AN ENGINEER IN ENGLAND AND RAIDS ACROSS THE CHANNEL

In 1755, two days before Christmas, Sir John Ligonier, the Lieutenant General of the Ordnance, signed an elongated piece of paper by which William was appointed a Practitioner Engineer. The standard wording contained William’s orders and set his objectives: ‘You are therefore to improve yourself in the study of the mathematicks, fortifications and other sciences which may render you capable to serve as an Engineer upon any occasion … .’ William, about fifteen years out of school, and after eight years in the Military Survey, was well advanced in these things, even though he had received no formal training of the kind that had been available to his contemporaries through the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich or in the Drawing Room in the Tower of London. A month later he received a second appointment, as a Lieutenant in the 53rd Regiment of Foot, Colonel Napier’s, which was then designated to have its headquarters in Exeter. He had finally joined the British Army.

However, the Engineers were in some ways a race apart. When William was appointed, they still held warrants which did not necessarily entail or equate to any particular rank in the regular army; they had their own hierarchy, in which the Practitioner was the lowest rung. In addition, contrary to the prevailing practice of personal advancement in the army by the purchase of commissions, it was recognised that the Engineers had a technical expertise that could not simply be bought; they were an elite group. In this winter of 1755–6, George III had just sanctioned an increase in the establishment from twenty-nine to thirty-seven, and by 1759 it was to grow further in order to meet the needs of the forces overseas. The Practitioners were distributed through the garrisons so that they could acquire a general military education beyond their specialist subjects.

The growth in the numbers of Engineers was largely due to the build-up to the Seven Years War. In North America there had been jostling between the British communities on the east coast and the French to the west. Large numbers of settlers and land hunger on the eastern seaboard, together with burgeoning Atlantic trade, had produced considerable strains.