Braddock's disaster on the Monongahela River, in 1755, came as a surprise and as a shock to the British Army at home. The significance of this defeat seems, however, to have been fully grasped by the Duke of Cumberland, for, according to Major Patrick Murray, who served in the 60th Royal Americans, a M. von Harbot, a Swiss, belonging to the canton of Berne, hearing of Cumberland's difficulties, made a proposal to a countryman of his, a M. Jacque Prevost, to raise in America a four-battalion regiment of Provincials under a British Colonel-in-Chief, but with a fair sprinkling of foreign officers in it. This proposal was accepted by the British Government, and £80,178 16s. was granted for this purpose ("History of England," Vol. III., chap. 24, p. 214. Smollett.)
Prevost was a soldier of fortune, he had seen service in Holland, he now spared no pains to collect officers for the new regiment, and Henry Bouquet and Frederick Haldimand, Swiss officers of distinction, then serving in the body-guard of the Prince of Orange, were appointed to the lieutenant-colonelcies of the first and second battalions.
The purpose of the Royal Americans was to form a body of regular troops capable of "combining the qualities of the scout with the discipline of the trained soldier." They were, in fact, true light infantry and the first true light infantry the British Standing Army ever had. It is quite possible that Prevost, if not Bouquet and Haldimand as well, had learnt what true light infantry should be like from the light troops of Marshal de Saxe.
Though the actual order to raise the regiment was not dated until March 4th, 1756, which placed the establishment of the regiment at four battalions of ten companies each, in all four thousand four hundred men, the date of the commission of Lord Loudon; Christmas Day, 1755, has usually been considered the birthday of the Regiment.
"The nucleus of the regiment having been raised, it sailed for Pennsylvania, in which district lived a large colony of backwoodsmen - English, Swiss, Tyrolese and German - who would supply it with recruits."
Much of the above has been taken from "The Annals of the Kings Royal Rifle Corps," Vol. I., pp. 2-25. By Capt. Lewis Butler. Whilst debates on the subject of raising the troops suggested by M. von Harbot were going on, Major Patrick Murray informs us: "Ten new regiments were raised, in consequence of which delay the Royal Americans were numbered the 62nd instead of being the 52nd Regiment . . . when in consequence of the capture of the 5oth and 51st Regiment at Oswego, these two regiments were disbanded, the Royal American Regiment became the 60th." This is an interesting coincidence. The first light infantry ever raised in the British Army were the Black Watch, originally the 43rd; the second the 62nd, which but for a short delay would have been the 52nd; eventually, in 1803, the 43rd and 52nd became the first two permanent light infantry regiments in the British Army.
At this time the number of German settlers in America was considerable. In 1750, out of a population of 270,000, there were no less than 90,000 Germans in Pennsylvania; forty years later they numbered 144,600. "The German Soldier in the Wars of the United States," p. 30. J. G. Rosengarten. See also the "Memoirs of Mme. von Riedesel," and "Die Deutschen Hulfstruppen im Nord Amerikanischen Befreiungskreige, 1776 bis 1783," pp. 271-397. By Max von Eelking. Many of these had been driven there from the Pfalz by Louvois' persecution. Pennsylvania formed, therefore, a magnificent recruiting ground for the new battalions. Many of the most noted hunters and Indian fighters were of German origin. Lewis Wetzel is one of the most famous. Once pursued by four Indians he loaded his rifle as he ran, and killed in succession the three foremost, whereat the other fled. In all he took over thirty scalps of warriors, thus killing more Indians than were slain by either of the forces of Braddock or St. Clair during their disastrous campaigns. The Germans, Tyrolese and Swiss introduced the rifle into America.
On June 15th, 1756, the forty German officers who were to raise recruits to the number of four thousand for Loudon's Royal Americans arrived ("History of the United States," Vol. Ill., p. 155. Bancroft.) In the following year, Lord Howe was commissioned colonel of the Regiment.
