From the political I turn to the purely military side of the Army\'s history. Treating first of the officers, it has, I think, been sufficiently shown that there were influences enough at work to demoralise them quite apart from any legacies of corruption that they might have inherited from the past. Against their indiscipline and dishonesty George the First seems to have set his face from the very beginning. He had a particular dislike to the system of purchasing and selling commissions. If (so ran his argument) an officer is unfit to serve from his own fault, he ought to be tried and cashiered, if he is rendered incapable by military service, he ought to retire on half-pay; and so firm was the King on this latter point that the Secretary-at-War dared not disobey him.[62] As early, therefore, as in June 1715 the King announced his intention of putting a stop to the practice, and as a first step forbade all sale of commissions except by officers who had purchased, and then only for the price that had originally been paid. One principal cause that prompted him to this decision appears to have been the exorbitant price demanded by colonels, on the plea that they had discharged regimental debts due for the clothing of the men, and suffered loss through the carelessness of agents.[63] It should seem, however, that as the rule [30]applied only to regiments on the British and not to those on the Irish Establishment, the desired reforms were little promoted by this expedient. In 1717, therefore, the King referred the question to the Board of General Officers, with, however, a reservation in favour of sale for the benefit of wounded or superannuated officers, which could not but vitiate the entire scheme. He thought it better, therefore, to regulate that which he could not abolish, and in 1720 issued the first of those tariffs for the prices of commissions which continued to appear in the Queen\'s Regulations until 1870. At the same time he subjected purchase to certain conditions as to rank and length of service, adding somewhat later that the fact of purchase should carry with it no right to future sale.[64] Evidently ministers kept before his eyes not only the usefulness of the system from a political standpoint, since every officer was bound over in the price of his commission to good behaviour, but still more the impossibility of obtaining from Parliament a vote for ineffective men. They followed, in fact, the precept of Marlborough, and it is hard to say that they were not right.

Concurrently the King took steps, not always with great effect, to check the still existing abuse of false masters.[65] A more real service was the prevention of illegal deductions from the pay of the men, a vice from which hardly a regiment was wholly free, by the regulation of all stoppages by warrant.[66] As part of the same principle, he endeavoured also to ensure honesty towards the country and towards the soldiery in the matter of clothing. In fact, wherever the hand of King George the First can be traced in the administration of the Army, it is found working for integrity, economy, and discipline; and it is sufficiently evident that when he [31]gave decided orders the very officials at the War Office knew better than to disregard them.

It is melancholy to record the fact that he was ill supported by the General Officers of the Army. The Board of Generals, to which the settlement of all purely military questions was supposed to be referred, seems to have been lazy and inert, requiring occasionally to be reminded of its duty in severe terms.[67] It may well be that this supineness was due to the general arrogation of military authority by civilians, but even so it remains unexcused. Colonels again appear to have been scandalously negligent and remiss in every respect; and it may have been as a warning to them that the King on one occasion dismissed seven of their number in one batch from his service.[68] But issue orders as he might, the King could never succeed, owing to the prevailing indiscipline, in making a certain number of officers ever go near their regiments at all. This habit of long and continued absence from duty, especially on colonial stations, is said to have troubled him much, and to have caused him greater uneasiness than any other abuse in the Army. It will be seen when we read of the opening of the Seven Years\' War that he had all too good ground for misgiving. Yet the regimental officers must not be too hardly judged. In foreign garrisons, as shall presently be shown, they were exiles, neglected and uncared for; at home they were subject to incessant provocation, to malicious complaints, and in every quarter and at all times to the control of civilians. Lastly, though frequently called out in aid of the civil power, they had the fate of Captain Porteous before their eyes, and indeed took that lesson so speedily to heart that for want of their interposition the life of that unlucky man was sacrificed.[69]

[32]

When officers flagrantly neglected their duty and civilians deliberately fostered indiscipline, it is hardly astonishing that there should have been much misconduct among the men. It was natural, in the circumstances, that after the Peace of Utrecht the profession of the soldier should have fallen in England into disrepute. The greatest captain of his time, and one of the greatest of all time, had been rewarded for his transcendent services with exile and disgrace. Many officers had quitted the service in disgust, some of them abandoning even regiments which they loved as their own household. Wholesale and unscrupulous disbandment did not mend matters; and the survivors of that disbandment were confronted with the railings of the House of Commons, the malice of municipalities, the surliness of innkeepers and the insults of the populace. The most honest man in England had but to don the red coat to be dubbed a lewd profligate wretch. Small wonder that, clothed with such a character, ready made and unalterable, soldiers should have made no scruple of living their life in accordance with it.

