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LECT. PAGE

PREFACE v

INDEX 201

LECTURE I

MILITARY HISTORY: ITS SCOPE AND DEFINITION

Is the history of the Continental System, therefore, military history? So far as concerns the invasion of Spain, Portugal and Russia to coerce those countries into the acceptance of it, undoubtedly it is. But as regards England, the power at which it was really aimed, what are we to say of it? How did we endeavour to combat it? How does any country invariably combat the commercial restrictions of any other? First by imposing retaliatory restrictions of her own, or engaging in a war of blockades or tariffs, which may be called regular commercial warfare; secondly, by the practice of smuggling, which may be called irregular commercial warfare. Is the history of a war of tariffs, then, military history? If we answer in the affirmative there is no escape from the logical conclusion that the never-ceasing contest between smugglers and revenue-officers in all countries is military history. Moreover, since revenue-officers are only departmental police, it follows that the external struggle between the breakers and the upholders of the law at large--between criminals and the police--is also military history. But this is to say that the history of social communities generally is military history; and I cannot think this to have been in the mind of the generous founder of the lecturership which I have the honour to hold.

Let us begin, then, by laying it down provisionally that military history is the history of the strife of communities. This is not enough; for communities have been known before now to fight with anathemas, and such a conflict belongs rather to the domain of religious than of military history. Shall we say then that it is the history of the strife of communities for self-preservation or expansion? This is open to the obvious criticism that communities have fought and will fight again for many other objects than the two above-mentioned--for a woman, for a creed, for a principle moral or political, or even for nothing at all but from sheer force of habit. So it will be wiser for us to avoid any specification of the objects of strife, or we may find ourselves in trouble. It may be true in a sense to say that a tantrum of Madame de Pompadour cost the French their empire in North America and in India; but it is not the whole truth, nor nearly the whole truth. Even the best and greatest of historians are but gropers in a thick darkness, and epigrams are the most deceitful of will-o'-the-wisps.

But no one on that account has ventured to stigmatize the study of penal codes, and of the organisation for putting them into force, as ignoble or unprofitable. The sheriff, for instance, and his functions are approached with respect, by some historians even with awe. "Ah," say the despisers of military history, "but the sheriff is an instrument for compelling obedience to the law, not the leader of a host whose business it is to slaughter and destroy." The law! and what is the law but the formulated will which some section of the community, possibly a majority, but always in former days and frequently, even at present, a minority, seeks to impose upon the whole? And if breakers of the law resist the sheriff or policeman, will he not if necessary slaughter them, and destroy any shelter in which they may have taken refuge? Of course he will, and "the law" will uphold him for so doing. "But," reply the objectors, "you forget that civil law is not always a mere ordinance of man; it may have the sanction of divine authority." I speak here with all reverence, but how many are the armies and the leaders that have claimed that theirs was the cause of God, and have fared forth to war in His name? I am not speaking now of modern armies, though they too invariably invoke the help of the God of Battles, and call him to witness that their cause is just. Look at the Crusades on one side, look on the other at the mighty and overwhelming conquests of Islam. Look at the extinction of Christianity in North Africa; look at the eight centuries of conflict which banished the Mohammedan faith from Spain. Look at the religious wars of Christians in Europe; and not least at our own Puritans. Look finally at the bitter struggles of Hindu and Mohammedan in India. There was not one of these parties that did not claim, that did not for the most part heartily believe, that it was fighting to uphold the Law of God.

And now observe that we have found a second definition of military history. It is the history of the external police of communities and nations. But external police, you may object, implies the existence of something which, for want of a better word, we must call external law. Is there such a thing as external law? There is a thing called the law of nations or international law, which is concerned chiefly, though not exclusively, with the relations between belligerents and neutrals, but which it simply custom, and should not be called law, because there is no international police to enforce it. Any nation may defy it, if she thinks it worth while, and a great many have defied it in the past and will defy it in the future, not necessarily with any damage to themselves. The same may be said of the International Tribunal of Arbitration at the Hague. Its decrees and decisions may be excellent, and nations may bind themselves beforehand to accept them; but nations are not remarkable for the observance of inconvenient agreements, where there is no penalty for violating them. It is a painful fact, but in its relations to its neighbours every community is a law unto itself, the nature of that law being principally determined by the community's powers of enforcement. Police first, law afterwards, is the rule between nation and nation--a formula which may be rendered more tersely still by the phrase, Might is Right. In a sense, therefore, though not in the sense generally attached to the words, military history is the history of the law of nations, which is the law of force; or, if you prefer it, of the law of force which is the law of nations.

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power."

Military history is the history of these trials. Does it seem to you a small, or ignoble, or unprofitable thing? But, it may be objected, this is an unfair way of putting the matter. No doubt it may be profitable to compare the political institutions of some effete community with those of the young, virile and vigorous communities which swept it out of existence. But the details of fire and sword, of massacre and devastation, of the blood of men and the tears of women, are they profitable? And the elaborate principles of strategy and tactics--that is to say the bringing of the armed force up to the field of decision, and the handling of it to the best advantage when there; with their ancillary sciences of fortification and poliorketics, that is to say, of setting up strong places and knocking them down again--are they profitable? What are the art of war and the science of military organisation but the art and science of destruction? Can the study of these be profitable?

