Black soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars

Posted on by

Let’s start with numbers. We can get them out of the way so quickly that I can’t resist.

How many Black soldiers fought for Britain in the Napoleonic Wars? 

Dunno. Record keeping was– Should we be kind and call it inconsistent? 

More than I thought isn’t a number that’ll make a statistician happy, but if I’m a fair sample of the English-speaking population (I seldom am but I might be for this) it will tell us something about the history we’re taught. It never crossed my mind that any Black soldiers fought for Britain, for France, or for the Republic of Never Happened.

The history I was taught was (a) boring, (b) often inaccurate, and (3) except for a quick digression into the slave trade, white. And just when I think I’ve cleared its last sticky residue out of my head, I find a few more bits. So, Napoleonic Wars? Of course my mind showed me white soldiers. And my mind was wrong. Although we can’t have solid numbers, we’re talking about a significant block of people. In the British armed forces, they would’ve come from the West Indies, from Africa, from the US, from Canada, from the East Indies, from Britain itself, and from Ireland. 

I don’t suppose I need to remind you that Britain was an imperial power by then.

Irrelevant photo: November sunset

 

Historian Carole Divall says, “It’s often forgotten how many black soldiers were employed by both the British Army and Navy during the period. There were many in the Northamptonshire Regiment, a fair number in the 73rd and probably also the 69th regiments who had both been in the West Indies. No doubt some of the other regiments of the British Army also had black drummers, as did the 1/30th India.”

You can find a website about Black soldiers who served in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire regiments. I’m sure you can find others, but I stopped there.

 

The West India Regiments

The majority of Britain’s Black soldiers seem to have been in the West India Regiments, so let’s focus on them. 

The regiments were formed in the 1790s to fight the French in the Caribbean. The British started out thinking British recruits could handle the fighting, but enough of them died of tropical diseases that the government was left with a problem, which it decided to solve by recruiting Black soldiers, who it was sure were better suited to the climate. 

When I say “recruit,” though, what I really mean is buy. The Caribbean islands were slave economies. And what would seem more natural to a slave-owning power than to buy itself some slaves, both off the plantations and from newly arrived slave ships, and turn them into soldiers? In 12 years, they bought some 13,400 men to serve as soldiers.

The soldiers’ legal status wasn’t clear–were they slaves? weren’t they slaves?–but once they were discharged they became free and some were awarded pensions. Which implies that some weren’t awarded pensions. That, unfortunately, is all I know about that.

The regiments might’ve been formed to fight in the Caribbean, but they ended up fighting wherever they were needed, which included the Battle of Waterloo. But that’s getting ahead of the story.

In 1807, Britain did two things that matter to the story: it abolished the slave trade, although not yet slavery, and it passed the Mutiny Act, which made it clear that the soldiers of the West India Regiments were free and should be treated like any other soldiers. Military discipline wasn’t anything you’d think of as fun, but it wasn’t slavery.

After 1807, the regiments incorporated men the navy had liberated from slave ships (the trade was now illegal, remember) as well as Black soldiers captured from French and Dutch colonies.

Unlike colonial subjects from India and from other parts of the empire, soldiers in the West India Regiments were recognised as part of the British Army. Increasingly, formerly enslaved soldiers got the same enlistment bounty, pay, and allowances as white soldiers, and soldiers of equal rank were equal, which seems, at the same time, stupidly obvious and also amazing.

Compared to the other choices on offer for Black men (working as servants; cobbling together whatever casual work they could) the army would have been an improvement. The work and the pay were steady, and it was a place where Black men in an overwhelmingly white society could find a small community, although that business of people shooting at you and being expected to shoot at them might’ve been off-putting. 

Black soldiers had a high re-enlistment rate.

 

Consider one soldier, Private Thomas James

Thomas James, from the West India Regiments, has been in the news recently because the National Army Museum identified him as–very probably, although not 600% certainly–the subject of an 1821 portrait by a painter whose more usual subjects were, say, the Duke of Wellington or Lord Byron, not lowly privates. The way painters made their money wasn’t by looking around for interesting faces but by charging their subjects. If you wanted to see yourself looking handsome in oils, you paid for the privilege, which is why we find the ordinary riffraff underrepresented and the aristocratic riffraff overrepresented.

In spite of which history has handed us the handsome portrait of a Black private in a bandsman’s white uniform, and it’s said, “You figure it out.” 

