BRITISH MILITARY WEAPONS the Problem of Telling Their Story in a New Museum by William Reid

Reprinted from the American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin 33:35-52 Additional articles available at http://americansocietyofarmscollectors.org/resources/articles/ BRITISH MILITARY WEAPONS The Problem of Telling Their Story in a New Museum by William Reid Five years and five months ago, less a few days, I left the Armouries in the Tower o.f London where I worked for 13 years. From the oldest military museum in the world - the Tower was first opened to the public 400 years ago - I moved four miles west to the newest, to become the director of the National Army Museum. The museum began its existence in 1960 in the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, our equivalent of West Point. When I took over as its director in 1970 we had a new building (figure 1) in which to install a modern display telling the history of the British Army from the end of the Middle Ages up massive expansion in two World Wars, to imperial to today. To guide us our charter, signed by the withdrawal and today's relatively small Queen, defines the Army as '. including Britain's establishment. standing army, militia, yeomanry, volunteers, In addition to the temporal range of our subject Territorial Army and Territorial Army and we are also concerned with a vast geographical Volunteer Reserve; and the Indian Army up to sweep. This is a major problem for curator-s and Partition in 1947, the forces of the East India designers alike as the British Army raised its units Company and all other land forces of the Crown.' throughout the empire, incuding Jamaica, where The complexity of this task is all too apparent we bought slaves in 1801 for recruitment into our when the number and variety of these forces is West Indian regiments. considered alongside a list of the places where they Our first task was to divide the Army's history served. Even if no formation smaller than a into episodes, each of which was recounted in a battalion is taken into account, several thousand Story of the Army Gallery on the middle display different named and numbered units have been floor of the new three-story building. On the upper raised. floor we have presented a tiny fraction of our So, we have to recount the history of a major thousands of uniforms and hundreds of thousands military organisation from the raising of the of medals and items of insignia. The visitor who Yeomen of the Guard in 1485 through a civil war, walks through the uniforms finds himself in the Art Figure 1. The National Army Museum, opened by Her Majesty the Queen, 11 November 1971. Gallery which houses the finest of our collection of British soldier from mediaeval times to the present. pictures. Among these I must confess that my It shows the influence of tradition, emergency, favourite is of Colonel Francis Smith, who was fashion and science, and the special preferences nominally in command of the detached flank and requirements of many individual regiments, of companies of all Gage's troops at Lexington on 19 the East India Company, which ruled the great April 1775 (figure 2). sub-continent until after the mutiny of 1857, and of We had neither the money to set up an arms the Indian Army. display nor the time, before the Queen opened the I realize that there are many of you here today new museum on Armistice Day 1971, eighteen who know more about firearms, or about swords, months after the building was complete, but we or about the hafted weapons of the army than I do, have now started and today I shall tell you but I know that you will forgive me if I labour the something about how we are describing the point of the complications created by the range of development of the weapons used by the British material which concerns us. In the 15th century the Army through almost five centuries. It is a majority of weapons carried by warriors the world complicated story, despite the fact that we are over were simple in their construction and not at dealing with little more than the weapons carried all complicated in their use. Bows, axes, clubs, by the infantry and cavalry, for there were swords and spears used in combat had been known occasions in this period when a cavalryman might in various forms since before recorded history. The carry pistols, a carbine, a sword and a lance. development of gunpowder to project a missile in In addition to these personal arms we must, of the early 14th century and to the gradual course, deal with the machinegun, grenades, introduction of firearms but it was not until the mortars, bazookas and recoilless rifles. The display days of Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558 which I shall discuss traces, therefore, the until 1603, that the musket made any positive development of hand-held weapons used by the impact on the use of bows and pikes as the main Figure 2. Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, 10th Regiment of Foot, c1764, who commanded the detached flank companies of Gage's Troops at Lexington on 19 April 1775. Oil painting by Francis Cotes. armament of the British foot soldier, and not until labyrinthine arrangement, with few opportunities the 20th century that the swords and lances of the for long views of full-scale dioramas. cavalry were completely superseded by firearms. The beginning of the preparations for telling this The earliest identifiable weapon was a spear story of the weapons carried in war and found between the ribs of a prehistoric elephant. ceremonial was a 30-page brief for the museum The simple, sharpened stick was soon fitted with a designer. It seemed to me that the level of display flint head which looks much like the pikehead of should be directed to the intelligent visitor who the Middle Ages or the lancehead of the 19th knows little or nothing about weapons. I also century. But there were repeated changes in the decided on a simple didactic approach with a form of the head, the haft, the shoe, the grip and, pictorial presentation using models and diagrams, later of the sling. Almost from generation to rather than an indigestible mass of text. Here and generation opinions changed as to the correct there, additional information is presented through length and weight of a spear for use on foot or from the use of film and slide projectors with sound horseback. Here in America during your Civil War, commentary. We have also arranged that the the 9-foot lance was discarded by Rush's Lancers visitor will have some sort of tactile opportunity; fighting in the woods of northern Virginia while that he can feel the metal and the woodwork of most European armies were employing lancers, common weapons which will not be unduly and in India the greater part of the cavalry of the harmed by being handled. three Presidencies, Bengal, Bombay and Madras, The original intention was to incorporate into were armed with lances which they were later to the display specimens of every smallarm used from take to France and to Mesopotamia between 1914 1485 to the present, with simple expositions of and 1918. techniques, tactics, training and technology, to Modern man looking at a sword of the European explain the changes in the Army's methods of bronze age or one of the early iron swords from warfare. Unfortunately there are still a number of Luristan could not help but identify it as a fighting weapons which we have been unable to buy, beg, weapon, but throughout the entire period with borrow or steal despite the generosity of many which the National Army Museum is concerned, friends in Britain and America. even when there was some national Since no single type of weapon was used in standardisation, there were continual variations in isolation, we have been faced with the difficult but the shapes of the hilt which could either leave the essential task of integrating the illustrations of the hand totally unprotected or enclosed in a steel tactical use and the technological development of shell. The blade could be used for cutting, for the various types of small arms, swords, muskets, thrusting, or for both, and the scabbard which was pistols and others, in the context of their combined made of a variety of materials was suspended from use in the Army. Swords developed on their own the wearer's body or saddle ih one of several but their design varied almost as frequently as did different ways. that of firearms. The pike, the halberd and the bill The greatest variations are found, of course, in also changed while they were used alongside the pistols and guns. The phrase 'lock, stock and musket (figure 2), before becoming obsolete barrel' encompasses some of the items which through the development of cavalry tactics which, changed, to which must be added the evolution in their turn, were eliminated as automatic due to conflicting philosophies concerning the use weapons were perfected. of the bayonet and the means to fix it to a barrel, of I have already mentioned the labyrinthine sights, of ramrods and of many other minor nature of the case and panel lay-out. Throughout variants which comprise development. Our plan we have limited ourselves for economic reasons to was to relate all of these changes to the needs of a repeated curved module into which we can fit a the soldier, in the light of tactical and industrial series of cylindrical and semi-cylindrical change.

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