Louis de Bonfils is a captain in the corps of état-major, or the staff
corps of France. I have known him for several years, and always found
him an honourable upright soldier; in every sense of the word, a
gentleman. According to our insular ideas of decorum, the captain is,
perhaps, rather too much given to swaggering about with his hands in
the far-down pockets of his red trousers, and is slightly addicted to
swearing when ladies are not by. An English cavalry captain might think
Louis awfully slow, because he does not know or care anything about
racing, is proud of, and wears, his uniform at all times and on all
occasions, and has but one suit of plain clothes to his name. Moreover,
since he commenced his career in the army, the captain has thought of,
and worked for, nothing but his profession, and has, consequently,
succeeded in making himself what the state pays him to be--a useful
active wheel in the great mass of French military machinery. Not
but that my friend has his failings and shortcomings like other men;
but he knows full well that unless he keeps pace with--and, to do
so, he must strive to outrun--his comrades on the staff in the race
for professional pre-eminence, he will be cast aside as a useless
encumbrance on the army list of France. Besides his rank of captain in
the staff corps, Louis de Bonfils is attached to the depôt général de
la guerre at Paris; where he is assisting, together with several others
of his own rank and regiment, in completing a magnificent series of
military maps of France, on a larger scale than any that have yet been
published. The captain lately returned from the Crimea, where he was
attached as aide-de-camp to the staff of a general of division; but,
being sent to Paris in charge of some valuable topographical papers
relating to Russia--which he had compiled when in camp by order of his
superiors--the minister of war attached him, for the present, to the
aforesaid depôt de la guerre.
I met Captain de Bonfils the other day in Paris, and asked him to
tell me what were the qualifications required for a staff officer
in his service, and how he had been fortunate enough to obtain
employment in so distinguished a corps. This request he complied with
at once; assuring me that the career of one officer in the corps
d’état-major may be taken as an exact sample of all, and that the same
qualifications are required from every one who aspires to the honour of
holding a commission in that regiment.
To apply the term regiment to the French staff is perhaps not quite
appropriate, as the corps consists entirely of officers. Belonging to
this body are thirty colonels, thirty lieutenant-colonels, one hundred
chefs d’escadron (who would be termed majors in the English service),
three hundred captains, and one hundred lieutenants. No one can join
the regiment unless he passes through the special school instituted in
eighteen hundred and eighteen for that purpose, and now called L’École
Impériale d’Application d’État-Major. This my friend, Captain Louis de
Bonfils, of course, did. There are sixty pupils in the establishment,
one-half of whom leave it every year; thus creating thirty annual
vacancies. Of these thirty, three are selected from the École
Polytechnique; the remaining twenty-seven places in the staff-school
are filled by competition from amongst fifty-seven candidates, thirty
of whom must be sub-lieutenants who have been at least one year in the
service, and must be under twenty-five years of age; and twenty-seven
from the pupils of the military school of St. Cyr. Captain de Bonfils
was one of the latter class. He had already spent his regulated time
of three years at St. Cyr; and having passed the required examination
for a commission in the line, might have joined a regiment without
delay. Being one of the twenty-seven pupils at the head of the list
amongst the hundred who had passed in his term, he entered his name
as a candidate for admittance into the École d’État-Major, and, as he
was successful, joined that institution. Here he remained two years,
going through the regular course of instruction in military science;
and--although, like the rest of the pupils, he held the rank of a
commissioned officer--under almost as strict military and collegiate
discipline as any school-boy. Winter and summer, the young men in
this college rise at six o’clock, and, with the exception of an hour
for breakfast, half-an-hour for recreation in the middle of the day,
and the same in the afternoon, work at one or other branch of their
studies until five in the afternoon; at which hour they dine, and are
then at liberty to go where they like, until ten in the evening. When
they want to be out of college later, leave must be asked and obtained
from the governor of the establishment. During the two years they
remain at the staff-school, their time is divided regularly every day,
each hour bringing its allotted task. The course of studies includes
all the higher branches of mathematics, topography, geography, and
fortification, together with statistics, military history, the English,
German, and Italian languages, drawing, and the theory of military
manœuvres--artillery, cavalry, and infantry--on a grand scale, and
separate as well as combined. One hour every day is devoted to lessons
in equitation in the riding-school; and every pupil is provided with
an excellent charger at the cost of the state. The young men have
each their own room, which is large enough to form, with comfort, a
sleeping apartment and a study. They breakfast and dine together in the
refectory, the former meal being served at nine, and the latter at five
o’clock.
Out of the year, eight months are passed at Paris, and are devoted
to hard work at the desk; three are spent in military surveying in
various parts of France; and one entire month is required for the
annual examinations. On entering the institution, and for twelve
months afterwards, the pupils are attached to the second division, or
lower school. After a year has elapsed they pass an examination, and,
if found qualified, move into the higher, or first class. Any young
man who cannot pass this examination is forthwith remanded to one of
the regiments of the line. Serious sickness for any length of time is
considered the only allowable excuse for any want of proficiency in
their studies. At the end of the second year another examination has
to be gone through, and is considered the final test of qualification.
