more than four decades in uniform, the attack at Lanoraie was the first time Doyle had seen action against a Western enemy... he returned to England without seeing any service in the Crimea. Doyle served as inspector-general of the militia in Ireland until his promotion to the rank of major-general on 15 Sept. 1860... Doyle – who had never commanded so much as a battalion in action before...
He also wants you to know that 'Overall, their general officers have little experience with large formations, brigades, divisions, or corps, in action or otherwise'. This is the actual experience of the British general officers in North America as of the Trent Affair:
- Lieutenant-General Sir Fenwick Williams: Siege of Kars, 1855; Woolwich District, 1856-9
- Major-General George T.C. Napier: Commanded the Cavalry Brigade at the action of the Berea, 1852
- Major-General David Russell: 5th Brigade, second relief of Lucknow (wounded, mentioned in dispatches, CB); 1st Brigade, Alambagh under Outram; 2nd brigade, fall of Lucknow (captured the Kaiserbagh), commanding a brigade at Aldershot 1861.
- Major-General Randal Rumley: Brigadier General at Malta, 26 January 1855; On the staff at Gibraltar (unattached) 1857; Commanding 2nd Brigade, Gibraltar, 1858; VP of Council of Military Education, 9 March 1860; IG of Infantry, April 1861
- Major-General Lord William Paulet: Light Division, Crimea; 1st Brigade, Aldershot, 1856-60; South-Western District, 1860-5
- Major-General Charles Hastings Doyle: No experience
And this is how TFSmith describes Union officers who have 'never commanded so much as a battalion in action before':
Brigadier General Joseph Hooker, 47, the divisional commander and the only West Pointer (class of 1837) of the trio… hard living and intensely ambitious, certainly, but he was no fool, and he knew soldiering and war. As a young officer in Mexico, he had been brevetted for gallantry for every grade from captain to lieutenant colonel - a record unsurpassed by any other first lieutenant in the Army. That undeniable ability was why he was a general officer today, despite having left the service almost a decade earlier.Once again, command inexperience matters only when it's the British. This phenomenon has accurately been described as 'competency capping': in any Trent War scenario, the British are limited to abilities they have already shown to possess, whereas the Union's untrained and unprepared militiary personnel only ever excel in new roles.
West Pointer (1843) Brigadier General Charles S. Hamilton... who earned a brevet for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco and was severely wounded at Molino del Rey, had returned to the colors in 1861 as colonel of the 3rd Wisconsin Volunteers; he had been promoted to brigade and then division commander after service on the Upper Potomac and in the Shenandoah Valley
[Darius N.] Couch, also an artillery specialist, had graduated with McClellan in the class of 1846, commanded a Massachusetts regiment in 1861, and been promoted to brigade and then divisional command in 1862
[Silas] Casey, (USMA, 1826) was an infantry specialist who had won two brevets in Mexico and commanded the Army of the Potomac’s “training division” in the winter of 1861-62
Consider Hooker's three brevets:
ReplyDelete1. Monterey - he was the acting assistant adjutant-general of Hamer's brigade and basically got a brevet for carrying a message.
2. "National bridge" - a minor skirmish where Hooker, in charge of a wagon train, ordered 2 coys of the 9th infantry to drive off a small group of irregulars. This was the ast awarded, and basically was only done so to make Hooker a Lt Col.
3. Chapultepec - now AAG of Pillow's division, Hooker was sent to lead the 6th US infantry into position, got lost with the regiment, and didn't participate in the actual attack.
Hooker never held command of a body of troops (even a platoon) under fire until Williamsburg, when he had a whole division. He'd been a staff wallah in the regular army and owed his brevets to being Pillow's drinking buddy who recommended him over the actual battalion commanders. No wonder it took Hooker two years to become reasonably competent as a formation commander, with him not turning in a good performance until late 1864.