British Army Theatre Returns: 1808-1815
Introduction
Editor's Note: Dr. Bamford's study also includes a monthly return for every British infantry battalion and cavalry regiment, as well as Ordnance, Royal Engineers, and miscellaneous units. The can be found at: British Army Individual Unit Strengths: 1808-1815
Introduction
In 2005, I embarked upon a PhD at the University of
Leeds, originally envisaged as a study of the British Army on active service
during the Napoleonic Wars.[1] It
eventually morphed somewhat into an analysis of the performance of the
regimental system, and, after further tweaking and a very substantial rewrite,
will shortly be appearing in print courtesy of the University of Oklahoma
Press’s Campaigns and Commanders series under the title Sickness, Suffering,
and the Sword: The British Regiment on Campaign 1808-1815.
From the outset, I sought to establish the extent and
nature of both the similarities and differences between the varying performances
of different regiments within a given theatre of war, and between the different
theatres themselves, and in order to do this effectively I required a large
body of basic statistical data. This led me to the Monthly Returns submitted by
to Horse Guards by individual units and – in particular – to those compiled by
the headquarters staff of the various overseas commands. Forming Series WO17 in
The National Archives at Kew, even a focussed selection of these tables took
several weeks to transcribe, and, even then, I was forced to be selective with
the data. Nevertheless, the resulting spreadsheets were an invaluable resource
during the compilation of doctorate and book, and so, with those projects now
complete, I offer them to the wider historical community in the hope that they
may prove of use to others as well.
Historical Context
Throughout the Napoleonic Wars, each regiment,
battalion, or independent detachment of the British Army was required to
provide a complete return once a month. Until June 1809 this was to be
completed on the first of the month, but this was then changed to the 25th so that there are thus two
“monthly” returns for June 1809. From that date, the
regulations required these returns to show “the exact state of the Corps, in
which every Officer, Non-commissioned Officer, and Private Soldier, belonging
to the Corps, is to be accounted for. […] The casualties which have occurred
from the 25th day of each Month to the 24th day of the
Month following, both days inclusive, must be accurately inserted in the
respective Columns.”[2] Although
the regulations went on to state that copies of this return be sent to the
“General Officer under whose Command the Regiments may be serving”, as well as
to the Adjutant General back in London, the latter practice does not seem to
have been much followed: certainly, few examples have survived to be
incorporated into The National Archives. However, barring the need for
occasional reminders to jar recalcitrant units into getting their paperwork in,
and some confusion in the case of detached commands, such as Cadiz, as to which
General Officer the returns should be sent to, theatre commanders seem to have
generally been able to obtain regular monthly returns for units under their
command.[3] This was of course vital for their own understanding of their forces, but also
necessary in that it gave them the data to provide, as they were required by regulation
to do, “A Return, as soon as it can be made up after the 25th of
each month, of the Troops, and of the General and Staff Officers employed
at each Station.”[4] This was to be sent not only to the Adjutant General but also to the Secretary
of State for War and the Colonies and to the Secretary at War, although the
copy for the Adjutant General required, in addition, details of all regimental
officers present and absent. It is from these returns that the great bulk of
the data presented here is taken.
The exact manner in which these returns were made out
differed from theatre to theatre, and their format also changed over time with,
for example, an initial distinction between those ill but still present with
their unit, and those in hospital, later being replaced by a single total of
the unit’s sick. At no point, it should be stressed, was any distinction made
between the ill and the wounded – all came under the heading of “Sick”. Another
innovation, first seen in June 1810, was the listing of men sent home,
alongside those lost through death or desertions, whilst Canadian-raised units
serving in that country, being able to send men on leave, made considerable use
of the “Furlough” column that was, necessarily, generally left blank in returns
from other active theatres. The main columns, however, which remain constant
throughout, are those giving the rank and file strength of each unit, broken
down into “Effective”, “Sick”, and “On Command”, plus the running totals of
deaths and desertions: for mounted units, or those employing draught animals,
the total number of horses and the number dead since the last return must also
be added. Those listed as “Effective” were those fit for service with the unit,
including neither the detached nor the sick. The more confusing “On Command”
may be best understood as a catch-all term for men actively employed in the
service, but away from their parent unit. In practice, this could variously
encompass anything from a handful of men overseeing some small task under the
supervision of an NCO to several companies detached on an expedition, as well
as most things in between.
