Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

Two methods of effecting this present themselves. In the first place, a regulation might be easily and advantageously made, in connexion with the army, whereby any nobleman, or son of a nobleman, or in fact any person belonging to the class which the law might define to be noble, (for some modification is wanted on this head,) might be allowed to attach himself as a volunteer officer to any regiment, and be bound to serve in it as such, without pay. He should receive his honorary promotion the same as any other officer, and should be subject to all the same duties and responsibilities; but "pay" he should not need; himself or his family should provide for all his charges. Or, in the second place, he should serve as an officer in a national force, the constitution of which we propose and advocate below: in this case, too, entirely without pay, and subject to all the articles of war. In either instance, we think it the duty of the country to give the nobleman an especial opportunity of serving her in a military manner; and we hold it to be his especial duty – one of the most essential duties of his order, without which his order degenerates and stultifies itself – to serve as a military man, and to serve with distinction.

We often hear it said that the English are not a military people; that they do not like an army; that they have a natural repugnance to the military profession, and other similar pieces of nonsense or untruth. Such libels as these on the innate courage of an Englishman, are never uttered but by those who have something of the calf in their hearts; the wish is father to the thought in all such declarations, when seriously made; and, if alleged as matters of argument, they are used only by the morbid lovers of la paix à tout prix who infest our age and country. It is just the same as when you hear a man say soberly, that he does not like shooting, nor hunting, nor fishing; that he cannot ride, nor drive, nor swim; that he cannot abide the country, and that he prefers a constant residence in town. Such a man is not only a useless, he is positively a noxious member of society – he is an excrescence, a deformity, a nuisance, and the sooner his company is avoided the better. Such men, however, do exist, and they do actually say such things; but they are tokens of the debased and degrading effects of over-civilisation, of social degeneracy, of national humiliation; and whenever their sentiments shall come to be approved of, or assented to, by any large portion of the people, then we may be sure that the decline and fall of the nation are at hand, and that our downward course is fairly commenced. No; the men and the nation that can, in cool blood, repudiate the noble profession of arms, forfeit the virility of their character, they may do very well for the offices that slaves, and the puny denizens of crowded cities, can alone perform; but they deserve to lose the last relics of their freedom, for thus daring to contradict one of the great moral laws of nature. Force and courage have been awarded to man like any other of his faculties and passions; they were intended to be exercised, otherwise they would not have been given: their exercise is both good and necessary; and, like their great development, War, they are destined by our Maker to be the causes and instruments of moral and physical purification and renovation. As long as the mind and body of man continue what they are, the Profession of Arms and the Science of War will be held in deserved honour among the great and good of mankind.

Great evils have no doubt resulted from their use, and more especially from their abuse; but not a whit greater than from the use and abuse of any other of the faculties and propensities of man: not so much as from the spirit of deceit and oppression, which is the concomitant of trading and manufacturing operations; not so much as from the spirit of religious fanaticism and superstition which haunts the human race; not so much as from the gluttony and sensuality of civilised nations. War and Arms are analogous to the Tempest and the Thunderbolt, but they purify more than they destroy, and they elevate more than they depress. The man that does not arm in defence of his country, of his family, and of himself, deserves to die the death of a dog, or to clank about for endless years in the fetters of a slave.

It has been well shown, by one of the most philosophic of modern historians,⁷ that the final causes of war are indissolubly united with the moral constitution of man and human society; and that, as long as man continues to be actuated by the same passions as hitherto, the same causes of war must occur over and over again in endless cycles. Not but that the pain and misery thereby caused are undoubted evils, but that evil is permitted to form part of the moral and physical system of the world; it is what constitutes that system a state of probation and moral trial for man. When evil ceases to exist, men's evil passions shall cease also, and the world shall become another Eden; but not till then. The bearing of arms and the waging of war are no disgrace to a nation; they are an honour and a blessing to it if justly exercised, a disgrace and a curse, sooner or later, if undertaken unjustly. Believing, therefore, that the proper maintenance of a warlike spirit is absolutely essential to the welfare of any nation, and knowing how much the pecuniary and political embarrassments of our mighty though heterogeneous empire cripple the public means (in appearance at least) for keeping up a sufficient military force, we proceed to throw out the following hints for the formation of an improved description of a national military force. And we may at once observe, that it is one especially calculated to fall under the direction of the nobles of the land, and to revive that portion of the feudal spirit which depends on the proper constitution of the military resources of a great people.

