A history of the British army Author:J. W Fortescue Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: surprising that the Government felt unwilling to weaken 1812. the British garrison much further. An additional justification for this reluctance lay in the numbe... more »r of French prisoners confined in the British Isles, and in the very disgraceful readiness of French officers to violate their parole. Since 1809 nearly seven hundred French merchant-captains and military officers had thus dishonoured themselves—brave men such as Brenier and Philippon among them—and four hundred and fifty had actually effected their escape. Finally it must be observed that Wellington had particularly requested that soldiers should not be sent to him except early in the year, because, if they arrived at the opening of the unhealthy season—the summer—they simply served to fill the hospitals, and were something worse than unprofitable.1 But in addition to troubles at home there was trouble abroad. First and foremost there was the American war ; and, although Ministers with great moral courage had announced that they could send no reinforcements to Canada, a British possession, but must keep every man for Spain, a foreign country, it was too much to expect that they should not reserve a few battalions for North America in case of need. The West Indies too, though outwardly quiet, might at any time demand three or four thousand men ; for the foreign levies which formed the garrison of the islands were not to be trusted. Yet the critics of the British Government appeared to think that there was no demand for British troops except in the Peninsula. What, they asked, was the use of keeping soldiers idle at home, when there was abundance of work for them abroad, and the bulk of Napoleon's armies were employed in Russia ? Very much of this censure was founded on wisdom after the event. If Ministers could have for...« less