ate.

The necessity for keeping the regular army on a war footing after 1815,
still remained so long as there was an army of occupation, 25,000
strong, to be kept in France. In 1816, therefore, the numerical
strength of the army was 175,615 men, exclusive of those employed in
India. But when that occupation ceased, a reduction of 26,000 men
followed as a matter of course, and most of the cadres of regiments
were reduced to a very low peace strength.




CHAPTER XIII

THE ARMY AFTER THE LONG PEACE--THE CRIMEA, 1854


Reference has already been made to the reduction of the army after
Waterloo. When warlike enthusiasm died out, and the cost of the
war--some £800,000,000--had been grasped, the natural reaction came.
Retrenchment “all along the line” was natural; but though the numbers
were reduced to a weak peace footing, few regiments actually ceased to
exist. The old 100th, 99th, 98th, 97th, 96th, 95th, and 94th Battalions
were disbanded. Many regiments received fresh numbers. Hence the army
in 1821 numbered 99,224 men, with 20,000 in India; but there was a
slight increase to the infantry in 1823, when the 94th, 95th, 96th,
97th, 98th, and 99th reappear, and a further increase of 7,000 in
1831 because of Irish discontent; but this was again reduced, to be
increased in 1848. In 1837 the army consisted of ninety-nine regiments
of the line, with the Rifle Brigade, but was extremely weak in the
matter of the artillery and cavalry.

The dread of war died with the banishment of the great emperor to St.
Helena, and was buried with his death. Europe was at peace for many a
year, and people, foolish then as now, could not read by the lessons
of the past that no perfect or continual peace was possible until the
millennium came. Even those who looked forward to that event did not
read prophecy correctly. There were to be “wars and rumours of wars,”
but the people sat quietly down and dreamed of a continual peace, which
was as impossible as a continual war.

Exhaustion follows great warlike efforts, and exhaustion, of