The Army in Victorian Society

G. Harries-Jenkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415412742
• eBook ISBN: 9781135032012
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Although in Victorian society the Army was the aristocratic backbone of England, it was persistently engaged in fighting Colonial Wars.

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The Impact of Defeat

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In the space of a few months between December 1899 and February 1900, the last chapter in the history of the Victorian army was written. To a shocked and incredulous British public, accustomed to reading about the colonial triumphs of their heroes, Roberts, Wolseley and Kitchener, the defeats of ‘Black Week’ and Vaal Krantz were disasters as great as any experienced by the British Army. There was little to applaud in the news from South Africa. The main British army of 47,000 men under the command of General Sir Redvers Buller, a red-faced Devon squire, had stumbled from crisis to crisis. In December 1899 Lord Methuen, sent with a strengthened division to relieve Kimberley, had been repulsed at Magersfontein. General Gatacre, who had been sent with a brigade to clear the Boers from the north of Cape Colony, had been defeated at Stormberg. The commander himself, trying to relieve Ladysmith, had been so badly beaten at Colenso on the Tugela River that he had ordered the beleaguered garrison to surrender.

To a very large extent the British public over-reacted to these tactical reverses. By European standards, the number of casualties suffered by the army in South Africa were small. Even at Spion Kop in January 1900 when Buller was again badly mauled no more than 1,700 men were lost. What magnified the scale of these disasters was not, however, the number of casualties, but the realization that they had been inflicted by a part-time army of Boer farmers. From the beginning, the public had been led to believe that the war would be another colonial triumph, Before the outbreak of hostilities, both press and politicians had looked forward to another easy campaign. Writing to his mother on the eve of mobilization, George Wyndham, the Under-Secretary of State for War and a former Guards officer, assured her that the army was more efficient than at any time since Waterloo.(1) In ‘Black-wood's Magazine’, a writer concluded his appraisal of the coming war with the assured statement that ‘no greater mistake can be made then to suppose that the conquest of the Transvaal Boers, left to themselves, is a task which would severely test the British army, or which would involve an expenditure which need in the least degree alarm the taxpayer’. (2) Nor had the military élite been any less optimistic. Buller, in a final interview with Lord Lansdowne before he left to take command of the British troops in Natal, had confidently concluded that he would begin his advance about two days before Christmas, and that it would probably take him ‘one month to pass through the Orange Free State, and after that fourteen days to get to Pretoria’.(3) Mafeking shattered this feeling of smug complacency. The defeats of Magersfontein, Stormberg and Colenso ended a wave of jingoistic optimism. They brought home to the British public, with dramatic effect, the realization that the Victorian military system had been found terribly wanting. For most of the century, from the Battle of Waterloo onwards, the system, as an important instrument of imperial expansion, had removed the burden of world power from the British people as a whole. It had allowed them the opportunity to promote a ‘Pax Britannica’. It had pioneered the growth of British institutions overseas, and had ensured stable conditions for the expansion of trade. Now in 1900, the reputation of that imperial army had been shattered by a small force of ‘slinking’ Boers who, unlike the Sudanese, ‘did not stand up to a fair fight’.(4) A ‘mob of good marksmen’ (5) had somehow put an end to a complete way of military life. It was all too evident that the Victorian army, as a fighting force, would be irrelevant in any future major campaign against the well-equipped mass army of a European power.

What, then, was this Victorian military establishment? What was the relationship between it and the parent society within which it functioned? Why had it persisted for so long in an era of striking technological developments? Few immediate answers to these questions emerged from the inevitable enquiry which, by tradition, followed every major British military reverse. The Royal Commissioners, under the chairmanship of the Earl of Elgin, analysed the shortcomings of the British performance in detail. Their Report, published in four large volumes, acknowledged that the whole military system as it stood in 1899 had been tested by the war in South Africa.(6) The Report's comments were pungent and scathing. It revealed causes of failure which were remarkably similar to those published after the Crimean débâcle — the want of organization, the lack of professionally trained officers, the inferior qualities of soldiers who were the sweepings of cities, the mindless rigidity of a rank and file whose tactical training had been based on the rules of the eighteenth-century drill book. It indicted, in its inquiry into the administrative defects and their causes as revealed by the war, almost every aspect of the army and the military system. Yet the Report, as comprehensive as it was, could only touch briefly on the more fundamental causes of this military weakness. Like a regimental history or campaign study, the Elgin Commission was primarily concerned with the analysis of a single event or series of events within a specific time scale, and it did not pretend to provide answers to the wider questions which arose.

