If the war in the East is good for nothing else it will at least 
demolish a portion of the military renown of the late Duke of 
Wellington. Whoever knew England during the lifetime of this | 
much over-estimated. General, will recollect that it was considered 
an insult to the British nation to speak even of Napoleon as of a 
soldier approaching in any way the invincible Iron Duke. This 
glorious Duke is now dead and buried, after having had the 
command of the British army, at least virtually, for the last forty 
years. Never was a man more independent or irresponsible in the 
exercise of command. The “Duke” was an. authority above all 
authorities, neither king nor queen* daring to contradict him in 
professional matters. Well, after enjoying many a year of those 
honors and comforts which usually fall to the lot of happy 
mediocrity, and which so strongly contrast with the tragic 
revulsions generally belonging to the career of genius— Napoleon 
for instance—the Iron Duke died, and the command of the 
British army fell into other hands. About eighteen months after 
his death, the British army is called upon to enter on a campaign 
against the Russians, and before the first regiment is ready to 
embark, it is found that the Iron Duke has left the army in a state 
entirely unfit for active service. 

The “Duke,” in spite of his generally sound English sense, had 
but a small and narrow mind in many respects. The unfairness 
with which he habitually alluded to the part his German allies bore 
in the decision of the struggle at Waterloo, taking to himself all 
the credit of a victory which would have been a defeat but for the 
timely appearance of Blucher, is well known. The pettishness with 

which he stuck to all abuses and absurdities in the English army, 
replying to all criticism: “Those abuses and absurdities made us 
victorious in Spain and Portugal’—perfectly agrees with his 
conservative notion that a certain degree of traditional absurdity 
and corruption was essential to a proper working of the 
“demonstrably best” of Constitutions. But while in politics he 
knew how to give way upon important points in critical moments, 
in military matters he clung all the more stubbornly to antiquated 
notions and traditional Tory fooleries. There was not one single 
important improvement introduced into the British army during 
his lifetime, unless it was in the purely technical department of the 
artillery. Here it was simply impossible that the rapid progress of 
manufacturing industry and mechanical science should have been 
left entirely unnoticed. The consequence is, that though the 
British army has the best artillery material in existence, the 
organization of that artillery is as clumsy as that of the other arms; 
and that in the dress, general armament, and organization of the 
British forces there is not a single item in which it is not inferior 
to any civilized army in Europe. 

I must again call the attention of your readers to the fact that 
the direction of military affairs is not confided, as in other 
countries, to a single branch of the administration.* There are four 
departments, each clashing with and independent of the other. 
There is the Secretary of War, a mere paymaster and accountant. 
There is the Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards,'*? who has 
the infantry and cavalry under him. There is the Master-General 
of the Ordnance, who commands the Artillery Engineers, and is 
supposed to have the general direction of the materiel of the army. 
Then there is the Colonial Secretary, who apportions the troops to 
the various foreign possessions, and regulates the distribution of 
war-material to each. Beside these, there is the Commissariat 
Department; and lastly, for the troops in India, the Commander- 
in-Chief of the Army in that empire. It is only since the death of 
Wellington that the absurdity of such an arrangement has been 
publicly alluded to, the report of the Parliamentary Committee of 
1837 having been superseded by the Duke’s authority. Now that 
war has begun, its inefficiency is felt everywhere; but change is 
deprecated as being liable to upset all possibility of order and 
regularity in the transaction of the business. 

As an instance of the confusion created by this system, I 
mentioned, on a former occasion, that there are hardly two articles 

for which a regiment is not obliged to apply to different and 
independent administrations. The clothing is supplied by the 
Colonel, but the great-coats by the Ordnance; the belts and 
knapsacks by the Horse Guards; but the fire-arms again by the 
Ordnance. On any foreign station, military officers, ordnance 
officers, storekeepers and commissariat employers are all more or 
less independent of each other, and responsible to distinct and 
independent boards at home. Then there is the nuisance of the 
“clothing colonels.” Every regiment has a titular colonel, a general 
officer, whose duty it is to pocket a certain government allowance 
for clothing his regiment, and to spend a portion only for the 
purpose. The balance is considered as his wages for the trouble. 

