accession, but no effort was made to train the national forces
according to the latest methods. A few foreign mercenaries were
imported from time to time, and a great many English went abroad,
and served either in the armies of Spain--which were the most
efficient of their day--or in those of the revolted Dutch which,
under the Princes of the House of Nassau, were rapidly improving
upon the Spanish methods. Thus some ideas of foreign practice crept
into England, and a great deal of foreign nomenclature, which still
remains with us. Nearly all of our military terms are foreign,
drawn mostly from the French, the Italian or the Spanish. Regiment,
battalion, colonel, sergeant-major, captain, lieutenant, ensign,
cornet, corporal, centinel--all are words borrowed from Latin
sources, and one could multiply the number of instances. Pistol and
howitzer are Bohemian, relics of John Zizka. Forlorn hope (which
has nothing to do with the English word _hope_) is Dutch. Even
Shakespeare speaks twice of recruits by the Spanish name _bisoño_,
corrupted into Bezonian.
Little progress was made in Elizabeth's time, and no more in the
reign of James I; but meanwhile a great military reformer arose
in the person of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who recognised that
missile action was that which must triumph in the future, and set
himself to improve the firing tactics of infantry. This he did by
reducing the depth of the infantry to three ranks, and forming
the musketeers shoulder to shoulder, the front rank kneeling. He
then distributed the whole of his battalions into sections, or
platoons, of twenty to thirty men each, and introduced the system
of firing by volleys of platoons; the usual method being that the
first, third, fifth, seventh and ninth platoons fired first in
rapid succession, and then the second, fourth, sixth, eighth and
tenth, by which time the odd-numbered platoons had reloaded and
were prepared to begin again. Thus a continuous fire was maintained
without unsteadiness or disorder; and the system was so good that
it lasted until the introduction of breech-loaders. There being
many Scots--even whole regiments--and a good many English in the
Swedish service, the drill and tactics of Gustavus became known to
a number of people in both kingdoms.
Now followed the Civil War, wherein the armies on both sides were
ridiculously inefficient until Cromwell, recognising that the King
had most of the gentlemen--that is to say the more efficient
amateurs--upon his side, decided that he must train professional
soldiers to beat them. So he raised his famous regiment of horse,
and for the first time since the days of Harry the Fifth brought
true military discipline to bear upon English soldiers. In 1645
the Parliament perceived that a whole army trained upon the new
principle would mean the difference between triumph and defeat,
and thereupon organised the famous host called the New Model Army,
consisting of twelve regiments of foot, eleven regiments of horse
and a train of artillery. The effect was immediate. The Royalist
cause was utterly overthrown, whether upheld by English, Scots or
Irish; the irresistible army displaced the Long Parliament and
took from it its usurped authority; and Cromwell during five years
of unrest and uneasiness kept the peace in the three kingdoms by
means of regular troops and an armed constabulary. Never before
or since have we been kept in such order. Scottish Highlanders,
Irish Tories, English colliers--as lawless a people as the other
two--were hammered and cowed into obedience. Some north-country
colliers attempted a strike; "they would neither work themselves
nor suffer others," said the newspapers. The Lord Protector sent
a regiment of horse to the spot, and nothing more was heard of
the strike. Nor was it only within the British Isles that he was
feared, for, in virtue of his army, he was dreaded throughout
Europe. His reign was brief, but he contrived within his five short
years to strike a fatal blow at Dutch commercial supremacy, to
ensure by his regulations as to trade and navigation that it should
pass to England, and to call representatives from an United Kingdom
to a single Assembly at Westminster.
And now pause for a moment to look at the portentous changes that
had come over England in the hundred years between the accession
of Elizabeth in 1558 and the death of Cromwell in 1658. In the
first place England, as I have said, had been finally cut off from
the Continent; in the second she had become mistress in her own
house, for, though Scotland was not administratively joined to her,
the two crowns had been united upon one head and closer union was
only a question of time; while Ireland had been subjected to so
stern a discipline that she still chafes at the remembrance of it.
Insular therefore the British Isles were as never before in their
history; and yet in the earlier half of the seventeenth century
there had been laid by private adventurers under Royal Charter the
foundations of a colonial empire in North America and the West
Indies, that is to say in the temperate and in the torrid zone,
as also of a great agency for foreign trade in India. Moreover
Britain's powerful neighbour, France, had almost simultaneously
formed settlements or trading establishments precisely in the three
same quarters. Almost at the instant therefore when the British
were relieved of the perils and anxieties of a land frontier at
home, they began to acquire such a frontier over seas. Lastly they
had evolved, in what may be called its perfected state, a scheme
of commercial policy which was not likely to make for peace with
their neighbours. Meanwhile, owing to the accidental circumstance
of a civil war and the happy advent of a man of genius, they had
produced quite casually the very thing that was needed for the new
conditions, a regular army subject to proper military discipline.
