army
army. The exact origins of the British army are lost to history, although its red parade uniforms have been fancifully traced back to the colour of the tunics of King Arthur's bodyguard. A vestige of late Roman military customs and practice can be seen in the law codes and military organization of the earliest British kingdoms. Long before the Norman Conquest, military obligation seems to have divided into two basic forms which have remained constant until modern times. One was an obligation for common service by all adult males, established in English law as the militia by the Assize of Arms of 1181. The other was a small permanent standing army, usually represented in the medieval period by the warriors of the royal household. To these were added an obligation upon individuals to serve the crown on a temporary basis, and a tradition of employing and paying mercenary troops, who might on occasion be the same people. Although women have always played a major part in warfare, they have been almost entirely excluded from combat roles until very recently.
By early modern times, English armies consisted almost entirely of troops paid in some fashion. However, any form of standing army was considered a potential instrument of royal despotism, and was also beyond the financial resources of the monarchy to maintain. The Yeomen of the Guard, founded by Henry VII in 1485 as a small royal bodyguard, is the earliest unit of the British army that has survived to the present day. Other modern units trace their descent from mercenary forces in the service of various kingdoms during the same period. The granting of money by Parliament to finance armies on a temporary basis became one of the most important issues between crown and Parliament. It reached a crisis in 1639–41 when Parliament refused Charles I money to repel a Scots invasion, and would not trust him with control of an army to suppress the Irish rebellion.
The direct ancestor of the modern British army is usually considered to be the parliamentary New Model Army of 1645. However, its part in enforcing Cromwell's rule in England and in subjugating Scotland and Ireland helped to establish a prejudice against soldiers which lasted well into modern times. The first properly constituted standing army, of tiny proportions, was created in 1661 by Charles II from royalist and parliamentary units of the Civil War, and entitled ‘His Majesty's Guards and Garrisons’. For the next century the army grew at an irregular rate, partly from the need to find garrisons for overseas possessions, and partly for European wars. The existence and function of the army (unlike that of the Royal Navy) was based on royal prerogative rather than statute, an issue which came to a head in the reign of James II and played a part in his overthrow. Thereafter the 1689 Declaration of Rights established that a standing army was illegal without Parliament's approval, granted every year in the Mutiny Act until 1953, when this was replaced by a five-yearly Armed Forces Act. The issue of direct royal control over the army largely died away during the reign of Queen Anne and the Hanoverians. George II became the last British monarch to lead his army personally into battle at Dettingen in 1743.
Particularly after the Act of Union with Scotland of 1707, and the subsequent defeat of Jacobite uprisings a large army at home was not required. Instead, the British needed a minimum force to keep order (particularly before the establishment of police forces in the 19th cent.), garrisons for their overseas possessions, and small forces to contribute to coalitions for European wars. The British army developed in a manner regarded by European standards as both eccentric and old-fashioned, with a central core of units providing the basis for a much larger army that could be expanded and disbanded according to need. The existence of this permanent standing army was first acknowledged by a royal warrant of 1751 setting out the official precedence of units.
Whereas in some countries the army became the focus of political and social reform, in Britain it was always seen as the last bastion of reaction. Particularly after the French Revolution, the army was deliberately kept apart from British society (through the building of barracks), and practices regarded as obsolete in continental warfare, such as officers purchasing their commissions, regiments having considerable autonomy from central authority, and the flogging of soldiers, persisted well into the 19th cent. Parliamentary fears of militarism meant rigid control of the army's budget, a deliberately divided command system, and a toleration of inefficiency in order to keep the army politically weak. Officers were drawn largely from the lesser gentry, with an admixture of the aristocracy, and recruits from the poorest classes.
It was easy to forget that by the end of the 19th cent. Britain was a major continental land power with a large permanent army, because neither the continent nor most of the army was European. Particularly after the loss of the American colonies in the American War of Independence (1775–83), the largest single focus for the British army was India, following the crown's absorption of the East India Company army as the Indian army in 1858. Garrisoning British India (the frontiers of which stretched from modern Iran to Thailand) with both British and Indian troops became the major army role of the late 19th cent. A series of reforms following the Crimean War (1853–6), associated in particular with the abolition of purchase by Edward Cardwell in 1871 and with the creation of the ‘county regiments’ structure ten years later, produced a largely infantry army to serve overseas. Experiences such as the inability of the British to intervene effectively in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1) and the revelation of serious military deficiencies in the Second Boer War (1899–1902) produced more reforms to prepare the army for warfare in Europe, most particularly associated with Richard Haldane. Like many other late Victorian or Edwardian reforms, these actions have continued to determine much of the structure and ethos of the late 20th-cent. army, despite the removal of their original justification.
