Merchants and the Military in Eighteenth-Century Britain

British Army Contracts and Domestic Supply, 1739-1763

Gordon E. Bannerman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317314554
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Investigates the contract sector of the British Army during the long eighteenth century. This book argues that this group of financiers, private merchants, businessmen and farmers represented a vital interest group which was at the nexus of the fiscal-military structure. It draws on papers from the War Office, the Treasury and the Audit Office.

1 The Supply System of the British Army from the Seventeenth Century

The mid-eighteenth century was a period of extensive British military activity.¹ From 1739 several conflicts emerged and coalesced² to form the basis, except for an uneasy truce between 1748 and 1754, of Anglo-Spanish, and particularly Anglo-French conflict until 1763. The increase in military expenditure during this period (Table 1.1) is particularly notable since Britain fought no major wars in the period 1713–39.

[Table 1.1: Army Expenditure, 1738-63: Select Years³]

1738	£845,944
1739	£1,066,284
1740	£1,417,874
1741	£1,775,854
1742	£2,522,716
1743	£2,878,411
1744	£3,226,675
1745	£2,790,226
1754	£1,070,731
1755	£1,399,391
1756	£2,395,716
1757	£3,210,227
1758	£4,585,589
1759	£5,743,536
1760	£8,249,276
1761	£9,922,959
1762	£8,780,601
1763	£4,067,118

Larger armies and a lengthy period of conflict were essential prerequisites towards the employment of contractors.⁴ As wars occasioned an augmentation of military forces ‘merchants and contractors have always been introduced into the army when war has been declared’.⁵ That it was contractors rather than state officials who conducted supply operations requires explanation. From the late seventeenth century, escalating military and financial demands induced European states accustomed to small armies and limited warfare to turn towards contractors to resolve supply problems and logistical dilemmas.⁶ In Europe, state officials and military officers assumed a larger role in military supply, although ‘military enterprisers’, officers raising armies under contract, were in decline by the eighteenth century. State assumption of these responsibilities led to officers diversifying in supplying accoutrements such as clothes and horses.⁷ In Britain, there was no such official involvement in supply. Whilst this may have owed something to associations with Continental absolutism it appears more likely to have arisen from the intermittent existence of the army. As early as the sixteenth century, ‘spasmodic demand’ has been noted as an inhibiting factor towards the formation of a supply corps.⁸ Directives against officers and troops selling provisions were issued in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and a state supply organization (Commissariat), employing commissaries, salaried officers managing procurement, was not a consistent feature of British military organization.⁹ Constitutional restrictions may have reinforced the absence of official organization and in this sense affected the evolution and contours of the supply system. Whilst the cause of this lacuna is open to debate, the result appears sufficiently clear. The eighteenth-century British state was ill-equipped to meet escalating military demands through their own supply organizations because these simply did not exist.

The absence of supply organization and concomitant reliance on contractors was not unique to Britain. France and Austria also employed contractors, thus indicating the inability of eighteenth-century states to provide an administrative framework capable of meeting the requirements of larger armies.¹⁰ That private enterprise should perform such essential work is somewhat remarkable. It was not that the state failed to recognize the enhanced role it had to play commensurate with a quantitative shift in military demands. For example, the formation of a long-term credit structure, the centralization of government fiscal policy, and greater efficiency in raising revenue and collecting taxation were largely responses towards meeting higher levels of military expenditure. The sophisticated financial apparatus of government did not extend to military administration, where a bewildering array of departments and private individuals were involved in military supply.¹¹ The irrationality of the eighteenth-century supply system, when considered alongside the modernized fiscal structure, illustrates the limitations of the organizational abilities and reforming instincts of the ‘fiscal military state’. Private individuals had a role to play within the fiscal military structure, and army contracts were an area where such individual expertise was exercised.¹²

From the late sixteenth century, technological progress and a revolution in strategic thought led to larger armies, notably in the early eighteenth century.¹³ Larger armies impacted on Anglo-French dynastic and commercial conflict to extend warfare from European theatres to a global stage.¹⁴ In discussing recruitment in 1761, Lord Barrington illustrated how far this development had gone:

Both are liable to great difficulties and objections; but where 150,000 British subjects wear Red Coats either on Shoar or aboard the fleet, (tho’ the great Duke of Marlborough thought 70,000 the utmost we could raise) no means of recruiting them should pass without due consideration.¹⁵

It was the type as well as the scale of warfare that facilitated greater opportunities for contractors. Armies were deployed according to strategic thought which emphasized the importance of avoiding battle until a clear and perceptible advantage was obtained. Siege warfare rather than battles predominated, with even the Duke of Marlborough fighting only four battles compared with conducting thirty sieges.¹⁶ Translated into military operations, the emergence of this strategic thought, alongside enhanced firepower and military capability has often been termed a ‘Military Revolution’. Although precise dating is impossible, by the late seventeenth century contemporaries appeared aware of a transformation in the nature of warfare.¹⁷ In 1677, Roger Boyle in A Treatise on the Art of War claimed ‘Battells do not now decide national quarrels ... For we make war more like foxes, than like lyons; and you will have twenty sieges for one battell’.¹⁸