In 1760, after the fall of Montreal, Amherst sent Major Rogers to effect the capitulation of the French troops on the Great Lakes. The French had built a series of rude forts; these, being surrendered to Rogers, were at once garrisoned by detachments of the 60th Royal Americans. The Indians deeply resented this change of masters, and Pontiac, an Indian of remarkable ability, planned a great confederation of all the Indian tribes so that he might destroy these British posts. He cut the line of forts, some containing the most microscopic garrisons, and Amherst, seeing the danger of an extensive Indian war, at once despatched Colonel Bouquet to nip the rebellion in the bud.
Bouquet's force consisted of some five hundred Regulars of the 42nd, 60th, and 77th - Montgomery's Highlanders. At Fort Bedford he engaged thirty backwoodsmen, and, by August 4th, had reached a place about four miles from Fort Ligonier. On the 5th, he was attacked at Bushy Run. Murray describes the advanced guard as resolutely returning the fire of the Indians until sustained by the Highland Light Infantry. But things on this day went badly with Bouquet's gallant little army, and it sustained heavy losses. On the 6th, however, the attack was renewed, and by a clever ruse Bouquet drew the Indians on, and then turning on them utterly routed them. "It was a magnificent performance."
The results of Bushy Run were the completion and solidification of the victories and labours of Amherst and Wolfe, a complete effacement of the disasters of Monongahela and Ticonderoga, and the release of many hundreds of European prisoners who had been kept by the Indians in captivity for a number of years. At a meeting between a mother and daughter who had been long separated we realise the true kindliness of Bouquet's nature. The story goes: "One woman recognised her daughter who had been carried off nine years before, but the girl had entirely forgotten her mother and utterly failed to return her passionate embraces. Bouquet was standing by, and his suggestion at the moment reveals his imaginative mind. 'Sing her songs,' said he, 'that you used to sing to your child.' Then memory returned, and with a flood of tears the girl buried herself in her mother's arms" ("The Annals of the King's Royal Rifle Corps," Vol. I, p. 191. Capt. Lewis Butler.) A man with so acute an insight into human nature as this, was a worthy founder of the training and discipline of British light infantry, which, fifty years later, was to be worthily completed by his successor, Sir John Moore.
Colonel Bouquet, we learn from the Annals of his famous Regiment, was a well read and highly educated man, and this is at once apparent on studying his voluminous correspondence and on reading his admirable treatise on his "Expedition against the Ohio Indians." He had seen much service in Europe under the Prince of Orange, but was in no way corrupted by the formal tactics of his age. He saw that brutality brutalised and did not reform; he saw that if his men were trained intelligently in place of mechanically, kindly in place of harshly, they must beat either untrained Redskins or soldiers trained according to the system of Frederick the Great. Intelligent co-operation was the basis of his training and that of Colonel Haldimand each member of his regiment being trained mentally as well as physically (Haldimand is believed to have been at one time in the Sardinian Service and to have served at Mollwitz, 1741, under Frederick the Great.) By the adoption of Indian dress, he at one stroke did away with the senseless trappings which delighted the heart of Cumberland. He studied Indian warfare, not to copy it - this would have indeed but shown his incapacity to overcome it - but to discover its nature so that he might devise a system of tactics whereby he could destroy it. As we shall see, he did devise such a system, and thenceforth, even on ground of their own choosing, the Redskins found not only their match in the men of the Royal Americans, but their master.
The training of Colonel Bouquet's men was organised as follows:
"The soldiers before being armed must be taught to keep themselves clean and to dress in a soldier-like manner. This will raise in them a becoming spirit, give them a favourable opinion of their profession, and preserve their health. The first thing they are to learn is to walk well, afterwards to run; and in order to excite emulation small prizes should from time to time be given to those who distinguish themselves. They must then run in ranks in extended order and wheel in that order, at first slowly, but by degrees with increasing speed. This evolution is difficult, but most important in order to fall unexpectedly on the flank of the enemy. The men are to disperse and rally at given signals, and particular colours should be given to each company as rallying points. The men must be trained to leap logs and ditches, and to carry burdens proportionate to their strength.
