1799, a plan put forward by an Army officer, Colonel Gaspard Le Marchant, to establish at High Wycombe a 'college for the improvement of officers of over four years' service, to fit them for staff employment.' This was part of a larger plan for improving the education of regimental officers that ultimately led to the establishment of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. With that we are not here concerned, excepting in so far as it affected staff training. On May 4, 1799, a senior college was opened at High Wycombe, Le Marchant reporting that he never saw officers more desirous of learning, and from that beginning the present-day Staff College at Camberley sprang. The need for some such establishment was urgent, army officers being so ignorant that, as Colonel, afterwards Sir Charles Crauford, has said, we were 'obliged to have recourse to foreigners for assistance, or our operations are constantly liable to failure in their execution.' Nevertheless, public opinion was hostile, and Le Marchant was faced by an uphill task. For various reasons the college was not placed on a permanent footing by Royal Warrant until June 24, 1801, and from that date onwards its work was continued, largely on account of the strong personality and high standard of integrity of Le Marchant himself. In 1811, when two hundred officers had passed under his hands, he was promoted to major-general and sent to the Peninsula, where he fell in action at Salamanca a year later, leaving, as a perpetual memorial, the high standard that he set for the army at High Wycombe. There he managed to establish, by degrees, a discipline and good order which continued the subject of admiration in the place long after his decease.' His portrait still hangs in the High Wycombe Library-' student and fighting soldier, teacher and administrator; an upright gentleman; a man of the world of high moral character.' He had realised, from his regimental experience, that the military inefficiency that existed in his day sprang from the complete absence of professional education for officers, and the best years of his life were devoted to finding a remedy for that deficiency. Of the early students at the Staff College we can mention Birch, on Abercromby's staff in Egypt, reported on as one of the officers sent from Wycombe who were found of infinite use' by Anstruther, the QuartermasterGeneral; George Murray, of the Foot Guards, who was Quartermaster-General in the Peninsula; de Lancy, of the 45th, who occupied the same post at Waterloo ; Herries, who lost a leg in the Peninsula and ultimately became Governor of the R.M. College; Scovell, with a similar career; Gomm, the hard fighter, last to embark at Corunna; Hardinge, destined to become GovernorGeneral in India and Secretary at War; and in somewhat later years, Sir Benjamin D'Urban, Marshal Beresford, Commander of the Portuguese Army, General Sir J. A. Hope, and others. The close of the Napoleonic Wars found the Staff College 'a virile institution fulfilling its functions, and the factors enabling it to do so were the Royal interest, which watched its inception and growth so closely; the enthusiasm of the Commander-in-Chief and his immediate staff, who insured the appointment of the best available instructors; and the financial assistance - the latter in some respects overgenerous, especially as far as the building of the new college was concerned.' (Page 59.) The building referred to was at Sandhurst, where the 'Senior Department' was brought in 1829 into close touch with the R.M. College for cadets, after a few years' sojourn in somewhat inadequate quarters at Farnham, to which place the senior department had moved in 1813 because the R.M. College building was still incomplete. The cadets had moved there from Great Marlow at the end of 1812. Le Marchant's successor at the Staff College was Howard Douglas, who had been appointed 'superintendent' under him in 1804, and throughout the history of the College we trace the influence upon the staff, and through the staff upon the Army as a whole, of the personality of successive Staff College Commandants. Amongst officers who passed through the course at Farnham we find the names of Charles Napier, the future conqueror of Scinde, who joined in 1814, and his brother William, who joined in Waterloo year, as did Colquhoun Grant, who was taken away by the Duke of Wellington to take charge of his intelligence department. It is on record that Grant's message, written on June 15, 'Les routes sont encombrées de troupes et matériel, les officiers de toutes grades parlent haut que la grande bataille sera livrée avant trois jours,' did not reach the Commander-in-Chief until 11 a.m. on June 18, when the Battle of Waterloo had begun, the message having been delayed by the intervention of a subordinate General (apparently of inferior mental calibre) through whom it had just been submitted. The years 1820 to 1854 covered a period aptly described as 'siesta' by Major Austen, and on these years we need not dwell, beyond taking note of the points that the length of the courses was reduced, that a period of parsimony set in, and that 'Howard Douglas, sick of attempting to prevent economies which he felt so drastic as inevitably to ruin the Senior Department, seems to have wearied of trying to maintain the previous standard of efficiency in the face of so great difficulty.' He left in 1824. No successor was appointed as Commandant, and under John Narrien, eminent as an astronomer, and others lacking in military knowledge and experience, the programme of work became less and less military, and 'the Senior