Fusiliers by Mark Urban Page B

lines at the head of a party with orders to move several hundred yards north to Penny Ferry, where the Mystic River narrowed to a crossing point, and then push up the riverside road, wreaking further vengeance. Their intention was to creep forward with the same stealth that the Americans had shown, burn down some houses used as guard posts and take prisoners. What happened is best described in the lieutenant’s own words:
     
    We burnt Penny Ferry House … and should have taken the whole guard andburnt the barns up Mystic road, had our men behaved like men and soldiers and obeyed orders, which were upon no account to fire even if fired upon. They fired and to mend the matter ran away without even having their fire returned.
     
    Lenthall managed to collar a few of his panic-stricken soldiers to carry off a captain of marines. It was the least the Fusilier lieutenant could do, since it was his own fearful grenadiers who had shot the poor man. The raid ended without prisoners and cost the life of that British captain who later died of his wounds.
    Lenthall’s affair was no isolated incident. Lieutenant Richard Williams could have brought his own example to the 23rd’s mess table. One month before, at the same spot on the lines, he had also been involved in a chaotic action. When a patrol had been sent out from one of the two bastions on the Charlestown Neck defences, men in the other strong-point had not known anything about it and ‘gave a general fire of small arms on them’. The two British companies had blazed away at one another until calm had been restored. Williams blamed, in part, the officer leading the patrol, for he had not informed those along the line what he planned to do.
    However, Williams, like Lenthall, reserved his toughest invective for the soldiers, criticising ‘the hurry and inattention natural to young troops … who never having seen service, foolishly imagine that when danger is feared they secure themselves by discharging their muskets with or without aim’. Williams believed that matters would get better as experience built: ‘Theory is nothing without practice, and it requires one campaign at least to make a good soldier.’
    While much of the 23rd had not been present at Bunker Hill, it was clear then that its soldiers were guilty of the same indiscipline that Burgoyne, Rawdon or Howe had lamented at that battle. Invested by vast numbers of rebels, the garrison’s morale had slumped. The regiment was a shadow of its former self, its Minden self. What could be done to curb its men and make them worthy Fusiliers?
    Most were agreed that some tough steps had to be taken to restore discipline. This was easier said – in some General Order put out by Headquarters – than it was done by the young officers who bore the brunt of actual duty. The lieutenant or captain who tried to grab some running soldier or prevent another from looting an American’s house could receive volleys of abuse in return. Williams or Lenthall suffered many handicaps in trying to get their men to do as ordered. An officer who allowed soldiers to insult him would risk losing all authority,whereas one who wielded the rod too readily might meet with unpleasant reprisals.
    Several days before the incident on the lines, Lenthall had brought a grenadier of the 4th to a general court martial. The man was charged with mutiny and insolence following an altercation with the lieutenant. Mutiny was a capital charge, but General Gage’s aversion to the death penalty would have been well known to the court and in the end it had found the grenadier guilty only of insolence. The outcome was duly announced in Orders, and the offender ‘sentenced to receive 500 lashes at such place and time as the Commander-in-chief shall think proper’. Even in this particular though, Gage left himself free to release the soldier without further punishment.
    Not only was the outcome of charging a soldier uncertain, but there were also risks for the