The military strength of this country lies at present concentrated in the regular army, in the corps of veterans styled "pensioners," and, we may very fairly add, in the "police." We have nothing to say except in praise of these three bodies of men, the two latter of which are most useful adjuncts and supporters to the former. But we not only wish that the number of the regular army were permanently and considerably increased, we could desire also that the number of the police were augmented, and that they had more of military training about them. We shall revert to one of these points, at least, at a future period. We are also of opinion that the militia of the country should always be kept up, and regularly trained even in the intervals of war, were it for no other purpose than to maintain some faint degree of military spirit and knowledge among the common people. The question of expense and of interruption to labour does not, we confess, stop us in the least in our aspirations: we think that the country pays not a farthing too much for its military and naval forces; and, as for interruption to labour, anything that would draw off the attention of the lower orders from the grinding and degrading occupations of manufacturing slavery, we should consider one of the greatest benefits that could accrue to the country.

We wish to call attention, however, to another method – by no means a new one – of augmenting the military resources of the country, and to throw out some hints for rendering that method more efficacious than it may hitherto have been deemed. We allude to the system of volunteers. And here let not our military readers laugh: we would assure our gallant friends that we are fully aware of the thousand and one objections that will be immediately started; we know how easy it is to pooh-pooh a plan of this kind all to nothing. We can already hear them calling out about the Lumber Troop, and the City Light Horse: nay, we ourselves can actually remember that most astounding and heart-stirring event of the late war, the storming of Putney, and the battle of Wimbledon Common. We were present, gallant readers, not as actors but as very juvenile spectators of that memorable combat, to which Austerlitz, Borodino, and Waterloo were mere farces; so we know all that is to be said against the volunteers. And now just have the goodness to let us say something for them.

A volunteer force, if it is to be merely a parade force, a make-believe force, is a "sham," a humbug, and a gross absurdity. If it is to be a "National Guard," playing the part of armed politicians, it is a dangerous nuisance, and ought never to be formed. If it is to consist of a crowd of pot-bellied citizens, with red noses and spectacles, who are afraid of firing off a musket, and cannot march above ten miles a day, nor go more than six hours without plenty of provisions tucked under their belts, nor sleep anywhere except between clean sheets and warm blankets – why, a set of wooden posts, sculptured into the human form, and painted to look like soldiers, would be far more serviceable. We are not going to commit the absurdity of advocating the formation of any such corps of men as these; but we wish to point out how a really efficient corps of volunteers might be raised throughout the kingdom, kept on a footing of constant service and readiness, costing the country not one farthing, and constituting a really useful and valuable auxiliary force to co-operate with the regular troops.

If these qualifications are to exist in any volunteer corps, then it is quite manifest that the following kinds of persons cannot form part of it. First of all, the whole generation of pot-bellied, red-nosed, counter-thumping fellows, alluded to above, would not be admissible; next, no man who is not endowed with a good quantity of bodily activity, health, and vigour of mind, could remain in its ranks; and further, no one need apply for admission who wanted merely to "play at soldiers," or whose means and occupations would not allow of his giving up regularly a certain portion of his best time to the service, and occasionally of absenting himself from home for even a considerable period – say of one, two, or more months, and proceeding wherever the government might wish him. Furthermore, no such corps could have the smallest pretensions to be effective, if it were left to its own guidance and command: it must be as much under the control, and at the orders, of the commander-in-chief – for home service – (for we do not contemplate the possibility of its being ordered abroad,) as any of the regular corps in her Majesty's army.

It will be seen at once, from the above stipulations, that we do not advert to anything at all resembling the loose and extremely local organisation of the old volunteers of 1805 and the subsequent years.

Now, a volunteer corps can only be held together by the two following principles: – first, a strong sense of public and patriotic duty; and, secondly, an acute feeling of Honour, and the Pride of belonging to a really distinguished arm of the service – a bona fide corps d'élite. Whenever war breaks out, we know, and we feel the most hearty satisfaction in knowing, that in every corner of the land – save, perhaps, in the murky dens of misery, discontent, and degeneracy abounding in our manufacturing towns – thousands of British hearts will beat with a tenfold warmer glow than heretofore, and will burn to give forth their best blood for the services of their country. Let but the most distant intimation of foreign invasion be given, and hundreds of thousands of brave and generous defenders of their beloved native land will instantly step forth. But we would say that, if the defence of the country from invasion be really desirable, it is not sufficient that the will to defend it be forthcoming at the proper moment – the knowledge how to do it, the preparatory training, the formation of military habits, – always a matter of slow growth, – the previous organisation of the defenders themselves, is much more important. In short, to keep the country safe from foreign invasion, (we do not allude to the naval strength of the country, which, after all, may prove abundantly sufficient for the purpose,) to take away from a foreign enemy even the spirit to dare an invasion, the previous formation, the constant maintenance of an efficient volunteer force must necessarily be of great value.