This, it may be said, is an unkind way of stating the matter. The superior machinery supplants and replaces the inferior. Quite so. There is in a general way renewal as well as destruction; but the superior machinery does not replace the men who have perished in assuring its triumph on the one side, or in succumbing to that triumph on the other. And after all what is the general purport of war but to replace what is inferior by what is superior? What are the rise and fall of civilisations, empires, states, nations and communities, but the process of supplanting the inferior by the superior, or at any rate the subjection of the inferior to the superior? Military history is the history of that process, and it is no more the history of destruction than any other kind of history. I do not suppose that the most tender-hearted member of the Society of Friends would take exception to the study of the legislative enactments whereby, quite apart from warlike measures, we wrested their former commercial superiority from the Dutch. He would not call it a history of destruction, and yet it was so--to the Dutch. In the case of a military war the casualty lists are published, and everyone says "How shocking." In the case of a commercial war it is announced that such and such a firm has closed its works through bankruptcy; and few, unless they chance to be share-holders, think more about the matter. There may be some hundreds of people deprived of their livelihood, but few consider that. Military victors feed their prisoners of war: commercial victors leave them to starve. And yet commerce is held to be humane, and war very much the contrary; while captains of industry are held in honour by men to whom the fame of a captain in war gives sincere and conscientious affliction.

But to return to a question which I have still left unanswered, wherein lies the profit for men not of the military profession, of studying the principles and the history of war, with the terrible details in which the history abounds so frequently? One chief profit, as I take it, is to learn the nature of the supreme test to which a nation may be subjected, so that she may equip herself morally and physically to pass through the ordeal with success. Let me repeat to you that war is less a matter of courage than of endurance. Of really brave men, men who from sheer love of fighting cannot be kept out of fire, the proportion is about one in a thousand. Of real cowards, men who literally cannot be induced to face fire in any circumstances, the proportion is about the same. The remainder can by training and discipline be brought to do their duty with more or less bravery, which is sufficient--or at any rate must be considered sufficient--for the purpose. Such training and discipline are a purely military matter, to which I shall presently return. But endurance depends upon moral and physical attributes which, though a great leader or regimental pride may do much to enhance them, are principally the concern of the statesman. Let us deal first with the physical requirements of a soldier.

First and foremost he must be mature, a man and not a boy; otherwise, no matter how great his pluck, he will never be able to withstand the hard work of a campaign. There is hardly a country which has not again and again filled up its muster-rolls with children, and deceived itself into the belief that it was enlarging its armies, instead of filling up its military hospitals and graveyards. Boys can of course do the work of garrisons within certain limits; but it is cheaper to knock them on the head at once and bury them at home than to send them upon active service in the field. On the other hand, men must not be too old, otherwise they succumb to rheumatic complaints in consequence of exposure to cold and wet. For the rest, the soundness of the feet, in order that men may be able to march; of the eyes, so that they may be able to see; and of the teeth, are of the greatest importance. An enormous proportion of men on active service die of dysentery or enteric fever, due to bad and ill-cooked food; and want of teeth to masticate that food aggravates the evil immensely. Bad sight and bad teeth are very common in the inhabitants of large towns, as also of course is inferior physique generally. Such defects weaken a nation for war; and a wise government will not let them continue without endeavouring to arrest them.

But, apart from this, much may often be done by care and foresight to abate the hardships of a campaign. It is often inevitable that the men's clothing should be in rags, and their feet almost if not quite shoeless for a time; as also that they should be scantily fed and then not on the best of food; but, if this be borne in mind, and measures taken to keep abundant supplies of everything at the seat of war, together with transport to convey such supplies to the front, privation and suffering may be greatly lessened, and sickness proportionately decreased. People who have never studied military history do not realise that a campaign is a gigantic picnic, and that, unless careful arrangement be made long beforehand for every detail of food, forage, clothing and carriage, an army may perish before it can reach its enemy. Such arrangement involves a nicety of organisation of which the ordinary civilian never dreams. One great lesson therefore that all may learn from the study of military history is, that the casualties through lead and steel are a trifle to those from hardship and the resultant sickness; and that these last may be very appreciably diminished by experience, forethought and organisation.

So much for the purely physical side of an army. The question of inspiring it with moral force could easily lead me into an endless disquisition upon the merits of different forms of civil government and different systems of education. I shall not be so foolish as to attempt anything of the kind; but I shall content myself with stating that the great secret of an army's moral force is that all ranks shall "know what they are fighting for, and love what they know." The most powerful of all purely moral forces is undoubtedly religious fanaticism, of which many instances will at once occur to you; but I question if among all its countless manifestations there are any quite so thorough as are found in the hosts of Islam. There are many instances of desperate courage and devotion among all races and all creeds, but I do not know where you will find a parallel, except in the annals of Mohammedan warfare, to the attack of the hordes of the Khalifa at Omdurman.

