A HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ARMY.* Mn.. FORTESCUE has chosen a

very opportune moment to produce his first instalment of a large book on a great subject Recent events have concentrated almost the whole of public interest upon our soldiers and landed sailors, and this particular stimulus will no doubt react upon the world of ordinary readers, and set them inquiring into the ante- cedents of the regiments which are displaying their valour in maintaining or enlarging our Empire. It is often discussed whether the British are at heart a warlike, or a pacific, people. Perhaps the composite nature of that people makes

it hard to give a categorical answer. The Highlanders certainly were, and probably are, warlike in temper ; so are the Irish, whose quarrelsome propensities find an admirable outlet in soldiering. The stolid Briton, who is the most dogged and dangerops fighting -man of them all, when he is roused, is probably also the most pacific by nature. Yet even he, without his determined bravery, could never have founded the British Empire. On this point Mr. Fortescae's mind is perfectly made up :—

• A History of the British Army. By the Hon. J. W. Fortescne. Vols. I. Ind n London : Macmillan and Co. [36s. net.] " Much, doubtless," he says, "besides the creation of a standing army, dates from the Great Rebellion, though few things are more important in our history, unless indeed it be the cant which denies its importance. The bare thought of militarism or the military spirit is supposed to be unendurable to Englishmen. As if a nation had ever risen to great empire that did not possess the military spirit, and as if England herself had not won her vast dominions by the sword. We are accustomed to speak of our rule as an earnest for the eternal furtherance of civilise- tion ; but we try to conceal the fact that the first step to empire is conquest. It is because we are a fighting people that we have risen to greatness, and it is as a fighting people that we stand or fall. Arms rule the world ; and war, the supreme test of moral and physical greatness, remains eternally the touchstone of

nations." •

The full discussion of this statement, which, though it may be true, is certainly not the whole truth, would lead us away from a review into a controversy, nor are we disposed to quarrel with a historian of the Army, even though he be a civilian, for his very pardonable prejudice. Indeed, his great griefs in narrating the annals of

our forces are the constant interference or control exercised by ignorant or malevolent civilians,—stupid Parliaments,

and still more stupid Secretaries at War. He deplores the subordination of the Army to a civilian official, and seems to regret the fact that the first Secretary, who was actually killed beside his general in action, should have been the last to suffer that misfortune. Those were nervous days, when

the cedant arma togce was no despicable sentiment, and when the tyranny of a pampered soldiery became intolerable to those whose peaceful industry supported the State ; and if in England, as in some other countries, this apprehension has outlived its reasonable time, and our soldiers have been treated with shocking harshness and ingratitude by the State, they may console themselves with the strong loyalty and unswerving admiration they command from the young of both sexes, and indeed from all men and women not debauched by theories. For courage is the most attractive of all moral qualities, and therefore the profession which affords the most public scope for this quality must always be popular.

The book is intended for the intelligent public, rather than for specialists, and we shall therefore criticise it from that standpoint, though here and there we find something which even an amat.eur could correct. Thus the author makes the rise of the Spanish infantry subsequent to that of the Swiss, and the first important Spanish victory over them in 1496 the beginning of the temporary supremacy of Spanish infantry. It is, however, no obscure fact in the history of the Middle Ages that the infantry of the Grand Catalan ' Company destroyed the Frankish chivalry of Greece on the field of Orchomenos in 1310.

It may be asked what this has to say to the history of the British Army, and here we come upon the greatest difficulty with which our author had to contend. The systems of foreign nations could not but react upon oars, just as ours acted upon them, and down to the stupid imitation of German uniforms in our own day, the habit of copying the externals of a successful military system has been the con- stant vice of our military reformers. Hence a consideration of external influences could not be avoided by Mr. Fortescue.

So likewise the relations of the State to the Army, and the internal organisation of the Army, require constant excur- sions into the field of politics. He is well aware that in the selection from his myriad topics he is not likely to satisfy his critics, nor will we cavil at his selection. But we may express our subjective opinion, that while he deliberately omits some campaigns, because they have been (be says) adequately handled by Macaulay, he gives us a great deal of the foreign politics which led to the declaration of wars. This latter topic does not belong to the history of the Army. The estimates of individual character, with which the book abounds, are not so irrelevant, and add much to its interest, but still we should far rather have had an account of Cromwell's battle of Worcester than the .account, however picturesque, of the pompous funeral of Marlborough.

Probably the best chapter in the two volumes is that on Cromwell and his reorganisation of the Army on the New Model, though we cannot but think the author has hardly laid

sufficient stress on the superiority of heavy cavalry, if well in hand, to any infantry at that moment. The whole history of the art of war consists of oscillations between the supremacy of cavalry and that of infantry, of the powers of defence and those of attack. Cromwell solved the former problem in his

own time just as Alexander the Great had solved it long before.

