The Making Of The British Army (37 page)

The Prussian army, like those of the other continental powers, was a conscript force. It was therefore large. But its real strength lay in its vast pool of reservists – former conscripts with residual military skills who could be instantly recalled. Its mobilization system was also without peer, based on a highly developed scheme whereby the local peacetime administrative headquarters formed the basis of the mobilized field army. Reservists had only a short journey to make to their local depot, where they drew their uniforms and rifles and mustered as a formed unit before entraining for the front. In most of the other continental systems, reservists were mustered as individual reinforcements – much less efficient and much less personal. In the Prussian army, a reservist would know many of his fellow soldiers already, and probably some of his officers.

Cardwell, impressed with Prussia’s mobilization for the wars with Denmark (1863–4) and France (1870–1), sought to emulate its strengths. Since there was no question of conscription in Britain he had to work through voluntary recruitment. To begin with, he reduced the length of service ‘with the colours’ – the time spent on duty with regiment or corps – and introduced a corresponding period on the reserve with pay of 4d a day and an annual training obligation. This would ensure a steady build-up of reservists to a total of 80,000 by the end of the century. That much was relatively easy to achieve; but the outflow of those leaving at the end of their shorter service had, of course, to be matched by intake – and the supply of Irish recruits had been drying up with the mass emigration in the wake of the potato famine. The answer, Cardwell believed, lay in a steady voluntary transfer of men from the militia (revived in 1852, though without the ballot) to the regulars. The Napoleonic Wars had shown the militia to be a significant source of recruits, for militiamen were, quite evidently, already
hardened to the life – and might even have found its camaraderie appealing. It made sense, therefore, to align the regular regiments as closely as possible with the local militias or ‘volunteers’. Infantry regiments had borne county titles since the last year of the American Revolutionary War, but the actual make-up of the regiments bore no relation to their nominal recruiting areas: they were rarely stationed in the county, and drummed up recruits where they chose – or, more accurately, where they could. Cardwell instituted a system of pairing regular battalions with common local connections, one serving overseas, the other training recruits to feed to the overseas battalion. These were known as ‘linked battalions’. The home battalion was to be based in a depot which would also serve as both the headquarters for the local militia battalions and the receiving depot for reservists called back to the colours.

In contrast to the Prussian system, the regional administrative headquarters would not be the basis of a mobilized field army: reservists would be sent individually or collectively to where they were needed. Regular service, however, was to be in the regiment of a man’s choice – and it was fully expected that reservists would serve in their former or adopted regiments too. One of Cardwell’s first acts was to do away with ‘general service’, the provision whereby a recruit could be sent to any part of the army the War Office saw fit. As early as 1829 Palmerston, secretary at war, had recognized that

On the twin foundations of efficiency and sentiment, then, Cardwell set about putting into place the third of his key reforms: ‘localization’, a linking and building programme which changed the face of many a British town, as well as that of the army. It was a timely idea. Local regimental pride perfectly suited the mood of mid-Victorian Britain: many a prominent architect enthusiastically drew up grand designs for
the new depot-barracks in his county town, and regimental bands were applauded playing at the county fairs. Some of the linked battalions found their homes in imposing fortresses: for example, the 34th (Cumberland) Regiment and the 55th (Westmoreland) were linked, with a depot in Carlisle Castle; likewise the 91st (Argyllshire Highlanders) and the 93rd (Sutherland Highlanders) were linked, with a depot halfway between their two recruiting areas at Stirling Castle. Other pairings, such as the 62nd (Wiltshire) Regiment and the 99th Duke of Edinburgh’s (Lanarkshire) were altogether less obvious; but the arithmetic – and the geography – were never going to be perfect. In this instance, the 99th being a latecomer (raised in 1824, with no county affiliation until 1836), its paired regiment would take priority in location; even so, it seems there was no suitable depot building in Wiltshire, for a brand new one was built in the county town of Devizes, with a massive neo-gothic keep. In these years many a hitherto peaceful county town suddenly found itself with a redbrick medieval citadel in its midst.

The depots were formed immediately by whichever one of the ‘linked’ battalions was on the home station (which included Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta) sending its ‘depot company’ to the new headquarters. Since Palmerston’s time as secretary at war, each battalion had had one or two depot companies to train recruits; these remained at home to continue recruiting and training when the battalion was posted overseas.
¹⁰⁰
The Carlisle depot, for example, was established in April 1873 with the title of the 2nd Brigade Depot, the brigade being a purely administrative title. It was commanded by a lieutenant-colonel and was home to the depot companies of the 34th (Cumberland), who were in Ireland, the 55th (Westmoreland) who had been in India since the Crimean War, and the two county regiments of militia.

