regular troops had orders to march from the nearest garrisons to the places appointed for the surrender of arms; but it was even as Dr Johnson was told, that the fiercest tribes were those who dwelt upon the Lowland Border; for Wade felt himself compelled to report that they did not send in their arms in such quantities as the Northern clans, or altogether withheld them.

The whole armoury that was collected, after so much trouble, diplomacy, expense, and personal risk amounted to only 2,685 weapons of all kinds, including Lochaber axes, which were stored up in the Castle of Edinburgh, Fort William, and the Barrack of Bernera. A few of the swords were of great antiquity; but General Wade concludes his report by stating to the King, that "His Majesty had paid near 13,000l. for broken and useless arms, which were hardly worth the expense of carriage; rusty by being exposed to rain, they are of little more than the value of old iron."

A force of

But the efforts on behalf of the Pretender did not end with the Earl of Mar's futile exertions. Spain, for nearly two centuries, the bitter foe of Protestant England, sympathised with the Catholic Pretender to the throne, and made preparations for assisting him by force of arms. 6.000 men, with arms for 12,000, was shipped on ten men-of-war and transports under the command of the Duke of Ormond, who had turned traitor on Marlborough's restoration to power, and declared for the Pretender. Ormond had actually accepted the appointment of Captain-General of his "Most Catholic Majesty." Troops were despatched to the North of England on the arrival of the tidings of the approaching expedition, and Contingents came from Holland and the Austrian Netherlands. Two of the frigates arrived in Scotland with noblemen in the Stuart interest, 300 Spaniards, and 2,000 stand of arms, but General Weightman advancing against them they were attacked, and the Spaniards were made prisoners. In the meanwhile a storm scattered the Fleet of the Duke of Ormond off Cape Finisterre. To counter the aggressive movement on the part of Spain, the British Government despatched Lord Cobham to Corunna with an adequate Force. He landed at Vigo, seized seven Spanish ships, and captured Vigo and San Sebastian, together with several pieces of cannon which had been prepared for the service of the Pretender. And while these operations were going forward, General Wade, with 1,000 men, attacked Port Nedra, captured 100 pieces of ordnance, 300 barrels of powder, 5,000 small arms, and a large quantity of stores. The operations under Lord Cobham were much assisted by the 34th Regiment of Foot. The Spaniards about this time made another attempt to regain possession of Gibraltar, in which they were entirely unsuccessful.

Although George I. had, during his father's lifetime, served the German Emperor at the head of 8,000 or 10,000 Hanoverians, he had no great passion for soldiership, nor any particular affection for the British Army. Beyond being present at an occasional review, he seldom troubled himself about the soldiers who had shown a loyal readiness to defend his throne from the attacks of the Pretender and his friends. This indifference led many Officers and men-besides those who had been disbanded as no longer needful-to leave the Army and seek other occupations. To add to the disgust of the men, the clothing served out to them was of a coarse and inferior character. Marlborough's Regiment, the 1st Foot Guards, positively refused to wear the under garments issued by his authority. A detachment, in passing through the city, exhibited them to the tradespeople, shouting, "These are the Hanover shirts!"

It has been unfortunate for the British Army in some respects, that, in peace time, it has been made the subject of experiments which, under the name of reforms, have produced changes without always effecting improvements in the articles of Military costume and head-dress. The commencement of the Georgian era was distinguished by some of these alterations. The long flowing wig introduced by Charles II. (in his own person it was the substitute for the magnificent tresses of which Time had robbed him with his youth), and continued in the reign of William, was now superseded by a peruke. The hair was gathered up and tied behind in the form of a long tail, which bore the name of the Ramilies Tie. The cuirasses of the Cavalry were returned to store. An alteration was made in the form of the hat, and spatterdashes came into use. But fuller mention of all these changes will be made when we come to treat of the Army costume generally in the reign of George II.

