Transcriber’s Note
In the Plain Text version of this eBook, superscripts are represented
within curly braces, preceded by a caret symbol, e.g., 24^{th}, and
italic text is enclosed in _underscores_. Other notes will be found
at the end of this eBook.
THE STORY
OF
THE BRITISH ARMY
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
MAP AND PLAN DRAWING
HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE
GEORGE WASHINGTON
THE BRITISH ARMY
ALSO EDITOR OF
GREAT CAMPAIGNS IN EUROPE
[Illustration: FIELD MARSHAL THE RIGHT HON. VISCOUNT WOLSELEY, K.P.,
G.C.B., G.C.M.G., &C., &C.
_From a Photograph by Werner & Son, Dublin_
]
THE STORY
OF
THE BRITISH ARMY
BY
LIEUT.-COLONEL
C. COOPER KING, F.G.S.
WITH PLANS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
1897
IN TOKEN OF A LENGTHENED FRIENDSHIP
I DEDICATE THIS STORY
OF
HER MAJESTY’S ARMY
TO
ITS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
F.-M. THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
VISCOUNT WOLSELEY, K.P., G.C.B., G.C.M.G.
PREFACE
I have endeavoured in the space at my disposal to show how the British
Army has grown up. I have tried merely to tell a “story,” and therefore
omitted much that might have been said regarding the noble work the
Queen’s Army has done. As regards the opinions advanced, I have always,
as far as possible, given the reasons for my views and the authorities
which induced me to form them.
I have adhered to the principle of using the old regimental numbers,
for the sake of continuity; though, after the date when these were
altered, I have, in most cases, added their present territorial titles.
I wish to express my great appreciation of the courtesy of the Colonel
and the Officers of the Lancashire Fusiliers (20th), South Wales
Borderers (24th), and the Prince of Wales’s Own (West Yorkshire)
Regiment (14th), in allowing me to sketch the uniforms of their men
from the interesting histories of their respective regiments, and to
E. C. Brett, Esq., for permitting me to copy the suits of armour that I
have chosen as types from his father’s magnificent volume on _Arms and
Armour_.
KINGSCLEAR, CAMBERLEY,
_March 1897_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE ARMY OF THE PEOPLE--TO 1100 1
II. THE ARMY OF THE NOBLES--TO 1500 14
III. THE PURITAN HOST 35
IV. THE ARMY OF THE KING--TO 1701 55
V. MARLBOROUGH AND HIS MEN--TO 1714 72
VI. THE EMBERS OF THE CIVIL WAR--TO 1755 87
VII. THE ARMY IN AMERICA--TO 1793 107
VIII. THE ARMY AT SEA--TO 1815 128
IX. THE PENINSULAR ARMY: (_a_) ITS MAKING--1793-1808 155
X. THE PENINSULAR ARMY: (_b_) ITS TRAINING--1808-1811 173
XI. THE PENINSULAR ARMY: (_c_) ITS REWARD--1811-1814 191
XII. THE ARMY IN THE NETHERLANDS--WATERLOO, 1815 206
XIII. THE ARMY AFTER THE LONG PEACE--THE CRIMEA, 1854 236
XIV. THE ARMY IN INDIA: (_a_) THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, ITS
RISE--1600-1825 264
XV. THE ARMY IN INDIA: (_b_) THE FALL OF THE COMPANY AND
AFTERWARDS--1825-1858 277
XVI. THE ARMY IN INDIA: (_c_) THE ARMY OF THE QUEEN-EMPRESS--
1858-1896 318
XVII. THE ARMY IN THE FAR EAST--1819-1875 336
XVIII. THE ARMY IN SOUTH AND WEST AFRICA--1834-1836 351
XIX. THE ARMY IN NORTH AFRICA--1867-1896 374
XX. THE ARMY AS IT IS 396
APPENDIX I.--THE PRINCIPAL CAMPAIGNS AND BATTLES OF THE
BRITISH ARMY SINCE 1658 407
APPENDIX II.--THE LIST OF REGIMENTS WITH THEIR PRESENT
AND FORMER TITLES 411
APPENDIX III.--LIST OF BADGES, MOTTOES, AND NICKNAMES
OF THE ARMY 416
INDEX 424
LIST OF MAPS, PLANS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS
LEADERS
PAGE
FIELD-MARSHAL VISCOUNT WOLSELEY, K.P., G.C.B.,
G.C.M.G., etc. _Frontispiece_
THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH (from an old print) 73
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON 209
ARMOUR
NORMAN (from the Bayeux Tapestry) 10
PLATE ARMOUR, _circa_ 1500 23
PLATE ARMOUR AT BARNET, 1471 29
HALF ARMOUR, 1640 35
UNIFORMS
PRIVATE SOLDIER, 14TH REGIMENT, 1712 72
PRIVATE SOLDIER, 24TH REGIMENT, 1751 104
PRIVATE SOLDIER, 14TH REGIMENT, 1792 126
PRIVATE SOLDIER, 20TH REGIMENT, 1812 200
PRIVATE SOLDIER, 24TH REGIMENT, 1840 239
OFFICER, LIGHT COMPANY, 20TH REGIMENT, 1853 260
PRIVATE SOLDIER, 14TH REGIMENT, 1864 322
PRIVATE SOLDIER, 24TH REGIMENT, 1879 370
BATTLES
THE LINES OF BATTLE AT BARNET, 1471 32
THE LINES OF BATTLE AT NASEBY, 1645 43
THE LINES OF BATTLE AT BLENHEIM, 1704 77
