CHAPTER XXI
THE EVOLUTION OF THE STAFF AND ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES
1. The Staff
The origin of the Staff must be looked for in the earliest European organization, that of the Reiters and Landsknechts in Germany about A.D. 1500, and in the armies of Maurice and Gustavus modelled on them. This organization was copied in England, France, Prussia, and other military nations, and survives in essentials to this day.
We find in the sixteenth century that the fighting officers of the troop or company left the drill to the Sergeant, an officer of experience in handling troops, and a most important personage in the unit. In action, while the other officers were in front, fighting, the Sergeant was in rear correcting the men’s movements, and giving orders. In the Infantry he had to run up and down the ranks for this purpose, and was therefore not armed with the long pike, which would hamper him. The Sergeant therefore either retained the halberd when Infantry gave it up for the pike, or was armed with a half-pike. These arms long survived in the British Army, where sergeants carried a halberd down to 1829, and the subalterns a half-pike or “spontoon,” down to 1786.
Similar duties to those of the Sergeant in the Company were performed in the Regiment by the Sergeant-Major, who supervised the drilling of the Companies by the Sergeants, regulated the march of the Regiment and its manœuvres in battle, and was therefore charged with the issue of orders. He was thus virtually a Staff Officer to the Colonel. Similarly, in an army, the Commander required an officer of experience to draw up the army in line of battle, a difficult task, and a delicate one, as the precedence of each corps had to be respected. This officer was called the Sergeant-Major-General, as he filled for the Army the same functions as the Sergeant-Major for the Regiment. He was the Staff Officer of the Army, responsible for planning the battle manœuvres, regulating marches, arranging for the quartering of the troops, and necessarily, therefore, for issuing the orders dealing with these matters. The word Sergeant was soon dropped from both these titles. The Sergeant-Major became the Major of the Regiment, with the duties of the modern Adjutant, and the Sergeant-Major-General became the Major-General of the Army.
We thus find in the sixteenth century that the Staff work of the Army was performed by the officer known in France as le Major-Général des Logis, or Major-General of Quarters, as the allotment of quarters was one of his chief duties. It may be mentioned that the old word for Staff duties was Logistics, formed from the word Logis, and meant the duties of the Major-Général des Logis. This title was then shortened to le Major-Général, by which name the chief Staff officer of the Army has been always called in France down to this day.
The full word was translated Quartier-Meister-General in German, or Quarter-Master-General in English, and this Staff Officer was charged with the Staff duties of the Sergeant-Major-General—namely: Orders, Drill, Manœuvres, Quarters. But the necessity of preceding the army to allot quarters for it entails deciding which road the army is to march by, so the duty of reconnoitring the roads, and thus that of reconnaissance generally, was added to the list of the duties of the Q.M.G. We thus find, in the eighteenth century, that what are now the duties of the General Staff were allotted to the Quarter-Master-General in the British and Prussian Services, and to the Major-Général in the French.
These duties continued to be performed by the Q.M.G. Staff in England, down to a few years ago. In Prussia the Q.M.G. was the second officer to Moltke on the General Staff in the war of 1870, and the appointment was only abolished in 1888.