The National Army Museum speculates that James’s officers would’ve commissioned the portrait to honor his courage. That’s not impossible and I don’t have a better story to offer, but before we give it our tentative acceptance let’s sprinkle a little salt on top.

Not much is known about James’s background, but that’s typical of enlisted men of the era. He may well have been enslaved. He was illiterate. He breaks into history as one of 9 Black soldiers who received the Waterloo Medal–the first British medal awarded regardless of rank; 38,500 were issued. 

James was wounded by Prussian deserters who were trying to loot the belongings of British officers during the battle of Waterloo. (That’s 1815; you’re welcome. I won’t remember it ten minutes from now either.) It’s an odd little sidelight to the battle: we–or I, at least–imagine everyone out there on the battlefield hacking the hell out of each other after their flintlocks misfired (health and sanity warning: military history isn’t one of my strengths), but here were 20 soldiers assigned to guard the officers’ money, jewelry, silver dishes, and whatever else they considered necessary to the rough and tumble of a military life. And clearly it did need guarding. This wasn’t a safe neighborhood.

We–or at least I–don’t know what happened to the other 19 defenders, but James was seriously wounded. And got a medal. And a portrait, for whatever either of those might’ve meant to him. The portrait shows him holding a cymbal, and along with his white uniform it indicates that he was part of the regimental band.

 

Music and warfare

Musicians were an essential part of warfare. They kept morale up; they communicated with–

C’mon, people. Use your own imaginations here. Whoever. Their own guys on the other side of the battlefield, or hidden in the trees. The system wasn’t good enough to carry letters home but it worked.

But bands weren’t only about the music. Band members flipped their cymbals into the air, swung them under their legs. Military music was full of athletics and show-offery. And Black soldiers were–

Okay, the story goes kind of queasy here. European armies had adopted the idea of military music from the Ottomans, and for a while it was the thing to have Turkish musicians in their bands. Gradually, they replaced them with men of African backgrounds. They weren’t Turkish but they were, you know, exotic. They brought a prestige addition to any military band. And I have no doubt some officer was sitting in a tent somewhere telling another officer, “They have natural rhythm, don’t they?”

I know. You get a little progress on one side of the equation and on the other you lay the foundation for a racist stereotype the next generations will build on. If you’re serious about your history, don’t expect purity. The water’s so murky it’s hard to tell it from the land.

 

So is this a feel-good story?

Depends what you’re wired to feel good about. Historians–or some of them, anyway–argue that the Napoleonic Wars opened up ways for marginalized groups to move half a rung up the social ladder. 

No, I know that’s not physically possible. My best guess is it would’ve been precarious, so half a rung? Yeah, I’ll stand by that, in all its absurdity.

What marginalized groups are we talking about? Jews from Central Europe, who fought in the Austrian and Prussian armies. Catholics from Ireland who fought in the British army. And the people we’ve been talking about: enslaved men of African heritage. 

How far up the ladder did they get? Far enough that a lot of Black soldiers re-enlisted. It doesn’t sound like a great deal from where I sit, but that’s not where they were sitting. It was worth it to them. 

If you want your history smoothly stitched out of feel-good stories, stick to kids’ books. 

40 thoughts on “Black soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars”

  3. It’s worth noting that as far back as the Napoleonic Wars, military bandsmen were responsible for getting the wounded off the battlefield. I assume the Black soldiers in the band would have been included in this task. They wore their regular bandsmen’s uniforms while doing this; white doesn’t seem like the most practical colour for the task, but perhaps it afforded them, as non-combatants, some immunity from being targeted by the enemy. (Athleticism would have come in handy for this, as well.)

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

    • Now that I didn’t know. As for the color of the uniforms, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that by the time they’d slogged around a battlefield for anything longer that a quarter of an hour, no one could tell what color uniform anyone was wearing. But that is, admittedly, guesswork. I’d put it to the test but I’m not sure where my closest battlefield is. And it’s raining out.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓

  4. It is not a period of history that I know very well, having not particularly studied it, but I definitely don’t conjure up images of people of colour when I think about the Napoleonic wars. History textbooks and media representations of that era of military history have definitely shaped my perception. It should have been a process started long, long ago, but I am glad that people are now making efforts to push back against past erasure of the complex histories of diversity and are highlighting the stories that make us confront the systemic prejudices of past teachings and representations and – I do hope – try to do better.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

