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

British army until late in the nineteenth century, when purchase was abolished.
Those who could not afford to purchase promotion had to put their faith in the fortunes of war, slow and unpredictable as they were. If an officer died on active service, his commission was forfeit to the Crown. The next senior officer was promoted in his place without payment, which in turn created another vacancy, and so on down the ranks to the lowest, where seniority on the list told. This gave rise to the black-humoured toast ‘To a bloody war, and a sickly season!’ If purchase seems incomprehensible as a concept today, it is as well to remember that almost every public office in Stuart times was obtained in this way. Even William Blathwayt had paid for his post as secretary at war.
One exception was general officers, those beyond the ‘field’ ranks (as the regimental officers, captain to colonel, were known). Whereas field officers purchased their commissions at a remove through agents, generals were appointed personally by the Crown. And while it was not always undiluted merit that determined promotion to general rank, money did not change hands. Generals were concerned with the direction of campaigns and battles and with their logistic arrangements. In the Middle Ages and ‘early modern period’ men of proven worth were appointed to senior command on campaign in an ad hoc fashion: there was no permanent establishment of generals, the rank being frequently honorific. Regiments were ‘brigaded’ – grouped in brigades, the term that superseded ‘tertia’ after the Civil War – and commanded by the senior regimental commander. The ‘brigadier’ had no formally allotted staff, only the officers he chose from his own regiment to relay his orders in battle, for he was not administratively responsible for the regiments in his brigade, only for their actual control during the fighting. But by 1704 these arrangements were becoming more formalized, though brigades were still not permanentcommands. The rank of brigadier-general had come into use, but it was a temporary one given to the senior officer within the equally temporary grouping of regiments. Indeed, a brigade might be commanded by a major-general if that was the rank of the senior ‘proprietor-colonel’, 27 though he was still referred to (confusingly to modern ears) as ‘brigadier’. Thus Colonel Archibald Rowe of the Scots Fuzileers, a proprietor-colonel who actually took his regiment into the field, was appointed to command one of the three brigades at Blenheim as Brigadier-General Rowe, while a second brigade was commanded by Major-General James Hamilton (earl of Orkney), colonel of the 1st Foot (Royal Scots), and a third by Major-General James Ferguson, colonel of the 26th (the Cameronians). All three led the brigades in which their own regiments were mustered, these regiments being commanded in their absence by the lieutenant-colonel. There were no ‘divisions’ – groupings of brigades – at this time: brigades were mustered into ‘columns’, usually for administrative and security purposes on the march, although just occasionally – as at Blenheim – divisions were employed as entities for battle itself. 28
Altogether then, Marlborough’s army marching along the Danube was a far more professional affair than any fielded before by Britain. Crucially the infantry, with the shorter and lighter flintlock musket (not needing a ‘rest’ on which to lay the barrel to take aim) and socket bayonet, were a great deal handier than their predecessors with whom William had made war in Flanders only a decade earlier. The flintlock’s calibre was also smaller than the matchlock’s and the ball therefore lighter, while no less lethal, allowing the infantryman to carry more rounds. The new weapon simply permitted a greater rate of fire. At Edgehill it had been one round in two minutes; now it was three or even four a minute in the best-drilled regiments.
And