Some indication of these causes of weakness could be seen in a comparison of the Victorian army with the mass armies of the European powers. On the Continent, armed forces were already becoming a world in themselves, characterized by a separate profession, closed organization, their own value-system and norms, a special technology and their own system of law. In short, these were the armies of an industrialized society, armies which apparently were able to exploit the advantages of mobility, fire power and concentration which a technical age had conferred upon them. In contrast, the Queen's army was a heterogeneous collection of regiments and corps, each of which sought to maintain its own identity. They were linked not by any universally accepted code of military values, but by the civilian interests of their members. A common acceptance of the standards and norms of the English ruling class from which the bulk of the officers were recruited, formed the basis of their attitudes towards such critical factors as the development of professionalism, the effects of technological innovation and the growth of the civilian bureaucracy. Socially the army, like early Victorian society, was held together by the bonds of deference. In common with the lower orders who had habitually deferred to their ‘betters’ in an earlier and more rural society, soldiers accorded officers the respect due to rank and title. The military code of obedience was supplemented by a complex pattern of social relationships which mirrored those of the parent society in an earlier period. In turn, junior officers normally deferred to their more seniors, not because of the latter's professional expertise but because the considerable self-confidence and authoritarian style of general officers reflected their upper-class assumption of an inborn right and duty to lead others.

This claim to hereditary authority was seldom questioned within the enclosed and exclusive world of the officers' mess. Where it was challenged was in the increasingly competitive world of the expanding middle classes. This was a group who were aware of their potential power to a greater degree than in the past. Their discontent with some aspects of aristocratic society, in combination with their concern for working-class poverty, heightened their middle-class self-consciousness. Consistently throughout the century, they opposed aristocratic idleness and privilege with a fervour which reflected their concern with the puritan values of hard work and dedicated commitment.(7) Now, at the end of the Victorian period, it appeared as though the army were the last bastion of neo-feudalism. Time and time again, these critics discovered ample evidence of the way in which the army was apparently an outmoded relic of an earlier period that had disappeared in the wider society. The courage, recklessness and physical toughness of many officers, for example, reflected qualities which in the Regency period had been cultivated for their own sake and which in the early Victorian period had been relished as the eccentricities of the foxhunting squire. But as the nineteenth century ended, qualities such as these appeared to compare very unfavourably as the hallmarks of military efficiency, with the cool detached professionalism of the Prussian officer corps.

The nature of the middle-class attitudes, attitudes which were a significant commentary on the relationship between the Victorian army and society, were moulded by the opportunity given to the public at large to serve in the armed forces. In the absence of conscription or the mass army, few members of society had any experience of military service in the regular forces. Even after 1870 when the employment of troops in an expanding empire led Cardwell, the Secretary of State for War, to introduce an ambitious programme of military reform, the regular army establishment was only 135,000 officers and men. In contrast the Prussian field army alone in the 1870 war comprised 462,300 infantry and 56,000 cavalry, while the total effective strength of the military was well over a million men. Shortly before the war in South Africa, the numerical strength of the British Army compared very unfavourably with that of her Continental neighbours. In the German Empire, with a total population of 61,479,901, the peace strength of the army, exclusive of troops employed in the African protectorate, was a cadre of 591,507 officers and men. In France, a population of 80 million supported an army of 573,743, whereas the British Empire with a total population of nearly 400 million produced a regular army of no more than 248,076 troops. Although this military participation ratio was slightly improved in Britain by the opportunity given to civilians to serve with the militia and other auxiliary forces, it was nevertheless axiomatic that only a very small percentage of the total male population had any experience of army life. Some of the effects of this were inevitable. The resulting cultural and physical remoteness of the Victorian army was an important characteristic of its relationship with the parent society. To many Victorians who lacked first-hand knowledge of military life, their army was an institution whose values differed from those of the population at large. Since it was an organization which few of them joined, they mistrusted its apparently privileged position during a century of change. In particular, they were very critical of the life-style of the officers where the daily routine within a regiment seemed to reflect the social life of the country's upper classes at an earlier period of history. The early socialization of these officers, their education at a small number of select boarding schools and their subsequent military training — or the lack of it — apparently created a privileged group who seemed to be out of touch with, and out of sympathy with, the technological and social changes which had affected the remainder of society. In contrast with the Prussian officer corps which was aristocratic but professional, British officers, with a few notable exceptions, seemed to be aristocratic and amateur.

