Friedrich Engels

The Volunteer Generals

Written in the first half of March 1861.

From the English.

["The Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire," No. 28, March 16, 1861]

One thing the Volunteer movement lacks, and that is fair and judicious, but open and outspoken criticism by competent outsiders. The Volunteers are to such an extent the darlings of the public and the press that criticism became an absolute impossibility. Nobody would have listened to it; everyone would have regarded it as unfair, unfriendly and ill-timed. The shortcomings in the Volunteers’ performances were almost always passed over in silence, while each corps was lauded to the skies for everything it did tolerably well. People’s courtesy was drawn upon very heavily, with every allowance made for impartiality. Everywhere they had to give their opinion on some Volunteer matter or other, and unless they were prepared to utter the most exaggerated and misplaced praise, they might count themselves lucky if they got away with being considered conceited snobs. How often the Volunteers have been harmed by the foolish flattery that they are capable of fighting against any troops in the world! How often they have been told that no division of the line could have done better what they showed at Hyde Park, Edinburgh, Newton or Knowsley!

Leaving aside such absurd flattery, which would have been ridiculous at all times, we would say that the Volunteers should be given an opportunity of being tested before a fair judgment is passed on their efficiency. But that time is long past. If the Volunteer movement, after almost two years of existence, cannot yet bear criticism, it will never be able to bear it. The great reviews of last summer mark, in our opinion, the period when the movement passed from childhood to adolescence; by means of these reviews the Volunteers have now themselves challenged criticism; and yet this criticism was – with one or two exceptions – not exercised publicly by those whose duty it would have been.

The effects – both of the absence of honest and outspoken criticism and of the exaggerated flattery – are now visible enough. There will hardly be a Volunteer corps that has been in existence for eighteen months which is not quietly convinced that it is as good as could possibly be required. The men, having gone through the simplest battalion movements, the routine work of skirmishing on level ground, and a little rifle shooting, will be only too inclined to assume that they can do all these things just as well as the line troops; and what the officers think of themselves was shown by the scramble for promotion to captain, major, and lieutenant-colonel which took place in almost every corps. Everybody felt himself fully fit for any officer’s rank he could obtain, and in the majority of cases it was certainly no merit of his if the man advanced; one need not be surprised that in quite a number of cases we have anything but the right man in the right place. Officers and men believed so firmly in what a well-meaning press and public were pleased to call perfection of performance that they began to consider soldiering an exceptionally easy matter; and it is a wonder that their own upstart perfection did not make them believe that a standing army of long-trained officers and soldiers was altogether superfluous in a country where perfect soldiers could be produced far more easily on the Volunteer basis.

The first clear proof of how the movement was harmed by its supporters in the press was the sham fight last summer in London. Some enterprising Volunteer colonels thought the time had come to give their men a foretaste of what fighting actually means. Naturally, the wiseacres among the regulars shook their heads, but that was of no consequence whatever. These regulars were ill-disposed towards the Volunteer movement, they were jealous of it, the success of the Hyde Park review almost drove them mad; they feared the sham fight would turn out better than anything the line had ever achieved in that direction, etc. Had not the Volunteers been through the rifle drill, the platoon training, the battalion training, and the skirmishing drills?

And the officers, although only recently mere civilians, were they not now capable captains, majors and colonels? Why should they not lead a brigade or a division just as well as a battalion? Why should they not play the general a little, having been so successful in the lower ranks!

Thus the sham fight was carried out, and by all accounts it was a disgraceful one. The affair was conducted with the utmost disregard of all features of the ground, magnificent contempt for the effect of fire, and a completely ludicrous accumulation of all the impossibilities attaching to a sham fight. The men learned nothing from it; they took home an impression of fighting which was totally contrary to reality, an empty stomach and tired legs – the latter perhaps the only thing that can be regarded as in some respect useful for novice warriors.

