With all her pride, and its consequent self-sufficiency, with all her natural self-respect and self-belief, there is no nation really less military, at the heart of her, than Great Britain. Always a fighting race, it may be that this is why she is reluctant to fight, and is therefore always unready. She began the Crimean War with her usual curious sort of half-reluctant enthusiasm, and with an army of about the Peninsular type. She finished the war, the only nation then prepared and anxious to fight on, and, stronger than before, to push it to a successful termination when her allies were somewhat more than half-exhausted. But this very reluctance makes her serious when roused. And the uncalled for insult that she, of all nations in the world, was open to invasion at the call of French colonels called out all that curious innate fearlessness of battle which has helped British soldiers in many a hard-fought field to victory. Never were the English people more at peace, and more anxious to be. Never did they more willingly throw that feeling to the winds than when a body of French colonels insulted the whole English race. So for a third time the civilian laid aside his mufti and clutched the uniform and rifle. By the middle of 1859 there were six thousand men armed and willing to fight. It is not necessary here to enter into the controversy of the merits or demerits of this force. It began one way, it has finished another. It began, helped by a fulsome praise that can only be called hysteric; for the first idea it had was to reduce or abolish the army for the sake of a force of _not_ soldiers, but merely men in arms, and which was for a time the laughing-stock of all Europe! Anything more ludicrous, and from a military point of view contemptible, than the early days of these willing and patriotic enthusiasts cannot be imagined. They played at soldiers in the most absolute way, and though much improved, they are very far from perfect now. At first they were designed merely as local corps of varying strength, and were to have merely a company organisation. A separate manual even, the “Drill and Rifle Instruction for Corps of Rifle Volunteers,” was compiled with the specific purpose of minimising the amount of instructions to be given. This could, it was considered, be imparted in six lessons, and Sir Charles Napier in his “Letter on the Defence of England” strongly advises the new soldiery not to “let anyone persuade you to learn _more_.” Of course all this has long changed, and now the volunteer undergoes the same training as the soldier or the militiaman, but without that continuity that alone can make it of first value. Discipline and drill, if not synonymous terms, run hand in hand. The former naturally follows on the latter if it be continuous and sustained. CHAPTER XVI THE ARMY IN INDIA: (_c_) THE ARMY OF THE QUEEN-EMPRESS--1858-96