A History of the British Army —— Second Part Continued From the Fall of the Bastille to the Peace of Amiens, 1789 1801

-----

ISBN: 9781330496961 出版年：2016 页码：654 J W Fortescue Forgotten Books

In offering to the public this new instalment of the History of the British Army, I feel constrained to accompany it with an apology. Six years ago I expressed my hope that I should tell the whole of my story down to the year 1870 in four volumes; and now the fourth volume proves to have carried the narrative no further than to the year 1803. I know not what plea to advance in my excuse, except the sheer ignorance avowed on a famous occasion by Dr. Johnson. I can only say that, until I had dug deep into the huge mass of military manuscripts at the Record Office, I had no conception either of the tasks that were set by Pitt to the British Army nor of the vast amount of work - thankless, indeed, and unprofitable - which it did, or strove to do, during the first ten years of the war of the French Revolution.I am aware that in some quarters this excuse will avail me little. One critic, neither incompetent nor unkindly, has lamented that I have not ignored military operations altogether and confined myself strictly to an account of the Army's growth and administration.