Could You Survive in the Duke of Wellington's Army?

abroad, it is the beginning of the 19th century and you have just enlisted in the Duke of Wellington's British

army

. Pay is bad discipline. It is hard. If you don't catch a French musket ball, you can contract any number of diseases. Life is hard for the man Wellington himself referred to. Considered the sun of the Earth, but not all British units were equal. A select few might find themselves serving as green-jacketed riflemen. These men selected for merit would be elite marksmen, feared by the enemy and respected. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British Army experienced a time of rapid change, at the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793, the

army

was a small, poorly managed force of barely 40,000 men, by the end of the period, numbers had increased enormously. to more than a quarter of a million soldiers in 1813.

The battlefields of the early 19th century looked similar to those of centuries past, with columns of infantry slowly advancing toward volleys of enemy muskets. The British Army was beginning to diversify by adding specialized and elite units to its forces. In this video, we join the Cold Stream guards. Reenactment groups of 1815 and 95 rifles representing actual units that served in the Peninsular War and helped defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. We will discover how his regiment in Wellington's army would shape his experience on the battlefield. I don't want to come in friendly with you what you hear is french french we have a spy on the shelf chances of survival due to the nature of your skirmish line you

could

be quite far from your nearest NCO so you had to be able to think for yourself, So the question is:

could

he

survive

as a soldier in the Duke of Wellington's foreign army?

Wellington's army started very early, so I'd better hurry up after picking up my uniform. They told me to report to the unit, Sergeant, to find out. What exactly was he up to in the Foreign British Infantry? Where do his recruits usually come from to join Coach Red? The recruits would have come from various sources. I would have had people seeing recruiting groups in a local town. He was captivated by the I thought about leaving for life and adventure, yes you have to remember what life was like 200 years ago, you are in the countryside from dawn to dusk and then you have a recruiting party that comes through town and recruiting sergeants look great. smart in their uniforms they would have had ribbons decorated on their uniforms to make them look even smarter they would have had drummers they would have had young soldiers they would have had a bag of shillings and they would have been playing young boys with baby, yeah, and they were just talking about a life of adventures, going to Spain, fighting on the Peninsula wherever, but basically being involved in war battles, loot, the other thing is and they don't tell you what it is if you

survive

, but it's the fact that you would have um, a pension if you do your full service, the king will give you a pension now, there's no one else to give you a pension back then and if there were entry requirements, if there were, they had to be a certain height, if there was some kind of doctor uh , standards they had to meet to join, they would basically look the same as the military does today, it's a physically demanding occupation, so you're looking for young, healthy men, preferably with all your own teeth, okay , because it has I have to remember that when they load the weapons they have a paper cartridge and they have to bite the paper off.

If you have someone who has lost all their teeth, it won't do you much good because they won't be of any use to you. able to open the cartridge to load the gun and fire it again, as for height, depending on how tall you were, it could dictate where you went in a regiment, certainly for the Cold Stream Guards in 1815 and beyond, before that , the taller and stronger guys would do it. If I had been in the Grenadier company back then, each battalion consisted of a Grenadier company, line companies and a light company, so someone who was smaller, more agile, might well have ended up in the light company, big guys and seniors would have ended up in the Grenadier company and the rest would have been in the line companies.

I'm going to say with confidence that I passed my entry requirements to at least make it this far to come to camp if you really had my own teeth. I have my uniform, let's talk about the uniform, so they gave me this kit. You say it is proportionate. What am I basically wearing on your feet? You have straight damn boots, so these are basically if I turn around to show you mine. They are straight, there is no left or right, okay, officers could have left and right boots and shoes, privates didn't need them, you have half a gray catering under your pants and the reasoning behind them you have to remember. that the uniforms reflected the fashion of the day, yes, as civilian fashion changed, that was incorporated into military uniforms, so you have half Gators with half Gators, um, if they were in wet and muddy conditions like at Waterloo, so the soldiers would have tucked their pants into the half Gators to keep the bottom from getting clogged and muddy and held them up with cloth suspenders, so there are no elastic suspenders, so you have cloth suspenders, they have little bows that you tie and that's how you adjust them so they're always a little loose because you don't want them to break and take off your buttons.

You are wearing a red coat. The British Army uses a red Mada coat. It dates back to the English Civil War. When Cromwell formed the New Model Army, they went to see the wool merchants in London because Comal had the idea that all the soldiers had the same uniform because red was the cheapest fabric available in London at the time the army British adopted the cheaper red cloth. It is the cheapest Club. Did it have anything to do with being seen on the battlefield? That's what you hear sometimes, just the cheapest right at the time they went to the wall.

Traders, that was the cheapest fabric, so the British Army adopted it, yes, as a by-product. of that was easier to see on the battlefield in the battle of Smoke, as we came out of the fire exactly um the buttons Colson's guards were obviously a royal regiment, therefore, we have blue cloths so that your epaulettes, your collar and your cups. They are all blue because we chose that we are a real regiment, okay you have two cross belts on one side, you have a leather cartridge case that opens and there would be all your ammunition, there was a block of wood inside and all your cartridges would go in Under there, if I were to take this out, in fact, you can see at the bottom, there is a metal can and although that can contains your cleaning kit for the gun and your spare ammunition on the other side you have a bayonet this It is a bayonet with a 17 and a half inch socket if we take it out if you hold it that is the bayonet that fits in the gun 17 and a half inches if you look there is a flu in the blood that runs on the outside and that fits in the gun, the only thing that holds it on the gun is this little bolt right here so when it comes on it just holds and that's a nightmare that fits and if you think about the old bayonet fitted bulbs from there it comes now in your head you have the Belgian Chaco um This was introduced um late in the Peninsular War and what you basically have is a replica of a Portuguese cap at that time and it has a false front.