The British tradition of a small long-service army for use overseas, virtually unique in European historical development, meant that at the start of the First World War (1914–18) Britain was the only belligerent country without conscription, introduced with reluctance in January 1916. The creation of a mass citizen army for the war, at first entirely by voluntary methods, was of great social as well as political significance for Britain, marking the first real contact between the army and British society since the Civil War. Ultimately the British army was the most successful of the war, inflicting a crushing defeat upon Germany, previously regarded as the dominant European land power. Although all belligerents suffered terribly from the effects of mass mechanized warfare, British losses were not markedly worse than those of any other major power. However, with no shared military tradition to draw upon, the social and cultural impact of the war upon Britain was devastating, and persisted to the end of the 20th cent. At the war's end, the mass conscript army structure was abandoned, and the army returned to its role as a long-service garrison for the empire by 1922, with considerable enthusiasm on all sides.
The experience of the First World War enabled Britain to cope rather better with the Second World War (1939–45). For the first time in British history peacetime conscription was introduced in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war. However, the demands of a genuinely global war for naval and air forces, and the growing erosion of distinctions between naval and land warfare, or even between civilian and military occupations, all contrived to keep the British army in the field considerably smaller than in the First World War. Although Britain (the only country save Germany to fight, with its empire, from the start in 1939 to the end) once more emerged victorious, it faced in 1945 a changed military situation. In particular the traditional roles of the British army of garrisoning the empire and fighting in Europe were ceasing to be relevant. After 1945 Britain maintained, again for the first time in its history, peacetime conscription (known as National Service) until 1963, after which, largely for cultural and social reasons, the army reverted once more to an all-volunteer force. Its two major roles were from 1949 membership of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) as part of the collective defence of western Europe against the Soviet Union until 1991, and covering the ‘Retreat from Empire’, a succession of wars as Britain dismantled its empire, beginning with the independence and partition of India in 1947. The most significant war for the army in this period was in Northern Ireland (1969–94), Britain's longest war since medieval times.
The army in the last decades of the 20th cent. was faced with the same issues that had confronted it since the 18th. It was once more largely separate from its own society, subject to rigid budgetary control, generally ill-equipped to cope either with changes in the nature of warfare or of Britain's role in the world, socially reactionary, and badly in need of reform. However, it has also remained the most effective military instrument obtainable for the minimum financial, political, and social cost which successive governments have been prepared to pay.
By early modern times, English armies consisted almost entirely of troops paid in some fashion. However, any form of standing army was considered a potential instrument of royal despotism, and was also beyond the financial resources of the monarchy to maintain. The Yeomen of the Guard, founded by Henry VII in 1485 as a small royal bodyguard, is the earliest unit of the British army that has survived to the present day. Other modern units trace their descent from mercenary forces in the service of various kingdoms during the same period. The granting of money by Parliament to finance armies on a temporary basis became one of the most important issues between crown and Parliament. It reached a crisis in 1639–41 when Parliament refused Charles I money to repel a Scots invasion, and would not trust him with control of an army to suppress the Irish rebellion.
The direct ancestor of the modern British army is usually considered to be the parliamentary New Model Army of 1645. However, its part in enforcing Cromwell's rule in England and in subjugating Scotland and Ireland helped to establish a prejudice against soldiers which lasted well into modern times. The first properly constituted standing army, of tiny proportions, was created in 1661 by Charles II from royalist and parliamentary units of the Civil War, and entitled ‘His Majesty's Guards and Garrisons’. For the next century the army grew at an irregular rate, partly from the need to find garrisons for overseas possessions, and partly for European wars. The existence and function of the army (unlike that of the Royal Navy) was based on royal prerogative rather than statute, an issue which came to a head in the reign of James II and played a part in his overthrow. Thereafter the 1689 Declaration of Rights established that a standing army was illegal without Parliament's approval, granted every year in the Mutiny Act until 1953, when this was replaced by a five-yearly Armed Forces Act. The issue of direct royal control over the army largely died away during the reign of Queen Anne and the Hanoverians. George II became the last British monarch to lead his army personally into battle at Dettingen in 1743.
Particularly after the Act of Union with Scotland of 1707, and the subsequent defeat of Jacobite uprisings a large army at home was not required. Instead, the British needed a minimum force to keep order (particularly before the establishment of police forces in the 19th cent.), garrisons for their overseas possessions, and small forces to contribute to coalitions for European wars. The British army developed in a manner regarded by European standards as both eccentric and old-fashioned, with a central core of units providing the basis for a much larger army that could be expanded and disbanded according to need. The existence of this permanent standing army was first acknowledged by a royal warrant of 1751 setting out the official precedence of units.