"When perfect in these exercises the young soldiers will receive their arms and follow the above-named evolutions on all kinds of ground. They will be taught to handle their arms with dexterity, and without losing time upon trifles to load and fire very quickly standing, kneeling or lying on the ground. They are to fire at a mark without a rest, and not allowed to be long in taking aim. Hunting and the award of small prizes will soon make them expert marksmen;
"The men should learn to swim, pushing before them on a small raft their clothes, arms and ammunition; they must also learn to use snow-shoes; they must be taught to throw up entrenchments, make facines and gabions, as well as to fell trees, saw planks, construct canoes, carts, ploughs, barrows, roofs, casks, batteaux and bridges, and to build ovens and log-houses. With practice the youngest among them will soon become tolerably good carpenters, masons, tailors, butchers, shoemakers, etc. . . .
"The men should take it in turns to go on hunting expeditions with their officers and remain out of camp for some weeks at a time, taking with them a little flour, but otherwise relying on the game and fish caught.
"Great care is to be taken to preserve purity of manners, order, and decency among the men; this will be found much easier in the woods than in the neighbourhood of towns. It would be a good plan to give the men only a small portion of their pay in cash, the remainder will be accumulated for them until discharge; then they would receive the balance due to them and 200 acres of land" ("The Annals of the King's Royal Rifle Corps," Vol. I, pp. 160, 161. Capt. Lewis Butler.)
Anyone who reads the above must at once be struck by the vast superiority of Bouquet's system of training over that of our own, controlled by countless regulations as it is. Probably few of Bouquet's men could read or write, but there can be no doubt that if an intelligent officer were offered the choice of a company of Bouquet's men or a company of the present board-school production, which he would accept. His were men, not overgrown boys, they lived and fought like men, they were recruited not from the unemployed, but from the skilled of the forests and the backwoods where they had been brought up in an atmosphere of danger, not of blue-coated policemen but of scalp-hunting Redskins. They worked like men, and they learnt what a man should learn: to fight at times, and at times to build himself a peaceful home. They conquered Nature by skill and intelligence, by will and muscle, and did not sit down expectant that things would accomplish themselves, or hopeful that others would accomplish them for them. Yet they were of the same flesh and blood as the men of to-day, and human nature does not change much in a century and a half. Why, then, this difference? Because Bouquet was a man of genius, of character, of originality and of independent thought, he knew what he wanted, and knowing it, he saw that he got it; he was as untrammelled by the shackles of clerical rule, as free from the hide-bound pedanticisms of mouldering regulations, the pettifoggery and hair-splittings of narrow-minded officials as Napoleon was from Junctas, Dutch Commissioners and Aulic Councils. And the result? He succeeded where we fail. There is only one true training for the soldier, namely, to act like a man, under the certain circumstances of peace and the uncertain circumstances of war. The men of the 60th were not only admirable soldiers, but good carpenters, masons, tailors, butchers and shoe-makers; in an English company of the present day it would be difficult to find five men who could, or can, boil a potato or wash a handkerchief properly, let alone build a house or plough a field.
Bouquet's tactics, in his Indian wars, are well worth our careful attention, for not only do they show how a trained light infantry met untrained skirmishers and sharpshooters a hundred and seventy years ago, but they set forth principles of savage warfare as true to-day as then.
The following extracts are, for the most part, taken from his own historical account "An Historical Account of the Expedition against the Ohio Indians, in the year MDCCLXIV., under the command of Henry Bouquet, Esqre," pp. 40-8. 1766.):
"Experience has convinced me that it is not our interest to be at war with them (the Red Indians); but if, after having tried all means to avoid it, they force us to it . . . we should endeavour to fight them upon more equal terms, and regulate our manoeuvres upon those of the enemy we are to engage, and the nature of the country we are to act in . . . .
