So how come the British practice of selling commissions didn't create noticeable problems before the Crimean War? I mean it's not like you didn't have your share of dumb generals in the 18th century, but this was attributed to individual failings rather than a systemic failure. George III wasn't happy with the results his generals got him, but he didn't think problem was more than some guys being arrogant.
British Officer Commission System
- Thread starter Alex Zetsu
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The military was not a massively prestigious organization. Young men with more money than ability might gain a lower commission when they are younger but would often then go inflict their talents on Parliament. Those who remained were often those committed to the military life. That did not ensure they were good but it meant that career officers were still generally the ones who determined who got greater responsibility.
Arguably the stoppage of sale of commissions had, in the near term, the opposite effect that was intended. The removal of the purchase of commissions reduced the quality of the officer corps. While commissions were purchasable retiring officers effectively had a retirement benefit by selling their commission to a lower ranked officer. Since nothing really took the place of this after sale of commissions was prohibited the quality of those entering the officers was reduced by the effective pay cut.
That’s my limited understanding anyway. There are others who can likely give a better researched answer.
Arguably the stoppage of sale of commissions had, in the near term, the opposite effect that was intended. The removal of the purchase of commissions reduced the quality of the officer corps. While commissions were purchasable retiring officers effectively had a retirement benefit by selling their commission to a lower ranked officer. Since nothing really took the place of this after sale of commissions was prohibited the quality of those entering the officers was reduced by the effective pay cut.
That’s my limited understanding anyway. There are others who can likely give a better researched answer.
IIRC you normally (at least when starting out) needed a more experienced officer to vouch for you, and colonels could reject candidates trying to purchase a commission in their regiments. Since recommending someone who later turned out to be incompetent would reflect badly on you, and going to war in a battalion staffed by incompetent officers would be more likely to result in your own death, that's two stages where obviously unsuitable candidates would tend to get weeded out.
Almost 40 years of peace without a great power war.
All the controls disappeared then.
What controls? You mean incompetent officers getting themselves and their units killed?
Incompetent officers not getting anyone more senior to vouch for them, and/or get rejected by the colonels of regiments they try to purchase commissions in.
I remember watching a video a while back that explained that the purchasing commissions system was originally introduced to ensure quality in the officer corps.
It apparently makes a bit more sense if you think of it a bit like the letters of marque. The commission was a sort of state issued lisence to go and do organised plundering abroad. You want people commited and educated in the task rather than any old chancer seeking loot, so the purchase requirements acted as a kind of barrier to entry that weeded out the insufficiently motivated and incompetent.
After all if you are no good at leading men, you are likely not to end up getting any good loot, and thus unlikely to make a return on your investment.
It apparently makes a bit more sense if you think of it a bit like the letters of marque. The commission was a sort of state issued lisence to go and do organised plundering abroad. You want people commited and educated in the task rather than any old chancer seeking loot, so the purchase requirements acted as a kind of barrier to entry that weeded out the insufficiently motivated and incompetent.
After all if you are no good at leading men, you are likely not to end up getting any good loot, and thus unlikely to make a return on your investment.
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Well if that's the case, I'm very surprised the commission system didn't end up like a shitshow the first decade.
Well I was thinking more along the lines of incompetent officers humiliating themselves and their sponsor sufficiently.
If there's a war every 10-15 years people will only sponsor potentially competent officers(as failures would humiliate them). If there's no war then you have a generation of people who don't care about army performance selling commissions.
As others have said the British system of purchase of officers commissions worked well from the Glorious Revolution and the creation of the "modern" British Army though to 1815 pretty well because regular wars mitigated the potential for abuses, Colonels* didn't want cowards or morons in their regiments no matter how much they will willing to pay, the very real risk of death discouraged those who didn't genuinely want to serve and regular battlefield vacancies (and resulting battlefield promotions) added a meritocratic element. Also the rate of officer casualties/size of the army compared to the population meant that during periods like the Seven Years War and Peninsular Campaign commissions were actually pretty cheap. You then had 40 years of no peer warfare and what little colonial campaigning there was was being done by East India Company regiments. Unsurprisingly the entire system went to pot. A lot of the critique of the entire system is back projecting from it's mid-Victorian nadir into the 18th century when it was broadly functional.
*Of active regiments deployed overseas, militia regiments in England on the other hand...
*Of active regiments deployed overseas, militia regiments in England on the other hand...
It's perhaps worth pointing out, too, that pretty much any army will have a lot of incompetent officers after forty years of (mostly) peace. Even in a meritocratic system, it's often difficult to tell who will perform well in combat -- an officer might be perfectly serviceable in peacetime duties, only to fall to pieces when he needs to lead men into a real battle; conversely, plenty of great battlefield commanders were too personally obnoxious to rise very high without having the opportunity to demonstrate their talents in real warfare. Even without the purchase system, therefore, I think the British army would have had a lot of poor leaders in the Crimea.
