“Wellington called them ‘the most complete and handsome military body I ever looked at.’”

By Douglas Brown

WITH A nearly 350-year history, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers is one of the most distinguished regiments in the British Army. From its formation in the late 1600s until its amalgamation with the Royal Regiment of Wales, the unit fought in no less than 18 wars stretching from Europe and the Americas to the Middle and Far East. Known at times as the Welch Regiment of Fuzilieers, the Prince of Wales’s Own Royal Regiment of Welsh Fusiliers, and simply the 23^rd Regiment of Foot, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers has a history of combining discipline and professionalism with a knack for being at the right place at the right time. Over the centuries, it attained some of the rarest and most coveted battle honours in British military history. Here is a look at its first 150 years of this storied regiment.

Formation and Early Campaigns

The Fusiliers were born on March 16, 1689, when Henry, Baron Herbert of Chirbury, obtained authorization from the English government to raise a regiment of foot in the Welsh Marches.

England had just overthrown the Catholic James II and replaced him with the Dutch-born William III. James had landed in Ireland with French support to start a Catholic revolt, and William wanted to raise fresh regiments that had no prior loyalty to James for his campaign.

The regiment had an inauspicious beginning in Ireland. Held in reserve by William at his famous crossing of the Boyne on July 1, 1690, the outfit was mauled by cavalry at Aughrim the following year. It would come into its own, however, in the War of Spanish Succession as part of the Duke of Marlborough’s army. For its gallantry at the storming of Liège in 1702, it won the title Welsh Regiment of Fusiliers.

Fusiliers were originally soldiers who guarded the artillery train. They were armed with newer flintlocks, which were safer around loose bags of gunpowder than the standard matchlock muskets of the era that featured lit slow-burning fuses. Later, when after all soldiers on the battlefield were equipped with flintlocks, the name fusilier had become a title of distinction ad was retained by a number of regiments.

At the Battle of Blenheim on August 2, 1704, the Welsh Fusiliers found themselves facing a French army intent on imposing Louis XIV’s will over Austria and all Germany. In the leading brigade of British troops in the assault on Blenheim, the Fusiliers held their fire until their commander struck the palisade with his sword. Although they did not take the town, the ferocity of the redcoats’ attack so scared the French that they pulled troops from elsewhere in the line as reinforcements, leaving the center vulnerable against Marlborough’s coup de grace with an all-arms assault. This move broke the French army and with it Louis’ dreams of dominating Europe. In 1712, the regiment was awarded the title “Royal” and the Prince of Wales’s emblem of three feathers.

The Year of Miracles

The Seven Years War began with appalling defeats for Britain and the Royal Welch. Abandoned in their garrison duty at Minorca, they were forced to surrender to the French at the outbreak of hostilities in 1756. Britain got its revenge in the Year of Miracles, 1759, and the Royal Welch shared in it. On August 1, they were part of an army defending Hanover, King George II’s homeland. Their commander, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, had planned to catch the French in a trap outside the city of Minden, but shoddy picket work meant that the French caught him by surprise instead, forming up before his army deployed. Whether due to a legendary garbling of orders or simply because they were the only troops to hand, the 23^rd went in with five other British regiments and three Hanoverian ones against the entire French centre. Coming under enfilade artillery fire, the Fusiliers withstood three French cavalry charges. The last tried to ride around the 23^rd’s flank, but the Fusiliers faced their rear rank about and turned the tables on the cream of enemy cavalry. Their advance carried all before it and routed the French army, though at a cost of 40 per cent casualties. The French commander, Marshal Contades, was incredulous. “I never thought to see a single line of infantry break through three lines of cavalry ranked in order of battle and tumble them to ruin,” he said.

The War for America

As tensions mounted between Britain and her American colonies, the Fusiliers were dispatched to Boston as part of the garrison. On April 19, 1775, the Fusiliers played a part in initiating hostilities at Lexington and Concord. In the years that followed, the regiment’s elite grenadier and light companies saw much action, but the other battalions were mostly used by General William Howe as part of his diversionary maneuvers.

Under General Charles Cornwallis in the southern campaign, the Fusiliers shone, especially at the Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780. Cornwallis with 2,000 men faced 4,000 Americans under General Horatio Gates. Wracked by disease and the unaccustomed heat and led by officers not yet out of their teens or 20s, the 23^rd still won the day. With three cheers, they advanced to within 50 yards of the American militia, received a volley, returned it and then charged with bayonets charge before the enemy could reload. Routing the rebels, the 23^rd then wheeled about to take the Continental regulars in the flank. The British victory was complete.

At Yorktown in October 1781, the 23^rd had to surrender again. They won, however, their French opponents’ “unqualified approbation and praise for their intrepidity and firmness in repulsing three attacks by such vastly superior numbers.”