" . . . They seldom expose their persons to danger, and depend entirely upon their dexterity in concealing themselves during an engagement, never appearing openly, unless they have struck their enemies with terror . . . if they were beat two or three times, they would lose that confidence inspired by success. . . . But this cannot reasonably be expected till we have troops trained to fight them in their own way, with the additional advantage of European courage and discipline.
"Any deviation from our established military system would be needless, if valour, zeal, order and good conduct were sufficient to subdue this light-footed enemy. These qualities are conspicuous in our troops; but they are too heavy, and indeed too valuable, to be employed alone in a destructive service for whicfi they were never intended. They require the assistance of lighter corps, whose dress, arms and exercises, should be adapted to this new kind of war."
Bouquet, after describing the difficulties which arise in Indian warfare, adds that the tactics of the Indians may be summed up as follows:
"The first, that their general maxim is to surround their enemy.
"The second, that they fight scattered, and never in a compact body.
"The third, that they never stand their ground when attacked, but immediately give way to return to the charge.
"These principles admitted, it follows:
"Firstly, that the troops destined to engage Indians must be lightly clothed, armed and accoutred.
"Secondly, that having no resistance to encounter in the attack or defence, they are not to be drawn up in close order, which would only expose them without necessity to a greater loss.
"And, lastly, that all their evolutions must be performed with great rapidity, and the men enabled by exercise to pursue the enemy closely, when put to flight, and not give them time to rally."
Bouquet's suggestion was to form a battalion of "hunters," which is the exact equivalent of the word "Jaeger." This battalion to be five hundred strong, to which was to be attached two troops of light horse (Compare this with the system of Marshal de Saxe) or mounted infantry, and a company of artificers composed of frontier men from fifteen to twenty years of age, enlisted for fifteen years, and specially trained for service.
The light horse, besides being armed with a short rifle, carried "a battle-axe with a long handle, the only sort of arms they should make use of in the charge." . . . "Every light horseman ought to be provided with a bloodhound."'
Bouquet's model column was composed of the following :
Two Regiments of Foot ... 900
One Battalion of Hunters ... 500
Two Troops of Light Horse ... 100
One Company of Artificers ... 20
Drivers and necessary followers ... 280
Total ... 1,800
His order of march is most interesting, and can be clearly followed on the accompanying diagram.
His order for the attack is a model of what an attack against a very active savage foe should be. He first assumed the defensive by forming a square with his regular troops, in which he collected and parked his transport, small advanced posts being thrown out to keep the Indians as far off the square as possible. The square being well-formed and the transport safe within it, its sides simultaneously expanded, the even squads, or sections, moving forward, the odd remaining in their original position; the corners of the square were strengthened by small parties of Rangers. The even squads now opened a rapid independent fire on the circle of Indians, and under cover of this fire the hunters sallied out in four columns through the intervals followed by the light horse and their bloodhounds, and, forcing their way through the enemy's circle, fell upon his flanks "by wheeling to their right and left and charging with impetuosity." The even squads now "march out briskly and attack the enemy in front," and halt when they are about one hundred yards from the square, whilst the rest of those who have attacked pursue the enemy "till they are totally dispersed."
The great difficulty of an eccentric attack, that is, an attack aimed from within against the circumference of a circle, is that the enemy offers no flanks to the attackers; further, every shot fired from the centre of a circle towards its circumference, if it misses the circumference, is lost; whilst, theoretically, no shot fired from the circumference towards the centre is wasted. The eccentric force not only offers flanks to the concentric, but lays itself open to receive frontal, oblique, enfilade and reverse fire, whilst it can only deliver frontal and a partially oblique fire in return.
Bouquet seems to have grasped all these points. First, by means of his advanced posts, he held the enemy at a distance; secondly, he collected his force together; thirdly, by four simultaneous charges, covered by fire, he broke the circle into four segments, that is, forced it to offer eight flanks to his attack; fourthly, he demoralised it by his fire, and, fifthly, pursued and annihilated it by means of his light troops, foot and, horse.
This formation against a savage foe is probably the most ingenious and effective that the history of irregular warfare has to record.
