It is this, the political not less than the military aspect of the Army's history that I have endeavoured, however slightly and however unsuccessfully, to elucidate, at the sacrifice sometimes of purely military matters; and it is this which makes the subject so vast as to be almost unmanageable. The difficulties of tracing military operations are frequently trying enough, but they are insignificant compared to those presented by the civil administration of the Army, and by the intolerable complication of the finance. Here again the reader must judge whether or not I have chosen aright; and I would ask him only not to attribute to neglect omissions which have been made after mature deliberation. My authorities from the reign of Queen Anne onward, and occasionally before, are quoted at the foot of the page; but in the earlier portion of the first volume I have been content to group them in a brief note at the close of each chapter or section;[1] and I have followed the same plan with some modification throughout. I must, however, mention that these notes rarely comprise the whole of the authorities that I have consulted, much less all that lie open to consultation. It would be a simple matter, for instance, to cover a page with works consulted on the subject of the Civil War alone; but while I have, as I trust, taken pains to make my work thorough, I have been content frequently to refer the reader to such authorities as will guide him to further sources of information, should he desire to pursue them. I have spared no pains to glean all that may be gleaned from the original papers preserved at the Record Office in reference to the military administration and to the various campaigns, and I have waded through many thousands of old newspapers, with and without profit. What unknown treasures I may have overlooked among the archives preserved by individual regiments, I know not, since with an army so widely dispersed as our own it seemed to me hopeless to attempt to search for them; but such regimental histories as exist in print I have been careful to study, sometimes with advantage but not always with profound respect for their accuracy.