Another great moral force is political fanaticism; but as a rule there underlies all combative fanaticism, either consciously or unconsciously, that less exalted element of human nature which is known as greed. Greed of course is of many kinds. It may arise from honest hunger and poverty; or from the less honourable, though hardly less cogent, persuasion that those who have are the legitimate prey of those who have not. But its manifestations are uniformly the same, though they are often embellished by titles of honour. People who would not dream of robbing their neighbours, if the process were described to them in as many words, will take credit to themselves for spoiling the heathen or the Amalekites. Primitive tribes and clans, which have outgrown or exhausted the territory that at one time sufficed for their support, are not always so squeamish. They see a weak and prosperous neighbour, fall upon him without more ado, and eat him up. Christian nations and Mohammedans have frequently extinguished aboriginal tribes as heretics and unbelievers. We ourselves used to excuse our predatory excursions against the Spaniards upon the ground that Popish idolaters deserved nothing better. Turn now to a case which is generally adduced as an example of an army inspired by political fanaticism--the levies which burst out from France against her neighbours on all sides in 1792 and 1793. They came, as they proclaimed, to carry the gospel of liberty, equality and fraternity into all lands; their evangel was to be for the healing of the nations; they menaced war only to the nobleman's castle; they brought peace to the poor man's cottage. Were they really inspired by any such exalted sentiments? A few enthusiasts may have been; but not many. Did their faith in their new creed suffice to make them die for it cheerfully? Not in the least; for they ran away like sheep, until habit and discipline inured them to war. Did they conduct themselves, where successful, according to their noble professions? Not in the least. They plundered all classes impartially, and were loathed by all impartially. The truth is that their real object was not to preach a gospel at all, but to gather plunder. France had been ruined by the incredible follies of the Revolution; her resources were exhausted; and there was nothing for her but to rob her neighbours or perish. Her robberies prospered; a soldier of fortune rose up to take command of her armies; and under his leadership the principle of robbery was indefinitely extended. As Wellington put it with his usual shrewd insight, war to Napoleon was a financial resource.

Must hope of plunder then be reckoned as a great moral force in war? The question is extremely difficult to answer. Astonishing military successes have been achieved under no other stimulating influence than this--I would instance the sack of Rome by Charles of Bourbon in 1527--but plunder, speaking generally, demoralises both the army and the nation that lives by it, for it leads to jealousy and divisions. You will remember at once, when I recall it to you, the story in the Old Testament of Saul's preservation of flocks, herds and prisoners in the face of Samuel's order that they should be annihilated. I strongly suspect that Samuel's motive for commanding the destruction of the plunder was apprehension lest the King, by offering to his followers a reward for their services, should steal away the hearts of the people and undermine the authority of the priesthood. On the other hand Saul may perhaps have been justified in supposing that his men would not fight the Amalekites without the assurance of a share in the spoil, and had consequently promised them a share beforehand. At any rate, it is certain that the incident so far estranged the ecclesiastical from the civil authorities that the former put forward a rival to oust Saul from the Kingship. This is a curious instance of an entire community being driven into civil war by a dispute as to plunder. Of its demoralising influence on an army the examples are endless, but I may mention to you the furious combats of the Spaniards and Germans over the spoil of Rome, which they had combined to capture and sack; the practical dissolution for a time of Wellington's troops after the storm of Badajoz, and the insubordination and disunion of Napoleon's armies in Spain, when nearly every officer of rank was seeking to enrich himself, and employing his men to enrich him, instead of using them in the legitimate operations of war.

Nevertheless men will not go a-fighting continuously unless there is plunder, or some composition in lieu thereof, to stimulate them to constant exertion. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the military profession was very nearly a mercantile affair, pure and simple. Capitalists formed companies of soldiers for hire, and sought to indemnify themselves by plunder for their venture, very much after the fashion of a privateer or private man-of-war. The "purchase-system" under which, when I was a boy, British officers still purchased their commissions for a sum of money, was a relic of the old practice of buying shares in a military company. In many of our wars there was no individual plunder, but all captures were lumped together, sold, and divided in due proportion between all ranks of the army engaged. The army which stormed Seringapatam in 1799 divided ?1,300,000 in this way; and beyond all doubt the hope of large profits was a great incentive to the men to endure many things and fight hard. Soldiers are almost invariably ill-paid. Very often their health is permanently impaired by the hardship and privation which they undergo; and they demand, not unreasonably, some compensation for all their sufferings and peril. This is a fact which no statesman can afford to overlook. Even in the middle of the late South African war it was necessary to give to every private five pounds, and to every non-commissioned officer and officer still larger sums, according to their rank, as prize money in lieu of plunder.

I come next to patriotism as a moral force. We are apt to take it for granted that it always exists in every country; but this is not so, as the earlier wars of the French Revolution most plainly prove. Nor is it sufficient to say that the countries over which the French armies rode rough-shod were autocratically governed, while France enjoyed a freer form of government, for a democracy can, and very frequently does, govern quite as abominably as any autocrat or oligarchy. If a large proportion of a community be discontented with its condition it will feel no patriotism, and will do little or nothing towards defence of its country. It sees no object in fighting to maintain a state of things which it disapproves, and will not do so. Then, in case of invasion it will submit quietly and without an effort to the enemy's will, and allow him to take peaceful possession of its territory. If, on the contrary, the war be not defensive but offensive, the malcontents will lay themselves out to embarrass the ruling authorities as much as possible, in order to secure political changes which they conceive to be political advantages. So long as the seat of operations is at a distance, the behaviour of the malcontents is always the same, whether they are of the highest or of the lowest class, whether the government under which they live be popular or despotic. Thus during the American War of Independence a considerable section of the English aristocracy threw the whole weight of its power and influence in favour of the revolting colonies, and to all intents assured their triumph. Thus also in the recent war between Russia and Japan a large section of the educated classes in Russia spared no efforts to stir up internal trouble, and crippled their country at the very moment when she bade fair to redeem all past failures and enter upon a successful campaign. In both cases the disaffected parties claimed to be the truest patriots, inasmuch as they had acted in the best interests of their country; though whether such a claim can be justified is a matter upon which men will differ until the end of time. It may, however, be doubted whether men can, unless in most exceptional circumstances, benefit their country by seconding their country's enemies; and it is probable that, when they profess to do so, they are animated rather by an intense desire to injure and humiliate their rulers than by any principle of well-doing towards any one. If the war were brought home to their own hearths, they would in all likelihood make a stubborn fight for their defence; either from dread lest their neighbours should hang them; or, as it is more reasonable to suppose, from honest jealousy for their country and indignation against the invader. But because the scene of fighting is at a distance, they think that they may legitimately play fast and loose with their country's fortunes.