More perhaps to serve political ends than to gratify the Service, Sir Robert Walpole, the Minister, united the Order of the Bath with a regular Military order. Letters Patent were iss ied under the Great Seal on the 25th May, 1725, "not only to re-establish and support the Order of the Bath in its former lustre and dignity," but to extend its dignity to the Army. The Sovereignty of the association was vested in the Crown, and eight Officers were appointed to assist in its government; but a large proportion of the old regulations remained in force, for, on that occasion at least, Sir Robert Walpole was sufficiently conservative of ancient usages to retain that which might have been dignified and graceful in the fourteenth century, but which in the eighteenth was the shadow of a bygone age. In the reign of George I. it was inexpressibly childish to retain the practices of bathing, of vigils, and the thousand

F

and one mummeries of obsolete institutions against which the writings of Cervantes had long previously directed such a flood of ridicule as set all Europe in a roar. The sneering sceptical eighteenth century had mocked at higher and holier things than the orders of Knighthood; the wonder therefore is, that the scoffers of that period did not laugh to scorn the puerilities that then disgraced the statutes of this order, and still more strange it is that Sir Robert did not reform a code from the obligations of which he must have foreseen that it would be necessary to give each newly-created Knight a special warrant of dispensation. Thirty-eight Knights were made in 1725.

On the 11th of June, 1727, died George I., to be succeeded by the second of that name.

George II. was peculiarly acceptable to the Army, for he had proved himself a good and brave soldier at the battle of Oudenarde. 'He is wild, but he fights like a man," was predicated of him by his father. Under his rule at the very commencement indeed of the reign-the Royal Artillery was regularly organised. It was formed of four companies, each consisting of a Captain, a Captain's Lieutenant, one First and one Second Lieutenant, three Lieutenant fire-workers, three serjeants, three corporals, eight bombardiers, twenty gunners, sixty-four matrosses, and two drummers—107 in each company. To Captains and Lieutenants the same rates of pay were assigned as they receive at this day. The fireworkers had three shillings and sixpence. In form the clothing resembled that worn by the Infantry of the period. The coats were loose and long with broad cuffs laced with gold and adorned with a superfluity of heavy buttons. The skirts of the coats admitted of being folded back in front that the leg might be free in marching. Breeches and waistcoats were then in vogue, to which gaiters or spatterdashes, going above the knee, were added on parade or field duty. Three-cornered cockedhats with lace borders surmounted the heads of Officers and men. The costume of the latter only differed from that of the Officers in the quality of the cloth and the substitution of cotton for gold lace. Fusils without bayonets were the arms of the Officers; halberds and long swords with brass hilts, the weapons of the non-commissioned officers. The privates, or matrosses, bore common muskets and pouches. The gunners carried staves, longer than the halberds, with spear-heads and linstocks branching out of them at either side, and over their left shoulders hung a powder horn, the brass mountings of which were kept highly

*These appellations were continued in the Army of the East India Company to as late a date as 1822. Matross still was the name borne by the privates, as derived from the French mat-tros.

polished. A sword, similar to that of the serjeants and corporals, completed the equipment of each gunner. The cocked hats were looped up at the left side, so as to leave room for the musket or halberd at the shoulder. White cravats and clean white shirts, or shirt fronts, constituted the remainder of the costume. The colour of the coats of the Artillery was, as now, dark blue, the facings scarlet; that of the Infantry was red, the facings various. The only striking difference in the two branches of the Service beyond the colour of the uniform, was in the shape of the hat, and the quality of the arms. The conical sugar-loaf cap of black or white felt was general in the line, and all the men carried muskets with bright barrels, for browning was then unknown. They also wore short swords with basket hilts and bayonets. Everything about them was cumbrous, and to add to their discomfort, each soldier carried, attached to a belt from the right shoulder, a broad flapping cartouche box.

66

The land Forces on the accession of George II. amounted to 17,700 men, but even this small number Mr Pulteney endeavoured in the Session of 1729, to reduce to 12,000, and he was sustained in his amendment by "downright Shippen." The strength of the Minister and the Court party, if not the good sense of the House of Commons, prevailed, and the vote passed. But the opposition was renewed in subsequent Sessions, on the feeble ground that a Militia could be relied upon in time of need, and at length the Minister, annoyed that even Military men should oppose the Estimates, obtained the removal of the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham from the command of their respective Regiments. Upon this Lord Morpeth moved for a Bill to prevent the removal of any Commissioned Officer, not above the rank of a Colonel, excepting by the verdict of a CourtMartial; but as this involved a serious interference with the Royal prerogative it failed.

Sir Robert Walpole was a determined friend of peace-whether because he honestly believed that the true interests of Great Britain lay in the avoidance of foreign wars, or because, as his enemies alleged, he did not wish that the funds which he required for corrupt purposes at home, should be diverted to other objects, it is no part of the Military historian to discuss. It is sufficient to know that during ten years of his administration not a single hostile shot was fired. But at length the day arrived when the sword had to be drawn in vindication of the honour and interests of England. In 1737, complaints were made by British merchants that the Spaniards had committed grievous outrages upon their ships and property, on the pretence that the English had gathered salt on the Island of Tortugas, and cut

Let us turn from this gloomy passage in the history of the British Army to subjects of a more interesting character.