It is not gtneraLly appreciated that the knights in the earliest British battles were practically mounted infantry, who left

their horses in the rear, and fought on foot with their men- at-arms around them. Mr. Forteacue points oat how strong a bond of union this produced between the higher and lower classes; and in accordance with this peculiarity there is a very clear account of the battles of the Black Prince, and the causes of his great success. But of these causes there is one which runs all through the book, and dominates in the im- pression left when we lay it down. It is that the quality of the soldiers has won nine-tenths of our victories, and the quality of the generals the rest. Time after time the valour of the men has made good the blunders of the leaders ; time after time the leaders who really possessed genius fought actions which they dared not attempt without absolute confi- dence that their troops would not flinch. The murderous nature of these conflicts makes the reader smile with astonishment at the ludicrous talk of bloody days and heavy losses during the present war in the Transvaal. Not only in England's great battles, but in most of the lesser fights recorded in these volumes, the loss of the British, even when victorious, was greater in one day than the whole sum of killed, wounded, and prisoners since the Boer War began. A recent writer in the Times has endeavoured, by quoting figures concerning the British battles during this century, to stop the nonsense talked and written about our losses, by showing that whereas at the severest action fought (up to December 10th) Lord Methuen lost 7?; per cent, of his force in casualties of all kinds, the bloody battles of the century cost us from 31 per cent. (Inkerman) to 48 per cent. (Albuera) of the men engaged. A review of the earlier conflicts which Mr. Fortescue narrates confirms this sober statement. He does not, indeed, tell us directly how many thousands of British were engaged in three of the poly- national armies, though he enumerates the regiments. But the English contingents during the wars of William III., of Marlborough, of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, were never large, and yet we bear of 70 Lieutenants killed in Churchill's brigade at Steenkirk, while the victorious French lost 620 officers killed and wounded. The total number of killed and wounded on both sides was over 6,000. And this was by no means an extraordinary case. Take the very next battle in the book, that of Linden. The Allies lost about 12,000 in casualties, the 19 British battalions losing 133 officers. These were unsuccessful battles, but at Blenheim we lost 670 killed and 1,500 wounded ; at Mal- plaquet, out of 20 battalions, 1,900 men, and so on. The conclusion would be forced upon us that the older fighting at close range with clumsy guns was far more bloody than the work of our modern weapons of precision at enormous distances, did we not remember the days around Metz and Plevna.

It seems almost barbarous to occupy ourselves with these annals of butchery, but it is an undeniable fact that from the days of Homer's Iliad to our own, descriptions of battles and details of fighting have a permanent fascination for the mass of readers. Manifestations of martial spirit, from brute courage to lofty heroism, will never cease to excite ad- miration, though it is given to few to attain the very summit of splendour which we feel in the dying Nelson's "Anchor, Hardy, anchor," or in Wolfe's earnest order with his latest breath to seize the bridge over Charles River and cut off the French retreat. Even the very hand of death upon them could not chill the loyalty of these unconquerable souls. It is but last year that a commanding officer in our North-West Indian "tumult," when mortally wounded, had himself held upon his horse, and died in the saddle directing the retreat of his surprised and hard-pressed men. Such heroism sheds about it a lustre that blinds us to all general considerations.

It is therefore not the smallest of Mr. Forteseue's merits that while giving due honour to these flashes of splendour, he recalls our attention to the solid greatness of obscurer men. He shows us that it was not Wolfe, but Amherst, with his genius fororganisation, who conquered the French in Canada. He shows us that while all of us know of the daring successes of Wive in India, it was the skill and genius of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick that occupied the French on their frontiers and prevented them from overwhelming either Clive or Wolfe in the Colonies. He tells us of forgotten British valour at Dettingen, Fontenoy, Namur, and a dozen other struggles in Flanders, that "Mars' orchestra" of Northern Europe, But there are few lands, and few centuries since the days of Harold, which do not witness to the great quali- ties of British infantry.

We need not criticise the style in which the author clothes his very laborious researches. He is well-known to the public in his fascinating Story of a Red Deer, and in his history of a noble regiment. In the present volumes his difficulty has been to compress his narrative within moderate limits, and he would have wrestled with it more successfully if he had laid before him a stricter dtfinition of his subject, and so excluded much matter which, if not positively irrele- vant, is certainly superfluous. But for all that he has given us a most useful and interesting book, and we wish him good speed in the rest of his labour.