Page 129 - The Wish Stream Year of 2022

training of cavalry and infantry officers. He was not entirely alone in this thinking.
Maj-Gen Craig, Adjutant to Duke of York, wrote to a friend from the Campaign: ‘We are undis- ciplined, the most ignorant, and the worst pro- vided Army that ever took to the field. Out of the 15 regiments of cavalry and 26 regiments of infantry which we have here, 21 are literally com- manded by boys or idiots.’
In 1798, Le Marchant was a Lieutenant-colonel commanding the 7th Light Dragoons in Croy- don. With the reputation as one of the most able regimental officers in the Army, he was reflect- ing on how he might improve and extend his own training of officers, especially when other commanding officers might not be so keen as him, when he realised that a permanent solution could only be found in a national institution with the aim to train both embryo officers before join- ing, and to train more experienced officers for staff duties. Britain was the only major European power without such an establishment. The story of how Le Marchant persevered, lobbied and persuaded the establishment, including the King and the Duke of York (Commander in Chief of the Army), to set up the Royal Military College is well-known. One major impediment was the insistence by much of the powerful establish- ment that education was unnecessary, or even
dangerous, because it implied that the exist- ing system of nepotism and preferment was unreliable! Nevertheless, the Senior and Jun- ior Divisions of the new Royal Military College were eventually set up under Royal Warrant in temporary accommodation respectively in High Wycombe in 1799 and in Great Marlow in 1802, with Le Marchant as overall Lieutenant-Governor of both establishments.
Le Marchant’s view, which was accepted, was that cadets from the Junior Division, on suc- cessfully completing the course, should receive a fee commission rather that relying on pur- chase. Although parents of cadets at the RMC needed to fund fees, uniform and equipment (e.g., horses), the scheme proved so popu- lar that the Marlow accommodation (a modest country house called Remnantz on the outskirts of the town) soon proved too small for the Jun- ior Division of the College, even after significant enlargement with temporary structures. Demand for places at the College had long outstripped available vacancies. The government had been progressing, albeit very slowly, a new single building to house the RMC at Sandhurst (now on the edge of Camberley) on the borders of Surrey and Berkshire. Building work had begun as far back at 1802 but not finished until 1812 when the Junior Division moved in.
RMC Sandhurst
The stated reasons why the Sandhurst site in particular was chosen were:
• The uncircumscribed extent of land, which admits of the buildings being so placed as to avoid a neighbourhood injurious to the morals of the cadets, and which allows space also for military movements, and the construction of military works without interruption (the town of Camberley, initially called ‘Cambridge Town’, did not exist then)
• The opportunity afforded of military instruc- tion from large encampments of troops, which, when they are formed in this coun- try, are generally situated in the vicinity of Bagshot (this referred to the Militias, which were the ‘reserve’ forces of the 18th/19th centuries)
• The low price of land, with the vicinity of water carriage by the nearby Basingstoke Canal (this had been recently completed in 1794 and ran from the Thames at Wey- bridge, via the Wey Navigation, to Basing- stoke, the nearest point to Sandhurst being Farnborough)
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