Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels

On the English Military System

["Neue Oder-Zeitung" No. 11, 8 January 1855]

London, 5 January. Who is responsible for the condition of the English army in the Crimea? A glance at the remarkable machinery of the war administration will show that responsibility is so skilfully distributed among the various authorities that it grazes each but clings to none. The entire British army has at its head a "Commander-in-Chief", a supreme commander, a sort of Constable, a person who has been abolished in almost all other civilised armies. From the Horse Guards – so called because the office of this supreme commander is situated in the Horse Guards barracks – almost all military appointments emanate. It would however be a mistake to suppose that this Commander-in-Chief actually has anything to command. If he possesses some control over the infantry and cavalry, the artillery, engineers, sappers and miners lie entirely outside the sphere of his influence. If he exercises some overlordship over trousers, coats and neck-stocks, his influence falls short at all greatcoats. He may determine how many cartridges each infantryman is to carry, but he cannot provide him with a single musket. He may bring all his men before a court-martial and have them soundly flogged, but he cannot set them in motion, not even by an inch. Marching lies outside his competence, and as for the subsistence of his troops, that is a matter which does not concern him at all. Next comes the
"Master-General of the Ordnance",
the Master-General of the Ordnance. This person is a sad relic of times when science appeared unworthy of the soldier and all scientific corps such as artillery and engineers did not consist of soldiers but formed a sort of indescribable body, half scholars, half handicraftsmen, united in a special guild or corporation

under the command of the Master-General. This Master-General of the Ordnance has, besides the artillery and the engineers, all greatcoats and small arms of the entire army under him. Without him, therefore, no military operation of any kind can take place. His participation is indispensable. Next in the series is the
"Secretary at War",
the War Minister, although again not the real War Minister, but rather the representative of the War Office in the House of Commons, yet a thoroughly independent authority. This War Minister can give no order to any part of the army, but he can prevent every part of the army from doing anything. As he is the chief of the military finances and as every military act costs money, his refusal to advance capital would be tantamount to an absolute veto against all operations. But however willing he may be to open his cash-box, he remains incapable of setting the army in motion, because he cannot feed it. That goes beyond his sphere. The authority which feeds the army and, in the event of a march, has to provide it with the means of transport, the
Commissariat,
is under the control of the Treasury. Thus the Prime Minister – the First Lord of the Treasury – has his hand directly in every military operation and can accelerate, delay or bring it to a standstill at his discretion. Everyone knows that the Commissariat in an army is quite as important as the soldiers themselves, and precisely for that reason the collective wisdom of Old England has thought fit to make the Commissariat wholly independent of the army and to place it under the control of an essentially anti-warlike department. But who, in the end, sets the army in motion? Formerly the Colonial Secretary, now the Minister for War, the nominal head of the War Office. He orders the troops from England to China and from India to Canada. But taken by itself his authority is just as powerless as that of the four preceding military authorities, inasmuch as the co-operation of all five is required to produce even the most insignificant movement. Each of these five powers has its own bureaucracy with its own routine, and each acts on its own responsibility.

The
origin
of this system obviously rests upon constitutional precautionary measures against the standing army. Instead of a
division of labour
that would give the army the greatest impetus,
a division of powers
that reduces its capacity for movement to a minimum. But the system was kept in place by no means out of parliamentary or constitutional scruples, but because oligarchic influence would at the same time, in this field at least, be broken

by a timely reform of the military administration. In the previous parliamentary session the ministers refused to allow any innovation, except the separation of the War and Colonial departments. Wellington stubbornly upheld the system from 1815 until his death, although he knew perfectly well that under this system he would never have brought the Peninsular War to a successful conclusion had not his brother, the Marquis of Wellesley, happened to be sitting in the ministry. In 1832 and 1836, before the committees which Parliament set up for the reform of the old system, Wellington defended the old one in its entirety. Was he afraid of making fame easier for his successors?

["Neue Oder-Zeitung" No. 13, 9 January 1855]

London, 6 January. We have become acquainted with the system of the English war administration under whose auspices the present war broke out. Hardly had the troops landed at their first station, at Gallipoli, when a comparison with the French army at once betrayed the subordinate character of the English arrangements and the helplessness of the English officers and officials. And here the task was comparatively easy. The arrival of the troops had long been announced beforehand, and the number of those disembarked was small. Nevertheless
everything
went wrong. Ship-loads rotted on the beach where they were first landed; want of space made it necessary to send troops to Scutari, etc. etc. Chaos announced itself in unmistakable signs, but as it was the beginning of the war, improvement was hoped for from growing experience. The troops now came

