History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, Vol. 1

The soreness on Captain Traille's part appears in other ways in the records of the time. A young gentleman, named Black, who, according to the custom in those days, had carried arms in his company with great distinction, refused a commission in the Artillery offered him by the Master-General, and accepted one instead in Lord Rawdon's New York Volunteers. It is easy to imagine the lad going to his Captain for advice, and finding him brooding over the unfortunate Majority, or calculating how next to worry the authorities with store-demands. And having imagined this, it is not difficult to imagine what the Captain's advice would be.

While talking of stores, it is worthy of mention that at one time so heavy had been the demands on the General from out-stations, particularly from Halifax, which was reduced to barely seven rounds a gun, that there were only 476 barrels of powder left in the whole city and district of New York, under British rule. There was, as is apparent from contemporary correspondence, not a little anxiety on the subject in the Commandant's office.

Although General Pattison was saved much laborious and unpleasant correspondence by having a very competent staff, he occasionally took the pen himself in official differences, even with his regimental subordinates. One, Captain William Johnstone, had entered a remonstrance showing that two of the officers posted to his company were prisoners in the hands of the rebels, and the other two were in England. Had he remained content with a bare statement of facts, he would have done well, but he went on to make insinuations; and after also disparaging the men who had been sent to his Company with the last draft, he concluded by hinting that the climate of Pensacola, where he was stationed, disagreed with him. To whom the General: "As to the idea which you think proper to throw out, and which I cannot but think an extraordinary one, of officers endeavouring to get out of their commands, no such applications have ever been made to me; consequently, I cannot have granted the improper indulgences you allude to; but with respect to indulgences to officers under my command, I must desire to be considered the best judge how far they may be bestowed, consistent with the good of the service… The men whom you think so bad were not picked out, but impartially drafted; and if any of them carry the marks of bad behaviour on their backs, I hope the end will be answered by their correcting it for the future, and that their good conduct under you will be the means of soon wearing them out… I am very sorry that the climate of Pensacola disagrees with you so much, but hope that you will soon recover your health."

The reader will now be good enough to accompany the General up Broadway, towards Hester Street, in the Bowery, then one of the extreme streets yet built in New York, and near the spot where the British landed on 16th September, 1776, to occupy the city. It was close to the place where St. Mark's Church now stands; and at that date was marked by the existence of the house of the last Dutch Governor of New York, built of yellow brick, imported from Holland, now unfortunately destroyed. In Hester Street lived Mrs. Douglas, the young wife of as brave a subaltern of Artillery as ever stepped. The General had just received a despatch from Sir Henry Clinton, then engaged in operations up the Hudson, in which young Douglas's bravery, coolness, and skill had been mentioned in the highest terms. Before writing to his subaltern to express the satisfaction he derived from such a report, the General hastened to tell the good news to Mrs. Douglas; thus killing two birds with one stone, for it enabled him to add to his letter a postscript which he knew young Douglas would value, giving all the latest news from his home. It was this thoughtfulness which endeared him to his officers; it is from such little data as this that the student learns how loveable as well as able this gallant officer was. The day shall come – and not so far distant – when the General shall stop in the same street at a door not much farther on, but his face shall be sad, and his step slow, as he mounts the staircase to tell of a young husband lying under the turf near Charlestown, wounded to death in the battle, and dying with his wife's name on his lips, and love for her in his glazing eye. As he enters the room, there shall be that in his face which a woman's wit shall too quickly read, and the cry of a broken heart shall echo on the old man's ears for years to come!

