STUDIES ON THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 015
The British Expeditionary Force
3. The Battle of Maida (2)
The British Expeditionary Force
The Bourbon Government, in its refuge at Palermo, and the English general, who now commanded 11,000 men in Sicily, found the temptation to try a sudden blow at the scattered French columns too great to be resisted. They undervalued the number of the enemy, whom they estimated at 30,000 instead of their real 50,000, and also believed them to be far more scattered than was really the case. The belief that Reynier had only 5,000 in Calabria, and these scattered over the whole province, was the false conception that lay at the base of Sir John Stuart’s expedition, which sailed from Messina on June 30, 1806, with no greater ambition than that of beating up the enemy and aiding the insurgents to drive him out of Calabria. No greater scheme was at the bottom of the design, and (it may be added) neither the Sicilian Government, nor the brisk, fussy general in command, nor Sidney Smith, the active volatile admiral who was to aid him, was capable of framing a more ambitious plan. In short, it was to be one of the pin-pricks which (down to the outbreak of the Peninsular War) were all that we ever tried against Napoleon’s vast Continental power.
The expeditionary force was wholly destitute of cavalry—sixteen orderly dragoons, told off to the brigadiers, constituted its whole mounted force. There were ten mountain guns packed on mules, and one field battery of six guns (four six-pounders and two howitzers) with about 150 artillery-men. The infantry consisted of six infantry battalions (20th, 1/27th, 1/58th, 2/78th, 1/81st, and de Watteville’s Swiss corps). But from the flank companies of these, aided by the flank companies of two other regiments in Sicily, which did not sail (the 1/35th and 1/6ist), there had been formed a light battalion and a grenadier battalion of seven and six companies respectively. This left the main units shorn of their picked men and short of two companies each; their numbers were very low, therefore—the 58th had only 550 rank and file left, the 1/81st, 570, Watteville’s only 520, when sick and detached were deducted—and the sick in a Sicilian summer were always very numerous in the British regiments. It resulted that the battalions sailed with an average of not over 600 men in the ranks of each, save that the light battalion had been abnormally increased by adding to its seven companies 250 picked sharpshooters from the Corsican Rangers and the Royal Sicilian Volunteers, besides nearly 150 men from the battalion companies of the 35th regiment, called “flankers”.
For, by an evil device invented by Sir James Craig and discontinued next year by Sir John Moore, the regiments of the Mediterranean garrison, after having been skimmed already to make these light and grenadier battalions, were depleted again by some twenty of the best shots being chosen from each of the eight battalion companies to act as skirmishers, alias flankers. When the “flankers”, as in this case, were deducted from a regiment as well as its grenadier and light companies, the remainder was left weak in numbers as well as in efficient men. It thus resulted that the light battalion (or the light brigade, as some called it) of Colonel Kempt was raised to very nearly 1,000 rank and file—of whom 320 were not British, viz. 70 men of de Watteville’s battalion and 250 Corsicans and Sicilians.
The total rank and file of the expeditionary force, including the artillery, was 4,960 men; if we add the officers, whom Stuart omits in his return, after the tiresome custom then prevalent, which gave only rank and file, the force must have been about 5,200 strong of all ranks. This exactly tallies with the report of Colonel Bunbury, the most accurate statistician among those who sailed from Messina on June 29, 1806. That same officer adds, “the 1/27th was the only battalion of old soldiers; the flank companies of the 20th, 35th, and 61st were also hard biting fellows of old standing; but the 1/58th, 2/78th, and 1/81st were young regiments”. Of de Watteville’s regiment it must be said that Louis de Watteville, its war-tried colonel, and most of the officers were Swiss patriots, who had quitted their native land after its wanton conquest by the French in 1798, and that the core of the rank and file were old Swiss soldiers of a similar sort, but the corps had only been kept up to strength by enlisting prisoners and deserters, some Swiss, but many Germans and others, of doubtful zeal.
The Corsican Rangers in a similar way were full of French deserters, and some doubt was felt as to their loyalty. But the Corsicans did fairly well in the end. Some of my readers may remember that Sir Hudson Lowe was long the colonel of this regiment, and that some wits or wiseacres accounted for his being made Napoleon’s jailer in 1815 by observing that “he was accustomed to deal with refractory Corsicans and so chosen for this job”.
The force was organized into four brigades, each of the absurdly small strength of two weak battalions, with an advanced guard composed of Kempt’s light infantry. Of the rest, Acland’s brigade consisted of the 2/78th and 1/81st, Cole’s of the 1727th and the grenadier battalion, Oswald’s of the 58th, de Watteville’s, and the 20th, which was expected to come up late, as it had been told to threaten a landing near Scilla, at the toe of the Calabrian promontory, in order to distract Reynier’s, attention. As a matter of fact it landed three days later., than the rest of the army, on July 4th, the very day of the battle, yet arrived in time to take a distinguished part in the engagement. The expedition was convoyed by Sir Sidney Smith, who had with him one line-of-battle ship, the Pompée, and the Apollo frigate, with two smaller vessels of war. There was no French naval force in the neighbourhood which could threaten any harm.
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