The standard of the recruit, socially and morally, appears at the accession of George the First to have sunk to the level of the worst days of Elizabeth, of the Restoration, or of William the Third. It is abundantly evident that the ranks were filled in great measure by professional criminals, who passed from regiment to regiment, spreading everywhere the infection of discontent, debauchery, and insubordination. The noxious weeds of desertion and fraudulent enlistment flourished with amazing exuberance, and no severity of punishment had power to root them out. Week after week deserters were brought out into Hyde Park, tied up to the halberds, or simply to a tree, and flogged with hundreds of lashes. Every variety of scourging was tried that ingenuity could suggest. Sometimes the instrument employed was the cat, sometimes the rod, sometimes a twig, varied in the case of the cavalry by cloak-straps and stirrup-leathers. Sometimes the whole[33] regiment did the part of executioners,[70] sometimes the guard, sometimes the drummers only. Sometimes the culprit ran the gantlope, accomplishing the unpleasant journey as quickly as he could, sometimes he walked it with a halberd\'s point before him, lest he should hurry unduly. Sometimes he took the whole of his punishment at one time and place, sometimes in instalments of a hundred lashes before the quarters of each detachment of his regiment, a practice akin to "flogging round the fleet."[71] Often he received two or three floggings in as quick succession as the state of his back would permit, the execution of the sentence being followed in many cases by "drumming out," with every circumstance of degradation.[72] The sentence of death was often pronounced by courts-martial and not unfrequently carried out, a deserter convicted for the third time rarely escaping with his life. Many a man was shot in Hyde Park during the twenty years of peace, and no opportunity was lost to enhance the terror of the penalty, the firing party sometimes consisting solely of fellow-deserters, who were spared in consideration of the warning given by the ghastly body which their own bullets had pierced.[73]

The newspapers record such matters with little ceremony, dwelling with greater relish on incidents of the cart\'s tail, of the pillory, or of Tyburn. The picketing of a soldier was indeed for a time a sufficient [34]novelty to attract crowds,[74] but the interest in the process appears to have been short-lived. People were not squeamish in those days, and men would lay a wager to receive so many hundred lashes without flinching, as calmly as if it were to run so many miles or drink so many pots of ale. It is, however, noteworthy that both of the first of the Guelphic kings were prone to lighten the sentences of courts-martial, constantly reducing the number of lashes and remitting the penalty of death. Whether this was due to policy or humanity it is a little difficult to determine, for the populace certainly sympathised with deserters, and would help to rescue them, while there were "malicious persons" who were glad to denounce the severity of military punishments as a reproach against the Government.[75] I am, however, inclined to believe that both kings were inspired by the higher of the two motives, and should receive due honour for the same. The like, I believe, can hardly be said of the malicious persons above named, considering that the House of Commons had the scandalous evils of the London prisons before it in 1729, but left the whole work of reform to be done by John Howard in 1774.

The consequences of filling the ranks with rogues, together with the evils of indiscipline and neglect, did not end with desertion and fraudulent enlistment. That soldiers in their private quarrels should have fought desperately, wounding and killing each other on the slightest provocation, is nothing remarkable, for [35]such encounters were common in the poorer classes of the urban population. But the newspapers report a sufficient number of mishaps through the use of loaded instead of blank cartridges at drill, to show that such occurrences were not wholly accidental. Again, we find a corps so much favoured as the First Troop of Horse Grenadier Guards breaking into open mutiny, because one of their number was sentenced to the picket.[76] On one very scandalous occasion the officers in command of the Prince of Wales\'s guard were so careless as to allow the troopers to get drunk when actually in attendance on His Royal Highness. The guard was turned out, and after some delay three troopers appeared who, though egregiously tipsy, were able to stagger to their places and stand more or less firmly on their legs. "This," we read, "the Prince complained of as shameful, as well he might"; but at this distance of time the reader, with the self-important figure of the prince who became King George the Second before him, will have no eye except for what was probably the most ludicrous spectacle ever witnessed at the Horse Guards.[77] But the climax of scandal was reached when a burglary was actually committed in Kensington Palace, and when, on the calling of the roll of the guard, but two men were found to be present, the rest being engaged apparently in rendering assistance to the burglars.[78] Certainly the soldiers of some regiments did their best to merit the bad name which was attached impartially to all who wore the red coat.