Leaving Hester Street the General rode towards Ranelagh House, then a species of Tea Gardens, out of the city, but only a little east of the present intersection of Anthony Street and West Broadway. About twenty-five years before the British occupation of New York, to which this chapter refers, this house was the residence of Major James, of the Royal Artillery, a man of great taste and considerable private means. He went on one occasion on leave to England; and, during his absence, the celebrated Riot on the arrival of the Stamps took place. A mob, which took the name of the "Sons of Liberty," having first burnt the Lieutenant-Governor in effigy, and broken his Coach of State to pieces, went off playfully to Major James's unprotected house, burned his valuable library and large collection of works of art, and ruined his beautiful garden. A few months later, it became a public-house, kept by one John Jones, who sent fireworks off in the evening, and by day and night gratified the thirst of the Sons of Liberty. It was a curious heaping of coals of fire, that a few years later it should fall to this very Major James – after a six weeks' passage from Plymouth, to bring the joyful news of the repeal of the Stamp Act. Ranelagh House had become during the War a great place for recruiting for the various Regiments raised for the King's service in New York. During General Pattison's command, no less than 4000 Loyalist Volunteers were doing duty in the city, and 3000 more were away on duty in the South. Some statistics regarding these volunteer corps may be interesting. The New Jersey Gentlemen Volunteers, embodied – as the recruiting notices said – "during this wanton rebellion," received each 20 dollars bounty, and "everything necessary to complete a gentleman soldier;" Lord Rawdon's Ireland Volunteers received each 30s. bounty; and men were tempted to enlist into Colonel Simcoe's Queen's Ranger Hussars by the promise of "an elegant horse, cloathing &c., to the amount of 40 guineas: the bringer to get 2l. 2s." Men enlisting into the regular army got one guinea bounty; and on one occasion when men were wanted for regiments in the West Indies, the married men of New York were tempted by the offer of 5s. a week for the husband, 3s. 9d. a week for his wife, and 2s. 6d. a week for each child, over and above prize-money.

Side by side with these various notices, as well as on every public place and in every newspaper, an intimation was to be found, characteristic of the General's method and accuracy, calling upon any one who had any claim against the Royal Artillery, or the Ordnance, to submit it without delay. This same method is visible in all his internal civil arrangements, showing that he possessed admirable qualifications for the post of Home Secretary as well as General. He ordered every stranger on arrival in the city to report himself on pain of suspicion; the citizens had to form a nightly watch in their respective wards, subject to 24 hours' imprisonment, or 1 dollar fine, if absent, in addition to making up the duty; each chimney had to be swept once a month under penalty of a 5l. fine; a certain number, only, of public-houses was licensed, on the recommendation of the principal officers of the Army and Navy, or of respectable inhabitants; and any one selling liquor without a licence was fined 5l. and the money given to the poor. All carmen were obliged to have licences; and if any one overcharged his fare, he was fined 40s., one half going to the poor, and the other half to the informer.

A favourite punishment for misdemeanours and theft was banishment beyond the lines, accompanied by further severe punishment if the offender should return. The inhabitants were liable to confinement in the main-guard, but their cases had to be inquired into by the civil magistrates before 11 A.M. on the following day. Negro slaves and others deemed worthy of corporal punishment were sent to a court-martial; and able-bodied offenders were not unfrequently sent on board the Admiral's Fleet.

The General's arrangements for the various ferries were excellent, and all the profits went to the poor. Boatmen had to take out licences, and in event of overcharge they were punished in the same way as the carmen. Auctioneers had not merely to provide themselves with licences, but also to find sureties to the amount of 5000l. New York currency. And at any meeting of the vestry which concerned the disbursement of public money, the Mayor was compelled to be present, and make a report to the Commandant, as well as to see that his wishes were complied with.

A good deal of trouble arose from what was called the Neutral Ground, extending some 30 miles above the Island of New York, and not included in the lines of either army. It was a fertile and populous country, but much infested by bands of plunderers, called cow-boys and skinners. The cow-boys lived within the British lines, and bought, or stole, cattle for the use of the troops. The rendezvous of the skinners was within the American lines. They professed to be great patriots, making it their ostensible business to plunder those who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the State of New York. But they were ready in fact to plunder any one, and the cattle they thus obtained were often sold to the cow-boys in exchange for dry goods from New York. It was when traversing this neutral ground, that the unfortunate Major André was captured. By the way, the General in his morning's ride passed the house where André was to dine the evening before he should start on his ill-fated journey. It was an old Dutch house which remained standing until 1850, near the present intersection of 2nd Avenue and 34th Street; and was occupied during the British occupation, as an officer's quarter, by Colonel Williams of the 80th Regiment.

