The first and great object of the military examinations has been to secure a liberally educated body of officers (ein gebildetes Offizier-corps), not, however, over-educated (übergebildetes); the second object has been to secure a professionally educated body of officers (ein berufgebildetes Offizier-corps).18
Future officers were required either to graduate from the gymnasium and to receive the certificate of fitness for the university or, failing that, to pass a rigorous six-day general examination, designed not so much to test the student’s factual knowledge as his intellectual capacity and analytical ability. About two-thirds of the officers came from the gymnasia and other schools which prepared students for all walks of life, while the remainder were drawn primarily from the cadet houses maintained by the state for the sons of former officers. Students entered the cadet schools at the ages of ten or eleven, or fifteen or sixteen. Although the cadets were subject to military discipline, virtually all the instruction was in liberal arts subjects. The operation by the War Ministry of general preparatory schools violated, of course, the principle of specialized professional competence; the general education offered in the cadet schools was inferior to that of the gymnasia; and the Prussian military leaders themselves were divided as to the desirability of maintaining the cadet houses. The technical proficiency of the Prussian officers was insured by requiring all entrants, except a few of the top students in the cadet houses, to serve six months in the enlisted ranks, attend a division school for nine months technical military training, and then pass the officers’ examination on technical military subjects.
In France, the Revolution swept away aristocratic limitations on entry. Never again was birth to be a formal prerequisite for a military commission. During the Restoration there was strong pressure to go back to the old ways, but St. Cyr succeeded in firmly establishing the principle that entry should be only by competition from the military schools or from the ranks. Similar standards were set for the navy. Throughout the nineteenth century both services had a high, although varying, proportion of aristocratic officers. This fact, however, reflected more the greater interest in a military career among aristocratic families than any weighting of entrance requirements in their favor.
St. Cyr’s law and subsequent legislation provided that one-third to two-thirds of the officers should come from the military schools and the remainder from the ranks of noncommissioned officers with at least four years service. The “privates with stripes” promoted from the ranks were frequently unaware of the difference in responsibility and duties between the commissioned and noncommissioned officer, and they contributed little to the intellectual level of the officer corps. Those officers who entered from the military schools possessed in contrast both a good general and a good technical education. There were three institutions of professional instruction. The Ecole Polytechnique (founded in 1794) supplied the army with its artillery and engineering officers and the navy with its marine artillery officers, naval architects, and other technical specialists. The Special Military School to train officers for the cavalry and infantry was established at Fontainebleau in 1803 and transferred to St. Cyr in 1808. Naval schools were set up at Brest and Toulon in 1810 and in 1816 were united in a single institution which came to be established at Brest in 1827. Entry into all these schools was by competitive examination, candidates normally being between sixteen and twenty years of age for the Polytechnic Institute and St. Cyr and fourteen to sixteen for the naval school. In most cases, however, it was assumed that candidates had completed the usual course at the lycée. For the French even more than the Prussians, officers were expected to have gone through the normal secondary schools of the country. The sole exception was the Prytanée Militaire, France’s only real military preparatory school, which each year sent a limited number of officers’ sons to the military colleges. The course at St. Cyr and the Ecole Polytechnique was two years in length. The curriculum at St. Cyr included in the first year predominantly scientific subjects and in the second principally military subjects. At the Ecole Polytechnique instruction was almost exclusively scientific and technical with only a single course on military art and topography. Students at the naval school studied general and professional subjects for two years at Brest and then underwent a year of practical instruction on board a training ship.19
Aristocratic bars to entry prevailed much longer in the British Army than in the French and Prussian forces. The first break in the purchase system (apart, of course, from the artillery and engineers) occurred with the establishment of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in 1802. Nomination by the Commander in Chief was necessary to enter this institution but graduates received their commissions without purchase. In the middle of the century efforts were made to broaden the avenues of entry which did not require purchase. But it was not until the abolition of the entire system in 1871 that aristocratic qualifications ceased to have a formal place in British entry requirements.* In the British Navy entry as a “Captain’s servant” was abolished in 1794. The “First Class Volunteers” which were instituted, however, were still appointed by ships’ captains. Approval by the Admiralty of these appointments was required in 1833 and examinations were instituted in 1838–39. In 1848 the captains’ powers were still further restricted, and in 1870 a system of “limited competition” was introduced in which two preliminary nominations were made for every appointment. The elimination of patronage from British naval entry thus proceeded at about the same pace as the elimination of purchase from British army entry.20
With the establishment of the Royal Military College in 1802, the reorganization and expansion of Woolwich in 1806, and the change of the naval academy into the Royal Naval College in the same year, Great Britain came to possess adequate institutions of preliminary professional education. Attendance at these schools, however, was not required of all officers. In addition, there were no provisions for an adequate general education. Students entered Woolwich and Sandhurst from public school, but the British public school did not offer an education comparable to the gymnasium or lycée. The Admiralty, moreover, had long adhered to a policy of “catch ’em young,” enlisting future naval officers at the ages of twelve to fourteen. Accordingly, if the naval officer was to get a general education, he had to get it from the Admiralty. From 1806 to 1837 an effort was made to supply this at the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth. In 1837, however, the college was closed and general education was sent to sea, naval cadets theoretically being educated by schoolmasters on board ship afloat. In actual practice, the training at sea was almost entirely practical and technical. In 1857 this system was ended, and a training ship was established at Dartmouth where cadets from twelve to fourteen received two years instruction before going to sea. In 1886 a special committee urged the Admiralty to secure a “greater degree of intelligence and a better general education” either by furnishing a general education itself or by delaying the recruitment of officers until they had finished secondary school. In 1903 the naval school at Osborne was reorganized in an effort to provide the first of these alternatives, and ten years later the second course of action was also adopted by permitting special entry from the public schools.21 Thus, about one hundred years after both a general and specialized education were required for the officers of the Prussian Army, they became mandatory for the officers of the British Navy.
