Free The Making Of The British Army by Allan Mallinson Page A

at home and in Ireland, from 1702 Britain’s treaty contribution to the Grand Alliance was 40,000 men, of whom half were to be ‘subject troops’ – men raised within the kingdom(s) – and the rest hired from continental princes. Later there was ‘the Augmentation’ – 20,000 men, a third of them subject troops, half the bill footed by the Dutch. Eventually Marlborough would have more than 30,000 red-coated subject troops at his disposal in the Low Countries. Nor were British eyes directed only to the south-east; from 1707 Britain would take the fight to the Bourbon Philip V, the French placeman on the Spanish throne, and there would be almost as many redcoats in Portugal and Spain.

This fourfold increase in the post-Ryswick figure could not have been achieved without the proprietor-colonel system in which some notable – a man of standing in the county, but not necessarily with military experience – would be contracted to field a regiment of specified strength. In 1704 an infantry battalion comprised some 800 men organized in twelve ‘battalion companies’ of sixty, and one grenadier company of seventy. They were equipped by the Board of Ordnance but clothed, fed and paid by the colonel. His return was his own pay, which was not great, plus any legitimate surplus from the public money he was given for the maintenance of his regiment. Day to day, the regiment was commanded and trained by a lieutenant-colonel. And since the proprietor-colonel frequently had other interests such as offices of state or, on campaign, a superior appointment (command of a brigade or a position on the staff), the lieutenant-colonel usually commanded on operations too. Charles Churchill, Marlborough’s brother, by now a lieutenant-general and a key member of the duke’s high command, was still colonel of the 3rd Foot, a regiment with which, though it was to fight at Blenheim, he had only the most perfunctory contact. Most of his proprietorial interest would have been handled by a London agent, a figure who would grow in importance to the whole system of army administration. The lieutenant-colonel, the major (the lieutenant-colonel’s second-in-command) and the company officers (a captain assisted by two or three ensigns) bought their commissions from the Crown but were paid direct by the agents on the Crown’s behalf. Officers were able to buy and sell their commissions more or less at will, and this became big business for the agents. Purchase was in fact the usual route to promotion to the next rank up, although commissioning and promotion without payment was sometimes conferred for men with the right connections, or for distinguished service.
The origins of ‘purchase’ (the whole system of buying and selling of commissions) are uncertain, but throughout Europe in the Middle Ages mercenary troops were raised on the expectation not of pay but of profit; not just of booty but of legitimate trading in the wake of conquest. Those who wished to hazard for profit in this way were expected, in effect, to buy a share in the undertaking, and since the profit was shared out among the various ranks pro rata, it followed that the price of each rank – each ‘share’ – would be different. The term ‘company’ for such a body of mercenaries possibly derives from thismilitary – mercantile arrangement. Bearing in mind the Crown’s penury after the Restoration, purchase was a useful additional source of income to fund the unconstitutional army. In effect, therefore, an officer purchased an annuity, though he could always recover his original investment by ‘selling out’. If he wished to purchase a greater annuity – if he wished for higher rank – all he had to do was pay the difference between the price of the higher rank and his own, as long as there was a vacancy in the higher rank. If his own regiment had no vacancy the aspiring officer would have to buy into a regiment that did, and regimental mobility was a feature of the