In continuing his ride, the General went to Greenwich, a village situated at that time a mile and a half out of the city, but now in the very heart of it, where the German troops in English pay were stationed. Of all the mistakes made by England in that war – and they were many – the hiring of mercenaries to fight the Americans was perhaps the greatest. It irritated many loyal men into rebellion, and gave a union and cohesion to the disloyal, such as they never otherwise would have gained. Nor were the mercenaries very valuable as soldiers; they were discontented and quarrelsome; and to their want of vigilance was the irreparable disaster of Trenton wholly due. Even to this day, the Americans talk most bitterly of their being hired by the English to shoot down their own flesh and blood; and there can be no doubt that more soreness was due to this circumstance, than to any other connected with the war. Apart, however, from the general question, there was no Commanding officer whose management of the foreign troops displayed so much tact, as General Pattison. Whether it were on duty, or on such occasions as the celebrated ball given by him on the King's Birthday in 1780, which he opened with the wife of the German Baron who commanded at Greenwich, his courtesy and tact were always exerted to cement differences, or allay grievances.

Returning homewards from Greenwich, the General rode through a great many burnt streets, burnt by incendiaries the night after the English occupied New York, and at a fire which took place later; – past not a few churches which had been converted into prisons, riding-schools, and hospitals, for at times the sickness in the city was very great; – past Vauxhall, where Sir Peter Warren lived; past the house in Hanover Square where Prince William stayed, when sent out by the King in compliment to his American subjects; and past the dwelling of that most princely of dinner-givers, honest Admiral Walton. As he rode along, he passed printed anathemas on the walls against privateering, and notices of 20 guineas reward from the Government, and 10 guineas additional from the insurance offices, for the discovery of any man who should have seduced a soldier on board a privateer. There were no less than 5000 New Yorkers engaged during the war in this lawless occupation. It was certainly adding insult to injury, after the sleepless nights they sometimes caused to the General, but the owners of a very fast privateer had actually the impertinence to name their ship after him.

On his way home he rode into the Ordnance Yard, where a few words of comfort had to be spoken to the men whose wages were so disproportionate to those of ordinary civil labourers, that not merely were they discontented, but they could hardly live at all. Ordinary labourers in the city got 5s. a day, and skilled artisans could earn as much as 12s. and 15s.; but in the Ordnance Yard the average wage was only 3s. a day and a ration, and in vain had the General urged on the Board of Ordnance to sanction some approximation to the wages of the other labourers in New York. While men could be got with ease near the Tower of London for 3s. a day, the Board of Ordnance might as well have been expected to pay more in America, as their clerks to learn geography.

The General having now returned to Broadway, let two or three instances be mentioned, in which he prominently figured during his command at New York, before closing this chapter.

The first shall be the only instance in which the General ever showed any symptom of insubordination. He forgot the soldier in the gunner. On the last day of May, 1779, he accompanied Sir Henry Clinton, the Commander-in-Chief, to within 3 miles of Stony Point on the Hudson; and as Artillery became necessary in carrying out the proposed attack, General Pattison was ordered to take command of the troops. During the night – a dark, moonless night – the Artillery for the service was got up, and the batteries completed by five o'clock in the morning, notwithstanding great difficulties, arising from a bad landing-place and a very steep precipice. Orders were then given to commence firing on the enemy's works, and, notwithstanding the great distance, the fire was soon seen to have been effectual. Sir Henry Clinton therefore sent instructions to the General to cease firing, but the General's blood was up. The range had been got to an inch and he hungered to go on; so instead of ceasing fire, he sent back an earnest request to be allowed a few more rounds. Very soon, however, a white flag was seen; and in a few minutes it was known that the whole rebel force had surrendered.