If passed, the pupil leaves the school with the rank of lieutenant in
the staff corps. But, although enrolled as one of that distinguished
body, he has yet to go through another and a longer ordeal of learning
in practice that which, as yet, he has only been taught in theory. For
two years he is attached to a regiment of infantry; after that, for a
like time, to a cavalry corps, and then, for one year, to a battery of
artillery. With each of these branches of the service he has to do duty
as a troop or company-officer for half the period; during the other
half he is employed as a supernumerary-adjutant, under the orders of
the colonel.
During the five years that he is attached to various regiments, the
staff-lieutenant has to prepare and transmit regularly to his own
corps, maps, papers, drawings, and surveys, which he is ordered to
employ his time upon. My friend, Louis de Bonfils, after leaving the
staff-college, was attached for two years to a regiment of infantry
in Algiers, after which, he passed a like term with a cavalry corps
in France, and then was ordered again to Algiers with a battery of
artillery. Having completed his ten years’ military education--viz.,
three at the College of St. Cyr, two at the staff school, and five
attached to regiments of the three arms of the service, Captain de
Bonfils commenced his career as a full-blown staff-officer: that is
to say, he joined his corps with the rank of captain, and was then
eligible for such appointments as officers of his grade can hold. It
is from this class--and from this only--that the aides-de-camp of
French general officers are selected, and it is amongst the captains
of the corps d’état-major, that my friend de Bonfils takes his place.
The French staff is not divided, like that of England, into two
separate departments of adjutant-general and quarter-master-general.
With our neighbours, these form one and the same staff, and every
officer belonging to the staff corps is perfectly qualified to fulfil
all duties relating to both departments. Nothing whatever is left
to chance, or to the hazard of personal selection. The marshals of
France alone, have the right to nominate their own aides-de-camp--each
having two, one a colonel, the other a lieutenant-colonel of the corps
d’état-major. All other officers who are entitled to aides-de-camp
must take such as are nominated to their staff by the minister of
war; and to ask for a friend or relative being appointed, would in
France be thought an unsoldierlike and unpardonable liberty. Louis de
Bonfils tells me that in about a year’s time he expects to be promoted
to the rank of chef d’escadron in the staff corps, and that he will
then probably be sent either to one of the bureaux d’État-Major, which
are attached to the various military divisions of France, or to the
staff of some general in the Crimea. As I mentioned before, the Corps
d’État-Major consists of one hundred lieutenants (who are attached
to various regiments of infantry, cavalry, and artillery), three
hundred captains, one hundred chefs d’escadron (or majors), thirty
lieutenant-colonels, and thirty colonels; so that, without counting
the junior rank, here is always in France an effective body of four
hundred and sixty officers who have received the most finished military
education it is possible to attain in the world, and who are always
ready to fill up vacancies in the higher departments, or to form a
staff for an army taking the field.
Is there any difference, O my countrymen, and what difference, between
this system and the system of the English service! Amongst my friends
on this side the Channel, I can also number a staff officer, whom I
have known some years. A better fellow, or more honorable man than
Charley Benson does not exist; but what there is in him to make a staff
officer out of I never could imagine. He entered the service about five
years ago, and, having an uncle a general officer in command of an
Irish district, was made aide-de-camp to that relative when he had done
two years’ duty with his regiment. The war in the Crimea broke out, and
his uncle having good interest at the Horse Guards, got Charley named a
deputy-assistant quartermaster-general with the army. What the duties
of the appointment may be, I don’t exactly know, and I am very certain
Charley himself does not. He writes me that he has a lot of paper-work
and returns to make out; but that with a good sergeant for a clerk, he
manages to make it all serene.
Poor Charley! I can imagine how sorely puzzled he would be if left to
his own resources with pen, ink, and paper. He can write a reasonably
sensible letter when he likes, (it is not often that he does like,) but
is decidedly eccentric in his orthography. As to the higher branches
of mathematics, he knows nothing whatever of them. He can add up the
various sums of money set down in the fly-leaves of his cheque-book,
and so tell whether he has overdrawn his account with Messrs. Cox, the
army agents; but beyond this his capabilities for figures does not
extend. Topography, fortification, military drawing, military history,
and military statistics, he denounces--when they are mentioned in his
presence--by the energetic monosyllable--rot! As to military manœuvres
on a grand scale, Charley says he got through his drill under the
adjutant of his regiment, and what more would you have? Moreover, he is
now on the staff, and having good interest, intends to remain there for
some time; so what use, to him, would be any further drilling? When the
war is over he is to join his uncle, an elderly gentleman, who, after
having been thirty years on half-pay, was appointed not long ago to the
command of an Irish district, and is now about to proceed out to India
as commander-in-chief of an Indian Presidency, where he will reign
supreme over a native army, of whose language he does not understand
one word, in a country he has never so much as read of. In Bombay or
Madras he will enjoy a salary of twelve hundred pounds a-year.