Whereas in some countries the army became the focus of political and social reform, in Britain it was always seen as the last bastion of reaction. Particularly after the French Revolution, the army was deliberately kept apart from British society (through the building of barracks), and practices regarded as obsolete in continental warfare, such as officers purchasing their commissions, regiments having considerable autonomy from central authority, and the flogging of soldiers, persisted well into the 19th cent. Parliamentary fears of militarism meant rigid control of the army's budget, a deliberately divided command system, and a toleration of inefficiency in order to keep the army politically weak. Officers were drawn largely from the lesser gentry, with an admixture of the aristocracy, and recruits from the poorest classes.
It was easy to forget that by the end of the 19th cent. Britain was a major continental land power with a large permanent army, because neither the continent nor most of the army was European. Particularly after the loss of the American colonies in the American War of Independence (1775–83), the largest single focus for the British army was India, following the crown's absorption of the East India Company army as the Indian army in 1858. Garrisoning British India (the frontiers of which stretched from modern Iran to Thailand) with both British and Indian troops became the major army role of the late 19th cent. A series of reforms following the Crimean War (1853–6), associated in particular with the abolition of purchase by Edward Cardwell in 1871 and with the creation of the ‘county regiments’ structure ten years later, produced a largely infantry army to serve overseas. Experiences such as the inability of the British to intervene effectively in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1) and the revelation of serious military deficiencies in the Second Boer War (1899–1902) produced more reforms to prepare the army for warfare in Europe, most particularly associated with Richard Haldane. Like many other late Victorian or Edwardian reforms, these actions have continued to determine much of the structure and ethos of the late 20th-cent. army, despite the removal of their original justification.
The British tradition of a small long-service army for use overseas, virtually unique in European historical development, meant that at the start of the First World War (1914–18) Britain was the only belligerent country without conscription, introduced with reluctance in January 1916. The creation of a mass citizen army for the war, at first entirely by voluntary methods, was of great social as well as political significance for Britain, marking the first real contact between the army and British society since the Civil War. Ultimately the British army was the most successful of the war, inflicting a crushing defeat upon Germany, previously regarded as the dominant European land power. Although all belligerents suffered terribly from the effects of mass mechanized warfare, British losses were not markedly worse than those of any other major power. However, with no shared military tradition to draw upon, the social and cultural impact of the war upon Britain was devastating, and persisted to the end of the 20th cent. At the war's end, the mass conscript army structure was abandoned, and the army returned to its role as a long-service garrison for the empire by 1922, with considerable enthusiasm on all sides.
The experience of the First World War enabled Britain to cope rather better with the Second World War (1939–45). For the first time in British history peacetime conscription was introduced in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war. However, the demands of a genuinely global war for naval and air forces, and the growing erosion of distinctions between naval and land warfare, or even between civilian and military occupations, all contrived to keep the British army in the field considerably smaller than in the First World War. Although Britain (the only country save Germany to fight, with its empire, from the start in 1939 to the end) once more emerged victorious, it faced in 1945 a changed military situation. In particular the traditional roles of the British army of garrisoning the empire and fighting in Europe were ceasing to be relevant. After 1945 Britain maintained, again for the first time in its history, peacetime conscription (known as National Service) until 1963, after which, largely for cultural and social reasons, the army reverted once more to an all-volunteer force. Its two major roles were from 1949 membership of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) as part of the collective defence of western Europe against the Soviet Union until 1991, and covering the ‘Retreat from Empire’, a succession of wars as Britain dismantled its empire, beginning with the independence and partition of India in 1947. The most significant war for the army in this period was in Northern Ireland (1969–94), Britain's longest war since medieval times.
The army in the last decades of the 20th cent. was faced with the same issues that had confronted it since the 18th. It was once more largely separate from its own society, subject to rigid budgetary control, generally ill-equipped to cope either with changes in the nature of warfare or of Britain's role in the world, socially reactionary, and badly in need of reform. However, it has also remained the most effective military instrument obtainable for the minimum financial, political, and social cost which successive governments have been prepared to pay.
Stephen Badsey
Bibliography
Ascoli, D. , A Companion to the British Army, 1660–1983 (1983);
Carver, M. , The Seven Ages of the British Army (1984);
French, D. , The British Way in Warfare, 1688–2000 (1990);
Pimlott, J. , The Guinness History of the British Army (1993);
Strachan, H. , European Armies and the Conduct of War (1983).
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