THE LINES OF BATTLE AT WATERLOO, 1815 228
THE LINES OF BATTLE AT TEL EL KEBIR, 1882 383
GENERAL MAPS
ENGLAND AND WALES 5
HASTINGS 7
QUEBEC 111
SPANISH PENINSULA 173
SALAMANCA 198
BELGIUM AND WATERLOO 208
CRIMEA 250
INDIA 266
ARMS
MUSKETS, ETC. 125
FIELD ARTILLERY 38
SPEARS AND SWORDS 231
THE STORY
OF
THE BRITISH ARMY
CHAPTER I
THE ARMY OF THE PEOPLE--TO 1100
All nations have passed, more or less, through the same stages in
the up-growth of that military system which is as essential to the
political security of the mass as the formation of a police force is
necessary for the protection of the individual in civil life. From the
outset, the history of human existence has been one of combat.
First, in the earliest of primeval days, archaic man had to contend
with mammoth, cave bear, and all the host of extinct mammals primarily
for food, and then for safety when the need for clearing them away
became more and more apparent as population increased. With this
increase in numbers grew also the instinctive hostility between man and
man. The desire for conquest is one of his strongest attributes. The
stronger has always tried to make the weaker subservient; and as time
went on, that desire was accentuated by the wish to possess the women
or slaves--the terms were then synonymous--of the weaker family.
It was no mere poetic statement, therefore, that the head of a
patriarchal household felt safe with a body of stalwart sons, and was
not afraid “to speak with his enemy in the gate.” That old-world text
tells volumes, behind which lie sinister pages and details of family
feud and rapine.
But families segregated together and became tribes; these in their
turn formed clans under a general head, and this led to the further
development of inter-tribal and clannish contest, of which the greater
wars of the present time are the natural outcome.
Still, throughout all this pre-historic or semi-historic time, there
was no organisation of what is called an army. Every able-bodied male
was bound to join in the defence of his poor village or district,
or, on the other hand, to acquiesce in the general desire of a
more courageous or dominant group, and share in the attack on, and
despoiling of, some other group weaker or richer than itself. A king
of men, a stronger soul, a man with more ambition or more boundless
energy than his compeers, carried his fellows, by the divine right of
leadership, to war. Except as a consequence of his greater bravery,
he stood in no one place higher than those he led. The fighting was
individual. There were no tactics; there was no systematic military
organisation. All fought singly, with a view to the common end of
success.
It was only when the character of arms themselves advanced, as
civilisation and greater inter-dependence of peoples increased,
as communication from point to point improved, rendering combined
operations possible, that systematic war began. Even then, there was
much of the personal element in the matter. The known chief planted
his standard, and round it gathered, at first, a mass of subordinate
units, led by their chosen sub-chiefs. But even this was the beginning
of greater things. Organisation, on which the real art of war depends,
had arisen. The chief now directed subordinate commanders, and command
became subdivided. He no longer led only; he directed, in addition to
infusing courage into his men by his personal bravery.
So it has been with the successive races that have fought in those
early days on British soil. The first real military system worthy of
the name was that which brought woad-clad Britons in collision with
the military might of Rome. But wonderful as the Roman organisation
was, it seems to have left but little permanent trace on the people
it had governed and civilised for four hundred years, from the time
of Cæsar’s first landing to that in which Honorius recalled the last
legion from the deserted province of Britannia to assist the main trunk
of the empire. There is little evidence that the Saxons met with any
more valuable opposition than mere courage, an attribute of little
real permanent importance against a foe that had at the least a sort
of military organisation. For that the Saxons had such is clear. They
had learned from the Romans indirectly if not directly; and there is a
distinct trace of Roman influence in the way they arranged a battle.