Such foolishness was excusable in the childhood of the movement. But what are we to say to the repetition of similar attempts at the present day? Our indefatigable London self-made Volunteer generals are at work again. Their own laurels of last summer give them no rest. A mere sham fight of ordinary dimensions no longer satisfies their ambition. This time a great decisive battle is to be fought. An army of 20,000 Volunteers is to be thrown from London onto the south coast, repel an invasion and still return to London the same evening, in order to be able to attend to their business again the next morning. All this, as The Times justly remarks, without any organisation, without staff, commissariat, land transport, regimental train – yes, even without knapsacks and all the necessary articles for a campaign that a line soldier carries in this receptacle! That is, however, only one side of the question; it merely shows one of the characteristic features of the incredible self-confidence which our Volunteer generals are convinced they are entitled to possess. How the purely tactical knowledge, the skill to handle troops, is to be acquired – The Times does not ask. And yet this is a point of equal importance. The drilling of the Volunteers is only carried out on level ground, but battlefields are generally anything but level and unbroken, and precisely the ability to take advantage of broken, undulating ground is the foundation of all applied tactics and of the skill to dispose troops for action. But how can the Volunteer generals, colonels and captains master this art, which must be learned theoretically and practically? Where have they been taught it? This principle of applied tactics has been so little heeded that we do not know of a single corps that has been practically instructed how to conduct an engagement on broken ground. What, then, can result from all such attempts to hold sham fights but a spectacle which may be satisfying for ignorant spectators, but for the soldiers who have to undergo them is certainly useless, and only calculated to make the Volunteer movement appear ridiculous in the eyes of the military experts who attend such a performance.

To our astonishment we find that even in practical Manchester an attempt is being made to produce Volunteer generals. No doubt we are not quite so far advanced as our friends the Londoners; we are not to have a sham fight, but a mere field exercise of all the Manchester Volunteers – something after the style of the Newton review – and the affair is to take place on a comparatively level piece of ground. Now we wish to be understood as, far from disapproving of this, on the contrary believing that half a dozen such field exercises each year would do the Manchester Volunteers no harm. We would add that we even consider it desirable that such field exercises should be carried out on broken ground, in order to allow the manoeuvres (against a supposed enemy) to be more varied, and gradually to accustom officers and men to manoeuvring on broken ground. Such manoeuvres would give the adjutants excellent opportunities of afterwards drawing, in the officers’ instruction, some practical conclusions as to the method of taking advantage of the ground in fighting. So far we not only agree with the plan, but even desire to see it extended and regularly carried out. But now we are informed by an article which appeared last Saturday in a local paper that on this occasion the Volunteers are to do everything themselves. That is to say, they are to have a Volunteer commander-in-chief, Volunteer brigadier-generals and a Volunteer staff. This is the attempt to introduce the London system of producing Volunteer generals into Manchester as well; and against this we emphatically protest. With all due respect to the commanding officers in Manchester, we say that they still have a great deal to learn before they – and here we make no exception – become fully trained battalion commanders; and if, before they have duly qualified themselves for the responsibility they have already assumed, they strive to act for a day in a higher rank, they are doing what in our opinion is the greatest curse of the Volunteer movement, namely playing at soldiers and thereby degrading the movement. At the head of their battalions they would be in their proper place, they could look after their men and at the same time learn something themselves. As Brummagem generals [sham generals] they would be of no real use – either to their soldiers or to themselves. With all respect for the adjutants of our Manchester regiments, to whom the greater part of the credit is due for having made their regiments what they are; but their place is with their respective regiments, where they cannot yet be dispensed with, while they would be of no real use if they played adjutant, general and brigade-major for a day, a performance which would certainly afford them no particular personal satisfaction either.

Since we have in Manchester the headquarters of the northern division of the army with an extensive, capable staff, since we have an infantry and a cavalry regiment here in garrison, there is no need to resort to such extraordinary farces. We believe it would be more appropriate to military subordination and also more in the interest of the volunteers themselves, not to assemble in large numbers under arms without offering the command to the general of the district and leaving it to him to designate the staff and the officers of the line troops for the division and the brigades. Undoubtedly, the volunteers would be met in the same friendly spirit as has been the case on previous occasions. They would then have at the head of the division and the brigades men who understand their business and can point out any mistakes that occur, and they would also retain their own organisation undiminished. Undoubtedly, this would prevent colonels from acting as generals, majors as colonels, and captains as majors, but it would have the great advantage of preventing Manchester from producing such Brummagem generals, for which one need not envy London, where this is now quite obviously happening.