships, the men were lined up in the port and examined to establish whether they were fit to bear arms. They were required to be at least sixteen years of age and five feet three inches in stature. Those selected were led away to be given a regimental name and to be kitted out as a redcoat. Between 1795 and 1808 the British Government purchased more than 13,000 slaves for its West India Regiments at a cost of almost a million pounds. For an oppressed slave already on the islands the inducements to become a soldier included a full stomach and the prestige of the uniform. The army diet and the relative wealth were more than he could ever expect whilst working on a plantation.

Most of the recruits came from various West African countries, the number of mulattoes gradually diminishing. Many of the companies appear to have been formed from diverse nations, perhaps intentionally to reduce the likelihood of conspiracy and mutiny. African recruits were favoured as they were ‘wholly unacquainted with and uncontaminated by the Vices which prevail among