Of what use, therefore, can military education be to my friend Charley
Benson? He is one of the fortunate men of this world, who, having good
interest, need not trouble his head with the why or the wherefore of
this or that science. As aide-de-camp, his chief duties are to dress
well, carve well, dance well, ride well, help to do the honors of his
uncle’s house, and occasionally attend that relative to the review
or inspection of a regiment. His training for the staff consisted
in going through a couple of years’ regimental duty with his corps;
and, although whilst there he learnt nothing which could be of the
slightest advantage to him either as an aide-de-camp or a deputy
quartermaster-general, he now finds himself quite on a par with his
brother staff-officers as regards any knowledge of his duties.
Nor is he altogether a bad specimen of the English staff-officer.
There are some few holding such appointments who have in a certain
degree qualified themselves for the post by a couple of years’ study
at the senior department of the Military College at Sandhurst; but
the certificates obtained by these gentlemen never got them on the
staff. Their nominations were coincidences, and would have been equally
certain had they no qualification whatever. In a work lately published
by an officer of the English army, whose character and accomplishments
guarantee the truth of what he asserts, the writer states: “I have
reason to believe that from eighteen hundred and fifteen to eighteen
hundred and fifty-four--a period of thirty-nine years--not one single
appointment on the staff of the army has been made in consequence
of the officer having graduated at Sandhurst.”[2] And further, the
same author informs us that, according to the Army List for May last,
twenty-five officers of the Guards hold staff appointments, of whom
only five ever studied at Sandhurst, and not one of whom received a
first-class certificate.
[Footnote 2: Notes on Military Education. By Captain J. Morton
Spearman, R.A. London, Parker, 1853.]
From another little work on military education,[3] which was published
just before the present war commenced, we learn that out of ninety-one
officers employed in the general staff of the army in eighteen hundred
and fifty-two, seven only had graduated at the senior department of
Sandhurst, and that out of one hundred and seventeen staff-officers
of pensioners in the same year, three only had obtained certificates.
But a stronger instance of the utter inutility of English officers
studying to qualify themselves for the staff has yet to be told.
According to a parliamentary return called for during the last session,
and published early in the month of May, there were then one hundred
and thirty-five officers serving on the staff of the army in the
Crimea. Of these only nine had obtained certificates at Sandhurst.
Not a single assistant quartermaster-general, nor brigade-major,
nor aide-de-camp, had ever graduated at that college; whilst of
eleven assistant adjutant-generals, one only had passed through that
ordeal,--and amongst twenty-nine deputies of the two staff departments
(of the adjutant and quartermaster-general), but five had ever obtained
certificates of qualification at the senior department of the military
college.
[Footnote 3: The Use and Application of Cavalry in War. By Colonel
Beamish, late Royal Irish Dragoon Guards. London, T. and W.
Boone, 1855. Page 437.]
But what is this Senior Department of the Military College? The
establishment of the Military College at Sandhurst is divided into
two departments; the junior, intended for the education of lads, from
thirteen to sixteen years of age, as preparatory to entering the army.
What the military college of St. Cyr is to the French service, the
junior department at Sandhurst is to the English, with this slight
exception,--that whereas the former institution sends forth annually
at least a hundred young men fully qualified for commissions in the
line, our British establishment turns out about a dozen or fifteen in
the same period. At the last half-yearly Sandhurst examinations--in
October or November of the year just ended--the number of cadets who
passed for commissions was less than half-a-dozen. The reason for this
vast difference is, that in France there are but two doors whereby a
candidate can enter the commissioned ranks of the army. The one is by
enlisting as a private soldier, and rising through all the various
subordinate grades to the distinction of wearing the epaulette; the
other by commencing and going through the regular course of studies
at the military college of St. Cyr. In order to qualify in the latter
method, it is necessary to enter that establishment between the ages of
twelve and fourteen, and to remain three years learning the duties of
the profession, before the candidate can be admitted to the examination.
But I have gone astray from my intention, which was to point out
in what consists the senior department of the Military College at
Sandhurst. The pupils of this division are all commissioned officers,
and by the rules they must, before entering the establishment, have
served with their regiment three years abroad, or four years at home.