When Charles II was restored, the intention was to disband the
entire army of the Commonwealth, or to keep at most a regiment
of foot-guards, which had fought against the forces of the
Commonwealth in Flanders, and a regiment of horse-guards, composed
of Royalist gentlemen. But as these showed themselves inefficient
in dealing with the London mob, two of the Parliamentary regiments
were also retained, Monk's of infantry--now the Coldstream
Guards--and a composite body of horse, which we now know as the
Blues. This sufficed for domestic police; but soon there arose the
question of colonial garrisons, for Katharine of Bragança, Queen
of Charles II, had brought to him as a dowry Tangier and Bombay;
and there were other places, notably New York and St Kitts, where
the close neighbourhood of the French made a little protection very
desirable. How were these to be provided? It was a time-honoured
custom in England that all fortified places should have a small
permanent garrison indissolubly attached to them, rather to keep
the buildings in order than to provide for their defence; and this
custom was now extended. A few companies were raised for New York
and St Kitts, and two regiments of foot and one of dragoons for
Tangier; but even so it was necessary to send the Guards abroad
from London to quell a rebellion in Virginia, and to give further
assistance at Tangier. In India the East India Company pursued the
same policy, keeping some companies of white troops at Bombay and
Madras, and forming also companies of natives, the number of which
was constantly increased, for defence of their factories.
James II who succeeded his brother in 1685 was a trained soldier
and sailor who had seen much active service, and an admirable
departmental administrator. He made a pretext of Monmouth's
rebellion to augment the standing army considerably; and, if more
time had been given to him, he would probably have established an
efficient War Office and laid the foundations of a sound military
system. Further, noticing the danger to the American colonies
from their constant divisions and quarrels in the presence of the
smaller but perfectly united and organised French settlements, he
remodelled the governments of many of them, grouping them together
under English Governors, who were also soldiers, so that in time
of danger there might be harmonious action and efficient defence.
These changes, principally, cost him his throne.
During all these years the English had never ceased to chafe at
the continued existence of a standing army. The country gentlemen,
who had made the Revolution of 1642, had the terror of Oliver
Cromwell before their eyes, and dreaded lest the Stuarts might
emulate his summary and efficient methods. They professed, some
of them no doubt conscientiously, solicitude for the liberties of
England, forgetting that their forerunners of the Long Parliament
had abolished the Monarchy and the House of Lords and erected
themselves into a permanent committee of tyrants. They protested
that a standing army was unknown to the Constitution of England,
but they had not awaked to the fact that there was a British Empire
in the making, and that such an Empire requires police. They could
not, or at any rate did not, look one inch before their noses
except at one principal object, namely the supplanting of the
monarchy, in substance if not in fact, by an oligarchy of their
noble selves. They therefore encouraged sedition and discontent
with the new arrangements in the colonies, and invited William
of Orange to come with an armed force and accept the Crown from
them. It suited William's policy exactly to have in his hands the
resources of England for his desperate struggle against France; and
he came, bringing with him the certainty of a great war.
It has been my fate to study the departmental administration of
England at various periods, but I have never found it quite so
corrupt and inefficient as in the early years of King William's
reign. James had improved it amazingly in his three years of power;
but his men were of course displaced in favour of the Whig magnates
and their nominees, naturally with bad results. The administrative
reforms of James in the American colonies were likewise upset
by the Revolution; and this folly brought us within measurable
distance of the loss of North America, besides taking the resources
of England to defend people who ought to have been able to defend
themselves. However there the matter was. It was necessary to raise
a number of regiments and improvise an army for the pacification of
Ireland, which was, I think, the very worst force ever put together
under the English flag. After many disgraceful episodes Ireland was
reconquered; and then the army, which was by this time beginning
to improve, was transported over to Flanders for operations there.
It fought in many severe actions with credit but mostly without
success, for William III was not a great general. However, it
learned a great deal, particularly in the matter of sieges, of
which it had known very little, and being thrown into company with
some good troops and into opposition against others, it was roused
to emulation of the high standard of French and Dutch efficiency.
In 1697 the war came to an end through the exhaustion of both
parties.
