00:00Who on earth thought it was a good idea to sell ranks in the military for money?
00:05It seems obvious that if you want to win wars, you'd put the smartest men in charge.
00:12So why did Britain deliberately place its soldiers
00:18under the command of whoever had the fattest stack of cash well into the 19th century?
00:24Well, the answer lies very much in the way the armies of these countries came about.
00:31As we all know, Europe went through a long and painful affair with feudalism,
00:37during which time armies were seasonal and recruitment was mostly organised by the nobility.
00:44This was fine for brief medieval military campaigns, but in an age of colonialism and gunpowder,
00:51assembling a defence force from your nobles and their farmers was no longer cutting it.
00:56To field a permanent standing army, however, requires a bunch of things that your average
01:0216th century European kingdom didn't have. For a start, you needed quite a lot of money,
01:09which is hard to get if you're a state that lacks the administrative apparatus needed to collect taxes.
01:15Even as late as the 18th century, many European countries would outsource their tax collection
01:22to merchants and aristocrats, who would keep a big chunk in exchange for doing the dirty work
01:28of actually collecting the taxes. Without proper taxation, the states of early modern Europe didn't
01:35have the money to pay for permanent troops nor to provide them with pensions. And without pensions,
01:41it's very hard for someone to make a career out of being a soldier or officer, as they wouldn't have
01:48any income as soon as the system spat them out. Another thing that countries had difficulty supporting
01:55without taxes was formal military academies, which is how you get good officers in the first place.
02:03Without military academies, you rely on your officers to gain their skills on their own,
02:09either through practice or private education. Which leads us to the obvious question. If you're in
02:16charge of an 18th century European army with no standardized military education, how do you
02:21determine who to put in charge? And, on a related note, how do you plug this massive fiscal hole in
02:29your country's budget that just keeps getting bigger? The answer to both these questions is exactly what
02:36happened historically. You put up the military commissions for sale. It was very similar to
02:42what the earlier medieval kingdoms had done with taxation. They outsourced them to whoever would pay.
02:50Military command had long been associated with the aristocracy, who tended to also be quite wealthy.
02:57So, the logic was that if one could afford to purchase a military commission, they were also likely
03:03wealthy enough to have received a military education when growing up. Also, in the same way that the
03:09nobles would bring their own equipment, the 18th century officer was expected to provide his men
03:15with uniforms and supplies whenever the official budget came up short. Wealth served as proof that an
03:23officer could support himself and his regiment without stealing. And by forcing officers to pay for their
03:29ranks, the state was effectively securing their loyalty. After all, someone who had invested a small
03:37fortune in becoming an officer had a lot to lose by deserting or switching sides. But, speaking of
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04:52and
04:52mobile too. Now, to be clear, money wasn't the only variable in consideration as to who could buy a
05:00particular commission. Especially for Britain, social standing and gentlemanly conduct mattered a lot,
05:08as did serving for a particular length of time for the higher ranks. And since there were a limited
05:15number of commissions to go around, in practice you'd have to wait for someone to retire, transfer or
05:21perish so that you could buy into their vacancy. When buying someone else's commission, you were in
05:27practice funding their retirement. They'd get the money, not the crown, but it wasn't paying them any
05:34pension, so the king was okay with that. As you climbed up the ranks, your investment would increase,
05:41a bit like owning stocks in your regiment, and then you'd get a fat payout when you hopefully made
05:47it out alive. Of course, this system was wildly susceptible to corruption, but that doesn't mean
05:54that everyone involved was incompetent. Many of the most renowned British generals during the Napoleonic
06:00Wars, for example, had purchased their ranks throughout their careers. The system could produce
06:06competent officers, but of course that's not the criterion by which they were being selected. And
06:13the biggest losers in this system were those who had the merit, but didn't have the cash.
06:20Many talented individuals were never even given the chance to rise due to their financial standing,
06:25and, perhaps worse, plenty of incompetence rose to disproportionately high ranks.
06:32The prime example is Lord Cardigan, a man with exceptional wealth and practically no battlefield
06:39experience. Throughout his career, he'd spend outrageous sums as high as £35,000, which is £3.5
06:48million today, to assume command of Britain's most prestigious cavalry regiments.
06:54He spent over two decades in charge, without ever actually engaging an enemy, with his first real
07:01combat happening in 1854, during the Crimean War against Russia. He led his regiment in a disastrous
07:09cavalry charge against entrenched Russian artillery, then promptly returned to England playing war hero,
07:16even though he hadn't achieved anything but getting his men killed. Despite multiple such
07:22occurrences during the 19th century, the system survived persistently long in Britain. France,
07:30Spain and Austria had abolished it around Napoleon's time, while Britain held out until the tail end of
07:37the 19th century. It was the rise of truly industrial warfare, with railways, telegraphs, rifles and mass
07:46mobilisation that made it impossible for the officer corps to remain as a mere social club for wealthy
07:54gentlemen. When reform finally came from Parliament, there was considerable pushback. The aristocratic
08:02House of Lords blocked the abolition of military commission sales, which had been passed by the House of
08:08Commons, and Queen Victoria had to personally intervene. Of course, this didn't transform the British Army into a
08:17perfectly meritocratic institution overnight, but when commission sales had outlived their usefulness,
08:24it made no sense to keep them. So, while the idea of selling military ranks seems absurd now, it did
08:31serve as an
08:32important bridge between the feudal armies of medieval Europe and the standing armies of today. In any case,
08:39let us know what other topics you'd like us to cover and maybe even consider supporting us on Patreon or
08:46buying our merch.
08:47Thank you for watching and stay tuned for the next regimentally commercial episode of SideQuest.
08:56Why did the British aristocrat take his military rank so seriously? He really bought into it.
