Industrial-Age Warfare

From three rounds a minute to six hundred

A redcoat at Waterloo in 1815 carried the Brown Bess, a smoothbore musket that a trained man could load and fire about three times a minute and could not aim with confidence beyond eighty yards. At Omdurman on 2 September 1898 a British and Egyptian army with magazine rifles and Maxim guns firing six hundred rounds a minute killed some eleven thousand of the Mahdist army and lost forty-eight men. Between those two dates the factory, the railway and the steamship changed what an army was and how it got to the war. The reporter and the photographer changed something else: for the first time the people at home saw what the army did, and what was done to it, within days. This block of the thematic study asks how warfare changed, how the experience of the soldier and the civilian changed with it, and why. This module gives you the dated evidence and the three question shapes.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with a date or a figure, because a term without support earns one mark where a supported one earns two.

Two centuries, in order

Put these six developments in the order they happened.

• Wellington beats Napoleon at Waterloo with musket, bayonet and cavalry
• The Enfield rifle-musket is adopted, accurate to five hundred yards
• Russell of The Times reports the suffering of the army in the Crimean winter
• Cardwell abolishes the purchase of commissions
• Hiram Maxim demonstrates the first fully automatic machine gun
• Maxims and magazine rifles destroy the Mahdist army at Omdurman

Why did the cavalry decline?

At Waterloo in 1815 the charge of the Scots Greys broke a French infantry column. At Balaclava in 1854 the Light Brigade charged Russian guns and lost about a third of its riders in twenty minutes. By 1900 British cavalry in South Africa fought mostly on foot with rifles. Which explanation best accounts for the decline?

• Rifled and then breech-loading weapons let infantry and gunners kill horses at five hundred yards and reload faster than a horse could cross the ground, so a charge that had once broken infantry now died in front of it, and the horse was kept for scouting and moving riflemen.
• Horses became too expensive for the army to afford.
• The cavalry regiments were abolished by the Cardwell reforms.
• Railways replaced horses for moving armies, so horses were no longer needed.

Change and continuity: 1700 against 1900

Put the two ends of the block side by side and every similarity or difference question in it is answered on this card.

Reporting and attitudes

Five statements about the Crimean War of 1854 to 1856. Tap the TWO that show reporting changing what the public and the government did, as opposed to describing the reporting itself.

• William Howard Russell of The Times followed the army to the Crimea and sent his dispatches home by steamer and, from 1855, by telegraph.
• After The Times reported the state of the hospitals, the government sent Florence Nightingale and thirty-eight nurses to Scutari in November 1854, paid for partly by a fund raised by readers.
• Roger Fenton spent four months in the Crimea in 1855 and brought back some 360 photographs, none of them showing the dead.
• On 30 January 1855, after the reports of a mismanaged winter, the Commons voted for an inquiry into the conduct of the war and the government of Lord Aberdeen resigned.
• Tennyson wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade within weeks of reading the report of Balaclava in The Times.

The Cardwell reforms

Select the THREE statements that are true of the reforms Edward Cardwell made as Secretary for War between 1868 and 1874.

• The purchase of commissions was abolished in 1871, so that officers were promoted by merit and seniority rather than by paying for rank.
• The Army Enlistment Act of 1870 replaced twenty-one years of service with twelve, six with the colours and six in the reserve.
• From 1872 the infantry was organised in county regiments of two battalions, one at home recruiting and training while the other served abroad.
• Conscription was introduced for all men over eighteen.
• Flogging was extended to peacetime service.
• The army was placed under the sole command of the Duke of Cambridge, free of the War Office.

The chain the examiners reward: reporting to attitudes

The grade-9 note on this block is explicit: link the growth of reporting and photography to changing public attitudes, and be ready to trace that link into the twentieth century. Have the chain ready with its dates. Crimea, 1854 to 1855. Russell reports the cholera, the hospitals and the winter without tents. Readers raise a fund; Nightingale sails; the Commons demands an inquiry; Aberdeen falls on 30 January 1855. Fenton photographs the camps in the spring, but not the corpses, because the photographs were to be sold to a public that did not want them. South Africa, 1899 to 1902. The relief of Mafeking in May 1900 is celebrated in the streets of London; Emily Hobhouse reports in 1901 on the camps in which some 26,000 Boer women and children died; the recruiting offices find that in Manchester 8,000 of 11,000 volunteers are unfit to serve, and the condition of the poor becomes a question of national defence. The point for the essay: once the public could see a war, governments had to answer for it, and that changed how wars were fought as well as how they were reported.