to Varna. Their distance from home increased, their numbers increased, the disorder in the administration increased. The independent working of the five departments that make up the administration – each responsible to a different ministry at home – produced the inevitable collisions. Want prevailed in the camp, while the garrison at Varna enjoyed all comforts. The Commissariat, most dilatorily, scraped together some means of transport from the neighbourhood; but since the commanding general provided these waggons with no escort, the Bulgarian carters vanished more quickly than they had been assembled. A central depot was now formed at Constantinople, a sort of first base of operations. It served only to create a new centre for difficulties, delays, questions of competence, squabbles between the army, the Ordnance, the paymasters, the Commissariat and the War Office. Meanwhile, at Gallipoli, Scutari and Varna, the army was still more or less in a peacetime condition. It was only in the Crimea that the British administration received full opportunity to develop its talent for disorganisation in all its magnitude. In fact! Of more than 60,000 men sent to the East since last February, no more than 17,000 are still fit for duty. Of these, 60 or 80 die daily and some 200 to 250 are placed out of service every day through sickness, while only rarely does one return from the hospital. And of the 43,000 dead or wounded, the Russians have not yet even 7,000 on their conscience!

When it was first reported to England that the army in the Crimea was lacking food, clothing, shelter, that neither medical nor surgical stores were available, that the sick and wounded had to lie either on the cold wet ground, exposed to the elements, or crowded together on ships’ decks, without attendance or the first requisites for healing; when it was reported that hundreds were dying from want of the first necessities, everyone believed that the government had neglected to send the necessary supplies to the theatre of war. It was confirmed, to be sure, that this suspicion had not been unfounded for the initial period. Later, however, it turned out that everything possible had been shipped, in part far in excess of requirements, but unfortunately everything always arrived at the wrong place and at the wrong time. The medical stores lay at Varna and left the wounded in the Crimea or at Scutari. Clothing and victuals arrived in sight of the Crimea, but no one was there to land them. What was landed by chance could quietly rot on the beach. The necessary co-operation of the navy introduced a new element of discord,

a new responsibility that likewise demanded a hearing in the camp of Agramante. Incapacity, shielded by the
rules
of peacetime routine, reigned absolutely. In one of the richest tracts of Europe, on a coast under whose shelter hundreds of transport ships, laden with stores, lay at anchor, the British army lived on half rations. Surrounded by countless herds of cattle, it suffered from scurvy because restricted to salt meat. With masses of wood and coal on the ships, they had so little of it on dry land that they had to eat the meat
raw
and could never dry the clothes that the rain had soaked through. When coffee arrived, it was not only unground, but also
unroasted
. There were masses of provisions, of beverages, of articles of clothing, of tents, stowed away in the ships whose quantity almost touched the tops of the cliffs on which the camp is pitched; and yet, like Tantalus, the British troops could not lay hold of them. Everyone felt the evil, everyone ran about cursing and denounced everyone for breach of duty. But everyone also had his own bundle of regulations, carefully drawn up, sanctioned by the competent authority and clearly showing that what had to be done was no part
of his purview
and that he, for his part, had no authority to set things right. Add now to this state of affairs the increasing harshness of the weather; the torrents of rain, whose season is only just beginning, to turn the whole Heraclean Chersonese into an uninterrupted pool of filth, into a mass of mud more than knee-deep; the soldiers at least two out of four nights in the trenches, while the other two they sleep, soaked and besmirched, on the morass, without boards beneath them, hardly with tents above them; the incessant sounding of the alarm; cramps, diarrhoea, etc., caused by the wet, cold, etc.; the dispersal of the from the start too weak medical staff over the army camp; the hospital tents with 3,000 sick, lying almost in the open air and on the damp ground; the hospital ships and the hospitals at Scutari and Constantinople – and one will easily comprehend that the British army in the Crimea is in a state of complete dissolution and that the soldiers welcome the Russian bullet that frees them from all these miseries.

In the "New-York Daily Tribune" No. 4293 of January 22, 1855, the final paragraph reads: "Finally, we must examine who is the founder and preserver of this excellent administrative system. No one other than the Duke of Wellington. He adhered to every one of its details, as if he were personally interested in making it as difficult as possible for his successors, who rival him in martial glory. Wellington, a man of extraordinarily sound common sense, yet by no means a genius, was all the more conscious of his own inadequacy in this regard, inasmuch as he was the contemporary and adversary of the mighty genius Napoleon. Wellington was therefore full of envy of the successes of others. His meanness in disparaging the merits of his helpers and allies is well known. He never forgave Blücher for having saved him at Waterloo. Wellington knew very well that he would never have brought the Spanish war to a successful conclusion, had his brother not been a minister during that time. Did Wellington fear that future heroic deeds would cast him into the shade, and did he therefore retain this machinery in its full extent, because it is so well suited to shackle generals and ruin armies?"