The Napoleonic Wars

The Fusiliers’ most sustained contest was the decades-long French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In the 19^th century version of D-Day, the 23^rd led the amphibious landing at Aboukir Bay as part of Sir Ralph Abercromby’s campaign to oust Napoleon’s forces from Egypt. During the French countermove at Alexandria, the 23^rd “attacked like wolves, transfixing the Frenchmen with their bayonets against the walls of the building.”

Its recruiting efforts during the war meant that the Royal Welch Fusiliers finally gained a substantial contingent of native Welshmen. Before, the regiment had largely been an English one, but by the war’s end, it was 30 to 40 per cent Welsh. Just as they had been the first ashore at Aboukir, the 23^rd were the last to leave Corunna during the British evacuation there after a nightmarish wintertime retreat through the mountains of Galicia in Spain in January 1809. In 1809, the 23^rd also helped capture Martinique, winning the coveted eagles of two French regiments.

As part of the Fusilier Brigade of the future Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley’s 4^th Division during the Peninsular War, the 23^rd helped save the day at the vicious Battle of Albuera on May 16, 1811. The wily French Marshal Soult had turned his opponent Marshal Beresford’s right, and the battle hung in the balance as the British 2^nd Division took decimating casualties in a close-range musketry duel with the superior French forces. The 4^th’s commander decided to come to the 2^nd’s rescue. Fearing French cavalry, he ordered his division to advance in columns in echelon from the left at the quick step, a difficult maneuver on the parade ground, to say nothing of during combat under heavy artillery fire. Each of the three battalions of the Fusilier Brigade deployed into line and took on a French column in another point-blank firefight as the Fusiliers advanced uphill. The battered Fusiliers then saw off a French cavalry charge. Although sustaining 50 per cent casualties, they ensured that one of the hardest-fought battles in the Napoleonic Wars ended in a British victory. No wonder that Lord Wellington, when he heard at the Battle of Aldea da Ponte later that year, that the Royal Welch were acting as his rearguard, remarked, “Ah, the 23^rd! That is the very thing.”

Eleven months after Albuera, the 23^rd faced another horrifying ordeal at the storming of Badajoz. The British controlled the routes into Portugal, and the French the routes into Spain, so Wellington needed to seize the walled city to break the deadlock. The French defended the breach the Fusiliers assaulted with musketry, grenades, shells, and mines. The French stopped the 23^rd with terrible losses, but the tenacious assault forced them to commit such resources to repel them that escalades elsewhere took the town.

The 23^rd consistently won praise from its commanders for its discipline and military bearing. After the French rout at Vittoria in 1813, the 23^rd marched straight through the French baggage train without falling out to plunder as it pursued the French (it returned once the pursuit was called off). Before Waterloo, Wellington called them “the most complete and handsome military body I ever looked at.” At that battle, the 23^rd held the right flank against alternating artillery fire and cavalry attacks. With this last effort, the 23^rd finally won itself some well-deserved peace in garrison duties. Its legacy lived on, however. When a sample administrative form was filled out with a fictional soldier of the 23^rd named Thomas Atkins. The nickname for British soldiers ever after stuck as Tommies: a fitting tribute to one of its best regiments.

Douglas Brown is a Texas-based writer who specializes in military history and historical fiction. His novel The Honorable Spy was released by Cheetah Publishing in July of 2022. Buy it on Amazon HERE. Follow him on Twitter @DougBrownAuthor or Instagram at douglasbrownauthor, or like his Facebook page, “Douglas Brown – Author.”

Sources

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Glover, Michael and Jonathon Riley. ‘That Astonishing Infantry:’ The History of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, 1689-2006. Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword Military, 2008.

Graves, Donald E. Dragon Rampant: The Royal Welch Fusiliers at War, 1793-1815. Barnsley, UK: Frontline Books, 2010.

Knowles, Sir Lees. Minden and the Seven Years’ War- Primary Source Edition. Facsimile by Nabu Public Domain Reprints, originally published London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co, Ltd., 1914.

McNally, Michael. Battle of the Boyne 1690: The Irish Campaign for the English Crown. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2005.

Reid, Stuart. The Battle of Minden 1759: The Impossible Victory of the Seven Years War. Barnsley, UK: Frontline Books, 2016.

To the Beat of a Drum: The Royal Welch Fusiliers, 1689-1989. The Band of the 1^st Battalion, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, the Blaenavon Male Voice Choir, and Cliff Morgan CVO, OBE, narrator. Bandleader Recordings 29097. Originally recorded 1989, MP3 album 2008.

Urban, Mark. Fusiliers: The Saga of a British Redcoat Regiment in the American Revolution. New York: Walker & Company, 2007.