It may be asked why the system of enlistment for three years, which had produced such excellent results in Queen Anne\'s time, should have been abandoned. The reply, judging from the arguments of a later time, is that there was apprehension lest men should pass [36]through the ranks of the British Army to strengthen those of the Pretender. There are signs that a reintroduction of the system was talked of in 1731, and was received by at least one observer with joy at the prospect of converting the whole nation into a sort of militia,[79] but I can find no official trace of such a revival. If it be asked how the Army survived a period of such discouragement and distress at all, the answer, I cannot doubt, is that it was saved, as it has often been saved, by the spirit, the pride, and the self-respect of individual regiments. There were always officers who worked hard and conscientiously for the credit of their own corps, and always men who were proud to take service with them and help them to maintain it. After the Peace of Utrecht, as at the present day, the War Office did its best to subvert regimental feeling by a return to the practice, expressly condemned by Marlborough, of strengthening the weaker corps by drafts from the stronger, but then as now regimental traditions preserved the War Office from the consequences of its own incapacity, and the Army from total dissolution.

So much for purely British affairs: but the British Empire, then as now, was not bounded by the shores of the British Isles, and it is necessary to examine next the broader question of Imperial defence. As the reader will have gathered in the course of my narrative, the system of home defence, up to the birth of the New Model and beyond it, had, apart from the fleet, been always the same. A few gunners and a few weak independent companies were maintained rather as caretakers than as defenders of the fortified places; in the event of an invasion there was the militia; while in case of an expedition beyond sea, a special force was raised, and disbanded as soon as its work was done. The standing Army gradually swept the independent garrison-companies out of existence, though there were still a few at Hampton Court, Windsor, and one or two similar places in the last year of King William the[37] Third; but as has already been seen, the standing Army voted by Parliament just sufficed to furnish garrisons for the most important British fortresses and no more. Practically, therefore, the new system differed little from the old: if England were called upon to fight an enemy outside her own borders she must still raise a new army before she could send a man beyond sea. The only difference was that there were sufficient skeleton regiments, with their officers complete, to absorb several thousand men.

In our possessions abroad the old English system was followed exactly. British colonies were expected to raise their own militia and to provide for their own defence, as though each one of them had been an England in herself; and they fulfilled that expectation with a readiness which in those days seems astonishing. In the case of the American colonies, and in particular of the northern provinces, the problem of forming a national militia presented little difficulty; for theirs was a country where the white population could increase and multiply, and where white children could grow up to a vigorous manhood. The reader will shortly be able to judge the American militia by test of active service. But in the tropical islands of the West Indies, and to some extent in the southern provinces of Virginia and Carolina, the conditions were different. There the white man could not thrive and rear a healthy progeny, while a horde of negro slaves, sound, strong, and prolific, made an element of danger which was only kept in awe by systematic intimidation of almost incredible severity.[80]

Failing the natural increase of a white population, the ranks of the militia in the West Indies were kept full by continual exportation of white "servants" from[38] England, that is to say, of men, women, and children saved from the gaol or the gallows, plucked naked and starving out of the gutter, trepanned by scoundrelly crimps, or kidnapped bodily in the streets and spirited, as the phrase went, across the Atlantic. From the earliest days of English colonisation the seeds to be sown in the great continent of the West had been gathered from the weeds that grow by the roadside. In 1610 three hundred disorderly persons were sent to Virginia, in 1617 and 1618 a cargo of poor and impressed emigrants, in 1620 "a parcel of poor and naughty children." New England, with higher ideals and a deeper insight than her sisters, resolved to accept only youths untainted by vice, but even so did not escape an infusion of the very scum of the earth.[81] An enlightened Frenchman did indeed formulate a scheme for recruiting old soldiers as emigrants for Virginia, but for the most part the white servants were drawn almost exclusively from the unprofitable classes.