There is the sale of commissions, which puts all the higher posts 
in the army at the almost exclusive disposal of the aristocracy. 
After a few years’ service in the capacity of lieutenant, captain, 
and major, an officer is entitled, on the first vacancy occurring, to 
buy up the next rank which becomes vacant, unless there should 
be an officer of the same rank, and of older standing, inclined to 
anticipate him. The consequence is, that a man with ready money 
can advance very rapidly, as many of his seniors have not the 
means to buy the vacancy as soon as it occurs. It is clear that such 
a system greatly narrows the class of useful men from which the 
corps of officers is recruited, and the advancement or active 
employment of general officers being subject almost exclusively to 
seniority or aristocratic connection, the circle from which these are 
drawn must necessarily exclude a large mass of talent and 
knowledge from the higher commands. It is, no doubt, attributa- 
ble to this system chiefly that the mass of British officers are so 
lamentably deficient in the general and more theoretical branches 
of military science. 

The number of officers is disproportionately large for that of 
the men. Gold lace and epaulettes abound in a British regiment to 
an extent unknown anywhere else. Consequently, the officers have 
nothing to do, and their esprit de corps hardly admitting of any 
degree of study, they pass their time in all sorts of extravagant 
amusements, trusting that if it comes to fight, native bravery and 
“Her Majesty’s regulations” will be quite sufficient to carry them 
through all difficulties. Yet when the Chobham camp’ was 
formed, the helplessness of very many of the officers was 
conspicuous enough to anybody who could judge a little better of 
the maneuvers than the poor enthusiastic penny-a-liners who, with 
true cockney spirit, admired everything in the strange spectacle 
which they saw for the first time of their lives. 

The drill regulations and system of exercise are of the most 
old-fashioned character. The maneuvering is exceedingly clumsy, 
all the movements being complicated, slow, and pedantic. The old 
system of movements in line, which has been maintained in the 
British longer than in the Austrian army, as the grand form of all 
tactical maneuvers, has a few well-known advantages where the 
ground allows of its application; but there is more than one way to 
counterbalance this, and above all it is applicable under very 
exceptional circumstances only. The system of evolutions in 
column, especially in small columns of companies, as introduced 
into the best regulated continental armies, insures a far grea- 
ter mobility and an equally rapid formation of lines when re- 
quired. 

The armament of the British soldier is of good material and 
capital workmanship, but disfigured in many cases by old- 
fashioned regulations. The old muskets of smooth bore are well 
made, of large caliber, but rather more heavy than is necessary. 
The old Brunswick rifle was good of its kind, but has been 
superseded by better arms. The recently introduced Pritchett rifle, 
considered an improvement upon the French Minié rifles, appears 
to be a capital weapon, but it has only been after a hard struggle 
that this arm has been forced upon the authorities. As it is, it is 
very irregularly and unsystematically introduced; one-half of a 
regiment carries muskets, and the other half rifles, thereby 
deranging the whole armament. The swords of the cavalry are 
good, of a better shape for thrust and sharp edge blows than those 
of Continental armies. The horses are also first-rate, but the men 
and equipments are too heavy. The materiel of the field artillery is 
the best in the world, admirably simplified in some respects, but 
indulging in too great a variety of calibers and guns of different 
weight, by which different charges of powder are necessitated. 

The dress, on the contrary, and the general accoutrement of the 
British soldier is the greatest nuisance in existence. A high, tight, 
stiff stock round the neck; a shabby-looking, close-fitting coatee 
with swallow-tails, badly cut and uncomfortable; tight trousers; 
disgraceful looking great-coats; an ugly cap, or shako; a system 
of strapping and belting, of carrying ammunition and knapsack, 
the like of which even the Prussians cannot show—all this has 
been of late the theme of so many newspaper comments that a 
mere allusion to it is sufficient. Besides the almost intentional 
discomfort of the dress, it must not be forgotten that the British 
soldier carries a far heavier weight than any other in the world; 
and, as if to make mobility the ruling principle of the army, it has 

a far more considerable train of impediments dragging along with it 
than any other. The clumsiness of the commissariat arrangements 
contributes a great deal to this, but even the regimental train, and 
particularly the great amount of officers’ luggage, surpasses 
anything known out of Turkey and India. 