Of the solid improvements effected by the incidents of this war,
the first was the passing of the Mutiny Act, in consequence of
the mutiny of a regiment which was faithful to King James. This
Act empowered the king to punish military crimes, for which the
civil law provided no penalty. A standing army being unknown to
the Constitution of England, the Act was passed for twelve months
only, a ridiculous piece of pedantry which is still perpetuated
in the Annual Army Act. The next reform was the adoption of the
bayonet, a recent invention, which united the pike and the musket
into a single weapon, and made an end of the distinction between
shock infantry and missile infantry. A third was the gradual disuse
of the pistol by cavalry; the discarding more and more of its
defensive armour and the reversion to shock action by the charge at
high speed.
Immediately upon the conclusion of the peace there was a howl in
the Commons for the reduction of the Army; and it was carried that
the English establishment should be fixed at no more than seven
thousand men, though the much poorer island of Ireland had been
permanently charged by an earlier act with an establishment of
twelve thousand. I must explain that until 1708 there were three
separate military establishments for England, Scotland and Ireland,
and after 1708 two for Great Britain and Ireland until the Act of
Union in 1800. Moreover, you must remember that even within the
memory of living men the infantry and cavalry were under the War
Office, the artillery and engineers under the Office of Ordnance,
and the commissariat and transport under the Treasury, so that,
while the three kingdoms were disunited, there were nine offices
concerned with the administration of the Army; and the colonels,
who were responsible for the clothing, made a tenth authority.
Hence it was no easy task to get the Army under way for any duty;
while the creation of any new force was a most bewildering labour.
The Commons, however, cared for none of these things. France was
evidently only taking breath for another spring; but that they
ignored, and, as I have said, cut down the Army to the ridiculous
figure of nineteen thousand men. William very nearly abdicated the
throne of England in disgust at their conduct.
Here then we must notice the first flagrant instance of a
besetting sin, which, practically from the very beginning up to
the present time, has afflicted and still afflicts the House of
Commons. No sooner is the country at peace than it raises a cry
for the reduction of the Army. In the eighteenth century this cry
was very much a matter of faction. The Whigs had always bitterly
opposed a standing army under the Stuarts, when they thought it
adverse to their interests; and the Tories naturally conceived
a mortal detestation of it after it had become a weapon in the
hands of the Whigs. Thus both parties were committed to general
discouragement of the force; and any member who desired to pose as
a champion of liberty could do so effectively by denouncing the
evils of a standing army. It has been my hard fate to wade through
a prodigious number of speeches upon this subject, and I have been
absolutely nauseated by their hollowness and cant. It is of course
possible for a man to object sincerely and conscientiously to any
description of army; but I have never met with such a one in the
Parliamentary debates of the eighteenth century. Their abuse of
standing armies, in which was generally mixed some vituperation of
the military profession at large, was simply hypocrisy and cant,
most mischievous and dangerous, inasmuch as it brought the calling
of a soldier into contempt, and kindled the entire civil population
into hostility with the military.
Compelled to reduce the Army to a mere handful of men, William
sought to turn this handful to the best account by keeping the
skeletons of a great many regiments, which might on emergency be
filled out with additional men, rather than a very few complete
regiments ready to take the field at once. He was quite right; and
his example has repeatedly been followed down to our own days; but
the system of skeleton regiments means always unreadiness for war.
In the haste and urgency of the first hostilities all the trained
men are swept into a few battalions, so as to fill up their empty
ranks; those few battalions are sent into action; in six months
they are so much reduced by losses as to be ineffective; and you
are left with nothing but recruits who need two or three years to
convert them into soldiers. This has happened again and again,
and the first instance of it came in 1701. In November 1700 the
acceptance of the throne of Spain for his grandson by Louis XIV
roused all Europe to arms; and Louis to secure his object invaded
Spanish Flanders, surrounded several towns which were occupied,
under the Treaty of 1697, by Dutch troops, and so cut off fifteen
thousand of William's best men. Under a former treaty of alliance
with Holland England was bound to furnish to her ten thousand men,
and both Houses of Parliament prepared faithfully to fulfil the
obligation. Twelve battalions were accordingly ordered to the Low
Countries from Ireland, eked out of course by a great many young
soldiers, but with a fair leaven of old ones; and the country
flattered itself that it would escape with no further burden. But,
as usual, Parliament had forgotten the Empire. Bad news came just
at the same moment from the West Indies, and it was imperative to
send two thousand more men to that quarter. Thus at one fell swoop
the garrison of Ireland was snatched away, and it was necessary to
raise at once ten thousand new recruits and four new battalions.
