A History of the British Army, Vol. 1

A History of the British Army, Vol. 1 - First Part—to the Close of the Seven Years' War

The civilian who attempts to write a military history is of necessity guilty of an act of presumption; and I am not blind to my own temerity in venturing to grapple with such a task as the History of the British Army. But England has waited long for a soldier to do the work; and so far no sign has been given of the willingness of any officer to undertake it beyond the publication, a few years since, of Colonel Walton's History of the British Standing Army from 1660 to 1700. Nor is this altogether surprising, for the leisure of officers is limited, the subject is a large one, and the number of those who have already toiled in the field and left the fruit of their labour to others is sadly small. A civilian may therefore, I hope, be pardoned for trying at any rate to make some beginning, however conscious of his own shortcomings and of the inevitable disadvantage from which he suffers through inexperience of military life in peace and, still more fatally, in war. His efforts may at least stimulate some one better qualified than himself to treat the subject in a manner better befitting its dignity and its worth. My design is to write the history of the Army down to the year 1870, the two present volumes carrying[vi] the story down to the Peace of Paris in 1763, and two future volumes bringing it forward to the great reforms which virtually closed the life of our old Army and opened that of a new. It would have been easy to have filled a score of volumes with matters germane to the subject and of genuine interest to at least some groups of military students; nor would such treatment have been foreign to the methods of one school of British historians. There is indeed much to be said for it from the writer's standpoint, for it simplifies his task beyond belief. To me, however, rightly or wrongly, it seemed better to gather the story if possible into a smaller compass, even at the cost of omitting many instructive statistics and picturesque details. Accordingly I have compressed the six hundred years of our military history from Hastings to Naseby into one-third that number of pages, endeavouring only to set down such points and incidents as were essential to a coherent sketch of the growth of our military system. Even after Naseby and up to the reign of Queen Anne I have dealt with the history in a like arbitrary spirit, thus passing over, not I confess without regret, the Irish campaigns of Cromwell and King William, though entering with some detail into that of Schomberg. All could not be written down, as any one can bear me witness who has attempted to go below the surface of the Great Civil War alone. The reader must decide whether I have judged well or ill in that which I have left unwritten. I must plead guilty also to deliberate omission of sundry small details which are rather of antiquarian[vii] than of true military interest, minute particulars of dress, armament and equipment and the like, the real place for which is rather in a military dictionary than in a military history. These I have sacrificed, not because I felt them to be trivial, but because I thought that the space which they demanded would be more profitably occupied by a sketch of the political relations between the Army and the country. I cannot, however, claim completeness for this sketch: and I am conscious that many questions of great constitutional importance are left unresolved, as I must frankly acknowledge, through my inability to cope with them. I have sought our acknowledged authorities on constitutional questions in vain; not one is of help. I confess that I have been amazed when reading our innumerable political histories to see how unconcernedly Army, Navy, and the whole question of National Defence are left out of account. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 55968
Author: Fortescue, J. W. (John William)
Release Date: Nov 14, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English