The institutional history of the British army in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is well-trodden ground, but the role of the army in politics has not, until now, received the kind of detailed attention that Hannah Smith's excellent study, Armies and Political Change in Britain, 1660–1750, offers readers. In eight chapters, covering the period from the Restoration to the end of the War of Austrian Succession, Smith makes a compelling argument that the army had a “profound effect” on British politics (300). The book is firmly situated in the field of war and society, presenting a balanced assessment of the political, military, and sociocultural forces shaping public perceptions of the British army. Smith draws on parliamentary speeches, letters, and memoirs, as well as contemporary journals, pamphlets and newsletters, stage plays, engravings, and funerary statuary detailing how those perceptions changed, for the better, by 1750.
Though much of the book concerns political and military elites, Smith uses court martial records to reveal that non-commissioned officers and private soldiers also had strong political opinions. While set-piece battles and sieges rumble in the distance, the real fighting (or infighting) is over budgets, postings, elections, patronage, and pensions that were waged at court, in Parliament, and in encampments, as well as taverns, coffeehouses, and the streets of cities, towns, and villages. To win public support, Smith notes that all the monarchs of the period used military reviews, parades, and performances to enhance their royal power, with some subjects seeing spectacle and others intimidation.
The first three chapters examine the reign of Charles II and Restoration politics, introducing the persistent problem of the captain-general as political actor and the degree to which the standing army could be trusted and controlled by the Crown or Parliament. In restoring the monarchy in 1660, General Monck and the army had become “the controversial facilitator of political possibilities”—that is, either the protector of the monarchy and church or the agent to overthrow them (37). Smith suggests that the political crises marking Charles's reign, including the fall of Clarendon and Danby and the Exclusion Crisis, were all related to the standing army's potential as a tool of royal absolutism. The next two chapters address the Revolution of 1688–89 and the wars that followed. Smith emphasizes that the army has an “enduring significance” in the revolutionary events of James II's reign, with the central characters: James, Duke of Monmouth, James II and VIII, and William of Orange, all soldiers who had armies at their disposal (122). Ultimately, the first failed because his army was too small, and the second because his was too disorganized.
Though William's invasion may have saved Protestantism, many in Britain saw his army of Dutch contingents as an even greater threat to their liberties than James II's. The Revolution also brought with it the twin threats of Jacobitism and French invasion, along with their attendant political concerns, notably those leading to the standing army debates that raged in Parliament in the late 1690s. These political battles have been well documented, but Smith explores their impact on the stage and in the streets, concluding that pro-army voices could be just as loud as their opponents.
In chapter 6, Smith describes how, despite her sex, Queen Anne took on “a number of aspects of military queenship,” particularly as Marlborough's star began to wane, including the dispensing of patronage and drawing up promotion lists. While few believed Anne sought to use the army to strengthen her royal power, Smith claims that “deep concern” existed amongst anti-army politicians over Marlborough's intentions, worrying that he sought “supreme political power” and possibly the crown to add to his many laurels (175). These political intrigues, Smith argues, created divisions in the army in the 1710s that were as deep as those in the 1680s.
The last two chapters assess the “new political world” marking the reigns of the soldier-kings, George I and George II, and the Hanoverian's efforts to address the factionalism that had plagued the army. Yet even though the army was smaller owing to peace with France, considerable fears remained over its politics, primarily the threat of Jacobitism among the ranks and anxieties over Walpolean despotism or, later, Cumberland's brutality. Smith, however, indicates that the second quarter of the eighteenth century also witnessed “the development of a loyalist culture” within the army and a concomitant decline in anti-army sentiment by the 1750s (238). By that time, Monck's ghost was all but exorcised, with the British army now the staunch defender of God, King, and Country.
Hannah Smith is to be commended for filling a significant lacuna in our understanding of the British army's role in politics during this turbulent period. The book is an important and welcome contribution that will fit snugly alongside the works of John Childs, R. E. Scouller, and J. A. Houlding, among others.