The next sketch may be said to show the culminating point of the General's career as Commandant of New York. The winter of 1779 was the hardest, it is believed, ever recorded in that city. The water was frozen between New York and Staten Island, and guns were carried over on sleighs. It was an anxious time. The insular advantages of New York disappeared before this unexpected high-road of ice; the Jerseys were swarming with Washington's troops; and as nearly the whole of the regular forces had gone from New York to Charlestown on special service, the General dreaded an attack which he might be unable to resist. Notwithstanding the croaking of many advisers, he called out, and resolved to arm, the inhabitants, to test the sincerity of their professions of loyalty, and to ascertain whether his rule in the city had been a successful one. To those who assured him that it was a rash measure, he answered that he felt confident that the number of doubtful characters was but trifling, and as those few would be blended in the ranks with the many who could be relied on, they would be less capable of doing mischief under arms, than if "left to lurk in their dwellings."

And the event proved that he was right. In a few hours he had 4300 loyal volunteers between 17 and 60 years of age, armed at their own expense, until arms could no longer be bought, when they received them from the King's stores; he had merchants of the city standing sentry on his own house; and so fired were the naval officers by his energy, that they landed all the sailors they could spare, and put them under his orders. In return, the General courteously named a new battery which he was building, the Royal Naval Battery, and gave it to the sailors to man. And the result was that the city remained unmolested.

The anxiety the General suffered during the winter of 1779 aggravated a complaint from which he had been suffering for some time, which he describes in his diary as "a stubborn disease which no medicine can allay," and he began to feel that rest and change were necessary. So he applied for, and obtained, leave of absence to go home for the benefit of the Bath waters; but so reluctant was he to leave his post that it was late in the autumn of 1780, before he actually sailed. During the few months immediately preceding his departure his correspondence is a mixture of explanations to the authorities at home of the reasons for his return, and entreaties to his officers to write to him at Bath, and keep him posted in all the news of the war. During the three years of his command he had got everything into such admirable order, that its transfer to his successor was simpler than could have been expected from its complicated and extensive nature. He received a perfect ovation on his departure, both from the civil and military part of the population; and the dear old man had hardly sat down in Bath, before he wrote off to all his old friends of the 4th Battalion.

In all that General Pattison did – whether on duty or not – he was essentially conscientious and hard-working. And these are the two qualities which rule the world. George Macdonald – in his lecture on Milton – said that on rising from a study of the poet's works, he felt that he had been gazing on one who was, in every noble sense of the word, a man. And the student of General Pattison's letters and orders feels also, in quitting the dusty tomes and faded letters, that he has been conversing with a true, a noble man.

A brief notice of his death will suitably close this chapter. He lived to be a very old man. Twice he was appointed Commandant of Woolwich, a command less onerous than that which he held in America, but still a prize to which every Artillery officer looks forward. At last on a March morning in the year 1805, that stubborn disease which indeed no medicine can allay, that old, old disease, death, stole into Hill Street, Berkeley Square, and touched on the shoulder, in his 82nd year, the gallant old soldier, a chapter in whose life has just been alluded to.

It was a year of note for England. War was going on in the East and in the West, and success had attended the English arms in both. Europe was bristling with armed men, whom the genius and the dread of Napoleon had produced; and in England alone, besides a gigantic regular army, 325,000 volunteers had rallied to protect the soil against a not improbable invasion. The cost of the army that year was over fourteen millions, in addition to which over four millions were voted for the Ordnance; and no less than four and a half millions more for the support of the militia and volunteers fell upon the groaning taxpayers. Nearly everything in England was taxed, and this year saw the taxes increased. A man's pension, office, personal estate, and everything that could be called a luxury was heavily mulct; if a legacy were left him, it shrank wofully in the process of reaching him; his profession or trade was made but another excuse for picking his pocket; if he smoked, the tax-gatherer waited round the corner; if he took snuff, the same relentless visitor called upon him; and yet, after all, the revenue of the country fell far short of its expenditure. The horrified fund-holder saw Consols quoted at 58, and yet Parliament borrowing right and left to make the two ends meet. Twenty-four millions were borrowed by annuities, and twelve millions by Exchequer bills; and driven to his wits' end by want of funds, the Chancellor of the Exchequer started lotteries to raise the wind.

A year of note in England. It was the year when Trafalgar was fought, and a country wept in the hour of victory for a life that could not be spared. A year when men were Titans; a fit year for a soldier to live; no unfit one in which he could die who had done to the very last his duty.