Now I cannot help thinking that if those who aspire to govern men, and even to lay claim to the title of statesmen, were to study military history, they might learn enough about the moral force of nations and armies to set them thinking very seriously. It is a force that is very difficult to build up and not very difficult to destroy; and yet politicians of all parties trifle with it as though it were an insignificant matter. It is impossible to devise a form of Government or to collect an administration which will satisfy all men; but, though everyone recognises the fact in theory, few make allowances for it in practice. It is sufficient for politicians of all ways of thinking in these days to say solemnly that the will of the majority must prevail. But why must it prevail? Because the majority is more likely to be right than the minority? Far from it: if we could believe that this were the rule, the government of the world would be much easier than it is. No, the will of the majority must prevail because it can be enforced on the minority, which is only another way of saying that Might is Right. See how in this world of cant the terrible maxim, which men think applicable to war only, is daily in force all round us. Wise men therefore will be always moderate in their dealing with honest and respectable minorities, whether they differ from the majority in matters of religious, political or social faith, provided always that their dissent is not merely a cloak for evading the obligations of ordinary morality. Yet such moderation, though of the last importance towards amity and good understanding in a community and therefore towards its moral force in the event of war, is little more common to-day than at other periods of human history. There is really only one political or social principle which has any permanent worth, and it is expressed in the homely proverb "Give and take."

What is the civic form of this proverb? It is this, No rights without duties, no duties without rights. In England I am afraid--though I may be wrong--that for some time past there has been too much prating of rights, and too little reflection upon duties; though the commonwealth depends for its stability upon the equal recognition of both. What, you may ask, do you owe to the State? Well, you owe to it gratitude for the fact that you can for the most part walk about decently clad and purse in pocket without danger of being knocked on the head; and that you can pursue your lawful avocation in peace. But how if your clothes are in rags and you have no purse? Well then, apart from all possible benefits from the poor law, you at least enjoy immunity from being knocked on the head as an unprofitable member of the tribe. The great difference between primitive and civilised societies is that the civilised recognise misfortune as a palliative to inefficiency, which the primitive cannot afford to do. We have still a right to say that a criminal is an inefficient citizen, but no longer that an inefficient citizen is a criminal; and this, for some of us, is a considerable gain. Even if the State gave us no more than this, we are everyone of us debtors for more than we can repay. But, in the most highly organised states of the present time, the tendency is that the community at large shall contribute more and more towards making men physically and mentally into efficient citizens and towards saving them from the consequences of misfortune, but in return shall claim from them more exacting duties. It would perhaps be historically more accurate to say that in some cases the duties came first and the benefits afterwards; but the point is that the principle of rights for duties and duties for rights has been faithfully observed. Thus in Germany the State has set up machinery for education, for insurance against misfortune, for provision against old age, claiming in return from able-bodied citizens two years of military training, with liability to be recalled to the colours up to a certain age in the event of war. There are other states in which the same or less is given or claimed; but there are few of importance in Europe in which free education is not the right, and military training the countervailing duty. And this system has been adopted in every case, not only from bitter experience of disastrous defeat in war, but because foreign statesmen read military history. The bond of a common duty, impartially imposed upon all classes from the highest to the lowest, tends to soften minor differences and discontents, and constitutes in itself a great moral force.

Yet it is very necessary that the working of military discipline should be most carefully studied in military history, in order that its defects, weaknesses and limitations may be thoroughly ascertained and realised. There is no greater mistake than to say that disciplined men are machines. They are nothing of the kind: they are flesh and blood; and it is most dangerous to treat them as anything else. Yet nothing is more common than for people to suppose that anything is good enough for soldiers because discipline forbids them to complain. Politicians in particular often appear to think that a soldier, in virtue of his discipline, can march all day and all night, dispense with food and drink, and lie out in cold and rain with no particular mischief to himself. I can assure you that in former days, within the memory of living men, English soldiers were housed in buildings and sent to sea in vessels that would have been thought too bad for valuable cattle. Tradesmen and contractors likewise presume upon the soldiers' enforced patience, and mobs will insult and pelt them, secure in the knowledge that the soldiers will not retaliate without orders. This indeed, albeit infinitely mean and cowardly, is an unconscious tribute to discipline, but may easily strain it beyond endurance. The fact is that discipline which rests wholly upon fear is not the strongest. Inelastic and unsympathetic severity, even though it may not actually amount to injustice, can produce only a passive and discontented obedience, which speedily gives way to sulky insubordination under any unusual trial. It is when officers are not in touch with their men and do not consider them, that the hearts of soldiers are stolen away by agitators and malcontents. And then follows mutiny, which if begun in some choice corps may spread to a whole army, as in the French Revolution, and bring a dynasty and the traditions of centuries to the ground. The ill-treatment of men was common enough in old days, when the gaps between social classes were wide and the distinction between them carefully marked, but you will never find an instance of a successful army in which the officers did not share the hardships of the men. Hannibal, for one, frequently slept on the ground with his outposts.