The number is limited to fifteen, which--considering there are in
times of peace upwards of ninety officers employed on the staff of the
army, and during the present war there are no less than two hundred
and fifty--is rather a small proportion; but even so very short a
list is seldom full, and but few officers avail themselves of the
privilege. Nor can we wonder at it. The English military man is like
his fellow-countrymen who follow other pursuits and employment. If he
saw that study or application would advance him in his profession, he
would work like a horse. If staff appointments were given to those
who had qualified themselves in the senior department of Sandhurst,
and if a certificate from that establishment were a sure and certain
means of obtaining professional distinction and subsequent promotion,
we should in England have in a very few years the best educated staff
in the world. When he has an object in view, there is nothing that the
Anglo-Saxon will not attempt, and few things he cannot accomplish. Let
us not then blame such men as my friend Benson, but rather try all
we can to reform a system which is at once a curse to the army and a
disgrace to the nation. And here let me relate an anecdote.
Some years ago, the regiment in which I then held a commission, formed
part of a very large force, assembled on the North-West frontier of
India. For several months this army was together, saw much service, and
went through several general actions. Besides a great number of the
East India Company’s regiments, there were with us two dragoon corps,
and eight or ten battalions of the Queen’s army. There was also a very
numerous staff, belonging to which were a dozen or fourteen officers of
her Majesty’s service. Of these latter gentlemen, not one had ever been
at the senior department of Sandhurst, whilst there were no less than
ten officers doing regimental duty with their respective corps in this
very force, who had gone through the regular course of study at that
establishment, and of these three had taken first-class certificates.
Again, I say, let us not blame officers who don’t avail themselves of
the senior department at Sandhurst to study, but let us insist upon a
reformation of the present system.
We all know how elderly officers cry up, and Young England cries
down, the heroes, habits, manners, and customs of our army during
the Peninsula war. But in the matter of staff officers and their
qualifications, the force under Wellesley in Spain was certainly in
advance of that commanded by Codrington in the Crimea. According to
a military authority I have already quoted,[4] there was during the
Peninsula war “only one officer employed on the quartermaster-general’s
staff who was not a graduate of the senior department of the Royal
Military College.” And the same gentleman, writing about a year before
the war with Russia broke out, says, “It is by many doubted whether, in
the event of a new war, there exists in the British army the necessary
materials for the construction of an efficient état-major, or corps
of staff officers, such as accompanied the troops under Sir John
Abercrombie to Egypt and Sir Arthur Wellesley to Portugal.”
[Footnote 4: Notes on Military Education, by Captain Spearman, page 35,
note.]
Still stronger evidence against the existing system is afforded us a
little farther on in the same pamphlet, where Captain Spearman states
that, “as an introduction to staff employment, the officers of the
army have long since abandoned the senior department at Sandhurst in
hopeless despair.” The writer then asks “to what is the disinclination,
not to say repugnance, so generally evinced by British officers to
devote themselves to the study of war as a science to be attributed?
Clearly to the want of due encouragement--to the practical denial of
the usual reward of such devotion and toil.”
“Staff appointments” (in the English army), says Colonel Beamish
in his work mentioned above, “are made without any reference to
scientific qualification--because the wish of a lord is more potent
than the judgment of a professor; and the most distinguished Sandhurst
students have been left to look in vain for congenial professional
employment, and some reward for their many hours of labour and
anxious preparation.... How different,” continues the same writer,
“is the practice with our enlightened neighbours! Staff employment
in France is the reward of merit alone. It is sought for by the
élite of the army, and obtained only by the severest study, and the
most indisputable proofs of the possession of the highest degree of
professional excellence and general intelligence. Thus are formed
those well-instructed officers who constitute the état-major of the
French army, and afterwards become their most distinguished generals of
division and brigade.”
If more evidence were wanting to show what are considered the necessary
qualifications for a staff-officer in the English service, a perusal
of the list of lords, honourables, baronets, and sons of wealthy
influential commoners, who form the staff of the Crimean army, would
be quite enough to set the question at rest. With us interest--as with
the French merit--is what the authorities make the sine quâ non for
those who aspire to the staff. The consequence to England has been but
too visible since the struggle with Russia commenced. With as brave
regimental officers and soldiers as ever were sent forth by this or
any other country, our army has never been able to effect half what it
would have effected with proper organisation and efficient leaders. In
France, what the École Impériale d’Application d’État-Major effects
in training for the staff, regimental service does in preparing for
the command of brigades, divisions, and armies. With a highly-educated
staff it is impossible either to want competent generals, or to have
every department of the service in that state of utter confusion
which has so sadly distinguished our army since it first embarked for
the East. Our general officers, commanders of division, brigadiers,
adjutants-general, quartermasters-general, aides-de-camp, and others,
are only now commencing to learn their various military duties with
the army. Should peace be proclaimed to-morrow, and Europe enjoy twenty
or thirty years respite from bloodshed, those officers who may then
hold commissions in the service will, in the event of war, (our system
remaining unchanged: which God forbid!) have in like manner to learn
all their duties. In France, on the contrary, the government maintains
its officers as we do our muskets or big guns--fit for immediate
service in any part of the world.