This applies still more to their fighting organisation after they had
conquered and subdued the effete defenders of Roman Britain, before the
Danes came. Though they, too, had succumbed to the enervating influence
of peace, they had established a genuine system which had in it the
elements of the army as it is, or at least some portion of it. For
the army of Saxon England was, in all essential respects, a militia;
that is to say, a body closely resembling the tribal array, but better
organised. Against these came the Danes, whose methods were those of
the early Saxons; that is to say, tribal leading under renowned chiefs.
But the stronger and more correct principles that underlay the Saxon
organisation triumphed in the end; and the raids of Danish hordes were
beaten in detail, and became absorbed in the Saxon stock, to revivify
and strengthen it. The Roman was an alien, and remained so; but both
Saxon and Dane had the same racial origin, became, finally, part of
the nation they had conquered, and were absorbed by it, to form the
English, when the still stronger tone that Norman soldiers gave--coming
also, be it remembered, from the same group of peoples--had borne fruit.
The story of the Saxon conquest and of the Danish invasion contains few
points of military interest, though that period was the cradle in which
the future army was to be reared. Still there is one battle of that
time which should rank with the decisive battles of the English world,
for it stemmed the tide of Danish success, and led to the amalgamation
of the hostile sides against the next new comer. This turning-point
is the battle of Æscesdune, or Ashdown, fought most probably on the
Berkshire hills.
The Saxon had retained, somewhat, the Roman fighting formation, as
they had utilised Roman villas in Britain, and altered them to suit
Saxon tastes. A spearman--one of the _hastati_, say, of a Roman
legion--required for the free use of his weapons a space of three clear
yards round the spot on which he stood;[1] and it is more than probable
that the later Saxons had adopted some of the Roman methods. The arms
varied little from those in use during the Roman invasion. The spear or
javelin and arrow showed no change; the sword was broad and two-edged,
with a heavy pommel; the favourite Saxon weapon, the axe, was either
double or single, like the Gallic _Francisca_.[2] The body armour and
head armour was of leather, strengthened in some cases with iron, and
the chief defence, the shield, was of wood with bosses or _umbos_
of iron. Their skill with the latter, as tradition tells it, seems
fabulous: it is even stated that Harold, surrounded by ten archers,
was able, his back being protected by a tree, to intercept every shaft
aimed at him. Until later, both antagonists fought mainly on foot.
[Illustration: _OUTLINE MAP of ENGLAND & WALES._]
Turn then again to the battle of Ashdown, and let the Saxon chronicler,
Bishop Asher of Sherborne, tell the story of the last great Saxon
fight, but one, on English soil. The next was to show the descendants
of the combatants at Ashdown united against yet another invader--and
the last. “The Pagans, dividing themselves into two bodies of equal
strength, draw up their lines--for they had there two kings and
several jarls--and they give the central part of the army to the two
kings (Baegsaeg and Halfdene), and the rest to all the jarls (Fraena,
Hareld, and the two Sidrochs). When the Christians perceive this,
they, in the same manner, divide themselves into two bodies, and draw
themselves up with equal diligence. But Alfred comes more speedily
and readily with his men, as we have heard from trustworthy reporters
who saw it, and arrives at the place of battle; for his brother,
Ethelred the king, was still remaining in the tent in prayer, hearing
the Mass, and declaring that he would not depart thence alive before
the priest should end the Mass, nor would desert the divine service
for the human. And he did as he had said, which faith of the Christian
king availed greatly with the Lord, as in the sequel shall be fully
shown. The Christians, therefore, had decreed that Ethelred the king
with his own forces should fight against the two pagan kings; but
Alfred his brother with his companies would know how to try the chance
of war against all the leaders of the pagans. Thus strongly were they
placed on either side when the king was lingering long in prayer, and
the pagans were prepared and had hastened to the place of conflict.