Turn from Palestine to Greece and look at the military constitution of Sparta founded by Lycurgus. Make a huge stride over the ages, and look at Chaka, the man of genius whose military organisation and training of his people would have made the Zulus masters of South Africa, had not the boundless resources of the British Empire dashed his work--though not without difficulty and defeat--at last to the ground. Look at the great men of modern times, whose names will be more familiar to you, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Wellington, and take note that from the very beginning of history the greatest generals have almost invariably been in the very first rank not merely of military but of civil administrators. It may seem heretical to say so, but I personally am inclined to think that Napoleon's work as a civil Governor transcends even in its own kind the greatest of his military achievements. I, even as many other men, have gone through most of the thirty-six volumes of his correspondence; and I confess that his reorganisation of France in the first months of the Consulate--crude and hasty as in many respects it was, owing to the urgency of the case and the desperate nature of the circumstances--appears to me the greatest thing that ever he did. But all three of these men are remarkable chiefly for the astonishing results which they achieved with small means. Frederick, in spite of terrible defeats and latterly an almost total failure of resources, contrived somehow to carry the Seven Years War to a successful end, and at its close to revive an exhausted Prussia. Napoleon took over a France demoralised by ten years of misrule, and sunk financially to a hopeless depth of bankruptcy, yet by squandering men in lieu of money he carried his eagles victoriously from end to end of Europe. Wellington had so few men that he could not squander them, and so little money that, owing to the general lack of specie, he was obliged to carry on the Peninsular War upon credit, and incidentally to administer the government of Portugal as well as direct the operations in the field, lest that credit should absolutely fail him. Yet by sheer administrative ability, patience and tenacity, he prevailed.

I have of design left the question of the technical study of strategy and tactics until the last. Strategy may, I think, be defined as the art of bringing armies up to the battle-field by the right way, in the right strength, at the right time; tactics as the art of handling them on the battle-field to the best advantage. Of what profit is the study of these two arts to the citizen at large? Well, in the first place he will learn what may be termed his strategical geography, and why battles are constantly fought century after century in or about the same places. He will understand why, for instance, endless great actions for the mastery of India have been fought within fifty miles of Delhi; the significance of Stirling on the map of Scotland, and of Acre on the coast of Syria. He will perceive why, owing to changes in transport and armament, places whose names constantly occur in old diplomatic records have ceased to be of great account and are now seldom mentioned, whereas others, as I have said, retain their importance through endless generations. He will realise, further, how far strategic considerations enter into political arrangements of all kinds, as for instance that Bismarck the civilian was against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine as tending to perpetuate the hostility of France, but was overruled by Moltke because the new frontier was worth 100,000 men. In fact it is not too much to say that knowledge of military history is essential to the right understanding not only of domestic and foreign politics, but of the whole story, written and unwritten, of the human race--which is mainly a story of fighting.

The interest of tactics is chiefly for professional men; but it is worth while to notice its main principles, which are simple. All fighting is, and has always been, of two kinds, hand-to-hand or shock action, at a distance or missile action. Goliath challenged the Israelites to shock action, and David killed him by missile action; and I dare say that the Philistines thought it unfair. Now, whether for shock or for missile action, it is very obvious that if you can overmatch your enemy in numbers--other things being equal--you are likely to get the better of him; and that if you are on higher ground than he is you can see him better than he can see you to throw things at him, and can charge him with greater impetus down hill than he can meet you with, uphill. It may be said broadly that the art of tactics is the art of bringing stronger numbers to bear at some given point, and taking or acquiring superiority of position. This is the physical side of tactics. The moral side lies chiefly in those two eternal and undying resources, known as the ambush and the surprise. Here the leader tries to upset an enemy's physical advantage of numbers and position by taking him unawares. There is no finer example of a surprise in the world than that of Gideon. Think of it--the silent march of 300 picked men in three companies through the darkness, each with his trumpet and his torch hidden in a pitcher, the silent surrounding of the hostile camp just before dawn, when human vitality is at its lowest; and then the silence broken by the crash of three hundred pitchers, the sudden flare of the torches, the braying of three hundred trumpets as if in signal to a host of thousands unseen in the night; and the simultaneous yell "For the Lord and for Gideon." There was a wild panic in the Midianite camp, and no wonder. In the darkness they took to fighting each other, "every man's sword against his fellow." Of course they did. Exactly the same result was seen many times over during our last war in South Africa, and has been seen in every panic from Gideon's age to our own. Gideon was a man who studied moral force.

LECTURE II

BRITISH MILITARY HISTORY

In my last lecture I attempted to deal with the broad subject of military history at large. To-day I shall treat of the narrower subject of British military history. There is nothing arbitrary or capricious in this; for British military history is, owing to our insular position, a thing apart.

Foreign nations, indeed, would say that a country which has never in the whole course of her existence put fifty thousand of her own children in line upon any battle-field and very rarely so many even as thirty thousand, can have no military history; but none the less we have one, which is in many ways remarkable and worthy of study.