(Though I do think that the poor state of leadership there is often exaggerated -- the British army in the Crimea did manage to stay in a battle-ready shape throughout the campaign, and when called upon to do battle it generally won.)
A lot of the failings in that war were due to logistical issues. Sanitation? Well, that was in the dumps for most nation's militaries and the brunt of it would be borne on any soldiers on the march. Really only the French had gotten this right yet and on paper the Austrians, although they didn't campaign so I don't know if camps would be built to regulation in practice.
The charge of the Light brigade? This is often stated as a prime example of Aristocratic buffoons not understanding war. Well, I'll admit the order of "Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front – follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns – Troop Horse Artillery may accompany – French cavalry is on your left. R Airey. Immediate" didn't take into consideration of the recipient's vantage point. However, Raglan's intention of trying to keep the Russians from carrying away guns seems to make logical sense. And I don't fault Lucan or Cardigan for sending their cavalry into the meatgrinder. The order of "immediate" implies no time to waste and from their vantage point the only guns are the ones they sent their cavalry into. I don't really see anything wrong with what these officers on the receiving end did. They knew the cavalry would be mauled, but when you get an order like that you have to assume it is part of some grander plan that makes the sacrifice worthwhile, not that your superior is General Badtaktiks.
I don't think the Crimean War was an example of the best generalship of the British Army, but it seems "adequate" to me and certainly better than the American Revolutionary War. General Howe had to find the longest way to reach Philidelphia, in fact even his subordinates pointed out it was faster to go by land. In the ARW, George III thought this was the failures of individual officers and you are going to have them in any system, not that the system was really bad. But suddenly in the Crimean War it's the system at fault? That was puzzling to me.
The idea that the purchasing system inherently leads to corruption or incompetent leadership is a myth. You could not simply walk into the regimental headquarters swinging a bag of coins around and purchase a rank whenever you pleased. It was a conservative and suboptimal system, in part meant to reserve higher ranks to people of higher standing, yes, but that was about as far as its crimes went.
For starters you needed someone to recommend you to a high-ranking commander just to be placed on a waiting list, without someone that's willing to vouch for you you're never going to acquire any officer rank whatsoever. In order to improve their chances of finding someone to vouch for them many potential candidates would enlist in the army as a regular so they could prove themselves and get some first-hand experience.
When you're accepted into the officer corps it'll be at the lowest rank (an ensign) and you'll have to work your way up from there. Because there's also a system of seniority you might well be an ensign for a while because of two reasons: 1. for each promotion there's a minimum required service time that you need to fulfil before you're eligible for that new rank and 2. other people who've been serving longer than you will always get priority to accept (or refuse) the promotion. This repeats over and over for every single rank.
While this does not guarantee that the best candidates get the position it does guarantee that whoever gets it will have plenty of experience already. Sometimes you ended up with bad officers anyways, but the overwhelming majority of the time they were at the very least adequate, and usually fairly good.
edit: also this system was applied in more of less the same way throughout Europe, Britain was just one of the last ones to completely get rid of it and instead just kept adding more and more requirements like education levels and tests until the 1870s. By which point they had a weird mix of seniority, purchasing, and merit all in one.
For starters you needed someone to recommend you to a high-ranking commander just to be placed on a waiting list, without someone that's willing to vouch for you you're never going to acquire any officer rank whatsoever. In order to improve their chances of finding someone to vouch for them many potential candidates would enlist in the army as a regular so they could prove themselves and get some first-hand experience.
When you're accepted into the officer corps it'll be at the lowest rank (an ensign) and you'll have to work your way up from there. Because there's also a system of seniority you might well be an ensign for a while because of two reasons: 1. for each promotion there's a minimum required service time that you need to fulfil before you're eligible for that new rank and 2. other people who've been serving longer than you will always get priority to accept (or refuse) the promotion. This repeats over and over for every single rank.
While this does not guarantee that the best candidates get the position it does guarantee that whoever gets it will have plenty of experience already. Sometimes you ended up with bad officers anyways, but the overwhelming majority of the time they were at the very least adequate, and usually fairly good.
edit: also this system was applied in more of less the same way throughout Europe, Britain was just one of the last ones to completely get rid of it and instead just kept adding more and more requirements like education levels and tests until the 1870s. By which point they had a weird mix of seniority, purchasing, and merit all in one.
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Howe was so bad, I've seen it seriously argued that he secretly sympathised with the rebels, and was deliberately trying not to beat them too badly because he hoped for a compromise peace rather than a total British victory.
One of the main trends over the last few centuries has been the attempt to substitute individual virtue and judgement with following the right procedures. This process had already started by the ARW, but it had been ongoing for an extra seventy years by the time the Crimea came around. The result was that, whereas George III might have blamed bad leadership on the individual officers, people in the 1850s were more likely to blame the system which had resulted in them becoming officers in the first place.