The expediency of this will be heightened by the consideration that it may, at any time, even of the most profound peace in Europe, be found necessary suddenly to detach a large portion of the regular army for the defence of our numerous colonial possessions, or that disturbances among our manufacturing population at home may require a sudden augmentation of the armed force of the country. In either of these emergencies, the existence of a considerable body of armed men who, though perhaps not equalling the regulars in precision of discipline and evolution, might yet be in far better training than the militia, and who should be kept so at no expense to the government, would evidently be of great value to the whole community.

We do not expect that many persons engaged in trade and manufactures, nor indeed that many inhabitants in large towns – at least of those classes – would like to enrol themselves in a corps the service of which would be constant, and might frequently take them away for a considerable time from their homes and occupations. We should not wish to see them joining it, for, however warm their goodwill might be, we know that their pockets and stomachs would be continually rebelling, and that, far from being "volunteers," they would more commonly be found as "deserters." We would rather see them staying at home, and acting as good members of their municipalities, or as special constables, or forming "street associations" for the keeping of the peace – all most necessary and laudable purposes, and not a whit less useful to the country than the serving as volunteers. We would rather see the force we meditate drawn exclusively from the gentry and the farmers of the country, and in fact from the same classes as now furnish the yeomanry cavalry, – only, we would have it most especially to include all the gentry of the nation: and we would have it thereby made an honour even to belong to the corps. To see a country gentleman heading his tenants, and his sons serving in their ranks, as some of themselves, and the younger gentry from the country or provincial towns also coming forward for the permanent military service of their country – coming forward as gentlemen, and serving as gentlemen, with the name and title of gentlemen – and to see the stout farmers of England, the real pride and bulwark of the realm, thus linked with their best and natural friends and protectors in a common bond of honour and of arms, would be the most glorious sight that this nation would have witnessed for many a long year. It would give a new stamp to society, and would infuse a vigorous energy of mind amongst us that should go far towards counteracting the dangerous and emasculating influence of the "large town system." The heart-blood of England would begin to flow back again into its old and natural channels; and that linking of lords and tenants, which can never be loosened without the most fatal consequences, would be rendered closer and tighter than ever.

Men drawn from such classes as these, the adult sons of respectable farmers, the sons of the country gentry, the younger gentry from the towns, the farmers and the gentry themselves, (such at least as could really be spared from their numerous avocations,) would constitute, both in their physical and mental qualifications, the very best description of volunteers that could be selected in any land, for they would be the true élite of the whole nation, the very pride and hope of the country. It would be truly an honour to belong to such a corps, whether the applicant for admission were a yeoman or a gentleman; and, if properly organised and trained, it might be made a force of paramount efficiency.

Now what would be some of the main characteristics of the men composing such a force? for by those characteristics the nature and destination of the force should be mainly guided. First of all, a large portion would be able, as now, to serve on horseback: and this leads at once to show that the yeomanry cavalry, if more frequently exercised, and if kept out for longer periods of service, might, with an improvement which we shall by-and-by suggest, become of great value in this division of the national force.

Next, men of this kind would be more or less distinguished for bodily activity – we mean activity, as distinguished from muscular strength – though of this they would have in the old proportion of one Englishman to any two Frenchmen, we have no doubt. Hence the force would be fitter for the service of light than of heavy armed troops.

And, thirdly, from their pecuniary means they would be capable of distant and rapid motion; and therefore they should form a corps destined for quick and desultory rather than for slow and stationary warfare.

From the very fact, however, of their forming a corps drawn from the middle classes of provincial and urban society, and from their having pecuniary means at their command, more than any other class of troops could possibly hope for, they would be especially liable to relax in discipline from the contamination of garrisons, or the seductions of large towns. They would be formed of the finest young fellows of the whole country; and therefore a residence at "Capua" would be destructive of their military efficiency. The damage they would reciprocally cause and sustain by being quartered in any large town for a lengthened period, might be great; hence they should be confined as much as possible to – where they would be most effective – operations in the open field.

Again, if there are any two points of manly exercise in which the gentry and yeomanry of this country are distinguished beyond any other European nation, they are these – the being good marksmen, and good horsemen.

