The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 - Thomas Babington Macaulay (novel books to read TXT) 📗

round them in seasons of danger;

and, within a few hours after a Spanish sail had been discovered

in the Channel, or after a thousand Scottish mosstroopers had

crossed the Tweed, the signal fires were blazing fifty miles off,

and whole counties were rising in arms. But many years had now

elapsed since the beacons had been lighted; and they were

regarded rather as curious relics of ancient manners than as

parts of a machinery necessary to the safety of the state.43


The only army which the law recognised was the militia. That

force had been remodelled by two Acts of Parliament, passed

shortly after the Restoration. Every man who possessed five

hundred pounds a year derived from land, or six thousand pounds

of personal estate, was bound to provide, equip, and pay, at his

own charge, one horseman. Every man who had fifty pounds a year

derived from land, or six hundred pounds of personal estate, was

charged in like manner with one pikemen or musketeer. Smaller

proprietors were joined together in a kind of society, for which

our language does not afford a special name, but which an

Athenian would have called a Synteleia; and each society was

required to furnish, according to its means, a horse soldier or a

foot soldier. The whole number of cavalry and infantry thus

maintained was popularly estimated at a hundred and thirty

thousand men.44


The King was, by the ancient constitution of the realm, and by

the recent and solemn acknowledgment of both Houses of

Parliament, the sole Captain General of this large force. The

Lords Lieutenants and their Deputies held the command under him,

and appointed meetings for drilling and inspection. The time

occupied by such meetings, however, was not to exceed fourteen

days in one year. The Justices of the Peace were authorised to

inflict severe penalties for breaches of discipline. Of the

ordinary cost no part was paid by the crown: but when the

trainbands were called out against an enemy, their subsistence

became a charge on the general revenue of the state, and they

were subject to the utmost rigour of martial law.


There were those who looked on the militia with no friendly eye.

Men who had travelled much on the Continent, who had marvelled at

the stern precision with which every sentinel moved and spoke in

the citadels built by Vauban, who had seen the mighty armies

which poured along all the roads of Germany to chase the Ottoman

from the Gates of Vienna, and who had been dazzled by the well

ordered pomp of the household troops of Lewis, sneered much at

the way in which the peasants of Devonshire and Yorkshire marched

and wheeled, shouldered muskets and ported pikes. The enemies of

the liberties and religion of England looked with aversion on a

force which could not, without extreme risk, be employed against

those liberties and that religion, and missed no opportunity of

throwing ridicule on the rustic soldiery.45 Enlightened patriots,

when they contrasted these rude levies with the battalions which,

in time of war, a few hours might bring to the coast of Kent or

Sussex, were forced to acknowledge that, dangerous as it might be

to keep up a permanent military establishment, it might be more

dangerous still to stake the honour and independence of the

country on the result of a contest between plowmen officered by

Justices of the Peace, and veteran warriors led by Marshals of

France. In Parliament, however, it was necessary to express such

opinions with some reserve; for the militia was an institution

eminently popular. Every reflection thrown on it excited the

indignation of both the great parties in the state, and

especially of that party which was distinguished by peculiar zeal

for monarchy and for the Anglican Church. The array of the

counties was commanded almost exclusively by Tory noblemen and

gentlemen. They were proud of their military rank, and considered

an insult offered to the service to which they belonged as

offered to themselves. They were also perfectly aware that

whatever was said against a militia was said in favour of a

standing army; and the name of standing army was hateful to them.

One such army had held dominion in England; and under that

dominion the King had been murdered, the nobility degraded, the

landed gentry plundered, the Church persecuted. There was

scarcely a rural grandee who could not tell a story of wrongs and

insults suffered by himself, or by his father, at the hands of

the parliamentary soldiers. One old Cavalier had seen half his

manor house blown up. The hereditary elms of another had been

hewn down. A third could never go into his parish church without

being reminded by the defaced scutcheons and headless statues of

his ancestry, that Oliver's redcoats had once stabled their

horses there. The consequence was that those very Royalists, who

were most ready to fight for the King themselves, were the last

persons whom he could venture to ask for the means of hiring

regular troops.