Department became the refuge of married officers who wished to avoid foreign service, and of unmarried officers whose only aim was to shirk regimental duty.' So matters went on during a period when the Duke of Wellington's acquiescence in the gradual decay of the army of his creation, as fine a fighting force as the world has ever seen, is considered to be incomprehensible. Before the situation could be retrieved, the policy of neglect was put to the test in March 1854 by the outbreak of the Crimean War, when : 'Had the work of the Quartermaster-General's Department been studied in the Senior Department as it had been whilst at High Wycombe and Farnham, there would at least have been a number of Staff Officers who had a theoretical knowledge of the subject, though they might lack practical experience. But all experience gained so dearly and bitterly forty years before had been forgotten. The Army was completely ignorant of any system of transport, supply, or medical service; no ancillary units even existed.' (Page 85.) The result is too well known by every student of the history of the period to need any further enlargement. Reform had its origin in the work of a Parliamentary Committee which reported (June 15, 1855) that the general decline of the Army Staff was due to lack of financial support. In January 1856 Lord Panmure appointed the first Commission to touch again upon the training of the Army Staff. With him the Prince Consort and the Duke of Cambridge co-operated, 'while the Queen kept in close touch with all that was done,' and Mr Sidney Herbert, as a private member in the House of Commons, insistently reiterated our shortcomings in military education, and the adequate training of Staff Officers in particular. In July 1856 the Duke of Cambridge became Commander-in-Chief. Advised by Mr Gleig, the Chaplain-General, he sounded the Prince Consort and enlisted the support of Lord Panmure and Lord Palmerston, who laid before the Queen a scheme for the establishment of a Council of Military Education. The ultimate result was that by December 1857 : 'Her Majesty the Queen had been pleased to approve of the name of the Senior Department of the Royal Military College being changed to "Staff College," and so, at last, after fifty-eight years of chequered existence, our training school for the Staff received its correct title.' (Page 103.) The Staff College, thus constituted, was established in the west wing of the R.M. College for cadets, but this arrangement was only temporary. The interest displayed by Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort, the Duke of Cambridge, and Mr Sidney Herbert (who became Secretary for War), continued, and, in the autumn of 1862, the staff and students moved into the present separate building, then approaching completion. During the years that followed, the Army University had its ups and downs, largely owing to the subjects taught and to the varying personalities of the successive Commandants and Professors. Out of 144 students who passed through the course between 1858 and 1868, only 81 received staff appointments, with the inevitable result; competition languished, and the right stamp of officer was not attracted. A Royal Commission reported in 1869 that 'expectations entertained of the Staff College had not quite been fulfilled,' and the enthusiasm of the Duke of Cambridge for the establishment for which he , had done so much declined into toleration in his later years. We read of his famous saying: 'Staff College Officers! I know these Staff College Officers! They are very ugly officers and very dirty officers!' - which Major Austen describes as 'a saying treasured by regimental officers who had suffered at the hands of the objectionable, and who naturally were inclined to tar all the Staff with the same brush.' There is no need to describe the twenty years of work done at the Staff College immediately after its establishment in the present building. The first requirement was some appreciation, by those in high places, of the duties required of Staff Officers, before there could be any hope of devising an educational system to train them to perform their duties. Competitive examinations in such subjects as geology and mathematics held their sway for many years, almost to the exclusion of the application of theoretical knowledge to the practical needs of warfare. One name, that of the late General Sir E. B. Hamley, author of the standard work in the English language on 'Operations of War,' stands out above all others connected with the Staff College during this period. After serving as Professor of Military History, he became Commandant in 1870, 'he saved the College Staff, revived it when it was in danger of perishing from infantine debility, and, on quitting the post of Commandant, which he had held just five months longer than the seven years fixed for its tenure, richly deserved the tribute paid him by the Director-General of Military Education.' (Page 182.) Hamley's departure seems to have shaken the faith of officers in the Staff College. In spite of the fine soldiers of the right type who had gone there, regimental officers still looked on the place with suspicion, and 'very few commanding officers encouraged their best to compete for entry.' Even by the year 1888 'no real Staff organisation was evolved for war; save, perhaps, for the Intelligence Branch,' in spite of the influence of a plethora of Commissions and Committees which had conducted inquiries and issued sterile reports. The year 1893 marked the beginning of the reforms initiated by Colonel H. J. T. Hildyard as Commandant |