ADVANCEMENT. The establishment of professional standards for entry into the officer corps was followed by the establishment of professional standards for advancement within the corps. In general, the new advancement system took the form of promotion by seniority tempered by selection.
In Prussia, Scharnhorst introduced the idea of examinations as a prerequisite to promotion and raised the pay of officers so as to decrease their reliance upon outside income. Able officers were advanced rapidly in the General Staff Corps. Despite a lack of formalized rules, influence and favoritism played only a minor role in the advancement of officers. Promotion up to the rank of captain generally followed
seniority although unusually able officers, particularly those who had qualified for the General Staff or Adjutant General’s Office, might be advanced more rapidly. Above the grade of captain promotion was within the arm or corps and seniority was followed more rigidly. An officer who was passed over, when his turn for promotion by seniority appeared, was expected to resign. Most officers might expect to be advanced in turn to the rank of major, the great weeding out taking place in the promotions from that post to colonelcies. Examinations were utilized as a guide to eliminating officers in the engineers and foot artillery.
The French law of 1818 was a bold attempt to exclude nonprofessional factors from advancement. It required that two-thirds of all promotions up to the rank of lieutenant colonel should be by seniority. The remaining one-third of the promotions in the lower ranks and all appointments of colonels and general officers were by selection. The law, however, placed too much reliance on seniority, required too lengthy terms of service in the lower grades, and did not entirely prevent aristocratic favoritism. The entire system was revised by the July Monarchy in 1832. The time required in each grade before promotion was significantly reduced, and the proportion of appointments to major going by seniority was reduced from two-thirds to one-half. More significantly, this law merited its title as the “Charter of the Army” because it guaranteed to the officer his rank except in instances of misbehavior punished by court martial. An elaborate system of recommendations for promotion was developed in which lists of officers eligible for advancement were drawn up annually in each arm, and acted upon by either the inspector general or a committee of higher officers. In 1851 a comprehensive and regularized scheme of retirement pensions was introduced. By the middle of the nineteenth century formal regulations for professional advancement existed in the French Army. In actual practice, however, the system was still subject to certain deficiencies and abuses.
Conditions were somewhat similar in the French Navy. Advancement from one grade to the next required two to four years’ service in the lower grade and in certain cases command experience. From the lowest grade up to capitaine de frégate (lieutenant colonel) promotion was by both seniority and selection; above this grade, by selection only. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century the disappearance of promotion opportunities caused by the slow retirement of senior officers led to the widespread use of nepotism and favoritism to gain the few appointments available. Whereas under the Empire merit had generally prevailed, in the first years of the Third Republic influence was essential. The situation eventually became so extreme and newspaper criticism of the apparently extraordinary abilities of the sons of admirals and ministers so strong, that the entire system was revised in 1890. The Admiralty Council which had existed since 1824 and which had become the focus of favoritism was abolished and a system of inspector generals instituted to determine those officers eligible for promotion.22
Only slowly during the nineteenth century were politics and purchase eliminated from the British Army. The first step toward the restriction of politics was taken in 1794 when the office of Commander in Chief was established. The new position gave the army a professional military head viewed as outside the area of party politics. Gradually this military chief took over appointments and discipline from the more politically vulnerable civilian ministers. In 1861 the Commander in Chief was given complete responsibility for the command, discipline, and appointments in the army, subject only to the general control of the Crown over the government of the military forces and the responsibility of the Secretary of State for War for the exercise of the royal prerogative. To assist the Commander in making appointments, each general officer was required to submit semiannual reports on his subordinates. At about the same time examinations became mandatory for the promotion of junior officers and successful completion of the Staff College course became a prerequisite to duty at general headquarters.