We are thus naturally led to the determining of the exact description of troops which should be constituted with such admirable materials —a vast body of riflemen– some mounted, the others on foot. Such a corps, or rather such an assemblage of corps, if properly organised and trained, would not have its equal in the world. It would be formed of the choicest spirits, the picked men of the nation, and it would be organised upon the very points, as bases, upon which those men would the most pride themselves, in which they would be the strongest, which they would be the most accustomed to, and would the best understand. They would have all the elements of good soldiers among them; all that would be wanting would be good organisation and training.

"This is no great discovery," some one will say; "there have been volunteer rifle corps already. Of late days they started a thing of the kind among the peaceable Glasgow bodies, and those treasonable asses, the Irish. Irishmen that wanted to be rebels, and the English Chartists that wanted to sack London, recommended their deluded countrymen to 'club together and buy rifles.'" We acknowledge it – the idea is old enough. We only mean to say, that if a volunteer force be a desirable adjunct to our military system – and, under certain regulations, it might no doubt become so – then a rifle corps, or rather an army of volunteer riflemen, drawn from the classes specified above, would constitute a most effective branch of the service. We make no pretensions to the starting of a new idea; we merely endeavour to render that idea practicable, and to point out how it may be best realised.

The following points as to organisation we lay down as indispensable, without which we should hardly care to see the force enrolled: —

1st, The only matter in which the volunteer spirit should subsist, should be that of joining the corps in the first instance, and then of equipping and maintaining the men, each at their own cost. Once enrolled, it should no longer be at the option of the men whether they served or not – nor when, nor where, nor how they served: we mean the force not to be a sham one; we do not want soldiers in joke, we require them to come forward in good earnest. All matters concerning the time, place, and mode of their service should lie with the government. Once enrolled and trained, they should be at her Majesty's disposal; they should be her bonâ fide soldiers, only not drawing pay, nor, except under certain circumstances, rations.

2d, The corps should be raised by counties, hundreds, and parishes, and should be under the colonelcies of the Lords-Lieutenants or their deputies. To keep up the esprit de corps conjointly with the spirit of local association and public patriotism, it is essential that friends and neighbours, lords and tenants, should stand side by side, fight in the same ranks, witness each other's brave deeds, and, in every sense of the word, "put shoulder to shoulder." The several counties might each furnish a regiment, and these regiments should then be brigaded under the command of a general officer, appointed by the commander-in-chief of her Majesty's forces. In the first instance, at least, it would be desirable that a certain proportion of the officers should be drawn from the half-pay list of the army, both for the sake of instruction and example. Afterwards they should be taken from the ranks, for the ranks in this corps would be, by the mere fact of their organisation, composed of gentlemen and the best description of yeomen – the latter, be it ever remembered, not unworthy to lead their friends and neighbours; and the mode of so doing might be easily arranged by the military authorities, on the combined footing of local influence and personal merit.

3d, These corps, when organised, should be primarily intended for the local defence of their several counties, or of any adjacent military districts, into which the country might, from time to time, be divided. But they should also be liable to serve, to the same extent as the militia, anywhere within the European dominions of Her Majesty. We do not contemplate the eventuality of their being ordered on foreign service, though we strongly suspect that it would be very difficult to keep such a corps always at home, when stirring scenes of national arms and glory were to be met with away from their own shores. If, however, the corps should be called on to do duty away from their own military districts, then they should draw rations, clothes, equipments, and ammunition, but not pay, the same as the regular troops.

4th, As it should be esteemed an honour to belong to such a corps, so the members of it should not only be exempt from being drawn for the militia, but they should also be free from paying for a license to carry firearms and to shoot as sportsmen; and the cost of their equipment should be such as to insure a certain degree of respectability on the part of the volunteer. This preliminary expense, added to that of maintaining himself on duty at his own cost, would prevent any one but a man of a certain degree of substance from seeking admission into the corps.

5thly, The acquisition of sufficient skill in the use of that deadliest of all arms, the rifle, might be made by means of local meetings to practise, at which heavy fines for non-attendance would not only insure tolerable regularity, but would also provide a fund for prizes, and for general purposes. At these meetings, which should be held frequently, the knowledge of military evolutions, and the minutiæ of drill might be readily communicated by the non-commissioned officers of the pensioners' corps; and, from the circumstance of the men not being mere clods from the plough tail, nor weavers from the loom, the requisite amount of instruction would be conveyed in a comparatively short time. We should suppose that, within six months from their first organisation, if the discipline was well attended to, such corps might be able to stand a field-day before their general officers. The cavalry would not learn their duties so readily as the infantry, because the men would have to teach not themselves alone, but also their horses; and, though they would form a most effective and valuable species of light cavalry, the combined practice of the rifle and the sabre would demand a considerable time for the corps to be quite at home with their duties. We would give them a year to make themselves complete. A volunteer force of cavalry should never aim at being anything else than a corps of light horse – they can never constitute effective heavy cavalry. But as light horsemen possessing rifles, and able to use them whether in the saddle or on the ground, they would become as formidable to a European enemy as the African Arabs have been to the French, and would be a match for any light cavalry that could be brought to act against them. For all purposes, too, of local service they would be admirably efficient.