Note in the first place that for five hundred years after the Conquest England was not a purely insular power. She had troublesome neighbours in Wales and Scotland, and her kings had possessions, and consequently troublesome neighbours, in France. Remember that it was not until 1558 that we lost Calais, and that, as long as we possessed it, we had so to speak a bridge-head which enabled us to enter France practically at any moment. This was a sad temptation towards foolish expeditions and waste of strength; and it was a great blessing to us really when the capture of Calais removed it for ever.

Elizabeth, therefore, was our first purely insular sovereign. What manner of military force did she find at her accession, and what manner of organisation for creating and maintaining it? The sovereign was empowered, as he still is, to call out every able-bodied man for the defence of the country; and upon the different classes of freemen was imposed by an Act of 1558, which was based upon an older Act of 1285, the duty of providing themselves with arms according to their means. Long before 1558 fire-arms had been brought to such efficiency that a compete system of tactics had been founded for their use by the ablest soldiers on the Continent; but in England the Statute still professed contentment with the weapons of three centuries earlier, bows and bills; and there were remarkably few fire-arms in the country at all. There were, however, great traditions derived in part from Saxon times, but strengthened, developed and enlarged by the victories of Edward the Third, his son Edward, Prince of Wales, and king Harry the Fifth, in France and in Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

I told you in my last lecture that all fighting, from the earliest times to the present, is in the ultimate resort of two kinds--hand-to-hand or shock action, at a distance or missile action. In the hands of the English a very old missile weapon, the bow, had become, in the form of the long bow, the most deadly and formidable of its time. Every English boy was trained to the use of it, and was taught to bring every muscle of his body to bear upon it, just as in rowing you are taught not to row with your arms only, but with your legs also and with all the weight of your body. "My father taught me to lay my body to the bow," says Bishop Hugh Latimer. The result was that their arrows were discharged with great rapidity and accuracy, and with such strength that they were effective in the matter of penetration at an astonishingly long range. The shock action of mediaeval times, as you know, was confined chiefly to mounted men-at-arms, clad in armour from head to foot, and furnished with lances, who moved in dense masses at very moderate speed, and trampled down everything that stood in their way. How did the English archers deal with them? They aimed mainly at their horses, which, maddened by the pain, ran away with their riders, and carried confusion everywhere; but being accurate shots, the archers aimed also at the joints of the harness--at the intervals between gorget and breast-plate, between breast-plate, or back-plate, and thigh-pieces, which were exposed by the swaying of the body, and above all the arm-pit when the arm was raised to strike. But how about the English men-at-arms, you will ask? Why did not the enemy shoot their horses with arrows, and make them unmanageable also? Here we come to the English peculiarity. The English men-at-arms always dismounted to fight, broke off their lances to a length that could be easily handled and, ranked together in a dense mass, used them as pikes. So here there was the tradition of a missile infantry, so to speak, steady and deadly shots; and of a shock infantry which could not be broken and, moreover, after winning a victory could mount and pursue on horseback.

The new tactics of the Continent, which the English had to learn, had taken much the same direction. The Swiss, in order to keep mounted men-at-arms at a distance, had bethought them of ranging their infantry into dense masses, armed with pikes fourteen feet long, and this they had done with such success that they had vindicated the position of infantry as the most important element on the battle-field. Other nations took up the idea, either for mercenaries or national troops; and, with the improvement of fire-arms, missile infantry developed into musketeers, or "shot" as they were called, who fought entirely as skirmishers, while shock infantry was represented by dense masses of pikemen. Simultaneously the cavalry became a missile force. Unable to make any impression against a bristling wall of pikes, they gave up their lances and provided themselves with pistols, so as to shoot the pikemen down from a distance. Hence it was customary to cover the pikemen with heavy armour on breast and thighs, which prevented them from moving very fast. The fate of the battle, however, was determined by them. Musketeers and cavaliers worried each other and the pikemen for as long as they dared, but the ultimate issue was decided when pike met pike. The chief reason for this was the system adopted for maintaining a continuous fire. This was to range the musketeers in ten ranks, and let these ranks fire in succession, the first rank filing to the rear as soon as its weapons were discharged, in order to reload, and leaving the second rank to do likewise, and so on. In theory the system was ingenious; but in practice it was found that men thought a great deal more about filing to the rear rapidly, than about firing steadily and accurately. Of course if heavy artillery could be brought within range of a square of pikemen, it might blast them off the field; but cannon were too cumbrous and difficult to move for this to be often possible; and thus the decision of the day was left, as it still is, to cold steel. You will see wonderful pictures of combats of pikemen, just as you see the like representations of fights with the bayonet. I doubt greatly if they ever occurred. Both sides approached each other with the pike or bayonet no doubt; but before they closed one side turned and ran away. All nations boast of their prowess with the bayonet, our own among others, but few men really enjoy a hand-to-hand fight with the bayonet, however much they may enjoy a hand-to-hand pursuit. You remember that the Homeric heroes, after a certain amount of close combat, invariably threw stones at each other; and the practice has never died out. English and French both talk much of the bayonet; but in Egypt in 1801 they threw stones at each other when their ammunition was exhausted, and one English sergeant was killed by a stone. At Inkerman again the British threw stones at the Russians, not without effect; and I am told upon good authority that the Russians and Japanese, both of whom profess to love the bayonet, threw stones at each other, rather than close, even in this twentieth century.

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 Bragan?a, 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.

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.

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.

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 Vend?me 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 Bass?e in 1711--any one of these achievements would suffice to make the fortune of an ordinary general.

