Armstrong, William George, Lord, engineer and mechanical inventor, born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 10th Nov., 1810. He was trained as a solicitor, and practised as such for some time. Among his early inventions were the hydro-electric machine, a powerful apparatus for producing frictional electricity, and the hydraulic crane. In 1847 the Elswick works, near Newcastle, were established for the manufacture of his cranes and other heavy iron machinery, and these works are now among the most extensive of their kind. Here the first rifled ordnance gun which bears his name was made in 1854. His improvements in the manufacture of guns and shells led to his being appointed engineer of rifled ordnance under Government, and he was knighted in 1858. This appointment came to an end in 1863, since which time his ordnance has taken a prominent place in the armaments of different countries. He was made a peer, as Baron Armstrong, in 1887. He died 27th Dec., 1900.
Armstrong Gun, a kind of cannon, so called from its inventor. It has an inner tube or core of steel, rifled with numerous shallow grooves, the tube being surrounded by a jacket of spirally-coiled bars of wrought iron, so disposed as to bring the metal into the most favourable position for the strain to which it is to be exposed. His first guns were small, but larger ones were soon made, and afterwards those of the very highest calibre. The breech-loading principle was also adopted in them, and special provision to effect this satisfactorily was invented by him. The improved shells introduced by him were of the elongated and pointed type now so well known, the charge being inserted in a special chamber behind the bore.
Army, a collection of bodies of men armed, disciplined, and organized for war. The essence of a modern army is that it shall be composed of organized units each under its own commander, grouped in formations of ever-increasing size, and owing allegiance through these commanders to one supreme head. Discipline and organization are essential, or such a force becomes merely a collection of armed men.
In the early days of our history every able-bodied man was, to a greater or lesser extent, a possible fighting man, and all had arms of one kind or another. Consequently, when an army was required, landowners and county authorities were ordered to provide the troops necessary. Every free landowner between the ages of sixteen and sixty was liable to service, which was limited to two months in a year. This was the Saxon 'fyrd' system. Later it was improved on by the institution of 'Thane's Service', which made it incumbent on the more considerable landowners to appear fully armed and mounted, and to serve for the whole campaign. The horse, however, was only used as a means of locomotion: for fighting purposes their riders dismounted, as did the dragoons of the seventeenth century and the mounted infantry of still more modern times. The fyrd was an unorganized and undisciplined force and entirely ephemeral in its nature, so that we find the Danish kings of England casting about for some more permanent force, which came into existence under the title of the 'House Carles', or Royal Guard. With the Norman Conquest the fyrd was largely supplanted by the feudal system of knight's service, according to which the country was divided into knight's fees, each of which had to provide its quotum of men. The gradual appearance of the custom of avoiding service by payments of money—in time regulated under the name of scutage—led to the employment of paid mercenaries, who for some two centuries were almost invariably foreigners. In the twelfth century it was found that sufficient troops could not be provided under these two systems, so the fyrd was re-established as a National Militia by the Assize of Arms, and in the next century further steps were taken to protect it under the Statute of Winchester. In the fourteenth century the archer, with his longbow, became a very important part of the fighting forces of England, and an army of those days consisted of the heavily-armed and armoured knights and men-at-arms for shock action, and the unarmoured archers for 'volley action', to use a later term. With the gradual disappearance of the foreign mercenaries, it became the custom for the king to issue indents to certain influential subjects for the raising of paid troops.
From this custom arose the free companies, which, in time, became nothing more or less than commercial undertakings. The indents were accepted, and the men enlisted primarily for what could be got out of the business of fighting, either in the shape of ransom or the sack of towns. Some attempt was also made at tactical organization, and an army of the period was divided into vanguard, battle, and rearguard. Artillery also was beginning to be developed in Germany for siege purposes. The sixteenth century saw the first formation of companies into regiments, though as yet of no fixed strength. Arms were also modernized, and by the end of the century muskets, 18-feet pikes, and swords, were the arms of infantry instead of the varied assortment of halberds, pikes, muskets, harquebuses, and longbows common at the beginning. Elizabeth introduced the press-gang as an aid to recruiting, and abolished the white coat of the soldier in favour of a long red or blue cassock. In the next century Cromwell's new model army became the first standing army of England, and, though it was disbanded by Act of Parliament at the Restoration, one of its regiments—Monk's—remained, and is now the Coldstream Guards. After this regiments were raised from time to time on one pretext or another, and the nucleus of a standing army became a fait accompli, though it was for a long time considered more as an appanage of the king than as a national institution. With the standing army came the first beginnings of civilian control, a Secretary-at-War being appointed in 1660. He had, however, no responsibility, and was subordinate to the commander-in-chief, and it was not till 1710 that he assumed his present responsibility to Parliament. During the eighteenth century the strength of the army rose or fell according to the state of the military barometer and the success or otherwise of the various recruiting expedients, among which was the first attempt at a short-service system in 1703. In 1871-2 the old numbering in regiments was abolished and a territorial designation substituted. According to this scheme, the first twenty-five regiments, all of which had already two battalions, were grouped together, the rest being joined arbitrarily to form new regiments under county designations. With these regiments were affiliated the militia and volunteer battalions, which have now been amalgamated into the Special Reserve and the Territorial Force.
For the requirements of the war of 1914-8 the Empire, as a whole, including India, raised and maintained a total of 8,654,467 men, of which the contribution of the United Kingdom was over 6,000,000. Casualties for the whole Empire were 3,060,616, of which the United Kingdom has for her share nearly 2,500,000, including 666,083 killed, 1,644,786 wounded, and 140,312 missing.
During 1918 the combatant strength of all arms of the British army in France fluctuated between 1,293,000 in March and 1,164,790 in November, while the rifle or infantry strength was from 616,000 to 416,748 during the same periods. From the date of the armistice to 31st Dec., 1919, the following number of demobilizations and discharges were effected:—
Demobilized.—Officers, 144,144; other ranks, 3,332,882.
Discharged as medically unfit.—Officers, 23,476; other ranks, 207,500.
Discharged from reserves.—Other ranks, 143,603.