- Judd, Denis.
Someone Has Blundered.
London: Phoenix, [1973] 2007.
ISBN 0-7538-2181-8.
-
One of the most amazing things about the British Empire
was not how much of the world it ruled, but how small was the
army which maintained dominion over so large a portion of
the globe. While the Royal Navy enjoyed unchallenged
supremacy on the high seas in the 19th century, it was of
little use in keeping order in the colonies, and the
ground forces available were, not just by modern standards, but
by those of contemporary European powers, meagre. In the 1830s,
the British regular army numbered only about 100,000, and
rose to just 200,000 by the end of the century. When the
Indian Mutiny (or “Sepoy Rebellion”) erupted in 1857,
there were just 45,522 European troops in the entire
subcontinent.
Perhaps the stolid British at home were confident that the
military valour and discipline of their meagre legions would
prevail, or that superior technology would carry the day:
Whatever happens,
we have got,
the Maxim gun,
and they have not.
— Joseph Hilaire
Pierre René Belloc, “The Modern Traveller”, 1898
but when it came to a
fight, as happened surprisingly often in what one thinks of as
the Pax Britannica era (the Appendix [pp. 174–176]
lists 72 conflicts and military expeditions in the Victorian era),
a small, tradition-bound force, accustomed to peace and the
parade ground, too often fell victim to (p. xix) “a
devil's brew of incompetence, unpreparedness, mistaken and
inappropriate tactics, a reckless underestimating of the enemy,
a brash overconfidence, a personal or psychological collapse, a
difficult terrain, useless maps, raw and panicky recruits, skilful or
treacherous opponents, diplomatic hindrance, and bone-headed
leadership.”
All of these are much in evidence in the campaigns recounted
here: the 1838–1842 invasion of Afghanistan, the
1854–1856 Crimean War, the 1857–1859 Indian
Mutiny, the Zulu War of 1879, and the first (1880–1881)
and second (1899–1902) Boer Wars. Although this book
was originally published more than thirty years ago and its
subtitle, “Calamities of the British Army in the Victorian
Age”, suggests it is a chronicle of a quaint and
long-departed age, there is much to learn in these
accounts of how highly-mobile, superbly trained, excellently
equipped, and technologically superior military forces were
humiliated and sometimes annihilated by indigenous armies
with the power of numbers, knowledge of the terrain, and the
motivation to defend their own land.
April 2007 