Charles, however, had, a few months after his restoration, begun

to form a small standing army. He felt that, without some better

protection than that of the trainbands and beefeaters, his palace

and person would hardly be secure, in the vicinity of a great

city swarming with warlike Fifth Monarchy men who had just been

disbanded. He therefore, careless and profuse as he was,

contrived to spare from his pleasures a sum sufficient to keep up

a body of guards. With the increase of trade and of public wealth

his revenues increased; and he was thus enabled, in spite of the

occasional murmurs of the Commons, to make gradual additions to

his regular forces. One considerable addition was made a few

months before the close of his reign. The costly, useless, and

pestilential settlement of Tangier was abandoned to the

barbarians who dwelt around it; and the garrison, consisting of

one regiment of horse and two regiments of foot, was brought to

England.


The little army formed by Charles the Second was the germ of that

great and renowned army which has, in the present century,

marched triumphant into Madrid and Paris, into Canton and

Candahar. The Life Guards, who now form two regiments, were then

distributed into three troops, each of which consisted of two

hundred carabineers, exclusive of officers. This corps, to which

the safety of the King and royal family was confided, had a very

peculiar character. Even the privates were designated as

gentlemen of the Guard. Many of them were of good families, and

had held commissions in the civil war. Their pay was far higher

than that of the most favoured regiment of our time, and would in

that age have been thought a respectable provision for the

younger son of a country squire. Their fine horses, their rich

housings, their cuirasses, and their buff coats adorned with

ribands, velvet, and gold lace, made a splendid appearance in

Saint James's Park. A small body of grenadier dragoons, who came

from a lower class and received lower pay, was attached to each

troop. Another body of household cavalry distinguished by blue

coats and cloaks, and still called the Blues, was generally

quartered in the neighbourhood of the capital. Near the capital

lay also the corps which is now designated as the first regiment

of dragoons, but which was then the only regiment of dragoons on

the English establishment. It had recently been formed out of the

cavalry which had returned from Tangier. A single troop of

dragoons, which did not form part of any regiment, was stationed

near Berwick, for the purpose of keeping, the peace among the

mosstroopers of the border. For this species of service the

dragoon was then thought to be peculiarly qualified. He has since

become a mere horse soldier. But in the seventeenth century he

was accurately described by Montecuculi as a foot soldier who

used a horse only in order to arrive with more speed at the place

where military service was to be performed.


The household infantry consisted of two regiments, which were

then, as now, called the first regiment of Foot Guards, and the

Coldstream Guards. They generally did duty near Whitehall and

Saint James's Palace. As there were then no barracks, and as, by

the Petition of Right, it had been declared unlawful to quarter

soldiers on private families, the redcoats filled all the

alehouses of Westminster and the Strand.


There were five other regiments of foot. One of these, called the

Admiral's Regiment, was especially destined to service on board

of the fleet. The remaining four still rank as the first four

regiments of the line. Two of these represented two brigades

which had long sustained on the Continent the fame of British

valour. The first, or Royal regiment, had, under the great

Gustavus, borne a conspicuous part in the deliverance of Germany.

The third regiment, distinguished by fleshcoloured facings, from

which it had derived the well known name of the Buffs, had, under

Maurice of Nassau, fought not less bravely for the deliverance of

the Netherlands. Both these gallant bands had at length, after

many vicissitudes, been recalled from foreign service by Charles

the Second, and had been placed on the English establishment.


The regiments which now rank as the second and fourth of the line

had, in 1685, just returned from Tangier, bringing with them

cruel and licentious habits contracted in a long course of

warfare with the Moors. A few companies of infantry which had not

been regimented lay in garrison at Tilbury Fort, at Portsmouth,

at Plymouth, and at some other important stations on or near the

coast.


Since the beginning of the seventeenth century a great change had

taken place in the arms of the infantry. The pike had been

gradually giving place to the musket; and, at the close of the

reign of Charles the Second, most of his foot were musketeers.

Still, however, there was a large intermixture of pikemen. Each

class of troops was occasionally instructed in the use of the

weapon which peculiarly belonged to the other class. Every foot

soldier had at his side a sword for close fight. The musketeer

was generally provided with a weapon which had, during many

years, been gradually coming into use, and which the English then

called a dagger, but which, from the time of William the Third,

has been known among us by the French name of bayonet. The

bayonet seems not to have been then so formidable an instrument

of destruction as it has since become; for it was inserted in the

muzzle of the gun; and in action much time was lost while the

soldier unfixed his bayonet in order to fire, and fixed it again

in order to charge. The dragoon, when dismounted, fought as a

musketeer.


The regular army