6thly, The discipline of a volunteer corps is always the main difficulty to be contended against in its practical management; but we conceive that this difficulty would be lessened, in the present instance, from the peculiarly good composition of the rank and file of such a body of men. Several large classes of military offences could not possibly prevail among them; and, for those that remained, the ordinary articles of war would be sufficiently repressive. It should be observed that we do not contemplate the granting leave to such corps to disband themselves: the engagement once formed should be binding for a certain moderate number of years, and the volunteer should not have the faculty of releasing himself from his duties except by becoming invalided. We imagine that the possibility of being ultimately dismissed from such an honourable body of men, for ungentlemanlike conduct, would constitute the most effectual check that could be devised for the instances of breach of discipline likely to occur.

It should not be lost sight of that we advocate the formation of such a force as a corps d'élite, as one elevated above the militia, and even above the regular army, in the morale of the men composing it, if not in their physique; and therefore it may be very fairly inferred that the members of it, feeling the prestige attached to their name, would act up to the dignity and honour of their station; that they would not only behave as valiant soldiers in the field, but that they would act as gentlemen in quarters. Drinking and gambling would be the two main offences to provide against; but these, if discouraged, and not practised by the officers, might be checked among the men. For all quarrels and disputes likely to end in personal encounter, a special tribunal of arbiters should be constituted among men and officers of corresponding rank in the corps; and all duelling should be totally prevented. The mere fact of sending or accepting a challenge should involve, ipso facto, expulsion from the corps. The running into debt, too, on the part of the members, should be most rigorously prevented, and should incur the penalty of expulsion. By these and similar regulations, combined with the judicious management of the superior officers, we have no doubt that the discipline of such a body, (which should be strict rather than lenient,) might be effectually maintained.

7thly, The arming and equipping of such a corps of men is a point of importance, but by no means of difficulty. We may here disappoint some of our pseudo-military readers; but we anticipate that the real soldiers will agree with us, when we declare our conviction that a military costume – we do not say a uniform costume – but a military one, would be altogether out of character and needless in such a case. No: we would not have any of the smart shakos, and tight little green jackets of the rifle brigade; no plumes nor feathers; no trailing sabres for the officers, no cartouche boxes for the men – nothing at all of the kind. We would put them all in uniform, but not in a uniform of that nature – it should be one suited to the wearers, and to the nature of their service.

Now the original intent and object of all uniform costume is, not the ornamenting of the person; it is not the dressing of a young fellow, until he becomes so handsome that the first woman he meets is ready to surrender at discretion to him. It is not the uniform that makes the soldier; it should be the soldier that should make the uniform; that is to say, the kind of dress should be dictated both by the usual habits and rank of the wearer, and by the service he is called on to perform. Add to this that, provided the men all wear the same costume, no matter what it may be, the great end of military costume, the holding the men in distinct and united corps, is attained. The uniform does not make a man fight a bit the better or worse: it is only for the sake of evolutions and discipline that any uniform at all is needed.

We would therefore recommend the keeping in view of two principles, in selecting the uniform of such corps; viz., utility and simplicity. What are the duties a rifleman has to perform? Any man who ever went deerstalking, any one who is accustomed to beat up the woods and covers for cocks or pheasants, knows nine-tenths of a rifleman's duties. His game is the enemy: whether he be a tall stag or a Frenchman, it is all the same; a steady aim and a quick finger will do the job for him. And now, dear reader, or gallant volunteer, or old fellow-shot, if you were invited to go a-gunning, whether after stags, cocks, or men, how would you like, if left to your own free choice, apart from all military nonsense – how would you like to equip yourself? We know how we used to go together over the Inverness-shire hills, and we know how we now go through the Herefordshire preserves, and how we sometimes wander over the Yorkshire moors; and it is just so that we should like to turn out. You know the dress; we need hardly describe it: everybody knows it; everybody has worn it. Just such a dress, then, as the volunteers would wear at home in their field-sports and occupations, the very same, or one of the same kind, would we recommend for their service as volunteer riflemen.