A true system of professional advancement was impossible in the British Army so long as purchase existed. By 1856 a captaincy cost approximately £2,400 and a lieutenant colonelcy £7,000. The extremely low pay of the officers had not been increased since the reign of William III, and independent income was obviously essential to a military career. Critics of this situation were not lacking. Lord Grey in 1846 made a vigorous attack upon it and formulated a farsighted program of reform. In 1850 a Royal Commission likewise took the system to task. Opposition to reform, however, remained strong. Purchase, it was argued, secured the loyalty of the army to the state by insuring that the former would be controlled by the same property interests which dominated the latter. Direct socio-political controls were preferred to reliance upon a sense of professional responsibility. Conservatives such as the Duke of Wellington strongly condemned proposals to substitute a “mercenary army” for one lead by “men of fortune and character — men who have some connection with the interests and fortunes of the country, besides the commissions which they hold for His Majesty.” The ghost of the New Model Army still haunted the minds of British soldiers and statesmen two hundred years after the Restoration. Only the example of the superior efficiency of the Prussian military machine in the war with France enabled Lord Cardwell to secure the abolition of purchase in 1871. Even then much criticism of the idea of a “professional” army still persisted, and Cardwell had to emphasize that:
. . . if there is one lesson which we have learned from the history of the late campaign, it is this — that the secret of Prussian success has been more owing to the professional education of the officers than to any other cause to which it can be ascribed. Neither gallantry nor heroism will avail much without professional training . . .28
With reluctance Parliament conceded that Moltke might be a greater threat than Cromwell and authorized the government to buy up the commissions of its officers and institute a system of promotion based on seniority and selection according to merit.
Professional advancement made easier headway in the British Navy than in the Army. Politics was largely eliminated at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Moreover, there was no purchase system. By the latter part of the century an effective retirement scheme had been introduced, and after 1860 all appointments were made on the basis of “rank” rather than “post.” Midshipmen and sublieutenants were promoted by examinations, lieutenants and commanders by selection, and all others by seniority.
EDUCATION. As the science of war increased in scope and complexity, institutions for its advanced study became increasingly necessary. Prussia recognized this long before any other power, and in 1810 Scharnhorst established the famous Kriegsakademie in Berlin. This school was designed to be a military university for the higher study of the science of war. Officers were admitted after five years service, certification by their commanding officers that they had performed their duties competently, and passage of a ten-day special examination. Ordinarily, forty were selected out of sixty to seventy candidates each year. The required subjects included tactics, military history, science of arms, field and permanent fortifications, military and political administration and economy, mathematics, artillery, special geography and geology, staff duty, and military jurisprudence. About one-half of the academic work was elective, and the officer could choose among universal history, universal geography, logic, physics, chemistry, literature, higher geodesy, higher mathematics, French, and Russian. The staff included both military and civilian instructors, and the school possessed an excellent library.
The War Academy was the focal institution of Prussian professionalism. In due course attendance at the Academy became a prerequisite for attainment of either high rank or one of the much coveted positions upon the General Staff. For a long time the Academy was the only institution of its kind in Europe. One measure of its impact is the estimate that in 1859 about 50 per cent of the military literature of Europe was produced in Germany.24 In the War Academy, as in the lower schools, the great emphasis was on the development of a general understanding and broad theoretical ability on the part of t
he students rather than detailed factual knowledge committed to memory. Foreign observers marveled at the stress upon encouraging “self-reliance” and the care bestowed upon the “higher objects of education, upon forming and disciplining the mind and encouraging habits of reflection.”25 Judged by the standards of modern educational theory, the Prussian military educational system must have been among the most advanced in Europe — civil or military — during the nineteenth century.
France like Prussia established a number of advanced specialized schools during the first part of the nineteenth century. The French, however, had nothing comparable to the Kriegsakademie. The only institution remotely approaching it was the staff school (Ecole d’Application d’Etat Major) established by St. Cyr in 1818. Admission was limited to a small number of the best students of St. Cyr and the Ecole Polytechnique and to sublieutenants on active service. All candidates had to pass a rigorous examination on military subjects. The course of study was two years in length and was much more narrowly focused and elementary in nature than the curriculum at the Kriegsakademie. Attendance at the school was, nevertheless, necessary for appointment to the general staff corps. Like the other institutions of French professionalism, the staff school did not make much progress during the course of the century. As the French military attaché in Berlin remarked in the 1860’s, all French military educational institutions were “only agricultural schools” when compared with the Kriegsakademie.26
After the defeat of 1871, the French officers began organizing themselves informally for their own military self-education just as the Prussian officers had done in 1807. In 1874 the government appointed a commission to study the desirability of a war academy, and in 1876 a special course for higher officers was established at the staff school. Finally, in 1878, a true war academy, the Ecole Militaire Supérieure, was founded. Entrance to this school was by competitive examination, and a two-year course was offered to captains and lieutenants destined for the higher command and staff positions. While the Ecole later had its ups and downs, French military education was thenceforth on a much higher level than it had been prior to 1870.27
The Soldier and the State Page 6
