The Troops.

Besides the Royal Artillery there is a brigade of Royal Horse Artillery, consisting of 7 troops, each troop with a Captain, Second-Captain, 3 First-Lieutenants, 2 troop staff Sergeants, 3 Sergeants, 3 Corporals, and 3 Bombardiers, and about 75 other men and artisans; making in all 44 officers and 648 non-commissioned officers and men. There is also a troop called the Riding House troop, consisting of 3 officers, a Captain, and 2 Lieutenants, and 31 noncommissioned officers and men. The privates of this troop

are termed rough riders.

In aid of these forces is the Field train department, consisting of 7 officers, a medical department, of 47 surgeons, &c.* In several garrisons of the United Kingdoms, there are stationed 70 master gunners, with the artillery force, as detailed by the estimates. †

Engineers. The Corps of Royal Engineers consists of about 280 officers, comprising the Master-General as Colonel, 6 Colonels Commandant, 12 Colonels, 30 Lieutenant-Colonels, 48 Captains, 48 Second Captains, 96 First Lieutenants, 36 Second Lieutenants, an Inspector-General of Fortifications, with a first and second assistant, and an Assistant AdjutantGeneral. The Master-General has no salary as Colonel.

The Engineers are considered to form only a single regiment, and the Officers of this Corps are promoted by seniority. But the services required from Engineer Officers are of a very different nature from those of any other Officers of the Army; for except when in command of detachments of Sappers and Miners, the Officers of the Engineers have no privates under their orders, and the duties imposed

* The first has 1 Director General, 1 Assistant Director, 1 Commissary, 1 Assistant Commissary, 1 Clerk of Stores, 2 Conductors of Stores. The second, an Inspector General, Deputy Inspector General, 6 Senior Surgeons, 13 Surgeons, and 26 Assistant Surgeons.

† 1853.

upon them require that they should be commonly employed The Troops singly, or not more than two or three together, throughout the extensive dominions of the crown.

There is no power of sale of commissions in the Artillery or Engineers. The two Ordnance Corps do not enjoy, therefore, the advantages which this system, however anomalous in itself, has no doubt conferred on the Army, by quickening promotion, and facilitating the retirement. from the service, of officers whose age or inefficiency, from ill health or other causes, has rendered them unfit for service. Again, the Ordnance has no temporary halfpay list; no officer being allowed to go on half-pay, except on the report of a Medical Board. Every officer who enters the Ordnance Corps remains in it for life, and continues on the full-pay list till certified by a Medical Board to be unfit for service. Nor can any officer, however brilliant his services, rise more rapidly than another to the higher ranks of his corps.

The result of this system necessarily is that the average age of the officers of the diffierent ranks of Ordnance Corps, is far greater than that of the officers in the corresponding ranks of the Army; nor is the average made up of that variety of ages which, within certain limits, is to be found in the ranks of the Army, and which gives to the public service the advantage of having a few officers of greater physical vigour than the rest, in each of the higher ranks.

Miners.

The only corps that remains to be mentioned, is the corps Sappers and of Royal Sappers and Miners, for general service. It consists of 3 officers and 2,182 non-commissioned officers and men. When on detachment duty they are commanded by the officers of the Corps of Engineers. The privates, (in all 1,791), are all artificers; including carpenters, masons, bricklayers, smiths, wheelers, coopers, collar makers,

D

The Troops. painters, tailors, and miners. They are divided into 22 companies, with 5 Sergeants and 10 Corporals to each company. The Sappers and Miners are generally young men of good education, and are said to contain among their ranks many men of very superior acquirements. There are also 4 companies (consisting of 415 non-commissioned officers and men), employed on trigonometrical surveys. The service they engage chiefly in- besieging—is one of the most dangerous, as it is their duty to commence the trenches. Sap, from which they derive the name of Sappers, is a mode of excavating trenches for the siege of a fortress, which is adopted when the besiegers arrive within so small a distance of the covered way that the fire from thence becomes too dangerous to allow the men to work on the ground, without being protected by some covering objects, as gabions, placed between themselves and the enemy.

Peace Establishment.

In estimating the number and force of the British Army, in relation to the power of the Empire, we can best form a notion of its normal condition, from a view of the establishment in the time of peace. The war-footing is of course constantly varying, according to the requirements of the hour, and bears no proportion to the prosperity of the Empire, or the extent of its dominion and commerce.

To arrive at a correet view of the Peace establishment it is necessary to examine the estimates, even as far back as 1836. In giving the numbers following, it must be observed, that there are always from four to five regiments of British Cavalry, and twenty-four regiments of British Infantry, serving in India, and in the pay of the East India Company; they number as a body of all ranks about 30,000, and are not included in the numbers that follow.

The highest number for the regular army, voted during

the period from 1836 to 1852, was in 1848-9, when it was The Troops. 113,847; and the lowest was in 1835-6, 81,271; the average being 96,935. Of these the average number for home service is 53,688, and for the colonial service 43,254; the highest number for the home service being 72,508, in 1848-9, and for the colonial service 52,981, in 1842-3.

During the same period of seventeen years, the highest number of the Ordnance Corps was 14,193; the lowest, 8,319 in 1835-6; the average being 10,482, of which rather more than one-third are sent to the Colonies, and the remainder retained for home service. So that the Peace establishment, which has been gradually increased from the year 1835 to 1852, averaged about 108,000. The establishment, however, previous to the present war, ranged as high as 113,000, thus

This number was further increased to about 174,000, by the addition of 18,504 Enrolled Pensioners (Home 16,554, Colonies 1,950); and about 14,626 Volunteer Corps, with 713 officers. To these might be added the 11,000 Marines, and about 60,000 Volunteer Militia, making a land force for peace purposes of about 245,000 effective

men.

This large body of troops is distributed through the em- Distribution of the Troops. pire in the following manner: -the three regiments of household cavalry, whose ordinary duties are principally confined to their attendance on the Queen's person, consequently take no colonial duty whatever. Of the four and twenty regiments of cavalry, four are employed in

The Troops. India; and as those regiments cannot be relieved under a period of from fifteen to twenty years, more or less, it is evident that no prominent share of colonial service falls upon the cavalry. The division of Guards, consisting of seven battalions, are also in their ordinary duties confined to the Queen's person and palaces, and have never been called upon to perform any colonial service whatever. Of the one hundred and three regiments of infantry, seventy-nine are generally abroad, and twenty-six at home; of those seventy-nine abroad, twenty are employed in India; and those employed in India are not relieved under a period of eighteen to twenty years. Those employed in our other possessions ought to be relieved once in every ten years, but it has not always been found practicable to carry that intention completely into effect; it sometimes occurs that there are regiments which have been abroad ten or eleven years, while the regiments which must relieve them have been home a very short period, after a service abroad of not less than ten, and many above twenty years.

Officers.

The Militia, of course, serve only in the United Kingdom; when called out for training, they are seldom removed from their own county, and then only to some adjoining county, for their own convenience in exercising; when embodied and called out for service, however, the Queen may order them to any part of the United Kingdom.

It has been mentioned that the officers of the Ordnance Corps rise by seniority. In the Cavalry and Infantry the system is different; the officers in these services generally purchase their commissions, up to the rank of LieutenantColonel; subject to the rules that no one can hold a commission until he is sixteen years of age, or rise to the rank of Captain until he has been two years an effective subaltern, or to the degree of Major until he has been six years in the service,