Alfred then being second in command, when he could no longer endure
the ranks of the foe, except he either retreated from the fight, or
dashed forward against the hostile forces before his brother’s arrival,
at last boldly, after the manner of a wild boar, guided the Christian
forces against the foe as had been determined, though still the king
had not come. Thus relying on the guidance of God, and supported by His
help, with the lines drawn up closely, he moves forward the standard
with speed against the enemy. But to those who know not the place it
must be explained that the site of the battle was unequal for the
belligerents, for the pagans had occupied beforehand a higher position;
but the Christians drew up their lines from a lower place. There was
also, in the same place, a single thorn-tree of very small size, which
we ourselves have seen with our own eyes. Around this, therefore, the
hostile armies, all with a great shout, meet together in conflict, the
one acting most wickedly, the other to fight for life and friends and
country. And when they fought for some time, fiercely and very cruelly
on both sides, the pagans, by the divine judgment, could endure the
attack of the Christians no longer; and the chief part of their forces
being slain, they took to flight disgracefully. And in this place one
of the two pagan kings and five jarls were slain; and many thousands
on the pagan side, both in that place and along the whole breadth of
the plain of Æscesdune, where they had been everywhere scattered, were
slain far and wide. For there fell their king Baegsaeg and Jarl Sidroc
the elder and Jarl Sidroc the younger, and Jarl Obsbern, and Jarl
Fraena, and Jarl Hareld; and the whole army of the pagans was put to
flight till the night, and even to the following day, until those who
escaped arrived at the citadel, for the Christians pursued them until
night and overthrew them everywhere.” “Never before or since,” says a
Saxon writer later on, “was ever such slaughter known, since the Saxons
first gained England by their armies.” All the next day the rout was
followed up, until the shattered remnants gained the shelter of their
fort. Whether it was absolutely abandoned by the Danes after their
defeat is doubtful; but it is recorded that fourteen days later Alfred
and Ethelred suffered a reverse at Basing, which shows, at anyrate,
that some portion of the enemy’s forces had retreated to the south.
To meet the last invasion of foreign blood, the Anglo-Saxons had, by
that time, a military organisation which differed but little from the
hosts that William of Normandy brought against Harold the king at
Senlac. There had been much intercommunication between the British
Isles and the mainland. Both armies were armed and equipped in much
the same way. Their leaders wore the same kind of armour, and there
was little to distinguish between them, save that the Norman’s chief
strength was in his cavalry, that of Harold in his infantry. The Bayeux
Tapestry shows both Harold and William clad in the same attire.
The Saxon fighting system at Hastings differed little from that of
the mercenaries of the most varied character that followed the banner
of the Conqueror, except that on Harold’s side there was union of
men, then of the same nationality to a great degree, against a mere
collection of adventurers. As to the political situation there is
little to be said. The true history of the eleventh century is
still, and ever will be, unwritten; the most reliable account is
after all largely, if not entirely, traditional. It is poetical
rather than actual. It is based on “hearsay” rather than fact. Yet,
notwithstanding, before real recorded history was, tradition had to
take its place, and this is what it and legend have to say of that
great conflict which destroyed Saxondom in Britain, and which placed
William the Norman on the English throne as king.
[Illustration: _Battle of Hastings._
_14^{th}. Oct. 1066._]
This, then, is what the fighting seems to have been. Curiously enough,
Harold selected the defensive, as did Wellington, as a rule, seven
hundred and fifty years after, and fought on foot while fortifying
his front with palisades; while the Normans attacked in a series of
lines, much as was done by British troops before the introduction of
the breech-loader led to the abandonment of “linear” tactics. The last
of the Saxon kings had chosen for his stand for crown and kingdom the
hill where Battle is now built; but there was one vast difference
between the opposing leaders. On the one side the Saxons feasted and
made merry, though there is little evidence that Harold made any effort
to rouse the enthusiasm of his men as his adversary did. In the Saxon
camp there was wine and wassail, and in that of William penitence and
prayer. William knew the guiding spirit of the art of war of the time,
the infusing into his host that religious fervour which later on made
Cromwell defeat Royalists as physically brave as his own Ironsides, and
the instilling in their minds confidence in their own powers, which has
been at the base of every English victory since then. The Saxons were
“slow to find out they were beaten”;[3] but the Norman enthusiasm was
raised by the duke’s address on the morning of the fight, in which he
recalled to their minds that the Normans “had won their land in Gaul
with their own swords; how they had given lands to the kings of the
Franks and conquered all their enemies everywhere; while the English
had never been famed in war, the Danes having conquered them and taken
their land whenever they would.”
All this may be fable, and probably is, but what we know of William
tends to show it was likely. Even omens he turned to advantage. He
fell on landing, but, rising with his hands full of English soil, he
exclaimed, “What is the matter? I have thus taken seisin of this land,
and so far as it reaches, by the splendour of God, it is yours and
mine.” He put on his mailed shirt back in front, only to laughingly
exclaim, as he reversed it, “A good sign and a lucky one: a duke shall
this day be turned into a king.”