At the War Office, 1853 to 1871

Four decisions taken in London across two decades. Choose what was actually done, and notice what each choice cost or won.

• 1853. French and American armies are adopting rifled muskets that hit at five hundred yards. Your infantry carries the smoothbore. What do you do?
• Winter 1854. The Times is printing letters from the Crimea about men dying of cold and cholera for want of tents and medicine, and the public is reading them. What does the government do?
• 1870. Prussia has just beaten France with a short-service conscript army and a trained reserve. Your army enlists men for twenty-one years and has no reserve at all. What do you do?
• 1871. Your bill to abolish the purchase of commissions has passed the Commons and been thrown out by the Lords. What do you do?

From cause to consequence

Because a rifled barrel spun the bullet, the infantryman of 1853 could hit at _____ yards what the musketeer of 1815 could not hit at a hundred, and the cavalry charge stopped being a way to win. Because the Enfield factory built rifles by machine from _____, every soldier could have one. Because the _____ carried Russell to the Crimea and his dispatches home, the public learned in weeks what it had once learned in years, and a government fell in January 1855. Because Prussia beat France in 1870 with a short-service army, Cardwell cut enlistment to twelve years and abolished _____ in 1871, so that the army became a profession. And because 8,000 of 11,000 Manchester volunteers were unfit in 1899, the health of the _____ became a matter of national defence.

The Cardwell reforms in numbers

Before the Cardwell reforms a recruit signed up for 21 years. From 1870 he served 6 years with the colours and 6 in the reserve. By what percentage did full-time service fall, to the nearest whole number?

Question 3: similarity or difference

Question 3 reads: Explain one way in which the recruitment of officers in 1815 was different from their recruitment in 1880. It is marked one point of comparison plus detail from each period. Which answer scores all four marks?

• In 1815 an officer bought his commission, so that rank followed money and a lieutenant-colonelcy in a fashionable regiment cost thousands of pounds, whereas by 1880 purchase had been abolished by the royal warrant of 1871 and promotion went by merit and seniority under the Cardwell reforms.
• By 1880 officers were promoted on merit because Cardwell had abolished purchase in 1871.
• Officers were recruited very differently in 1880 from 1815 because the army had been reformed.
• In 1815 men enlisted for life whereas in 1880 they enlisted for twelve years.

A 12-mark paragraph, marked

Question 4: Explain why the cavalry declined in importance in the years c1700 to c1900. One reason for the decline of the cavalry was the improvement in infantry weapons. The smoothbore musket of the eighteenth century could be aimed with confidence at no more than eighty yards and fired about three times a minute, so a cavalry charge that covered the last hundred yards in seconds could reach a line of infantry after a single volley. The Enfield rifle-musket of 1853 was accurate to five hundred yards, and the breech-loading Snider of 1866 and Martini-Henry of 1871 could be fired ten times a minute lying down. This meant that by the 1870s a squadron of horse charging a line of riflemen was under aimed fire for half a mile and for most of a minute, and horses are large targets; the charge that had broken infantry at Waterloo could no longer reach it. The cavalry did not disappear, but it was reduced to scouting and to carrying riflemen to the fight, which is what it was doing in South Africa in 1900. What earned the marks: a cause named in the first sentence; specific support (the ranges, the rates of fire, the three weapons with dates); the link phrase this meant that; and a closing sentence that returns to the question and qualifies the change. Two more paragraphs, on artillery and on the lesson of Balaclava, and the answer reaches the top level.

Write the 12-mark answer

Explain why warfare changed in the years c1700 to c1900. You may use the following in your answer: the rifle; the railway. You must also use information of your own.

• Support that counts: a date, a weapon, a range, a rate of fire, a reform or a figure
• Causes of your own: mass production, the Cardwell reforms, the machine gun, or the telegraph and the press

Question 5: how far do you agree?

Question 5 might read: "Industrialisation was the main reason for change in warfare in the years c1700 to c1900." How far do you agree? A student has written the case FOR. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST it?

• The change in who the army was and how it was led owed nothing to factories: purchase was abolished, short service introduced and the county regiment created between 1868 and 1872 because Prussia had shown what a professional army could do, and a machine-made rifle in the hands of a life-enlisted man flogged into line would have been a smaller change than the reforms were.
• Wellington won Waterloo before industrialisation had any effect on warfare.
• The army still used horses in 1900.
• The Maxim gun was invented by an American.