ABSTRACT
On 11th July, 1882, Admiral Seymour’s fleet, still equipped with muzzle-loading artillery, bombarded the ramparts and town of Alexandria and began Mr. Gladstone’s war on Egypt. General Sir Linton Simmons, respected military critic and member of many important committees since 1870, wrote an article on “The Weakness of the Army”; General MacDougall in another article asked plaintively “Have we an Army?”, while from Sir Frederick Roberts in India came penetrating criticisms deployed beneath less provocative titles. Edward Cardwell’s reforms, radically altering the structure of the Army, had been passed under the shadow of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871; a war that momentarily shook the tax-paying public out of its customary apathy towards military affairs with the sudden realization that neither in size nor organization was their army a match for a continental rival, even the defeated France.
