British Army
The British Army is the land warfare force of the United Kingdom responsible for defending the UK, the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. The British Army has seen involvement in most of the world's major wars throughout history, including both world wars and was founded in 1707. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Gurkhas, 25,742 volunteer reserve personnel and 4,697 "other personnel", for a total of 108,413.
The British Army traces back to 1707 and the formation of the united Kingdom of Great Britain which joined the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into a single state and, with that, united the English Army and the Scots Army as the British Army. The English Bill of Rights 1689 and Scottish Claim of Right Act 1689 require parliamentary consent for the Crown to maintain a peacetime standing army. Members of the British Army swear allegiance to the monarch as their commander-in-chief. The army is administered by the Ministry of Defence and commanded by the Chief of the General Staff.
At its inception, being composed primarily of cavalry and infantry, the British Army was one of two Regular Forces within the British military, with the other having been the Ordnance Military Corps of the Board of Ordnance, which along with the originally civilian Commissariat Department, stores and supply departments, as well as barracks and other departments, were absorbed into the British Army when the Board of Ordnance was abolished in 1855. Various other civilian departments of the board were absorbed into the War Office.
The British Army has seen action in major wars between the world's great powers, including the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War and the First and Second World Wars. Britain's victories in most of these decisive wars allowed it to influence world events and establish itself as one of the world's leading military and economic powers. Since the end of the Cold War, the British Army has been deployed to a number of conflict zones, often as part of an expeditionary force, a coalition force or part of a United Nations peacekeeping operation.
History
Background
Until the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, neither England nor Scotland had a standing army with professional officers and career corporals and sergeants. England relied on militia organised by local officials or private forces mobilised by the nobility, or on hired mercenaries from Europe. From the later Middle Ages until the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, when a foreign expeditionary force was needed, such as the one that King Henry V of England took to France and that fought at the Battle of Agincourt, the army, a professional one, was raised for the duration of the expedition.During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the members of the English Long Parliament realised that the use of county militia organised into regional associations, often commanded by local members of Parliament, while more than able to hold their own in the regions which Parliamentarians controlled, were unlikely to win the war. So Parliament initiated two actions. The Self-denying Ordinance forbade members of Parliament from serving as officers in the Parliamentary armies. This created a distinction between the civilians in Parliament, who tended to be Presbyterian and conciliatory to the Royalists in nature, and a corps of professional officers, who tended to be Independent in theology. The second action was legislation for the creation of a Parliamentary-funded army, commanded by Lord General Thomas Fairfax, which became known as the New Model Army.
While this proved to be a war-winning formula, the New Model Army, being organised and politically active, went on to dominate the politics of the Interregnum and by 1660 was widely disliked. The New Model Army was paid off and disbanded at the later Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 with the accession of King Charles II. For many decades the alleged excesses of the New Model Army under the Protectorate / Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell were used as propaganda and the Whig Party element recoiled from allowing a standing army to continue with the agreed-upon rights and privileges under the return of a king. The militia acts of 1661 and 1662 prevented local authorities from calling up militia and oppressing their own local opponents. Calling up the militia was possible only if the king and local elites agreed to do so.
King Charles II and his "Cavalier" / Royalist supporters favoured a new army under royal control, and immediately after the Restoration of 1660 to 1661 began working on its establishment. The first English Army regiments, including elements of the disbanded New Model Army, were formed between November 1660 and January 1661 and became a standing military force for England. The Royal Scots and Irish Armies were financed by the parliaments of Scotland and Ireland. Parliamentary control was established by the Bill of Rights 1689 and Claim of Right Act 1689, although the monarch continued to influence aspects of army administration until at least the end of the 19th century.