To the British public as a whole, the army was thus an unknown institution. Most of the soldiers were in any event serving overseas, from the Shetlands in latitude 60 degrees north to the Falklands in latitude 55 degrees south. Their presence at home was not particularly noticeable. And when they were seen in Britain on parades or on guard-mounting ceremonies or on manoeuvres, they were objects of distant admiration. Their presence was welcome, provided it was at a distance. Closer contact was less acceptable. There were occasions, perhaps all too frequent, when civilian society totally rejected the military — as when a soldier was prevented from riding in an omnibus, or when three sergeants were expelled from a box in Her Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket because they were wearing the uniform of the British Army.(8)

This ignorance of army life did not inhibit criticism nor did it necessarily invalidate the attempts made by the public at large to understand why their army had failed in South Africa. It did, however, produce a number of paradoxical situations. Consistently the public, though willing to share in the victories of its army, were strangely indifferent to the condition of the military. ‘Over and over again when attempting to improve Army conditions we have had to speak to a practically empty House, empty Press gallery, and unsympathetic public.’ (9) More than two centuries of national hostility to any organized military force, a hostility engendered by Cromwell's dictatorial role, had produced a public mistrust of a standing army in peacetime. This hostility was, as Fortescue stresses, truly ‘national’, shared by all sorts and conditions of men. It vented itself in the neglect and maltreatment of the army by the government of the day, and in the hatred and scorn of the people at large.(10) For most of the nineteenth century, the middle class refused to join the officer corps, whilst the industrial and rural worker looked upon a son who joined the army as a disgrace to the family name; yet both groups resented the privileges of the military, and each, in its own way, deplored the apparent exclusiveness of army life. When its army was defeated, the public reacted violently. When the army was successful, the public basked in the reflected glory, pouring adulation — and financial rewards — on its victorious generals; a paradox which led a foreign observer of the British scene to comment, ‘How this blind glorification and worship of the Army continues to coexist with the contemptuous dislike felt towards the members of it must remain a problem in the national psychology’.(11)

Equally paradoxical was the effect of British conservatism. Whilst it was very evident that the army had been found wanting, the wish to cling fiercely to old institutions meant that the public at large strenuously set its face against whatever seemed to endanger sanctified traditions. This conservatism was still more loth to part with a tradition if it were a famous one. The British Army under Wellington had gained victory upon victory in the Peninsular War. It had routed Napoleon at Waterloo. Under leaders such as Campbell and Havelock it had subjugated an immense Empire. It had waged more or less successful war in every corner of the globe. Why then, change in time of peace the finest army in the world? What might be suitable for a Continental army was not necessarily suitable for the British Army which, it was argued, was in a class of its own. The army had stood by itself in the past and would continue to do so in the future. Professionalism and a dedicated commitment to military life, like universal conscription, smacked too readily of a militaristic spirit which was totally foreign to the British way of life. Yet it was the lack of professionalism and the absence of this dedication to the military career which in time of defeat were two of the most pungent criticisms levied against the Victorian army.

