Page:British campaigns in Flanders, 1690-1794; being extracts from "A history of the British army," (IA britishcampaigns00fort).pdf/201



On the 5th of March it was resolved to send the Fourteenth, Thirty-seventh, and Fifty-third Foot, completed by drafts from the new independent companies, to join the Duke as a brigade under Major-general Ralph Abercromby. These regiments, however, were subject to the same instructions as the Guards, namely, to remain within immediate reach of their transports in case their services should be required elsewhere. Their quality was such that the Adjutant-general felt constrained to apologise for them both to Abercromby and to the Duke of York. "I am afraid," he wrote to the Duke, "that you will not reap the advantage that you might have expected from the brigade of the Line just sent over to you, as so considerable a part of it is composed of nothing but undisciplined and raw recruits; and how they are to be disposed of until they can be taught their business I am at a loss to imagine I was not consulted upon the subject until it was too late to remedy the evil, but I hope that my remonstrances will be of some use in the modelling of troops for the Continent in future." It

need hardly be added that, on their arrival in Holland, two out of the three battalions were found utterly unlit for service, the new recruits being old men and weakly boys, worse than the worst that had been accepted even at the period of greatest exhaustion during the