The Spreadsheets
The spreadsheets themselves form two distinct series.
The first is composed of the original sheets produced by transcription of the
actual returns, divided up by theatre and with a return for each month, as well
as a composite spreadsheet for each theatre with monthly all-arm totals. Within
these, in addition to the transcribed data, I have calculated the percentage of
each unit returned as both Effective and Sick. On those returns that separate
men sick in hospital and those sick in quarters, I have also calculated the
total sick to allow direct comparison with those returns showing only the
total.
The second set of spreadsheets, created almost
entirely from the data contained within the first, comprise a composite
month-by-month listing for each individual unit. These were set up on a
standard format, running from September 1808 to July 1815, for which reason the
reader may need to scroll down to find any entries for a unit that may only
have been sampled during the later years of the war. As well as the data itself,
also included are some basic graphical representations tracking strength over
time and marking peaks and troughs in deaths and desertions. I have created
such a spreadsheet for every unit that appears in the initial run of theatre
returns, although there are several which, as a result, carry only a month or
two’s actual data. In order to keep the graphs balanced, it was necessary to
work around the problem of there being two June 1809 returns by producing
composite figures for that month which combine the strength totals of June 25th with the combined losses from May 1st to May 31st, from
the June 1st Return, with those for June 1st to June 24th from that of June 25th. Because artillery and engineer units are
always listed as total figures for each theatre, these have been treated a
little differently and there are individual spreadsheets for, say, the Royal
Artillery in Flanders or the Royal Engineers at Cadiz, rather than breakdowns
by individual company.
It must be remembered that the spreadsheets were
created with a specific task in mind, namely the easy like-for-like comparison
between units, and that therefore certain compromises had to be made that limit
their wider utility. Most importantly, it should be understood that the
figures provided are for the rank and file strengths only, with no details of
officers, sergeants, or musicians. Including such would have doubled the
amount of time necessary to make the transcriptions, and rendered the project
unmanageable in terms of scope without adding much to its utility for the
purpose for which it was undertaken. Unfortunately, this means that the closest
one can come to knowing the full all-ranks strength of a unit is to follow
Oman’s formula and add ten per cent to the figures given here. Nor was a record
kept of every single column heading, so that no information is here reproduced
relating to transfers of men and horses, nor of men discharged and horses cast
(although some idea of these may be had by comparing the rise and fall of total
figures – it is generally fairly obvious, for example, when an infantry
battalion has received a batch of reinforcements). Finally, the focus of the
project for which these sheets were created was on units on active service in
Europe and North America, so that there is no data for units at home, nor for
those in the East and West Indies. Coverage for the East Coast of Spain begins
only in mid-1813, prior to which date I believe that returns from this force
were included with those for Sicily, which station was not included in the
sample for reasons of time – this omission I intend to correct in due course. Where
possible, gaps whilst a unit was on passage between theatres have been filled
by consulting the unit’s own returns sent direct to Horse Guards, also to be
found in the WO17 series, but these are very patchy in terms of what has
survived; the same method has been used to provide strengths for KGL
detachments in Germany in 1813-14. Within these confines, however, it is hoped
that readers will find this data of use.
Notes
[1] Supervised by Dr Kevin Linch and Prof. Edward Spiers, and completed
in 2009 with the thesis title, “The British Army on Campaign 1808-1815:
Manpower, Cohesion, and Effectiveness”.
[2] General Regulations and Orders for the Army, Adjutant
General’s Office, (London, 1811), p.266; see also ibid, pp.267-271 for
detailed instructions as to how the forms were to be completed and what
additional information was to be included.
[3] See, for example, GO of October 9th 1810, The General
Orders of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington KG, ed. Lieut. Colonel
Gurwood (London, 1838), Vol.II, pp.179-181. Regarding Cadiz, see notes to the
Monthly Returns for Portugal of April 25th and August 25th 1810, TNA, WO17/2465.
[4] General Regulations, p.261, italics as original.
Placed on the Napoleon Series: February 2013 - December 2018
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