After the defeat of the insurgents the war was continued in the Low Countries, where the Allies sustained two more defeats, until in 1748, owing to the exhaustion of all parties, it was closed by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, leaving the French and English at the end very much as they had been at the beginning. In a way it might seem that the British had been dragged into the contest mainly on account of the Kingdom of Hanover, but, as we shall see in a future lecture, the war resolved itself into a continuation of the struggle with France for the possession of the new world. That struggle in fact never ceased over the seas, both east and west, and early in 1756 it came to an issue in open war. As usual England was unready. German troops were actually imported for the defence of the realm; Minorca was taken by the French; everything went wrong in America; and the state of affairs seemed to be desperate. At last a competent Minister, William Pitt the elder, was raised to power and from that moment things began to improve. The foreign troops were sent back to Germany; their place was taken by Militia; and an immense levy of recruits was begun for the increase of the regular Army. In the year 1756 France, Austria, Russia and Sweden leagued themselves together to crush Frederick the Great; and Pitt, perceiving that America might be conquered in Germany, decided to send a contingent of British troops, together with Hanoverians and Hessians, to Frederick's assistance. Moreover, as we had no competent general of our own, he asked Frederick to provide one; and thus for the first time British troops were placed under the command of a foreign general for service on the Continent. Few people know anything of the campaigns of Ferdinand of Brunswick, though they are distinguished by two of the finest performances of the British soldier: of the infantry at Minden, and of the cavalry at Warburg. And the reason of this is that, as I have said, the expedition, so far as England was concerned, was a diversion to help her to the conquest of the Empire. That conquest proceeded apace during the years 1759 to 1762, and by the end of the latter year we had expelled the French from Canada, India and the West Indies, besides depriving the Spaniards of Havana and Manila. The process demanded a great number of troops, for seventy-five per cent. of the men in the West Indies died or were incapacitated for further service, and it is here that we strike the weak point of Pitt's military administration.

The great Minister saw the importance of reorganising the Militia, though as a matter of fact he never enforced his own scheme of passing all able-bodied men through the ranks--or in other words of instituting national service. But he never matured nor even considered any sound scheme for maintaining the voluntary army that was serving abroad. His only plan was to name a certain sum for bounty, and scatter broadcast commissions to any individuals who would undertake to raise independent companies or regiments. In this way the nominal strength of the Army was brought up to one hundred and fifty battalions of infantry and thirty-two of cavalry, the numbered regiments of infantry being as many as one hundred and twenty-four. Comparatively few of these new regiments survived, because they had been formed simply and solely to be broken up immediately and drafted into other battalions. But what did this mean? It meant in the first place that hundreds of officers went about the country trying to make money out of the recruiting business by obtaining recruits for less than the prescribed bounty, and pocketing the difference. It meant secondly that crimps arose by the score who contracted to supply recruits to these officers, of course at a considerable profit to themselves, and that thus there were so to speak two middlemen to be paid out of the bounty as well as the recruit. The inevitable result was that the country paid vast sums to obtain worn-out old men, half-witted lads and weedy boys, who were absolutely useless in the field, and served only to fill graves and hospitals. Moreover, it was saddled with the obligation of giving half-pay to field-officers, captains and even subalterns, who had gained their rank by the simple process of a bargain with the crimps. Meanwhile the recruits, being enlisted not for some old corps with a regimental history and a regimental pride of its own, but for some ephemeral battalion which was dispersed as soon as formed, felt no sentiment of honour in their calling and deserted right and left. One consequence of this exceedingly wasteful system was that the resources of England both in money and men were exhausted before peace was made, and that the war could not have been carried on for another twelve months even if it had been necessary. But yet more fatal than this was the misfortune that the system, owing to its supposed success, received consecration from the great name of Pitt. In the bitter struggle with France which began in 1793 and ended at Waterloo I have said that France squandered men to save money, and that England squandered money to save men. The elder Pitt squandered both money and men.

The conclusion of peace in 1763 found England in possession of Gibraltar and Minorca in Europe; Bermuda, the Bahamas, several West Indian Islands and practically the entire continent of North America east of the Rocky Mountains from the mouth of the St Lawrence in the north to the Lower Mississippi in the south. I omit the name of India, for that is a subject to be treated separately. The military establishment of England and Ireland for the defence of this vast Empire was fixed at about forty-five thousand men, two-thirds of them roughly speaking at home, and one-third abroad. This was neither more nor less than madness; yet nevertheless many were found, so great a man as Burke among them, to condemn the "huge increase" as they called it of the Army. But this was not the worst. Prices generally had risen and the pay of the soldier was too small for his subsistence; wherefore recruits could hardly be obtained by any shift, and the ranks of regiments were miserably empty. Reeling under the burden of the debts bequeathed by the late war, England proposed to the Colonies that they should share that burden with her. The North American provinces admitted the justice of the claim but made no effort to meet it; whereupon the British Government, after exhausting all expedients for obtaining a contribution from them, fell back upon the only possible solution of the problem--impartial taxation of all the Colonies by Act of the Imperial Parliament, with a special provision that every penny of the money so raised should be spent in the Colonies themselves. A faction in the Colonies raised a loud outcry over this; and the question, owing to mismanagement in England and to the provocative violence of the American agitators, finally issued in war between Mother-country and Colonies.

