Note Back to Main Text — Chapter I

Various stages of scheme. Practically no mobilisation scheme really took shape until 1886, when Major-General H. Brackenbury,[3] on assuming office as head of the Intelligence branch, turned his attention to the question. The unorganised condition of our army and the deficiency of any system for either home defence or action abroad formed the subjects of three papers,[4] in which he showed that, at the time they were written, not even one army corps with its proper proportion of the different departmental branches, could have been placed in the field, either at home or abroad, while for a second army corps there would have been large deficiencies of artillery and engineers, and no departments. For horses there was no approach to an adequate provision. The urgent representations contained in these papers were strongly taken up by Lord Wolseley, then Adjutant-General, and pressed by him on the Secretary of State for War,[5] with the result that a committee of two, Sir Ralph Thompson[6] and Major-General H. Brackenbury, was appointed to investigate the matter.