and France, with her frequent experience of continental war on a large scale, was the subject of widespread imitation in drill and doctrine.
And there were many Frenchmen in the British army, even when that army’s prime function was fighting the French. The first wave arrived after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 forced many Protestants to flee the country, and another wave arrived after the Revolution. During the French Revolutionary Wars a large number of émigré units, composed of French royalists, served under British command. English law was changed in 1794 ‘to enable the subjects of France to enlist as soldiers’ and receive commissions without suffering ‘pain or penalty’ for professing ‘the Popish Religion’. Most of these units had disappeared by the Peace of Amiens in 1802, but some émigrés soldiered on after this, albeit largely in ‘British’ units. For example, many members of the York Rangers, raised in 1793 and consisting mainly of Germans with French-Irish émigré officers, were eventually incorporated into the 3rd Battalion 60th Foot, which had begun its existence by enlisting Germans for service in North America.
During the Napoleonic Wars foreign corps rose from forming 11 per cent of the army in 1804 to constituting more than 20 per cent by 1813. There was one remaining nominally French unit, the Chasseurs Britanniques, which served with Wellington in the Peninsular War. It generally behaved well in battle, but suffered such an appallingly high rate of desertion – 224 of its men absconded during 1813 – that it was not allowed to post its own pickets in case they seized the opportunity to decamp.55 Corporal William Wheeler of the 51st Regiment served alongside it in Spain, and was unimpressed, as he told his father in a letter.
Want of room in my last prevented me from informing you that 9 men of the Chasseurs Britanniques Regt were shot for desertion. This Corps was originally formed of French loyalists, but the old hands are dropping off and they are replaced by volunteers from the French [prisoner of war] prisons. A great number of these men enter our service for no other purpose than to go over to their army as soon as an opportunity offers (and who can blame them). The consequence is the major part of the Corps cannot be trusted. I wish they were at the Devil or any where else, so that we were not plagued with them…56
Other foreign corps included the Calabrian Free Corps, the Ceylon Light Dragoons, the Piedmontese Legion and even the fustanella-clad Greek Light Infantry. In the great Swiss tradition of mercenary service, the Swiss regiments of Meuron, Roll and Watteville served throughout the war. The latter was roughly handled in the siege of Fort Eirie in 1814: on 15 August 83 of its men disappeared when a mine was exploded and another 24 were killed and 27 wounded. Two days later a vigorous American sortie captured another 128 officers and men.
The Brunswick-Oels Corps was known, from the colour of its uniforms, as the Black Brunswickers, or, from their skull and crossbones badge, as the ‘Death or Glory Men’. It was raised in 1809 by the Duke of Brunswick, whose father had been killed commanding the Prussian force at Jena-Auerstadt three years before. After a period in Austrian service it marched across Europe, and was evacuated by the Royal Navy and taken into British pay. It fought in the Peninsula (Wheeler complained that it was ‘almost as bad’ as the Chasseurs Britanniques) and during the Hundred Days Campaign of 1815, and the duke himself was killed at Quatre Bras.
The biggest and best of the many foreign corps was the King’s German Legion. This had its origins in the Hanoverian army, which had fought alongside the British during the eighteenth century – not surprisingly, for since the accession of George I in 1714 kings of England were also rulers of Hanover. The French overran Hanover in 1803, and the Convention of Lauenberg disbanded the Hanoverian army but allowed its members to emigrate and to bear arms against the French once they had been properly exchanged with French prisoners of war. The British government did not accept this provision, and so, instead of incorporating Hanoverian units intact, as it might otherwise have done, it raised a unit known first as The King’s Germans and then as The King’s German Legion, abbreviated to KGL.
The Legion contained line and light infantry, hussars, dragoons and artillery. It grew rapidly in size, and peaked in June 1812 when over 14,000 officers and men were serving in it. Many of its officers and almost all its rank and file were German, although some British officers joined it, for a young man without money or interest could often gain a commission more easily in the KGL than in a British unit It was reduced in size after the peace of 1814, as many non-Hanoverians were discharged in preparation for the return of the whole corps to Hanover, where it was to form the nucleus of the new Hanoverian army. However, Waterloo intervened, and the KGL fought there with distinction, with the defence of the farm complex of La Haye Sainte by Major George Baring’s 2nd Light Battalion KGL adding fresh laurels to an already distinguished reputation. The KGL was disbanded after the Napoleonic Wars, though many of its officers and men went home to serve in the Hanoverian army while a few transferred to other British units.
The KGL was held in wide respect. On the battlefield its performance was undoubtedly in the first rank. In 1812, at Garcia Hernandez, near Salamanca, KGL cavalry broke a French battalion in square, drawn up on ground well-suited to infantry, without the assistance of other arms, one of the few recorded examples of such an achievement. Afterwards Sergeant Edward Costello of the 95th Rifles watched the Germans ride past with their prisoners and testified that their courage was matched by magnanimity.57
I never before saw such severe-looking sabre cuts as many of them [the prisoners] had received; several with both eyes cut out, and numbers had lost both ears…The escort consisted chiefly of the Germans that had taken them prisoners, and it was pleasing to behold these gallant fellows, in the true spirit of glory, paying the greatest attention to the wants of the wounded.
Off the battlefield, KGL cavalry was renowned for its outpost work. The KGL dragoons developed a warm relationship with the Light Division – which they called the ‘Lighty Division’ – and it was axiomatic that, while a British dragoon might hurtle through camp without occasioning comment, if a German galloped up men stood to their arms and looked to their priming, because it was bound to be a serious matter.
Edmund Wheatley was commissioned into the 5th Line Battalion KGL in 1813, although he came from nowhere more Hanoverian than Hammersmith. He thought that:
The Germans bear excessive fatigues wonderfully well, and a German will march over six leagues [18 miles] while an Englishman pants and perspires beneath the labour of twelve miles; but before the enemy a German moves on silently but mechanically, whilst an Englishman is all sarcasm, laughter and indifference.
He felt, however, that relations between officers and men were not as good as in the British army, partly because: ‘The officers do not hesitate to accompany a reproof with a blow and I cannot imagine any man in so dejected a situation as to bear patiently corporal chastisement.’58
Yet there could be no doubting these officers’ personal bravery. At Waterloo, Wheatley’s commanding officer, Colonel Baron Ompteda, was given a suicidal order by the Prince of Orange. He told his second in command to ‘try and save my two nephews’, who were serving with him, and led his battalion in a gallant but impossible charge against French infantry in the garden of La Haye Sainte, the farm complex in Wellington’s centre. His action was so brave that French officers struck up their men’s muskets with their swords to prevent them from shooting him. But he jumped his horse over the garden hedge and laid about him: ‘I clearly saw his sword strike the shakoes off,’ remembered Captain Charles Berger. Wheatley was knocked out in the hand-to-hand fighting: ‘I looked up and found myself, bareheaded in a clay ditch with a violent headache. Close by me lay Colonel Ompteda on his back, his head stretched back with his mouth open, and a hole in his throat.’59
KGL
