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CHAPTER V.

THE BRITISH ARMY.

Every army necessarily grows up according to the traditions Various of its past history. Those of the Continent having only to employment cross a frontier, marked by Royal, Imperial or Republican British stones, have, in their rare but terrible campaigns, to pursue Army ' definite objects that can be anticipated in nearly all their details years beforehand. The British army, on the contrary, through­out the nineteenth century, since the great war came to an end in 1815, has had to carry out a series of expeditions in every variety of climate, in all quarters of the globe, amidst the deserts of North Africa, the hills, plains and tropical forests of South Africa, the mountains of India, the swamps of Burma, or the vast regions of Canada. Such expeditions have been more numerous than the years of the century ; each of them has differed from the other in almost all its conditions. Amongst its employments this army has had to face, also, the forces of a great Empire and troops armed and trained by Britain herself. Accordingly, it has happened that the experience of one cam­paign has almost invariably been reversed in the next. To take only recent illustrations, the fighting which was suitable for dealing with Zulu warriors, moving in compact formations, heroic savages armed with spears or assegais, was not the best for meeting a great body of skilled riflemen, mounted on well- managed horses. Moreover, the necessary accessories of an army, without which it cannot make war, such as its transport and its equipment, have had to be changed with the circum­stances of each incident. Just as it has been impossible to