A revolution in arms production and development underpinned and facilitated this transformation. In battle, the strategic uses of firepower replaced headlong charges and hand-to-hand combat.¹⁹ Contemporaries recognized that a more static form of warfare conducted by a larger number of troops, resulting in longer campaigns and greater expense, tested the economic condition and resources of combatant nations as much as the fighting qualities of men or leadership qualities of officers. These factors were linked, for inability to concentrate a sufficiently large number of troops to gain decisive victories meant prolonged hostilities and greater expense, which in turn raised acute logistical problems.²⁰ In earlier centuries, three supply methods have been identified: government victualling, private contracting and living off the country.²¹ Throughout Europe, the latter method was most common, with armies living off the produce of surrounding areas by foraging (gathering hay for horses), or by imposing contributions on localities.²² Lest the areas in question became quickly exhausted, sutlers ‘not exactly under contract nor exactly independent traders’, followed the army and sold their wares.²³ Such supply methods were recognized in the bureaucratic structure of English military administration, where during the Elizabethan period a ‘Forage Master’ supervised foraging parties.²⁴ An element of state compulsion existed, through the Crown’s feudal rights of purveyance and preemption, that is, the privilege of obtaining supplies and transport for the Royal Household at prices below market rates.²⁵ Neither the abandonment of these feudal rights at the Restoration nor parliamentary control of the army led to systematic state involvement in military provisioning.²⁶ Nevertheless, whilst a degree of demilitarization occurred after 1660, England’s heightened capacity for military and fiscal mobilization was an important legacy of the Cromwellian period.²⁷ Logistical difficulties in organizing supply on an extensive scale were readily apparent in provisioning the New Model Army. During the Naseby campaign, local procurement alone proved insufficient, and sutlers supplied the deficiency.²⁸ Although such informal methods were apposite for a period of small armies and short, highly mobile campaigns, they survived into the eighteenth century, although even in earlier centuries they were not always practical or reliable.²⁹ Generally, problems arose when armies remained stationary, for it was easier to provision armies that were encountering fresh sources of supply as they marched.³⁰ During the Civil War, centralized organization became necessary, with contracts made by a central body of six members of Parliament, and commissaries appointed to provide victuals, ammunition, draught horses and horse provisions.³¹

If the size and mobility of armies impacted on supply methods, inhospitable country also posed considerable problems. In the seventeenth century, Oliver Cromwell successfully provisioned troops in Ireland and Scotland by adopting methods suitable to prevailing conditions. With an insufficient quantity of local supplies, procurement from a wider geographical area was necessary. Cromwell therefore planned troop movements near the sea or navigable rivers, where English and Dutch supplies were landed.³² When the Scottish campaign moved inland, General Monck simply provided troops with biscuit and cheese in knapsacks with additional quantities on packhorses. Alongside strategically placed garrisons, this method enabled an army of 6,000 to travel 1,600 kilometres.³³ The necessity for a degree of foresight and planning, however rudimentary, was readily appreciated, even when supplying a small army in inhospitable territory. These methods were suitable for a ‘horde army’ embarking on particular operations with limited objectives, and necessarily bore a makeshift character.³⁴ Neither the number of troops nor scale of operations demanded a more formal supply. When informal methods and short-term expedients sufficed, there was no need for contractors, far less a regular supply corps.

State planning of military provisioning was most apparent in France, where, building on the ideas of Cardinal Richelieu, Michel le Tellier and his son, the Marquis de Louvois, planned location of magazines stocked with non-perishable supplies at no more than one day’s marching distance. Formal contracts replaced the ‘multitude of ad hoc agreements’ previously governing supply and the employment of official intendants alongside contractors represented a necessary intensification of state planning.³⁵ Le Tellier linked subsistence with military effectiveness, for ‘to secure the livelihood of the soldier is to secure victory for the king’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Tables
• Note on Dates
• Introduction
• 1 The Supply System of the British Army from the Seventeenth Century
• 2 The Growth of Army Contracting
• 3 Procedures and Patronage
• 4 Administration of Encampment Contracts in England, 1740–62
• 5 Performance of Encampment Contracts
• 6 A Domestic Contractor: John Willan
• 7 Domestic Supply and Contracting in Scotland, 1746–62
• 8 Profit and Wealth
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Sample of Army Contractors in Britain
• Appendix B: The Legacy
• Appendix C: The Business Life of Contractors
• Appendix D: Property-Holding
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index