Regimental and battalion commanders are perhaps the most-overlooked
cohort of the British Army during the period of the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars. Nineteenth-century histories tending to be written from
the top-down, such that the decisions of the commanding generals took
primacy; the battalion commanders existed at the very bottom of that
chain and so were infrequently seen. In contrast, contemporary works
have concentrated on a bottom-up view of history, placing the memoirs of
the rank & file and junior officers as central to the action, and for
these writers the battalion commanders generally existed at the
rarely-seen outer edge of their regimental experience.
We are left with a documentary vacuum at field officer levels. Yet
within this vacuum, battalion commanders - lieutenant-colonels and
majors - were undertaking a very difficult task for which the British
Army frequently failed to equip them for, intellectually or physically.
Not only did they have to administer an organization of maybe 1,000 men
or more but were also responsible for directing small-unit tactics on
the battlefield, as well as providing inspiring leadership to their men.
Most commanders had to learn their craft on-the-job.
Singular examples of outstanding battalion leadership such as Colborne
at Waterloo, Stirling at Alexandria and Inglis at Albuera bring into
focus the qualities required of good battalion commanders. Conversely,
the impact of a bad commander could be disastrous, and at times lead to
the near-destruction of the units - such as the 2/69th at Quatre Bras -
or near-mutiny, as happened within the 85th Foot in 1813.
This book seeks to bring the battalion commanders of the British army in
the period 1793 to 1815 into sharp focus and enable to see their
progression - how the field officers of Wellington's victorious
Peninsula army of 1814 were dramatically better equipped for their roles
than their earlier counterparts in Flanders in 1793.
There have been other books covering the general workings of the British
Army of the era, never one purely concentrated on Field Officers, and
their contribution to unit leadership.