Now see how this army managed when the troops reached 
Turkey. The French soldiers, having permanently incorporated 
into their army system all the arrangements found to be of 
practical utility in their Algerian campaigns, had no sooner landed 
than they made themselves comfortable. They carried everything 
with them which they wanted, little as it was, and whatever was 
deficient was soon supplied by the inborn ingenuity of the French 
soldier. Even under the joint-stock swindling Administration of 
Louis Bonaparte and Saint-Arnaud, the system was found to work 
smoothly enough. But the English! They came to Gallipoli before 
their commissariat stores had arrived; they came in numbers four 
times greater than could encamp; there were no preparations for 
disembarking, no portable ovens for baking, no properly responsi- 
ble administration. Orders and counter-orders succeeded each 
other, clashing most fearfully, or rather ludicrously. There was 
many an old sergeant or corporal who had made _ himself 
comfortable in the Kaffir Bush, or in the burning plains of the 
Indus; but here he was helpless. The improved arrangements, 
which each foreign commander on a campaign might have 
introduced, were made for the duration of the campaign only; the 
different regiments once separated Her Majesty’s old-fashioned 
regulations were again the only rule, and the administrative 
experience of the campaign was totally lost. 

Such 1s the glorious system to which the Iron Duke stuck with 
iron tenacity, and which was necessarily the best, because with it 
he had beaten Napoleon’s generals in the Peninsula. The British 
soldier, when strapped in his leather cuirasse, with 60 or 70 
pounds weight to carry over the steppes of Bulgaria, creeping 
along under occasional attacks of ague, badly supplied by 
neglectful and unbusinesslike commissariat officers, may well be 
proud of his glorious Iron Duke, who has prepared all these 
benefits for him. 

The mischievous results cteaially flowing from the Duke’s 
traditionary routine are still aggravated by the oligarchic character 
of the English Administration, which intrusts the most important 
offices to men who, although their parliamentary support may be 
needed by the set of place-hunters just in power, are altogether 
destitute even of elementary professional knowledge and fitness. 

Take for instance Mr. Bernal Osborne, the Coalition Clerk of 
Ordnance.'** Mr. Bernal Osborne’s nomination was a concession 
made to the Mayfair Radicals,'*’ represented in the ministry by Sir 
W. Molesworth, the “humble” editor of Hobbes. Mr. Bernal 
Osborne 

“Pecks up wit, as pigeons peas, 

And utters it again when Jove doth please: 

He is wit’s pedlar; and retails his wares 

At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs.”’* 

But although a small trader in stale jokes, Mr. Bernal Osborne 
is hardly competent to distinguish a common musket from a Minié 
rifle, and, nevertheless, he is Her Majesty’s Parliamentary Clerk 
of Ordnance. 

Your readers will remember that some time ago he applied to 
Parliament for a grant of money to enable the Board of Ordnance 
to manufacture all the small arms required for the army and navy. 
He asserted that in the United States of America, Government 
manufactories supplied the arms at a cheaper rate than could be 
done by private industry, and that on several occasions serious 
difficulties had arisen from the contractors failing to deliver the 
arms at the time agreed upon. 

The vote of the House was, however, postponed on the motion 
of M.Muntz, to appoint a Select Committee “to inquire as to the 
cheapest, the most expeditious, and the most sufficient mode of 
obtaining fire-arms for Her Majesty’s service.” The report of this 
Committee is now before the public,” and what are the conclusions 
it has come to? That the private manufacturers had failed to 
supply the arms at the time contracted for, 

“because of the vexatious manner of the view of their work, as required by the 
Board of Ordnance, and its habit of employing different contractors for each 
individual part of the numerous pieces which compose a musket.” 

The report states further that 

“the Board of Ordnance had scarcely any knowledge of either the price at 
which muskets were made in America, or the extent to which machinery was used 
in their manufacture, and had never seen any fire-arms which had been made at 
any of the Government manufactories of that country.” 

Finally, we learn from the report that 

“from the manufactory the Government intended to build, not a musket could 
be issued for eighteen months.” 

These extracts from the Parliamentary Report may suffice to 
characterize the professional abilities of Mr. Osborne, the Coali- 
tion’s own Clerk of Ordnance. Ex ungue leonem, 

Written on May 25, 1854 Reproduced from the New-York