March 7. a notable new departure in the formation of a Corps of Waggoners in five companies, with a total strength of six hundred non-commissioned officers and men, one-tenth of them artificers. This was the first attempt at a military organisation of the transport-service.
It was reckoned that, in one way and another, at least thirty thousand men were enlisted for the regular Army between November 1793 and March 1794,[1] and the number was the more astonishing since Fencibles and substitutes for the Militia had absorbed a large number of recruits. It would, however, be a fallacy to suppose that Ministers had yet thought out any regular plan for continual filling of the ranks; on the contrary, they had resorted to a variety of hasty expedients founded upon no fixed principle, and therefore unfitted to meet more than a temporary emergency. Such procedure is invariably wasteful and extravagant in the highest degree; but Yonge and Dundas honestly believed themselves to have found true economy in a clever and specious scheme put forward by one of the Generals in Ireland, for defraying the cost of new levies by the sale of commissions.[2] The experiment was tried on a grand*
- ↑ Adj.-gen. to Prince Edward, C.C.L.B. 17th March 1794.
- ↑ C.C.L.B., Adj.-gen. to Lieut.-gen. Cunninghame, 8th October
1793.
Here is an example of the scheme as used for raising a regiment
of 10 companies each of 60 men.
Proceeds of sale of 1 Lieut.-colonelcy, 1 Majority,
1 Company, 1 Lieutenancy, 1 Ensigncy,
amount to £9250
Cost of 600 men at £15 9000
Balance £250
====Another scheme for augmenting battalions of infantry. As soon
