Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Despite its seminal importance to the expansion and maintenance of the British empire in the eighteenth century, the army chronically suffered from popular dislike and government neglect. The public viewed the common soldier as drunken, unreliable, prone to crime (particularly petty theft), a threat to individual liberty, property and women, and the tool of overweening monarchs. Essentially, a small, professional force composed of long-service volunteer enlistees, the army proved surprisingly effective despite the chronic lack of funds, low pay and social standing of the soldiers and the amateurishness of their officers. Despite its limitations, the eighteenth-century British army performed as well as or better than its adversaries. Typically, it suffered at the outbreak of hostilities from peacetime neglect and low funding, but with few exceptions (the prime example being the American War of Independence), it generally emerged victorious. A German observer commented (in 1748) that British soldiers possessed ‘an unquenchable spirit, great stubbornness in defence, [and] bravery amounting to recklessness in the attack [but were] difficult to discipline, quarrelsome in quarters, [and] haughty in their attitude to other troops’. Following the Restoration of 1660, the standing forces in England lacked constitutional legitimacy, and simply existed as a department of the royal household. ... log in or subscribe to read full text