Abstract
Edward Cardwell was the Secretary of State for War who abolished the purchase of commissions in the British Army. His lasting reputation as a military reformer is primarily due to this achievement, and rightly so, for it was the most overdue and difficult Army reform of the nineteenth century, carried almost single-handed by a civilian against the reactionary weight of the officers and the Royal Family. As a loyal Peelite, Cardwell confidently declared, in seeking re-election at Oxford, that the War Office could be run at less expense and with increased efficiency. The Colonial reductions, announced by Cardwell in his speech on the Estimates on 11th March, amounted to 15,173 men, mostly from Canada, and left only 34,852 abroad. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 temporarily released Cardwell from the strain of controversy because opposition was drowned by public clamour for military preparedness.
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