After the Restoration, King Charles II pulled together four regiments of infantry and cavalry, calling them his guards, at a cost of £122,000 from his general budget. This became the foundation of the permanent English Army. By 1685, it had grown to number 7,500 soldiers in marching regiments, and 1,400 men permanently stationed in garrisons. A Monmouth Rebellion in 1685 allowed successor King James II to raise the forces to 20,000 men. There were 37,000 in 1678, when England played a role in the closing stage of the cross-channel Franco-Dutch War. After Protestant dual Monarchs William III, formerly William of the Dutch House of Orange, and his wife Mary II's joint accession to the throne after a short constitutional crisis with Parliament sending Mary's father, predecessor King James II, during his brief controversial reign, off the throne and into exile. England then involved itself in the War of the Grand Alliance on the Continent, primarily to prevent a possible French Catholic monarch organizing an invasion restoring the exiled James II. Later in 1689, William III to solidify his and Mary's hold on the monarchy, expanded the new English army to 74,000, and then a few years later to 94,000 in 1694. Parliament was very nervous and reduced the cadre to 70,000 in 1697. Scotland and Ireland had theoretically separate military establishments, but they were unofficially merged with the English Crown force.
File:John Churchill Marlborough porträtterad av Adriaen van der Werff.jpg|thumb|200px|alt=Oil-on-canvas portrait|John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, was one of the first generals in the new British Army and fought in the War of the Spanish Succession. He was a noted ancestor of Sir Winston S. Churchill, later famous Prime Minister during World War II.
Formation
By the time of the 1707 Acts of Union, many regiments of the English and Scottish armies were already combined under one operational command and stationed in the Netherlands for the War of the Spanish Succession. Although all the regiments were now part of the new British military establishment, they remained under the old operational-command structure and retained much of the institutional ethos, customs and traditions of the standing armies created shortly after the Restoration of the Monarchy 47 years earlier. The order of seniority of the most-senior British Army line regiments is based on that of the earlier English army. Although technically the Scots Royal Regiment of Foot was raised in 1633 and is the oldest Regiment of the Line, Scottish and Irish regiments were only allowed to take a rank in the English army on the date of their arrival in England. In 1694, a board of general officers was convened to decide the rank of English, Irish and Scots regiments serving in the Netherlands; the regiment which became known as the Scots Greys were designated the 4th Dragoons because there were three English regiments raised prior to 1688 when the Scots Greys were first placed in the English establishment. In 1713, when a new board of general officers was convened to decide the rank of several regiments, the seniority of the Scots Greys was reassessed and based on their June 1685 entry into England. At that time there was only one English regiment of dragoons, and the Scots Greys eventually received the British Army rank of 2nd Dragoons.British Empire (1707–1914)
After 1707, British continental policy was to contain expansion by competing powers such as France and Spain. Although Spain was the dominant global power during the previous two centuries and the chief threat to England's early trans-Atlantic colonial ambitions, its influence was now waning. The territorial ambitions of the French, however, led to the War of the Spanish Succession and the later Napoleonic Wars.Although the Royal Navy is widely regarded as vital to the rise of the British Empire, the British Army played an important role in the formation of colonies, protectorates and dominions in the Americas, Africa, Asia, India and Australasia. British soldiers captured strategically important sites and territories, with the army involved in wars to secure the empire's borders, internal safety and support friendly governments and princes. Among these actions were the French and Indian War / Seven Years' War, the American Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars, the First and Second Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the New Zealand Wars, the Australian frontier wars, the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, the first and second Boer Wars, the Fenian raids, the Irish War of Independence, interventions in Afghanistan and the Crimean War. Like the English Army, the British Army fought the kingdoms of Spain, France and the Netherlands for supremacy in North America and the West Indies. With native and provincial and colonial assistance, the Army conquered New France in the French and Indian War of the parallel Seven Years' War and suppressed a Native / Indian North Americans uprising in Pontiac's War around the Great Lakes. The British Army was defeated in the American Revolutionary War, losing the Thirteen Colonies but retaining The Canadas and The Maritimes as in British North America, including Bermuda.
Halifax, Nova Scotia and Bermuda were to become Imperial fortresses, along with Malta and Gibraltar, providing bases in the eastern Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea for Royal Navy squadrons to control the oceans and trade routes, and heavily garrisoned by the British Army both for defence of the bases and to provide mobile military forces to work with the Navy in amphibious operations throughout their regions.
