"Authorised Establishments of the British Army 1802-1815" Topic

"This paper is based on research which I did in 2006, leading to the publication of the results as two articles (18,000 words) in the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research (Volume 87 Number 350 in Summer 2009 and Volume 87 Number 352 in Winter 2009). I also gave it as a PowerPoint presentation to the Research Section of the Napoleonic Association, and this paper is based on that Powerpoint presentation, but with a bit of extra detail from the full paper…"
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Amicalement
Armand

That you were able to trace the organization of the British army in the Napoleonic era is great. The problem is that if you take one step back and look at it it is somewhat crazy. The problem is that no attempt was made to keep battalions of the same regiment together so a regiment might have one battalion serving in Spain/Portugal another in England and another somewhere else in the world. Even if battalions of the same regiment were in the same army they may be in different brigades or divisions. The depot for the regiment was somewhere in the UK and replacements came from there to that unique regiment which wasn't unique to the British army. I wondered if battalions in the same regiment in the same theater would swap troops to somewhat compensate for losses.

Strangely enough the present US army does the same thing. When I was in the army one battalion of my regiment was in Germany while another battalion of the regiment was in Korea. The difference was each battalion is independent and uses a common replacement system which is theater oriented.

Rod, the author of that, is a regular contributor here.

It's intriguing that Light and Rifle battalions had grenadier and light companies, if only to get the extra officer these companies had! And also that the KGL had no flank companies until 1811.

Re the Guards, where Rod notes that several had two light and two grenadier companies per battalion instead of one, I wonder if this was because the companies were so large they expected to serve as two "flanks" of battalion strength so took along extra flank companies as well?

@gamershs

Yup, that was pretty much the attitude to regular batallions for around 200 years. Depots and training were eventually shared into 'Divisions' but they were purely tribal "King's Div" "Queen's Div" Prince of Wales's Div" etc. However, although recruits could in theory be flexed many of these were family regiments with in post Cardwell reforms strong regional affiliations.

In theory, 2nd batallions were supposed to stay at home, but in reality the exergies of the service took over. Familiar to all Brits is the way it sort of more or less has rules but rather custom and practice, all fudged over with a bunch of mistakes and half-baked ideas that get explained away as "tradition".

Ther are some advantages to batallions serving seperately. Being mostly an expeditionary force, the regiment can always claim a slice of the glory, having a chance of at least one of it's batallions there. The flip side is also true, if it was a disaster or a disease ridden post, the regiment at least had a chance to re-generate from it's other batallion.

In the first world war, we discovered putting all your eggs in one basket (regionally recruited Div aand Bdes, Pal's batallions etc) can devistate a community when facing casualty rates like the Somme, Ypres, Paschendale and so on. It did throw up some strange aberrations. The public houses and clubs of Blackburn continued until recently (perhaps they still do?) imported Benedictine Liquer because of the taste for it that the East Lancs introduced.

I'm not surprised by your assertion that the US do something similar. I remember a number of US studies into the British Regimental System with a view to assessing and adopting some of it's strengths.

It is worth pointing out that localisation of regiments occurred much later than the Napoleonic Wars, during the Cardwell Reforms of the 1870s. Before that troops from anywhere could be sent to any regiment, and tended not to come from the area that the Regiment purported to represent. Even after this it was by no means unusual for troops to end up serving in a regiment outside of their area. My great grandfather, who was from Nottinghamshire, signed up in a Bantam battalion (a unit for men below regulation height) of the Sherwood Foresters which ended up being transferred to the Green Howards, a Yorkshire Regiment.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

@newarch

I agree, in our period regional titles were mostly notional, the make up of a batallion usually had more to do with where they were stationed in the UK. For example Alan Lagden and John Sly's book on the 73rd (nominally a Highland Regiment) reveals a goodly number of Nottinghamshire frame knitters.

Likewise the rotation of units through the Irish establishment produced a pre-ponderance Irishmen in the ranks of those regiments. Some regiments were certainly more homogeneous than others, but in a time before a regular police force troops and frequent need to aid the civil power units were often stationed 'out of home area' for good reason.

The main 'regionlisation' of the Cardwell reforms was connecting regular batallions to militia ones. The even later Haldane reforms and the formation of the Territorial Force (later the TA) by encampassing the traditions of the local volunteers further cemented those links. People often apply the later affiliations in retrospect, going in search of the 'Men of Harlech' singing South Wales Borderers and acually finding the 2nd Warwicks!