BOOKS.
THE BIRTH OF THE ARMY.* WHEN erudition and a style so pellucid that it occasionally verges on colloquialism combine to elucidate an interesting historical subject an instructive book is sure to result. When, further, to these qualities are added a timbre of human sympathy rare amongst modern singers of old songs, and an unerring instinct of just what is necessary to make the dead past arise alive again before the reader's eyes, the book becomes not only as fascinating but as precious as a great picture, or as the "little miraculously lamplit Pathway" through the murk of bygone times which won such mag- nificent gratitude from Carlyle. Such a book is this of Mr. Firth's, a book twice bleat, at once learned and vivid, afford- ing as much entertainment as instruction, and though accu- rately historical, not without the thing too commonly taboo in history, the capacity for seeing a joke, even though it be three hundred years old.
Mr. Firth begins his volume with a quite unnecessary apology. A Fellow of All Souls might well approach with diffidence a subject like the growth and economy of an army, bristling with technicalities, for the proper manipulation of which knowledge of a language as full of " cant " words as
* Cromwell's Arms : a Eistory of the English &Idler during the Civil Ware, MI Commonwealth, and the Protectorate. By C. U. Firth, M.A. London • Madan= and Co. [7e. 6c1.1 that of Fagin's young thieves is necessary. Laymen using the terms of any specialism with which they are deatizig-
are in danger of punishment far greater than the crime. Ali error, and their authority with the reader is gone; even - a slip lays them at the mercy of every professional num- skull who comes upon it. They are like trespassers in a park : perhaps disregarded if they behave themselves, but swooped upon instanter if they tread on a Bower or climbs paling.
But Mr. Firth has avoided the innumerable pitfalls .so successfully that we cannot help suspecting him of having,
before commencing his task, sat him down and incidentally absorbed the military science, as Schopenhauer did the theory of light or George Borrow the Welsh language. There is not, that we can discover, a military solecism in the entire volume, and even if there were a hundred they would detract but little from the intense interest of this excellent work. So good hi the book that the author's aim is a little obscure. Was it to
present a historical or a human document? Mr. Firth, as Ford Lecturer, would probably prefer to claim the former
only. It has ever been the whim of historians to withdraw their work the more aloof from the drama of life the more vast and unwearied was the research expended upon it. But Mr. Firth has an eye which, after the studious collation of hundreds of dryasdust manuscripts and tomes, can still turn with sympathy to that most human of human beings, the English soldier, with his wants, his grumbles, his failings, sufferings, and heroism+. That he does this more by anecdotal quota- tion than by his own writing rather adds to than detracts from the cleverness and charm of the book. Mr. Firth, indeed, quotes so much that he has left his reviewer nothing to quote in illustration or comparison ; but in history of this kind more skill is shown by making contemporary writers tell the story than by telling it oneself, and the genius for selecting and linking excerpts is rarer than the mere industry which dis- covers them. This genius Mr. Firth has most eminently; his learning is so great that be had probably no trouble in pitching upon his authorities, but without selective skill the mass of material at his command would have been but an embarrassment and the foundation of the dullest of volumes. As it is, we have one of the brightest.
The event of which it treats, the formation of the first systematised army of Englishmen, is certainly of peculiar interest, as momentous in its way as the Reformation, or even the signing of Magna Charta itself. The New Model was the father of our Army of to-day, and the latter in all but arms and equipment has altered strangely little from its progenitor.
For Fairfax's fighting machine was, considering its origin, a masterpiece of administration. Evolved by no long process of evolution, but arising at once from chaos at the bidding of the great wizard who conceived it, arising, moreover, in the very midst of the heavy work for which it was designed, it took its place at once as an institution of England, a regular army,—in brief, the British Army. Before it sprang into life, like Athene fully armed, from Oliver's brain, England had never seen an army, only armed mobs. How familiar do the complaints of long-sighted men of that time sound in English ears to-day : "The danger of all is that a people not used to wars believeth no enemy dare venture upon them This kingdom bath been too long in peace.
For we think that if we have men and ships our kingdom is safe, as if men were born soldiers."* Since the reign of Elizabeth, the trained bands (" who bore that name," says Mr. Firth drily, "rather because they were selected for training than because they were actually trained ") had steadily deteriorated. A piteous account of the farcical nature of their training is given by a keen soldier in 1639, and militia- men of two hundred and fifty years later might feel pricks of conscience when they read of the hurried drill and prolonged lunching which characterised these gatherings. Londoh then, as now, supplied the best amateur soldiery, and then, as now, it was maintained only by the honorary and honourable
efforts of enthusiasts. But the standard was necessarily low, and, says Mr. Firth, "the comparative efficiency attained by the London regiments was never reached by the trained bands of the rest of England." The -British forces, whether at home or abroad, were the most useless in Europe, and even when they were called upon to encounter the next worst—the Scotch
• Sir Edward Coen.
—disaster ensued, the Treaty of Berwick in 1638 and the rout of Newburn next year proving the disability of rawness and lack of system in the presence of even the most rudimentary organisation and skill at arms. And the degradation of the trained bands was complete when, two years later, at the out- break of the Civil War, they found themselves, instead of being welcomed as fighting men, disarmed as inefficient cowards by both sides.* They were replaced, at first in the early years of enthusiasm by Volunteers, later by pressed men, and it was from these, not from the constitutional forces of Britain, that the New Model was formed in 1645-1647. It is a somewhat peculiar reflection that the Army of the Commonwealth, the freest regime ever known in the land, was more than half composed of conscripts. Yet to quote Mr. Firth, retelling to the last impressment of 1651: "It was then remarked that the men raised by impressment for that service, were better than those who had voluntarily enlisted."
But the formation of the New Model is the shortest and least interesting portion of Mr. Firth's enthralling volume. It is when he comes to the details of the three arms composing it, their drill, discipline, pay, feeding arrangements, clothing, mounting, hospitals, chaplains, manners and mode of life, that the reader feels himself to be verily transported back into the lines and quarters of that extraordinary Army. The world does not move as quickly as it is popularly supposed; many of the ancient queries and grumbles which fluttered the troopers in Ireton's horse-lines, or the artillerymen in Wemyss's gun. park, smack strangely familiar to a soldier of to-day. Pay and rations, issues of boots and clothing, " stoppages " (word accursed to soldiers even then), " separation " allowances to absent wives and families, employment after discharge,—it is almost a shock to find how much the helmeted Roundhead of 1900 has in common with his felt-hatted ancestor of 1650, and how similarly he bears himself as regards his little troubles. Through all of this does Mr. Firth most fascinatingly guide us with much learning, yet with many a sly remark and humorous sidelight on some long-forgotten little trick or swindle of commissariat or military finance. With much strategy and tactics besides, he tells how the infantry "stood like stakes," and the cavalry swore at the weight and heat of their armour, one distinguished officer flatly refusing to appear on parade in "full kit." Then we have the " dragooneers," lineal forbears of the mounted infantry of to-day, taught to gallop for bridges and defiles, and to hold them dismounted. And the artillery, by which "never yet was victory obtained," whose culverins and Bakers, however, must have made worthy Matthew Sutcliffe eat his words later on ! Every one of the four hundred and thirty pages of this admirable book tempt quotation almost beyond one's powers of resistance. But it must be read, and to be read will be to be appreciated by both soldier and civilian. Of its kind it is perfect, and Mr. Firth is to be heartily thanked for using to such good effect the elixir of historical life, the power to breathe actuality into dead and ancient things, which be undoubtedly possesses.
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