as prime minister from 1801 to 1804, raised three battalions of Cinque Ports Volunteers. He modestly referred to them as ‘the advanced guard of the nation’, drilling them himself as their colonel commandant and expatiating, red-coated in the House, on the virtues of volunteering. There was a similar rash of part-time officer-MPs during the French invasion scare of the 1860s, and in 1869 no less than 130 had connections with the volunteer movement.
While a government could not affect a senior ranking military career, they could influence their income, being in control of the much desired government appointments. All promotion above lieutenant colonel was, until the reforms of the 1880s, wholly dependent upon seniority, and so once an officer had reached this rank even the government’s concentrated spite could not stop further ascent. But generals received no pay (getting by on the half-pay of their regimental rank) unless they were given a specific appointment, like command of troops engaged in operations or a governorship, at home or abroad. There were a good deal more such jobs than one might expect: Regency Brighton kept three generals gainfully employed. All of these posts were at the government’s disposal, as were regimental colonelcies, a useful source of income until the late nineteenth century.
George De Lacy Evans – ‘an obstreperous radical from an Irish landowning family’ – had served in the Peninsula, was present at the burning of the White House in 1814, and fought at Waterloo the following year.24 On half-pay after the war, in 1835–7 he commanded the British Legion that fought for Queen Isabella, the liberal claimant to the Spanish throne, in the first Carlist War. The British Government was anxious to help Isabella against her uncle Don Carlos but was not prepared to do so directly, although it is clear that Evans’ officers and men were ex-soldiers, most serving because of the lack of employment at home. But Evans was also an MP, sitting for Rye in 1830 and 1831–32, and then for Westminster from 1833 to 1841 and 1846 to 1865. Although the diarist Charles Greville testily described him as republican, he was impeccably radical, pro-Chartist but (like his middle-class electors, whose opinions he took very seriously) firmly opposed to political reform by force. He was passed over sixteen times for the colonelcy of a regiment, but when Horse Guards was reviewing the long list of generals to find commanders for the Crimean expedition, it settled on Evans to head the 2nd Division. His broad military experience commended him even though his political views did not, and, in the event, he proved one of the war’s most capable generals – and returned to radical politics after it.
The dukes of York and Wellington, as commanders-in-chief, did their best to consider claims to commissions, promotions and appointments on their own merits, and in 1827 Wellington told the king, ‘The principle is that the pretensions of officers to Your Majesty’s favour should be fairly considered, notwithstanding their conduct in Parliament.’ He was less scrupulous during his second term as commander-in-chief (1842–52) when ‘he made partial sacrifice of the claims of merit to those of political or party interest’, and Rowland Hill (commander-in-chief 1828–42) was, in the kindly way that had earned him the nickname ‘Daddy’, inclined to favour ‘Conservative members of Parliament, old friends, the offspring of brother soldiers and unfortunate widows, [who] all found the way open to their solicitations.’25
The abolition of the purchase in 1871 and the increasing formalisation of promotion made it harder for politics to influence an officer’s career for good or ill, though it has never wholly prevented it. While government could not stop the declining number of officer-MPs from speaking their minds in parliament, it stamped down hard on the public expression of political opinion by serving officers. Redvers Buller was one of the heroes of his generation. His VC, won in a dreadful fight with the Zulus on Hlobane mountain in 1879, was a remarkable achievement even by the high standards of that award. He was less successful commanding British troops in the Boer War, and in the mood of recrimination that followed his recall he was widely attacked. On 10 October 1901 he replied publicly to an outspoken article by Leo Amery. Both Lord Roberts, now the army’s commander-in-chief (and, no less to the point, Buller’s successor in South Africa), and the Conservative Secretary of State, St John Brodrick, had much to gain from off-loading the blame for initial failures onto Buller. For speaking without authorisation he was summarily dismissed on half-pay and denied the court martial he requested. Buller remained popular in the country at large, and when the Liberals came to power in 1905 they offered him a safe seat, which he was wise enough to decline.
The Buller affair did not stop officers from having political views, although the fate of a general with a VC and close connections to the king made them cautious about expressing them while they were serving. In 1913 it seemed likely that if the Liberal Government persisted in its plan to give Home Rule to Ireland, then Ulstermen would fight to avoid rule from Dublin. Thousands flocked to Unionist rallies, and the newly formed Ulster Volunteer Force drilled hard. Lord Roberts, outspokenly sympathetic to the Unionist cause, recommended Lieutenant General Sir George Richardson, a retired Indian Army officer, as its commander. Captain W. B. Spender, hitherto the youngest Staff College graduate, resigned his commission to serve on his staff. The North Down Regiment was commanded by a retired major general, and Richardson’s chief of staff was a former colonel. All these officers were recalled to service in 1914 when the UVF formed the bulk of 36th Ulster Division, whose service on the Western Front has left such an enduring mark on the province’s history.
It was evident that using the army to enforce Home Rule in Ireland would be fraught with difficulties, and in September 1913 the king wrote a statesmanlike letter to Prime Minister Asquith, reminding him
that ours is a voluntary army; our soldiers are none the less citizens; by birth, religion and environment they may have strong feelings on the Irish question; outside influence may be brought to bear upon them; they see distinguished retired officers already organising local forces in Ulster; they hear rumours of officers on the active list throwing up their commissions to join this force. Will it be wise, will it be fair to the sovereign as the head of the army, to subject the discipline, and indeed the loyalty of the troops, to such a strain?26
Sir John French, the CIGS, had already assured the monarch that the army ‘would as a body obey unflinchingly and without question the absolute commands of the King no matter what their personal opinion might be,’ though he added that intervention in Ulster would subject discipline to serious strain, and ‘there are a great many officers and men … who would be led to think that they were best serving their King and country either by refusing to march against the Ulstermen or openly joining their ranks.’ He concluded, though, that he would impress on all serving officers ‘the necessity for abstaining from any political controversy’.27
The so-called ‘Curragh Mutiny’ of 1914 remains instructive. It was not in fact a mutiny, and the best evidence suggests that while deployment to Ulster would have imposed a severe strain on the army’s loyalty, most officers would have obeyed unequivocal orders. Because they then required private means to serve, resignation would not have been as damaging as it would be today, when almost all officers live on pay and look forward to pensions. There remains little evidence of how the army might have behaved even if many of its officers had indeed resigned. In Francis Foljambe’s artillery brigade (then the equivalent of a regiment in any other army) all officers but one decided to go, changed into plain clothes and left command in the hands of the sergeant major and the NCOs. Non-commissioned personnel did not have the luxury of being able to send in their papers, and most had joined the army to make a living. Regiments recruited in Ireland would have been in an agonising position, and many of the Irishmen serving across the rest of the army would have found their own loyalty taxed. Most soldiers would have stayed true to their salt, and we would do well to remember that issues that generate heat in officers’ messes do not necessarily cause such dissention in barrack rooms.
Lastly, the incident occurred when Jack Seely, secretary of state for war, was a reserve officer with a reputation for personal bravery, and who knew most major players personally. The CIGS was very close to his political master and on good terms with both the Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor. Soon after French’s resignation he went off to lick his wounds with Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, aboard the