All this evidences genius for war such as Harold never had. His bravery
is undoubted, but mere bravery counts little against bravery _plus_
skill. So it was that, armed with sword and priest-blessed relics,
protected by the “consecrated” banner of Pope Alexander, and bearing
on his finger a ring set “with one of St. Peter’s hairs,” William went
into battle with not merely an army of sixty thousand men, to whom
success meant profit, but to whom death meant falling in a holy cause,
and to whom the very battle itself was a crusade. Everything was in his
favour, when, singing the battle hymn of Roland, he moved his three
lines against the hill on which Harold’s royal standard was planted.
The details of the battle are of little interest. It was one of
hand-to-hand fighting. “The English axe, in the hand of King Harold,
or any other strong man, cut down the horse and his rider by a single
blow.”
The personal element entered largely, as it did later, into the
contest. The fall of the leader led to the fall of the army. Where
Harold was, where his standard flew, there was the “tactical key” of
the field of battle. True tactics do not depend on the death of the
king, or the capture of so many yards of silk embroidery. But true
tactics, rightly understood, were not in these days.
The duke formed his army in two wings and a centre, each of which seems
to have advanced covered by archers, supported by heavy infantry, and
strengthened by the main arm of battle, then the mailed cavalry. The
left wing, composed of men from Ponthieu, Maine, and Brittany, was led
by Alan; the right, adventurers from Picardy and France, was directed
by Roger de Montgomery; and the centre, comprising the flower of the
Norman host, was commanded by William himself.
The bowmen covered the advance by arrow fire, and seemed to have
produced little effect; but towards the end of the day they, possibly
and apparently from the flanks,[4] poured in a vertical fire, and so
covered, without interfering with, the attack of the main bodies, and
it was from this, in a sense, long-ranged fire that Harold received the
wound that disabled him, caused his death and the ruin of the Saxon
cause.
Whether the statement that William, by a feigned retreat, drew the
Saxons from their entrenchments in pursuit and then turned on them with
success, is true or not, may be open to doubt. Harold’s tactics and his
method of entrenchment all point rather to passive than active defence.
His best armed and best equipped men were in the centre, round his
royal standard, armed with javelin, axe, and sword, and covered close
by the large Saxon shield; on his flanks were the less reliable and
poorly armed “ceorls,” who could not be trusted to meet the main brunt
of battle. It is quite possible, however, that these less disciplined
troops may have been decoyed into a pursuit which was counter attacked
by the cavalry, and thus the flank was turned, and with it the line of
obstacles along the front, whatever they might have been.
Be that as it may, it is most likely that the traditional termination
of the battle is in the main correct, and that William, by his “high
angle” fire of arrows, was able to “search” the ground behind the
stockade, and that the last Saxon king received his death-wound in the
eye from one of these missiles. It would have been better strategy on
his part to have fought a merely rearguard action at Hastings, and,
falling back, have both weakened his adversary by the guards he must
have left on the coast, and increased his own power of resistance
by the aid of the reinforcements that were coming up. So night went
down on the bloody field of Senlac, where Harold lay dead with fifteen
thousand Normans and “threescore thousand Englishmen,” though the
latter statement is, on the face of it, exaggeration. But the fight
had broken the Saxon power, and the Conqueror--as William of Poictiers
says--refused his royal brother burial, swearing “that he guarded
the coast while he was alive, let him thus continue to guard it
after death.” None the less, it is believed he was buried eventually
at Waltham, and William the duke passed on to cross the Thames at
Wallingford, seized London, and become William the king.
With Senlac perished the militia system of the Saxon rulers of England.