Independently of the necessity for arming the country against Spain there was a probability of other complications arising, which would tax the Military resources of the State. The occasion seemed opportune for examining the condition of the Army, and to this point the attention of the House of Lords and the public was directed by the Duke of Argyll in the Session of 1740. The Duke, disgusted with the jobbery and corruption of which the Army was made the victim by Sir Robert Walpole, threw up all the appointments which he held under the Crown, and assailed the malversations of the Minister in language as forcible as it was eloquent. Warm and impetuous by nature, and gifted with a remarkable fluency of speech, he poured forth a torrent of reprobation that was not the less effective because it was founded on truth and justice. After referring to his own experience, training, and services in the field, as giving him a title to be heard, he said that he had always been of opinion that it was necessary to keep up a body of regular troops with reference to the attitude of neighbouring nations. 'But, my Lords," said the Duke, an Army is to be admitted only for the security of the State, it should be so regulated that it might produce that result-that it may be useful without danger, and protect the people without oppressing them. To this end it is indispensably necessary that the Military subordination be invariably preserved, and discipline indiscriminately exercised without any partial indulgence in malicious severity; that every man be promoted according to his desert, and that Military merit alone give any pretension to Military preferment. To make the Army yet more useful it ought to be under the sole command of one man, exalted to the important trust by his known skill, courage, justice, and fidelity, and uncontrolled in the administration of his province by any other authority-a man enabled by his experience to distinguish the deserving, and invested with power to reward them. * It is known equally

"as

to the highest and meanest Officers that those who have most opportunities of observing Military merit have no power of rewarding it, and therefore every man endeavours to obtain other recommendations than those of his superiors in the Army, and to distinguish himself by other services than attention to his duty and obedience to his Commanders. Our Generals are only Colonels with a higher title, without power and without command; they can neither make themselves loved nor feared; and what discipline can be established by men whom those who sometimes act the farce of obedience know to be only

* *

*

phantoms of authority?

*

No man will

labour to no purpose, or undergo the fatigue of Military vigilance without an adequate motive; no man will endeavour to lessen superfluous duties and neglect the easiest road to honour and to wealth merely for the sake of encountering difficulties; and therefore no man in the Army will solicitously apply himself to the duties of his profession, of which, when he has learned them, the most accurate practice will avail him nothing. * Nothing is now considered but Parliamentary interest, nor is any subordination desired but in the Supreme Council of the Kingdom. For the establishment of this new regulation the honours of every profession are prostrated and every commission is become merely nominal. To gratify the leaders of the Ministerial party the most despicable triflers are exalted to an authority, and those whose want of understanding excludes them from any other employment, are selected for Military commissions. No sooner have they taken possession of their new command, and gratified, by some act of oppression, the wantonness of new authority, but they desert their charges, with the formality of demanding a permission to be absent, which their Commander dares not deny them. Thus, my Lords, they leave the care of the troops and the study of the rules of war to those unhappy men who have no other claim to elevation than knowledge and bravery, and who, for want of relations in Parliament, are condemned to linger out their lives at their quarters, amuse themselves with recounting their actions and sufferings in former wars, and with reading in the papers of every post the commissions which are bestowed on those who never saw a battle.

After this manner has the Army been modelled-it has known no other power than that of the Secretary - at - War, who directs its motions and fills up every vacancy without opposition and without appeal. * * * And surely no man could have made choice of such wretches as he has done for Military commands but to show that he considers

The strictures of the Duke of Argyll upon the facility with which the Officers appointed to Regiments by the Minister obtained leave of absence from their duties, were fully borne out by the indulgence shown to those who were quartered in Minorca. On the 27th of January, 1742, Lord Sandwich moved a vote of censure on the authorities who had permitted fourteen Officers out of the nineteen, constituting the total strength, to absent themselves from their duties at a serious juncture. Minorca was much exposed to an attack by France or Spain, or the States united, as its position contributed to the command of the commerce of the Mediterranean. The Duke of Argyll warmly seconded Lord Sandwich's motion, but the Minister was too powerful for his honest opponents, and when the question was put to the vote it was lost by sixty-nine to fifty-seven, a large minority for the House of Peers constituted as it then was.

himself supreme and unaccountable, for we have seen the same animals to-day cringing behind a counter and to-morrow swelling in a Military dress. We have seen boys sent from school in despair of improvement and entrusted with Military command; fools that cannot learn their duty and children that cannot perform it have been indiscriminately promoted; the dross of the nation has been swept together to compose our new Forces, and every man who was too stupid or infamous to learn or carry on a trade has been placed, by this great dispenser of honours, above the necessity of application or the reach of censure.'