File:Battle of Waterloo 1815.PNG|thumb|250px|upright=1.05|alt=Panoramic painting of the Battle of Waterloo|The Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal von Blücher's triumph over Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo
The British Army was heavily involved in the Napoleonic Wars, participating in a number of campaigns in Europe, the Caribbean, North Africa and North America. The war between the British and the First French Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte stretched around the world; at its peak in 1813, the regular army contained over 250,000 men. A coalition of Anglo-Dutch and Prussian armies under the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal von Blücher finally defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815.
The English were involved politically and militarily in Ireland. The campaign of English republican Protector Oliver Cromwell involved uncompromising treatment of the Irish towns which supported the Royalists during the English Civil War. The English Army remained in Ireland primarily to suppress Irish revolts or disorder. In addition to its conflict with Irish nationalists, it was faced with the prospect of battling Anglo-Irish and Ulster Scots in Ireland who were angered by unfavourable taxation of Irish produce imported into Britain. With other Irish groups, they raised a volunteer army and threatened to emulate the American colonists if their conditions were not met. Learning from their experience in America, the British government sought a political solution. The British Army fought Irish rebels—Protestant and Catholic—primarily in Ulster and Leinster in the 1798 rebellion.
File:Alphonse de Neuville - The defence of Rorke's Drift 1879 - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|alt=Painting of the Battle of Rorke's Drift, with a building burning|In the 1879 Battle of Rorke's Drift, a small British force repelled an attack by overwhelming Zulu forces; eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded for its defence.
In addition to battling the armies of other European empires, the British Army fought the Chinese in the First and Second Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion, Māori tribes in the first of the New Zealand Wars, Nawab Shiraj-ud-Daula's forces and British East India Company mutineers in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, the Boers in the first and second Boer Wars, Irish Fenians in Canada during the Fenian raids and Irish separatists in the Anglo-Irish War. The increasing demands of imperial expansion and the inadequacy and inefficiency of the underfunded British Army, Militia, Ordnance Military Corps, Yeomanry and Volunteer Force after the Napoleonic Wars led to series of reforms following the failures of the Crimean War.
Inspired by the successes of the Prussian Army, the Regular Reserve of the British Army was originally created in 1859 by Secretary of State for War Sidney Herbert, and re-organised under the Reserve Force Act 1867. Prior to this, a soldier was generally enlisted into the British Army for a 21-year engagement, following which he was discharged as a Pensioner. Pensioners were sometimes still employed on garrison duties, as were younger soldiers no longer deemed fit for expeditionary service who were generally organised in invalid units or returned to the regimental depot for home service. The cost of paying pensioners, and the obligation the government was under to continue to employ invalids as well as soldiers deemed by their commanding officers as detriments to their units were motivations to change this system. The long period of engagement also discouraged many potential recruits. The long service enlistments were consequently replaced with short service enlistments, with undesirable soldiers not permitted to re-engage on the completion of their first engagement. The size of the army also fluctuated greatly, increasing in war time, and drastically shrinking with peace. Battalions posted on garrison duty overseas were allowed an increase on their normal peacetime establishment, which resulted in their having surplus men on their return to a Home station. Consequently, soldiers engaging on short term enlistments were enabled to serve several years with the colours and the remainder in the Regular Reserve, remaining liable for recall to the colours if required. Among the other benefits, this thereby enabled the British Army to have a ready pool of recently trained men to draw upon in an emergency. The name of the Regular Reserve has resulted in confusion with the Reserve Forces, which were the pre-existing part-time, local-service home-defence forces that were auxiliary to the British Army, but not originally part of it: the Yeomanry, Militia and Volunteer Force. These were consequently also referred to as Auxiliary Forces or Local Forces.
The late-19th-century Cardwell and Childers Reforms gave the army its modern shape and redefined its regimental system. The 1907 Haldane Reforms created the Territorial Force as the army's volunteer reserve component, merging and reorganising the Volunteer Force and Yeomanry, while the Militia was replaced by the Special Reserve.