Recruiting remained a persistent problem, however, and the system was soon thrown out of balance again by demands for more battalions overseas, so that by the end of the 1870s there were only fifty-nine battalions on the home establishment, with eighty-two abroad. And the sometimes incongruent linking – of which Wiltshire and Lanarkshire was but one extreme example – was not calculated to generate harmony, for the strength of the regimental system derived in part
from robust independence rather than collaboration: why, for instance, should the 34th work harmoniously with the 55th just because they both recruited in the north-west?

The system probably worked best with the more senior regiments, which had retained their second battalions. It was far easier for, say, the first battalion of the 4th (King’s Own) Regiment of Foot to send men to the second battalion of a regiment which had the same name and uniform. So in 1881, when Gladstone formed his second administration, the new secretary of state for war, Hugh Childers, decided to take Cardwell’s system one step further by amalgamating the linked battalions into new regiments. The regimental numbers were now dropped altogether – the 4th, for example, a non-linked regiment (for it had kept two battalions throughout) became simply the King’s Own – and new regimental names were substituted. Some of the names were an obvious reflection of the amalgamation: for example, the 91st (Argyllshire Highlanders) and the 93rd (Sutherland Highlanders) became the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. But there were some other new and rather evocative titles: the 34th (Cumberland) and 55th (Westmoreland), for example, became the first and second battalions respectively of the Border Regiment; the 45th (Nottinghamshire) and the 95th (Derbyshire) regiments became the first and second battalions of the Sherwood Foresters. Regiments were now referred to locally as ‘our regiment’, or even ‘
the
regiment’. Local pride would be a powerful spur to recruiting in emergencies, and when additional battalions had to be raised, the regimental identity was an equally powerful aid to assimilation, if not quite in the way that Cardwell had expected. The Foresters, for example, would field thirty-one battalions in the First World War.

No amalgamation of ‘opposites’ seemed too difficult for the War Office either. The conjunction of Scottish heather and English chalk – the Lanarkshire – Wiltshire amalgamation – was in fact one of the most felicitous: the two were renamed the Duke of Edinburgh’s (Wiltshire Regiment), taking the county affiliation from the 62nd Foot (which became the first battalion) and the honorific from the 99th Foot (which became the second battalion). Having then lived with the title for forty years, in 1921 the regiment switched the order round to become the Wiltshire Regiment (Duke of Edinburgh’s). Long must have been the agonizing over the change; but such is the stuff of regimental identity! With these new regimental names the army would
see out the Empire and fight two world wars; in large measure the names would continue right up to the wholesale amalgamations of 2006/7
¹⁰¹
.

So Gladstone, Queen Victoria’s least favourite prime minister, had significantly reshaped the army – or rather, his two war ministers had.
¹⁰²
But the Queen was determined always to keep Gladstone up to the mark. ‘If we are to
maintain
our position as a
first-rate
Power,’ she now wrote to him, with her characteristic emphatic capitals and under-linings, ‘we must, with our Indian empire and large Colonies, be
Prepared for attacks
and
wars, somewhere
or
other
, CONTINUALLY.’

THE 1964 FILM CLASSIC
ZULU
, STARRING MICHAEL CAINE AND STANLEY BAKER,
can still raise a cheer despite its enormous toll of Chief Cetewayo’s phenomenally brave warriors. It has its exaggerations – for example, of the supposed friction between the officer commanding the company of the 24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment, 33-year-old Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead, who had purchased his commission, and the Royal Engineers officer, 31-year-old Lieutenant John Chard, who had not – as well as a fair sprinkling of inaccuracies, some of which were careless (such as the serjeant-major’s Great War medals) and some egregious.
¹⁰³
But the essential story is dramatically told: a small number of redcoats hold off a vastly superior force of Zulu warriors, while the rest of the battalion lies dead 10 miles away at Isandhlwana, and win an unrivalled number of VCs. The year after the battle, 1880, Chard was invited to send an account of it to Queen Victoria. His report on the action that day at the little mission station on the border between Natal and Zululand reads at first like a policeman giving evidence in a magistrate’s court, but the narrative soon picks up:

Why were Chard and his sappers needed at Rorke’s Drift? Because it was the entry point to Zululand from Natal, and the Zulu king, Cetewayo, was to be on the receiving end of a punitive expedition. It was all part of being, in Victoria’s words, ‘Prepared for attacks and wars, somewhere or other, continually.’