    • Who knew, when we were all trying to stay awake in history lessons, that it had such fascinating stories hidden in it. And what a shame schools manage to make it all so boring. It’s a gift, turning something that interesting into something so dull.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓

  6. I did not know about Black soldiers at Waterloo / Belle Alliance, I thought they came to Europe first in WWI.
    Frankly I am a bit sceptical towards the notion that the “Napoleonic Wars” helped marginalised groups to a better social standing. As far as I know Austria did not start a love affaire with eastern Jews, or any Jews at all, just because some of them fought that little monsterman. Or rotten Prussia, that only showed a fine presentation of lack of principles through those oh so national times.
    In fact, what Napi tried with the establishment of the kingdom of Westphalen, introducing the Revolutionairy (!) laws (egalite !) with the code Napoleon, tried, I say, to show the achievements of The Revolution, the positive utopia of a better life in egalite regardless of race, gender, yadayada, – all that failed terribly. “They”, those westphalic hardheads did not want this, too much too early.
    But if you protect some gentleman’s heirlooms with your precious body, and the order is not basically shattered, yeah, you may be considered to be a good negro, and have yer portrait painted.
    At least this is a possible perspective, perhaps.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

    • I’d agree that some–in fact, considerable–cynicism is warrented as far as the benefits of protecting your officers’ loot. Whatever the story is behind the painting, I expect it’s much stranger than the museum’s guesses. But nobody talked about any European states starting a love affair with any of their marginalized groups. What they’re talking about is that war created small openings into which marginalized groups could move. As societies change–and they do in wartime–unexpected cracks open in the usual structures, and no pre-existing group is there to fill them. All sorts of unexpected people, then, can move into them–they’re needed; they’re not proscribed. It’s not love–it may make them even more disliked–but it does happen. Sometimes.

      Like

      Reply ↓

  7. (This is the 4th time I’ve tried to leave this comment. My apologies if the others mysteriously show up.)

    I wonder how much their lives changed after they left the military. (I’m thinking about the US Black soldiers in WWI who were treated well in Europe but came home to Jim Crow.)

    Liked by 7 people

    Reply ↓

    • Theme? Damned if I remember. It’s named after the year they released it (and then they renamed it after another year when they updated it), but I don’t remember what year it was. Sorry. That’s as l close as I can get you.

      I don’t know the book–I’ll keep an eye out for it–but have been thinking it’d be interesting to do a post on Black soldiers in the US War of Independence, who I first became aware of when I read the novel The Book of Negroes, which if you’re a fiction reader might interest you. I liked it.

      Like

      Reply ↓

  11. What a fascinating and important piece of history to share. It’s remarkable how many crucial stories like this have been overlooked or forgotten. Thank you for bringing this to light and helping us see a more complete picture of the past.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

    • My pleasure. The post has gotten an interesting response–not so much in the form of comments as in the form of Likes from readers who seem to be new to the blog. I’m not sure how they’re finding it, but I’m grateful that it’s making its way out into the world.

      Like

      Reply ↓

  12. I’m one of those newbies to your site that really appreciates this piece. I found it because it was on a short list of new posts that wordpress’s AI thought might interest me, found on my Dashboard. Probably shows up because I sometimes write political and economic poetry about race, caste, and systemic trauma. Although, sadly, not with as much humor as bring to the writer’s table. Congratulations on a great piece, with just the right personal point-of-view touch.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply ↓

    • Thanks for letting me know how you got here. The blogosphere is so strange and this post has generated an unusual response. Unusual and, I should add, real, unlike the 40,000 bots who’ve been stopping by lately and doing who knows what. It’s very strange out there.

      I’ll check out your site when I get a chance. That doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, but I’ll look forward to it. It sounds worthwhile.

      Like

      Reply ↓

    • You have to wonder how many wars are fought by people who have so few opportunities that risking their lives and taking other people’s doesn’t look like a better situation than the one they’re in. Not that the enslaved soldiers had a choice, but still, it does raise the question in my mind.

      Like

      Reply ↓

  19. A powerful, eye-opening reminder that history is deeper, messier, and more human than we’re taught. Stories like this deserve to be remembered—and shared. ✨

    📚 Explore more thought-provoking stories that challenge the narrative
    👉 Dive in here: https://socialclip.pro

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

Talk to me