The Story of the British Army

by Charles Cooper King

The school of musketry at Hythe was also inaugurated; and in 1851 the principle of granting medals was extended to cover the Indian victories from 1803 upwards. Medals for the long war and the recent Indian successes were issued, but of all the host who upheld the national honour when Napoleon ruled, only 19,000 recipients were found for the Peninsular decoration, and but 500 for the victory of Maida!

The next French “war scare” arose in 1847, because of a pamphlet, written by the Prince de Joinville, pointing out the military defencelessness of Great Britain, and the poor condition of our defensive forces. This had never been more clearly pointed out than when the Duke of Wellington wrote to Sir John Burgoyne: “It is perfectly true that, as we stand at present, with our naval arsenals and dockyards not half garrisoned, five thousand men of all arms could not be put under arms, if required, for any service whatever, without leaving standing, without relief, all employed on any duty, not excepting even the guards over the palaces and the person of the sovereign.” This was mainly the condition of the army when the Crimean War broke out. The Royal Artillery had been slightly increased in 1847, but in 1853, none the less, it was stated that there were not at home fifty guns fit for service.

But things were on the mend. Examinations for admission to the army were introduced, to the dismay of those who had hitherto gained commissions therein solely by family or other influence. The arms, too, were improving. Minié had invented a bullet, expanded by an iron base-cup, which facilitated the rapid loading of the piece, which had hitherto, with the Brunswick rifle, with its “belted ball,” and a range of about 400 yards, been impossible. This began to be used in 1851. The Great Exhibition of 1851 had introduced to the world the “Colt’s Revolver.” As far back as 1842 the percussion lock, invented in 1807, had taken the place of the Brown Bess, so called from the brown tint given to the barrel, as distinct from the bright iron barrels of foreign muskets; but it is stated that the duke was by no means favourable to the supersession of the flint-lock by the chemically charged cap. Judging from this, the actual armament of the whole army with the English model of the Minié (the “Enfield” rifle of 1855), which carried a bullet weighing sixteen to the pound, and of which a man could only carry sixty rounds of ammunition, would have been to him “Anathema Maranatha.” Similarly, the breech-loader had been introduced to Napoleon in 1809, but the weapon, being probably imperfect, met with little favour; none the less, the Prussians had already adopted, by 1841, the breech-loading needle gun. But General Anson, then “Clerk of the Ordnance,” had no fancy for such new-fangled ideas, a feeling shared fully, by all accounts, with the Commander-in-Chief, who was always irascible with inventors and their inventions. He did not believe we “ought hastily to adopt any of these improvements”; and, as to rifles, “it was ridiculous to suppose that two armies could fight at a distance of 500 or 600 yards!” Even the Secretary of State for War, afterwards Lord Panmure, stated that the weapons, that is, the percussion musket, “were better than all the inventions that could be discovered.” Certes, he lived long enough to be “sorry he spoke,” for of the musket he so be-praised, it was officially declared, in 1846, that “fire should never be opened beyond 150 yards, and certainly not exceeding 200 yards,” for “at this distance half the number of shots missed the target, measuring 11 feet 6 inches, and at 150 yards a very large proportion also missed!”

It is but forty years since these ideas were held, and rightly; but it is curious, none the less, to note the extraordinary advance the art of killing men has made since then. In 1822 it is deliberately stated in a French report that “thus infantry is only formidable at about 100 yards.” In 1852, and thereabout, there were marked improvements in firearms, and this, notwithstanding the continuance of the reign of peace the “Great Exhibition” was supposed to inaugurate, and the ominous distant growl of the war-thunder that was arising in the East. With nations of different national characteristics, and in different stages of national development, the quietude of a peaceful power is looked on as but a synonym for weakness. National decadence and a peace-at-any-price policy run, as all history proves, on very much the same rails; the latter spirit is called up to cover or excuse the former. So it was that the long peace was broken. If Russia had really thought she would have to fight four powers and a “benevolent neutral,” she might have held her hand, but the “Manchester School” talked much, and foreign powers are disposed always to take the outcry of the hysterical few in England for the solid opinion of the silent many.

Some people, less influenced by the hysteria of those who, like the Pharisee in the parable, air their opinions in the streets, or, like Rudyard Kipling’s monkey-folk,—the “Bander-log,”—imagine, because they proclaim, their proclamations must be true, were uneasy. The best of the House of Commons were uneasy, and voted the Militia Bill, which aimed at creating 80,000 permanent militiamen as a second line of defence; a force that proved the justice of the view taken, by the enormous help they gave the army when the new war began. It is saying very little to assert that, without the militia from 1854 to 1856, we could not have recruited the army at Sebastopol, any more than we could have held our Mediterranean garrisons.

Then there was a certain Colonel Kinloch who was uneasy. And he found relief for uneasiness by starting the second Volunteer Movement. The first was when Napoleon threatened to invade us. He wrote a very valuable, because impressive, pamphlet, which attracted attention, and actually led to the formation of volunteer corps, which, of course, had little support from the Government; all the more because they were anxious about their own pet child, the new “Militia Bill.”

Then, lastly, there were the Secretary of State and the Commander-in-Chief also anxious. And these relieved their anxiety by doing the best possible thing they could, in establishing the camp at Chobham, where field manœuvres were first seriously tried. Again it is curious to see how history repeats itself. When the impressive lesson of 1870 to 1871 aroused the national anxiety, the first camp of instruction with real field manœuvres was started in 1871 by Lord Cardwell, over much of the same area.

In 1852 Wellington died, and, after a while, Lord Hardinge took his place. That the “Iron Duke” had been uniformly and, on the whole, extraordinarily successful, is evident. That he never saw the greatest leaders until he met Napoleon at Waterloo, is equally so. It was for long, and is, to some extent, still rank heresy to even criticise his actions. But whatever confidence he may have gained by his imperturbable coolness, he gained no man’s regard. The rank and file trusted and believed in him to some extent. But there was not one soldier who would have died with his name on his lips as many did for his far greater antagonist—Napoleon. Men were obedient, save in such retreats as Burgos, when Wellington’s influence was powerless to check the disgraceful conduct of his army, but never devoted. He rarely praised the men who fought, and died, and won battles, some of which are distinguished by the absence of everything but that bull-dog courage which the privates showed. He had a belief in himself that seems at times arrogant, but he was patient, persevering, and sagacious. No careful student of the art of war, no foreign military critic certainly, has ever classed him among the greatest generals, or thought his campaigns worth studying seriously.

Gneisenau at Waterloo utterly mistrusted him, as has been shown, and the feeling must have been created by Wellington himself. If half the myths about him were true, they would be worth publishing as the unwritten history of a great man with many faults. Of him Gleig, who shared in the general admiration of him, is quite plain-spoken as to his personal coldness.

“Though retaining to the last a warm regard for his old companions in arms, he entered very little with them, after he became a politician, into the amenities of social life. We have reason to believe that neither Lord Hill, nor Lord Raglan, nor Sir George Murray ever visited the duke at Strathfieldsaye, nor could they, or others of similar standing, such as Lord Anglesey, Sir Edward Paget, and Sir James Kempt, be reckoned among the habitués of his hospitable gatherings in Apsley House. The circle in which he chiefly moved was that of fashionable ladies and gentlemen.”