The Civil War, the conquest of Ireland, the subdual of Scotland, and the crushing of royalism introduced a new element into the exported white servants. Irish men and Irish girls, grouped under the generic name of Tories, were shipped off to the West Indies by hundreds and even thousands.[82] English and Scottish prisoners of war, the vanquished of Dunbar and of Worcester among them, followed the Irish; and, finally, all ranks of the Royalists who dashed themselves in vain against the iron will of the Protector, many of them men of birth and high character, were, in the phrase of the day, Barbadosed. After the Restoration the supply of white servants, though swelled for a moment by the rebellion of Monmouth and by the innocent victims of Jeffreys, reverted to its dependence on the gaol, the crimp, and [39]the "spirit." Transportation, though not long obsolete, has been well-nigh forgotten as a means of penal discipline, and quite forgotten as the first foundation of our system of colonial defence.

The white servants might, in the majority of cases, have been termed white slaves. They were frequently sold for money at so much a head without the least concealment, and were granted away in scores both by Oliver Cromwell and by James the Second as a means of profit and reward to good servants or to favourites. The practice was thoroughly recognised; and not a voice, except that of the younger Vane, was ever raised against the principle.[83] Theoretically the white servants were bound apprentices for a term of years, rarely exceeding ten, at the close of which they received their freedom with, as a rule, a grant of Crown-land to encourage them to settlement.[84] During their period of servitude they were obliged to serve in the ranks of the colonial militia, not as free men, but as the subjects of their masters. Every planter was bound by law to furnish his quota of men, and old colonial muster-rolls frequently consist only of a list of masters, with a figure showing the number of servants to be supplied by each of them, not unlike the provincial muster-rolls of Queen Elizabeth\'s day in England. Having furnished their men to the ranks, the masters took their places at their head, in such numbers as were required, as their officers.

Three causes conspired to clothe the colonial militia with an efficiency unknown to the militia of England,—the presence of powerful neighbours, native or European; the knowledge that little help was to be expected from the mother country; and, in the tropics, the eternal dread of a rising of the negroes. Barbados, an island no larger than the Isle of Wight, could at the close of [40]King Charles the Second\'s reign show six regiments of foot and two of horse, or a total of six thousand men; while Jamaica, a less fortunate island and a full generation later in settlement, produced in the same year seven regiments of four thousand men. Jamaica, it may be observed, owing to the presence of wild tribes of runaway slaves called Maroons, lived in more than ordinary terror of a servile war, and therefore kept her militia up to a high standard of efficiency. The reader should take note, in passing, of these Maroons, for we shall meet with them again at a very critical time. Even so, colonies frequently observed the true English spirit of apathy.[85] The main point, however, is that each colony, tropical or temperate, made provision for its own defence in respect of trained men and of fortification. Magazines were replenished partly by local laws, which compelled all vessels trading regularly from England to pay dues of gunpowder in proportion to their tonnage; the mother country making frequent grants of guns and of other stores from the depots of the Ordnance in England, and occasionally doling out even a small subvention of money. As a rule, moreover, the Crown was careful to appoint men of some military experience to be governors, in order that the local forces might not want a competent commander; and it is noteworthy, as a curious survival of old military traditions, that the civilian who performs the functions of sheriff in the West Indian Islands still bears, in a great many cases, the title of provost-marshal.

But even in the days of Charles the Second this primitive method of colonial defence showed signs of breaking down. At St. Kitts, which island was shared by the French and English until the Peace of Utrecht, the French kept a small permanent garrison. The English were of course bound to do likewise, and accordingly two independent companies of red-coats were stationed there at the cost of the Crown—stationed, not maintained, for they were left at first without pay,[41] clothing, or attention of any kind from home, for whole years together.[86] In times of emergency such companies were quartered also in other colonies, such as Jamaica and Virginia, but these were never retained for longer than could be helped, the colony receiving the option of maintaining them at its own expense or of dispensing with them altogether. As the men were generally mutinous for want of pay, they sometimes proved to be an element of danger rather than of security.[87] Where settlements were granted out by charter to companies or to proprietors, the burden of defence of course fell on them, and was almost invariably borne by a local militia. There were, however, exceptions, notably the East Indian and African Companies, which, as they concerned themselves not with colonisation, but solely with trade, will be more conveniently discussed elsewhere. New York, from its supreme importance as a commercial and strategic station, was provided by its proprietor, James, Duke of York,[88] with two regular independent companies of English.

Time went on, and the system of defence by transportation became more and more unstable. White men, chafing against servitude, ran away from the West Indian Islands by scores to join the pirates that swarmed in the Caribbean Seas. The long war from 1689 to 1714 finally cut off ............