British conservatism, pride in past successes and a sense of natural independence were some of the subjective reasons which justified the paradoxical retention of an outmoded military system in an era of technological and political change. But these reasons could be supplemented by the practical realization that the geographical insularity of Britain favoured the development and growth of the Royal Navy. To the supporters of the ‘blue water school’ and to other critics of the army, it appeared as though there was nothing carried out by the military in the United Kingdom, which could not be more efficiently — and more cheaply — provided by auxiliary and reserve forces. In this context, the creation of county and borough police forces, although it relieved the army of much irksome duty, also removed one of the basic reasons for the retention of a standing army in peacetime. If the duty of preserving law and order could be transferred from the army to a quasi-military force, then it could also be argued that the task of providing defenders in the event of invasion by a foreign power could similarly be transferred to a force of civilians in uniform. Yet underlying these immediate subjective and objective reasons for the evolution of the Victorian army in a particular form, was the more fundamental question of the place of the army in nineteenth-century England. In criticisms which were made of the military, too much attention was paid to details of superficial and peripheral importance, and too little to the realities of the relationship between the army and society. Conclusions which were reached were often based on inadequate evidence, and in many ways it looked as though the relationship of the military establishment to society had to be based on one of two polar extremes. On the one hand, it seemed as though the army and society were two completely separate institutions. Britain, it appeared, was a non-militarist nation. There was no indication of the preponderance of the military in the state. Instead, fcivilianism1 was the order of the day, a characteristic which implied a rejection of military values, militancy and the adulation of the military ethos. This further encouraged the public in their belief that, in the absence of any extensive control by the military over social life, both military objectives and organization were wholly or partly subordinated to a civilian way of life. A lack of public interest and involvement in military or para-military activities confirmed the distinction between ‘militarism’ with its apparent addiction to drill and ceremonial or its worship of useless trappings, and ‘civilianism’ with its preference for dynamic commercial and industrial development. Military activities were thus believed to be on the periphery of societal development, and their characteristic features were seen to be indicators of group attitudes and behaviour, rather than the reflection of the ethos of society as a whole.(12)

This conclusion encouraged a section of the British public in their belief that the military was a functional body which existed quite separately from all other institutions in society. Their attitudes were confirmed in contemporary studies of the military. The majority of these were critical in their approach, emphasizing the neo-feudal characteristics of the military organization, but this particular analysis of the military was not limited to the works of reformers such as Trevelyan or De Fonblanque.(13) Studies which related the position of the military to that of other institutions in society tended to concentrate on circumstances and occasions when, as in the Crimea, there were differences of opinion between the political and military Elites. Much of what was written examined differences as to the control and direction of war operations with a view to restating the institutional arrangements which were in existence. When more general aspects of military life were considered, as when ‘The Times’ and ‘Punch’ in the 1850s deplored at length instances of ‘military jocularity’, the generally-reached conclusion was that these examples of hazing and bullying were symptomatic of an institution which was different from the remainder of society. The identification of the military, in emotive language, with such attributes as authoritarianism, inhumanity, coercion and persistent social conservatism made it difficult to reach any other conclusion. Even the mass of campaign literature which appeared towards the end of the nineteenth century endorsed the feeling, through glorifying selected aspects of military life, that the army was different from the remainder of society.(14) Nor did the writings of Victorian officers contradict this conclusion, for the majority of these army apologists sought to convince the public that there was something almost mystical about life within the military organization and that the participants were not like ordinary men. The features of military life were apparently completely different from those of society at large and for the ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’ this portrayal was particularly prevalent in the popular culture and mass media accounts of Victorian service life. The common characteristic of these diverse publications was thus the emphasis that was placed on those qualities of the Victorian military which suggested that the army could be distinguished from comparable civilian structures, Indeed, descriptions of the army tended to perceive this as a total institution in which clearly defined barriers had been erected between the organization and the remainder of society. This perception then encouraged the belief that interaction between members of the military establishment and the world at large was extremely limited, a conclusion which drew attention again to the differences which apparently existed between the military and the parent society.

Since most contemporary Victorian literature on the subject of the army sought to draw attention to the way in which it differed from other institutions in society, it is easy to forget that this was only one point of view. In contrast with these writings, the work of other theorists emphasized the similarities between the army and the remainder of society. In some ways Gaetano Mosca's classic work ‘Elemanti di Scienza Politica’, which appeared in 1895, brought ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The Impact of Defeat
• 2 Officer Recruitment
• 3 The Purchase System
• 4 Professional Education
• 5 The Search for Professionalism
• 6 The Task of the Army
• 7 The Army and its Political Attitudes
• 8 Postscript
• Notes
• Index