So it's actually higher in the front than it is in the back, but the The idea behind it was that it would make you look taller and more imposing to the opposing army and it was obviously a cheaper way to get a big hat because you didn't. It had to have the back too, it was just the front. You have a carbon plate. Sergeants ncos and above would have a gold cord. Officers would have a red and gold cord to obviously distinguish rank. Obviously I am. I'm a sergeant so I have gold, the Grenadier company and the center companies would have white worsted ropes and the light companies would have green, the same goes for the feathers, so they tell the difference.

The pens also say where so you can look, you can look at the lot, you have a line of soldiers and you know what part of the regiment they are. The British Army may have been divided into specialized companies, but when it came to the maintenance of clothing and weaponry, every soldier was in the same boat, what is certain is that even back then soldiers had high standards in uniform. and team. If you're fighting a war and your gun is dirty or rusty, chances are it won't fire and therefore you're no good as a soldier because if your gun doesn't fire, all you have is a big club and that's not going to help. win the battle.

In the 18th century, European armies consisted mainly of large numbers of line infantry troops dressed in brightly colored costumes. uniforms firing volleys in mast formations in open fields, these tactics proved ineffective for the British against French troops and their Native American allies in the wilderness of North America in the mid-18th century, after some unofficial experiments with infantry lighter ones proved to be effective in the field. The conflict officers, Colonel Manningham and Lieutenant Colonel William Stewart, proposed using what they had learned to train a new experimental core of riflemen. These troops were distinguished by wearing dark green jackets rather than scarlet and were armed with a rifle rather than the muskets that would eventually form the 95th Rifle.

In 1803, to find out more about this specialized core, I was told to report to my officer in the woods surrounding our camp, ah, that man, the donut with the top button, now, my God, I'm sorry, Crocker, of Anyway, uh, gentlemen, I'm in the Green Jackets, but no. You don't have a green jacket, why is it good? First of all, you haven't earned it. If you are a recruit, earning a green jacket is necessary and it will be the greatest privilege of your life when you are rewarded with one. In the meantime, you are dressed in a recruit's outfit, it's a fatigues, also known as an undressed uniform, which will be your equipment until you get your greens and tell me a little about this uniform which was obviously a talk about the king and the influence from Germany and the Jaegers wanted to look like them, but also in terms of camouflage, it would be a myth to say that they were created only for camouflage purposes, absolutely in the style of the Georgian army.

It was King, everything was included in that, but that said there was a nod to camouflage, right? Green is a traditional Jaeger color as you mentioned and in fact this sunken V button line is seen in several continental armies so they are matching the Jaeger fashion but the nod to camouflage was the collar and cuffs blacks. true, yes, the fifth 60th has a green uniform, they preceded us by a few years. They adopted the style that was basically copied by the 95, but they had red collar and cuffs and in this type of terrain behind us you would see that you would.

If you don't necessarily see the green first, you'll see the red color and the cuffs, and you do that when we do tactical exercises, that's what you see first when you go up against them and Richard tells me a little bit about the equipment that you're using. I have quite a bit on yeah this is a full marching order for uh for a rifleman we have the pattern 1812 regimental cap with bugle insignia and the green plume meaning light infantry powder flask so this would carry a quantity of gunpowder that is used to prime the pan of the rifle, we have the sword belt and the sword is a sword bayonet, so today's rifles, modern rifles still refer to their baynetts as sword , although these days there are eight main ones. um, the sword fits the model 1801 infantry rifle, known laterally as a baker rifle, this here is the ball bag that holds the musket balls, we have a cartridge case, so this would contain pre-made powder and ball cartridges, and we happen to have a backpack that would contain my rations uh for the day and uh that would be cuts of meat with bones but not very nutritious these things would have actually been dirty yeah um because it was so delicious he said it was uh raw meat blood dirt you know What can you imagine uh more soldiers were lost to disease than to combat and things like uh, uh, full of meat, can you see why yes and water from dubious sources, yes, and moving on to water from dubious sources, we have the canteen um now the canteen probably wouldn't contain water because in most places the water wouldn't have been safe to drink anyway, so it would probably contain small beer or liquor of some kind, okay?

And because it was safer. drink absolutely more than water um we have the backpack to contain all the worldly goods of the rifleman um everything that is there, from a spare shirt uh spare soles for the boots because in the campaign in theWe're talking about very basic staples like bread and cheese and things like that, their food is designed to keep them active rather than giving them a lot to look forward to, yeah. and it also lacks vitamins and minerals and also water. You know beer is safer to drink than water, so I would say mix it up with what food you would feed it.

I think a four out of ten. Four out of ten. I agree with you and in terms of our chances of survival in general, I mean, this is the 19th century, during the Napoleonic Wars, what were the kinds of survival rates? I've read that in the Napoleonic Wars, one in 20 British soldiers were killed as infantrymen, so it's not five. percentage of casualties and that is quite poor if that statistic is correct, the medicine is not very good in this period nor are there exact chances of survival. I think maybe for the Green Jackets it might be a slightly better situation than the Redcoats, but I still think I'd give survival a five out of ten.

I think we have jackets. I think I'll have to go five out of ten. Plus, there are more of us, so safety in numbers at least, but you know, it's not a great prospect. face um although as we said life at home in Britain might not be so great for the guys who are joining so that's very true. You know, I'm sure there were some positives to it, but could you? Survive who knows, who knows, welcome to the story kit YouTube channel. I hope you enjoyed that video and if you want to see more videos where we try to bring the story to life, don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification.

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