THEIR HEIGHT, FORM, AXD STRENGTH. 71 



Those were the men that would do the fighting. 



English. Scots. Irish. 



Foot-guards ... 4,388 437 192 



Life-guards ... 709 66 15 



Horse-guards . . . 303 15 7 



5,400 518 214 



How many of those ornamental Household troops 

 were exposed to the hardships of the Peninsular 

 campaigns? For the -share the Connacht soldiers 

 took in it, see pages 130 to 136 infra. 



Even "in 1770 we find English men-of-war in 

 which nearly the whole crew was composed of Irish- 

 men, who could scarcely speak one word of English. 

 To prevent the hatching of mutinies, orders were 

 frequently given, and enforced, that no conversation 

 in Irish should be allowed on board. The seamen 

 of the fleet deserted at every turn ; they were often 

 as rough, brutal, and drunken as their officers. To 

 hold them down was a matter of no small difficulty. 

 The code of rules governing the Navy, or ' the 

 Articles of War/ were, therefore, of extraordinary 

 severity. Almost any offence could be punished by 

 a court-martial with death. Disobeying orders . 

 . . uttering mutinous words . . . were all 

 punishable with death." Nelson and his Times, by 

 Rear-Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, in Her 

 Majesty's Printers' Pictorial Library, vol. ii., p. 10. 