Before the end of the year Louis XIV recognised the son of James II
as King of England; and Parliament, at last roused to indignation,
agreed to furnish a contingent of forty thousand men--eighteen
thousand British, and the rest foreigners. Thereupon orders were
issued for the raising of fifteen more new regiments, at enormous
expense; for, in consequence of the ill-treatment of the army by
Parliament at the close of the last war, men could not be tempted
to enlist except by large bounties. In 1703 the English share in
the contest extended to the Spanish Peninsula, and eight new
regiments were raised for the purpose. In 1704 the capture of
Gibraltar and other operations demanded the levying of six more
regiments; in 1706 thirteen new regiments were added; and to make a
long story short, before the war ended in 1713 sixty-nine new corps
of horse and foot had been formed to carry on the war.
But we must not leave that war without a sketch of the greatest
of English generals who conducted it. John Churchill was born,
you remember, in 1650, received his first commission in the
Guards in 1667, saw active service against the Moors in Tangier
a year or two later, and serious warfare in 1672 against the
United Provinces under Condé, Turenne and Luxemburg, continuing
to serve them under the colours of Louis XIV, as was not uncommon
at the time, until 1677. In the course of those five years he
learned his work under the great master Turenne, while fighting
another great master, Montecuculi. In 1689 he commanded a small
contingent of British troops against the French once more in
Flanders; besides which, saving a little work in Ireland, he was
employed no more by William until 1698; being suspected, I fear
with justice, of treasonable relations with the exiled King James
II. Finally in 1702 he was appointed to the command of the Allied
Forces in the Low Countries, thus finding himself for the first
time a general-in-chief at the age of fifty-two. In those days
of bad roads there were few districts where armies could keep the
field, owing to the difficulty of feeding them; for a campaign,
as I told you in my first lecture, is a picnic. The delta of the
Rhine and Meuse was a cock-pit because it was in the first place
rich in food, and in the second traversed by navigable rivers and
canals, which made the transport of victuals, of heavy guns, and of
ammunition comparatively easy. But being a cock-pit, its water-ways
were studded with innumerable fortresses, constructed to prevent
ingress into France from the north, and into what we now call
Belgium but which in Marlborough's time was known as the Austrian
Netherlands, from the south. Hence it naturally followed that a war
in that quarter signified a war of sieges; and the French Court
was fond of sieges, because it could attend them in state and take
charge of the operations with much glory and little discomfort or
danger. It must be added that incessant warfare in that unfortunate
country had made every feature in it so familiar, that the ordinary
tactical and strategical movements in it were as well known as the
moves on a chess-board.
It was a mark of Marlborough's originality of mind that on this
familiar ground he contrived always to do something unexpected.
Had he not been hampered by disloyal Dutch Generals and timid
Dutch deputies, who controlled the Dutch contingent of his army
and therefore the Commander-in-Chief also, he would have driven
the French out of Flanders in two campaigns. As it was, these
so-called allies deliberately foiled him again and again; and,
since the French arms had been uniformly successful against the
Imperial troops on the Upper Rhine and Danube, the way to Vienna
was by the year 1704 practically open to the French armies. Then
it was that Marlborough, seeing that the case was desperate,
conceived the magnificent idea of a march of some three hundred
miles from the Low Countries to join the Imperial army on the
Danube. The difficulties were immense. In the first place he had
to gain permission from numbers of petty princes to pass through
their territory; in the second he had to provide magazines of food
and clothing for his army all along the line of march, as well as
money to pay them with; and all this he had to do with secrecy
and circumspection for, in the third place, it was essential that
the French armies should gain no inkling of his intentions, but
should be absolutely deceived by his movements until he was so
far advanced upon his way that he could not be caught. It seems
impossible that such a thing could have been done; but done it was;
and the two victories of the Schellenberg and of Blenheim were
the result. Moreover, this campaign, though the most celebrated
because of its extreme originality and boldness, by no means stands
alone as an example of Marlborough's surpassing skill in the field.
You may go through the whole of the campaigns that he fought in
Flanders, ten in all; and in every one you will find some salient
feature which betrays the master. The forcing of the French lines
on the Geete in 1705; the feint which beguiled Vendôme into a fatal
blunder at Ramillies in 1706; the wonderful march before Oudenarde
in 1708; the investment of Tournay in 1709; the amazing wiles by
which he turned the lines of La Bassée in 1711--any one of these
achievements would suffice to make the fortune of an ordinary
general.