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, founded in 1707, has seen involvement in most of the world's major wars throughout history, including both world wars.
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 (there were also separate Reserve Forces) within the British military (those parts of the British Armed Forces tasked with land warfare, as opposed to the naval forces), with the other having been the Ordnance Military Corps (made up of the Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers, and the Royal Sappers and Miners) 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 (1639–1653), 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.David G. Chandler, ed., The Oxford history of the British army (1996) pp. 24–45. 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 (1415), 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 (such as the Eastern Association), often commanded by local members of Parliament (both from the House of Commons and the House of Lords), while more than able to hold their own in the regions which Parliamentarians ('Roundheads") controlled, were unlikely to win the war. So Parliament initiated two actions. The Self-denying Ordinance forbade members of Parliament (with the notable exception of Oliver Cromwell, then a member of parliament and future Lord Protector) 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 ("Cavaliers") in nature, and a corps of professional officers, who tended to be Independent (Congregational) 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 (originally phrased "new-modelled 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 still feature in Irish folklore) 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.Lord Macaulay The History of England from the accession of James the Second (C.H. Firth ed. 1913) 1:136–38 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.David Chandler, The Oxford History of the British Army (2003) p. 46. The first English Army regiments, including elements of the disbanded New Model Army, were formed between November 1660 and January 1661David Chandler, The Oxford History of the British Army (2003) p. 47. and became a standing military force for England (financed by Parliament).Mallinson, p. 2 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.David Chandler, The Oxford History of the British Army (2003) pp. xvi–xvii
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, (who remained a Catholic) 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 (Queen Mary's father and still a Roman Catholic). 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.Chandler, ed., The Oxford history of the British army (1996) pp. 46–57.Correlli Barnett, Britain and her army, 1509–1970: a military, political and social survey (1970) pp. 90–98, 110–125.
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 (or the date when they were first placed on the English establishment). 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 (intended to maintain a buffer state between British India and the Russian Empire). and the Crimean War (to keep the Russian Empire to the north on the Black Sea at a safe distance by aiding the Ottoman Empire).. Like the English Army, the British Army fought the kingdoms of Spain, France (including the First French Empire) and the Netherlands (Dutch Republic) 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 (North American theatre) of the parallel Seven Years' War and suppressed a Native / Indian North Americans uprising in Pontiac's War around the Great Lakes.Pontiac's War Baltimore County Public Schools 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 (originally part of the Colony of Virginia, and which had been originally strongly sympathetic to the American colonial rebels early in the war)..