The task of bringing America to submission by force of arms was a military operation beyond the strength of any nation in the world at that time, and very far beyond that of England as she was in 1775. No effort was made to augment the Army until hostilities had actually broken out, and consequently there were no troops at hand. Recruiting, moreover, was so difficult, owing to the insufficiency of the pay, that the country resorted to the hiring of German mercenaries and to the transfer of Hanoverian battalions to Gibraltar and Minorca, so as to release four British battalions from thence. Faction violently obstructed all military measures until a great disaster to our arms in 1777 made it practically certain that France would declare war; but then, in spite of all the ravings of the King's enemies at home, patriotic feeling prevailed, and fifteen thousand men in new regiments were raised by private subscription alone. Troubles multiplied now on all sides; troubles in India, in Ireland, in Great Britain, everywhere. France declared war in 1778, Spain in 1779; Holland became an open enemy in 1780; and the Northern Powers formed an Armed Neutrality to curb our pretensions at sea. What with regular troops and embodied militia we had more than one hundred and eighty thousand British soldiers afoot, besides some twenty thousand Germans; but this was not enough. Our preparations, thanks to Parliament's eternal jealousy of the Army, were made too late. Our military policy was wrong, for we dispersed our forces so as to endeavour to hold every point; and thus we were everywhere overmatched. The war ended with the loss of America and very nearly of India also; of Minorca in Europe, of Senegal and Goree in West Africa, and of St Lucia and Tobago in the West Indies.

Pitt's idea was to compel France to submission by taking all her Colonies and ruining all her commerce; but it was necessary to send troops at short notice to Holland in order to hearten the Dutch to resistance; and, as there were no others to send, he despatched the Guards. The remainder of the Army, most excellent men but very few in number, he hurried off to the West Indies. This done, he set to work to make the Army, which should have been ready made, according to his father's methods by large bounties and giving commissions to any who would raise companies and regiments. Endless corps of weakly men were thus created, and endless bad officers admitted to the service. The old soldiers in the West Indies did their work admirably, but perished almost to a man, as I shall explain to you in another lecture. In the Low Countries also, where the British were not fairly used by the Allies under whose command they were working, the old soldiers were soon used up; and we were left without any Army. Even at home, where there was some peril of invasion, Pitt did not pass the nation through the ranks of the Militia, as he should have done, but either enlisted soldiers voluntarily for home service only, or permitted the citizens to enrol themselves in innumerable little useless bodies of Volunteers. The operations in the Low Countries ended disastrously. In the West Indies practically the whole of the captured islands were recaptured by the French; and at the close of three years of war Pitt had expended many millions of money, and had nothing to show for it whatever.

After a short truce, war broke out again in 1803, Pitt was not then in power, but was the patron and more or less the adviser of Addington's weak administration. That was the period when Napoleon made great and serious preparations for an invasion of England; and it was necessary to take unprecedented measures for home defence. Instead of thinking out some plan for training the entire manhood of the nation to arms, expanding the Militia and compelling every man to serve in it, Addington and his colleagues devised a system which was one long tissue of absurdities. They began by instituting a ballot for fifty thousand Militia, but permitted the ballotted men to provide substitutes instead of serving in person. The price of substitutes soon rose to ?30, ten times the amount of the bounty offered to recruits for the Regular Army; and as a natural consequence all the men who should have enlisted in the Army were drawn into the Militia, while the men who should have served in the Militia did not serve at all. Having failed to raise fifty thousand Militia, Ministers asked for twenty-five thousand more on the same terms, which raised the price of substitutes still higher. They then asked for corps of Volunteers upon very favourable conditions, and then ordained that fifty thousand more men should be raised by ballot, once again with substitution permitted, and should be formed into second battalions to the Regular Army. They next passed an Act compelling all able-bodied men to undergo compulsory training, unless a certain proportion came forward as Volunteers upon less favourable terms than those offered to the first Volunteers. Thus there were three different kinds of ballotted men and two different kinds of Volunteers. The result was that recruiting for the Regular Army was killed, at great expense, while the whole of the levies were failures; and the only reason was that the Government had not the courage to insist upon the country's undoubted right to the service of every able-bodied citizen for her defence.

Addington was swept out of office; and Pitt came in again. He brought in a bill to form a new army of Reserve, which was an utter failure; and he then fell back on the old expedient of offering a bounty to Militiamen to enlist in the Regulars. In this way, which was faithfully followed until the close of the war in 1814, he raised some semblance of an Army; but he did not know how to use it, and he died in January, 1806, thinking the cause of Europe hopeless. A Ministry which included most of the ablest men in England was formed upon his death; and they introduced an Act for national training to arms, excellent in principle but not properly worked out in detail, and abolished the Volunteers. This was a step in the right direction, but was taken too late. The Ministry of All the Talents, as it was called, resigned early in 1807; and then at last the War Office passed into the hands of a capable man, Lord Castlereagh. He began by taking forty thousand men from the Militia into the Regular Army, and raising as many--by extremely drastic methods--to refill the empty ranks of the Militia. He then devised a scheme which unfortunately was not enforced, for making national training a reality; and finally he established a new Militia called the Local Militia of two hundred thousand men for home defence, keeping the old Militia to furnish recruits for the Regular Army.

Thus for the first time in our history there was a Regular Army of from forty to fifty thousand men, fit to go anywhere and do anything, together with the means of refilling their ranks as fast as they were depleted by active service.

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