The new-comers had brought with them the elements, though not the
completion, of the feudal system that was to follow and be the outcome
of the Norman Conquest. As a matter of fact, the invading army that
William led was only after all a gathering of armed men under leaders
of sorts. Its very origin prevented the full organisation which means
a real or regular army. Mercenaries, men who had never before the
war met the chiefs who were to lead them, in rare cases religious
enthusiasts, who believed that the cause of the Pope and the Normans
was the cause of God, mere soldiers of fortune, who thought from the
fair English land they might obtain fortune even more than fame;--these
were the men who were to break up the Saxon kingdom, still existent
more or less, and were to weld into one homogeneous whole the English
race. Never has the end better justified the means. Never have the
means themselves in 1066 been more ignoble. The Norman host as men had
scarcely a redeeming feature. To count descent from them, is to count
often enough from the meanest social ancestry, though age has made
it venerable and respected. Some of the noblest of English families
trace, or rather claim, descent from men of the lowest origin, who rose
from such a place as that of “Hugo the Dapifer,” to be the rulers of
England and replace Saxon jarls whose descent was more distinct, and
on whom the Norman parvenu looked down. It cannot be too definitely
expressed that to “have come in with the Conquest” is only a confession
that those who use the expression are ignoring the fact that many a
Saxon thane could show a family title far deeper set in the history of
England than any of the men who usurped and trampled on those whose
pedigree went back to the days of Æscesdune, before the soldiers
of fortune of the Duke of Normandy had emerged from their original
obscurity.
[Illustration: _Battle of Hastings_ (_From Bayeux Tapestry_).]
None the less the new invaders were “men,” and had a “man” to govern
them, while William, the king by right of everything that in those days
made kingcraft, ruled.
“Stark was he,” says the English Chronicler, “to men that withstood
him; none dared resist his will. Earls that did aught against his
bidding he cast into bonds; bishops he stripped of their bishopricks
and abbots of their abbacies. But stern as his rule was, it gave peace
unto the land.”
This was William. “Out of the strong cometh forth sweetness,” out of
the horrors that followed the Norman Conquest came the English people,
and, as time went on, that army which has mostly conquered, often
suffered, and generally met disaster with a bold front. And so the new,
or rather the last successful invaders seized the fair isle of Britain,
added their names to old place-names of Celtic or Saxon origin as an
affix, converting, for example, the “town by the water” of Ashton into
“Ashton Tyrrold,” and, holding the richest lands as their own appanage,
raised the massive frowning towers of Norman castles at all important
strategic points throughout the country, marking their conquest as by
a sign-manual that they held the land, as they had gained it, by the
sword.
Notwithstanding that the Norman had many friends in England, it was
long before the whole country was subdued. There was fighting in the
north of England and on the marches of Wales; there was prolonged
resistance by Hereward in the Fenland and central forests, until, in
1071, the “Wake” surrendered, and became the “king’s man.” There was
much still to settle, and William settled them in his own stern way.
So much so that his own often parvenu barons revolted, and for many
a century rebelled against the royal authority, which, backed by the
clergy and English, won in the end. Ralf Guader was quieted in 1074,
and Robert of Bellème, with Robert Mowbray and Prince Robert, were
beaten in 1078. Similarly, when Rufus reigned, the same Robert Mowbray,
with Odo of Bayeux and others, held their castles as rebels until they
were stormed in 1095.
The Celts of both Wales and Scotland proved troublesome, so to hold the
latter frowning Norman castles were erected at each end of the neck
between North Britain and England at Carlisle and Newcastle, while the
former were shut in by a chain of similar fortresses from Cheshire to
the Severn valley, along which hostilities continued for many a year,
to the territorial aggrandisement of the defenders of the “Marches.”
Henry I.’s marriage, uniting the old royal race with the new, much
pacified matters, or at anyrate gave the king still more aid from the
English people as distinct from the Norman barons. Again Robert of
Bellème on the Welsh border revolted, but was driven into exile by the
sovereign: in the claim of Robert to the throne, Englishmen sided with
Henry, and for the first time served abroad to defeat the pretender at
Tenchebrai. But Henry left no male successor, and Matilda his daughter
was distasteful to the barons, who chose Stephen, grandson of the
Conqueror, as king. This created two factions--that of Stephen and that
of Matilda, the first of the great Civil Wars (for now the “English”
counted for much more than heretofore), and the king, unlike his
predecessors, unwisely allowing the barons to build castles on their
own lands, paid for his over-confidence. For Matilda’s party, led first
by the Earl of Gloucester, formed in the west of England, assisted by
David King of Scots in the north. Stephen advanced against the latter,
defeating the former at Northallerton, and after many vicissitudes on
both sides, the war ceased by the retirement of Matilda to Normandy.
So in anarchy and suffering--suffering so great that it was said “that
God and His saints were asleep,” so terrible were the wrongs done in
the land--the Norman power as such ceased to be, and Plantagenet kings
(no longer Norman but English) reigned over the realm for more than
three hundred years.
Out of that time grew up the system of feudal levies, that is, of men
who served as the personal retainers of some baron or overlord, and
who fought therefore no longer as freemen, fighting freely in their
country’s wars. Military service long remained personal rather than
national.