ABSTRACT
The British Army’s regular Mounted Infantry was arguably one of the most important innovations of the late Victorian and Edwardian armies. Its origins lay in the extemporised mounted detachments raised during times of crisis from infantry battalions on overseas imperial garrison duties. Eventually the Mounted Infantry model, unique among European armies, would evolve temporarily into a formalised organisation proposed as non-cavalry mounted troops until its abolition immediately prior to the First World War. A subsequent epitaph for this comparatively short-lived military force acknowledged that ‘for forty years the Mounted Infantry played a not inconsiderable part in many small wars and a major role in our one large conflict’. 1 Indeed, the experiences of the Mounted Infantry in this ‘one large conflict’, that of the South African AngloBoer War of 1899-1902, culminated in the Mounted Infantry becoming the successful, albeit transient, archetype for the British soldier in South Africa in 1901-02. 2 With hindsight, these wartime years represented the apogee of the British Army’s regular Mounted Infantry model. 3 This may be a surprising if not counter-intuitive assertion, as this particular conflict is often considered to have exposed the weaknesses of the mounted branches of the British Army. 4 It is all the more surprising, therefore, considering this contemporaneous enthusiasm for Mounted Infantry both in the army and with many senior army commanders at the end of the South African War, that the Mounted Infantry ceased to exist just eleven years later. Nevertheless, the philosophy behind Mounted Infantry, the fusion of battlefield mobility and firepower, still exists today in the form of mechanised infantry. Considering all these factors, the regular Mounted Infantry movement remains something of an enigma, and a historical review of the Mounted Infantry has been long overdue.