In March, 1805, the old General passed to his rest. Perhaps, as he lay dying, his mind wandered to the Far West, where so important a part of his career had been passed; to the Hudson, bound then in the grip of winter; to the trees at West Point waving their naked arms in the wind, as if praying for summer; to New York spreading in peace as it never could have spread in war; to that great country, destined to be greater yet, but ah! never to be so pure as in those days of its infancy as a Republic, whose people were listening – even as he died – to the words addressed to them by their new President, words of soberness and peace, such as Washington himself would have loved.

And so the old man went to sleep.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Conclusion of the War

Before summing up the Artillery share in the American War of Independence, a glance may be taken at the domestic life of the Regiment at this time. From the date when the Regimental feeling first developed itself, there has always been a body of officers whom taste, opportunity, or ability has singled out to express the hopes, schemes, or resolutions, which may have existed among the officers at large for the welfare of the Corps. The centre of the Regimental life which has found its expression in such men has always been Woolwich. In the earlier days of the Regiment this was natural, as its head-quarters and its commanding officer were at that station: in later times, when the Regiment became too large for the supervision of one man, the head-quarters of the Battalions were concentrated there; and after the appointment of a Deputy-Adjutant-General of the Royal Artillery, his office remained at Woolwich for many years, the centre of administration of the whole corps. The large force of Artillery always at Woolwich, the manufacturing departments, and the numerous Regimental establishments, such, for example, as the Royal Artillery Institution, and the Department of Artillery studies, conspire at the present day to render Woolwich more than ever the centre of the Regiment's intellectual and domestic life.

In the correspondence between officers at out-stations and at head-quarters, at various times in the Regiment's history, may be read much that is interesting of Regimental schemes and wishes. The great domestic event during the American war was undoubtedly the formation of the Invalid Battalion, thus ridding the four service Battalions of their invalid companies, and giving them effective men instead. The promotion given by the augmentation gave also great satisfaction to the officers, and in no place was it hailed with more delight than in America. Although the Invalid Battalion was not formed until 1779, its formation had been part of a scheme which had entered into the consideration of the thoughtful officers of the Regiment for some years. In a letter from General Pattison, at New York, to Captain Blomefield, at Woolwich, the scheme is thus alluded to. "I have just time, and that is all, to acknowledge and thank you for your obliging communication of the new arrangement for the Corps of Artillery. I began to despair of that plan, after lying dormant so long, ever taking place. You will, I am sure, do me the justice to believe that its being brought to light again, and carried into execution, affords me the truest satisfaction, and I very sincerely congratulate you upon the event. I hope, too, it is a prelude to something still better, and that the next step will be to form the four Battalions into as many Regiments, to consist of two Battalions each; and then I think the young officers need not be very solicitous to get into the Line." This is a very interesting quotation; and shows that the idea which has frequently been entertained, although happily never carried out, of dividing the Regiment into small Regiments with independent promotion, is at least a century old. Division of a different description may soon be necessary; a more thorough separation of the Garrison Artillery from the Horse and Field Artillery; but a division into several Regiments would have few good results, and many evil. That the division, which it is said above may become necessary, has never been effected, is demonstrative of the strength of the Regimental feeling, which could tolerate so many anomalies, rather than admit the small end of the wedge of separation. As science progresses, Siege and Garrison Artillery wander farther away every day from the Field branch of the Arm; and the difficulty of ensuring the necessary proficiency in officers who are changed repeatedly from one service to another wholly distinct, as well as the natural tendencies of young officers towards the mounted branches, may some day compel the issue of the long deferred edict of divorce. That such divorce is practicable without infringing on the Regimental system is as firmly believed by those who have given the subject their consideration, as that the duties of the various branches would be better performed, were the officers to realize that they would be retained in their performance during the whole of their professional lives. Embarrassing details, and individual hardships, might terrify a military reformer from undertaking the task; but such hardships are inevitable in every reform, and it is the duty of a conscientious and statesmanlike reformer to master details, instead of being mastered by them.