The gallant Duke continued much in the same strain to denounce the gross favouritism of Sir Robert Walpole, and to show of how much injustice he had been guilty to the country as well as the Officers. In augmenting the Army very little pains had been taken to reduce the cost of the half-pay. Out of the 250 Officers on half-pay, only thirty-six had been brought on the effective strength, and to make the Minister's patronage the more extensive new Regiments had been raised when the same strength could have been obtained by simply adding to the companies of those already existing.

Lord

The Duke of Argyll's speech excited great surprise and admiration. No one but the Lord Chancellor ventured upon a reply, and he. could only use a lawyer's special pleading. Carteret was greatly struck with the boldness and truthfulness of the Duke. "Not only the present age," said his Lordship, "but posterity may possibly be indebted to the Duke of Argyll for juster notions of a Military establishment than had yet been attained by those whose profession obliges them to such inquiries."

Posterity, it must be confessed, was a long time in practically acknowledging the lessons taught by the Duke. Nearly a century elapsed before political services ceased to form the foundation of a claim to Military preferment.

The question of the best method of augmenting the land Forces was debated with some earnestness in the House of Commons. Shippen, who had made twenty-one anniversary speeches against standing Armies, fifteen of which he ingeniously admitted had never been seconded made his twenty-second and left the House. Pulteney was more rational. He contended for the augmentation by companies, not simply because it was the more economical course of procedure, but because he had been assured by 66 one of the greatest Generals of the world" that raw troops could be disciplined in a short time only by being incorporated with those who had already been taught their duty, and that with an Army so mixed, he would "think himself able to meet any Forces of the same number."

In the ensuing Session of Parliament (1741) a subject came before the House of Commons which was at first regarded as too trifling a matter for the attention of the Legislature. Its importance, however, became the more apparent as the debate proceeded a debate which lasted two days. It referred to the billeting of troops on inn-keepers, or inn-holders as they were then called. Previous Mutiny Acts had provided that soldiers should be furnished, when quartered at public-houses, with diet and beer for fourpence per diem-apparently an adequate sum in those times, but not so disproportionate to the cost of provisions then as it would be now. However, certain country innholders objected to supply the soldiers at that rate, and were equally averse to supply hay and corn for their horses for eightpence per diem. Some disturbances were threatened, and Sir W. Yonge brought under the consideration of the House of Commons the advisability of amending the law, as it was of great importance to keep up a good understanding between the people and the soldiery. After an animated discussion, and the introduction of an amendment which was not carried, Sir W. Yonge proposed that, as soldiers received but sixpence per day, they should not be charged more than fourpence for diet and small beer, but that the publicans should be allowed the alternative of supplying them with fire, candles, vinegar, salt, and five pints of beer or cider gratis if the men purchased their victuals themselves. This arrangement was agreed to. It was just to both parties, for while the inn-keeper was protected from any extraordinary loss arising from the cost of provisions in excess of what he received from the troops, the men had all the advantage of those fluctuations in the prices of bread and meat, which occasionally rendered the diurnal fourpence more than was necessary for the man's comfortable sustenance.

Events of startling importance on the Continent of Europe indicated that the policy of placing the British Army on a war footing was not altogether unsound, however anxious a profligate Minister may have been to strengthen his hands by an extension of his Military patronage.

The Emperor Charles VI. of Germany died at Vienna, and was succeeded in his hereditary dominions by his eldest daughter, the Archduchess Maria Theresa. In the year 1722, having no sons, nor any prospect of becoming the father of one, the Emperor had settled the succession on his daughter, and obtained the confirmation of the Diet and the guarantee of Great Britain, France, the States-General, and certain other Powers of Europe. This settlement was called "The Pragmatic Sanction." The title was not new. In civil law it meant the rescript of the Sovereign to some college, order, &c., which had addressed him