The dawn of military geology in Europe

There had been an association between military men and mineralogy and mining in parts of Europe from at least the mid-eighteenth century. For example, from 1749 to 1752 Captain Benedetto Spirito Nicolis Di Robilant (1724–1801) and four cadets from the Royal School of Artillery in the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont were sent to Freiberg in Saxony, ‘to take courses in metallurgy, mineralogy, chemistry and to study the organization and the productivity of the local mines’ (Vaccari 1998, p. 110). However, it was during the French Revolutionary Wars that a general was to take geologists as such on a military operation for the very first time. In July 1798, after victory in late 1797 in command of French forces in northern Italy but lacking sufficient resources to subsequently invade England, Napoleon Bonaparte led an invasion of Egypt. Ostensibly to free its people from their Mameluke overlords, who ruled largely in defiance of Ottoman Turk superiors, this was intended to make France a power in the Levant, to counter British domination in India (Herold 1963).

Napoleon's army was accompanied by a Commission of Sciences and Arts: the ‘savants’. Comprising about 150 engineers and other technical experts, their task was to examine almost every aspect of contemporary and ancient Egyptian civilization, and thus provide information about Egyptian society and the country's physical environment and natural resources that would enable the French to govern the region effectively (Gillispie 1989, 1994; Bret 1999). The Commission included four members specifically as ‘minéralogistes’ (i.e. geologists) (Bret 1999, p. 61): Déodat de Dolomieu (1750–1801) and three of his former pupils at the redeveloping School of Mines in Paris, Louis Cordier (1777–1861), François-Michel de Rozière (1775–1842) and Victor Dupuy (alias Dupuis: 1777–1861) (Rose 2004a, 2005a, 2008a, b).

Dolomieu (after whom the carbonate mineral dolomite is named) and his assistant Cordier (after whom the metamorphic mineral cordierite is named) left Egypt in March 1799, before the French army had created access to the country as a whole. Dolomieu soon came to the end of a long and adventurous life, already well documented (e.g. by Lacroix 1921; Lacroix & Daressy 1922; Gaudant 2005). Cordier, however, developed a distinguished career in the government Corps de Mines and as Professor of Geology at the Natural History Museum, Paris, served three times as President of the Geological Society of France and was, ultimately, elevated to the French peerage as Baron Cordier (Jaubert 1862). In 1821 he became a Foreign Member of the Geological Society of London (Woodward 1907), one of the few members resident in France.

However, it was Rozière who was to complete the most significant geological work in Egypt (Drouin 1999; Rose 2008b), before the French army was defeated and expelled by a British expeditionary force in the spring and summer of 1801 (Herold 1963; Rose 2005a). In addition to four Egyptian articles in the Journal des Mines (Rose 2008b), Rozière contributed a dozen major items to the Description de l'Égypte, the official published record of the ‘savants’ and a work so massive in its 20-volume first edition (Jomard et al. 1809–1828) that a special cabinet could be bought to contain it. Rozière and Dupuy returned to France to lifetime careers in the Corps des Mines. Rozière, from 1820 to 1824, was concurrently employed as Professor of Geology and Mineralogy at the Saint-Étienne School of Mines in southern France.

Although the conflicts of 1792–1815 arguably mark the advent of modern warfare, the role of French geologists in Egypt bears closer comparison with that of later colonial explorations in America, Africa and the Far East, than with the work of military geologists in later ‘world’ wars. There was no need (or means) for a geological appraisal to facilitate a beach landing, as, for example, in the geological preparations for the D-Day landings in Normandy of June 1944 (Rose & Pareyn 1995, 2003; Rose et al. 2006) and the German preparations for the invasion of England in 1940 (Rose & Willig 2002, 2004). Although the main responsibility for the young engineers in the expedition was to build or mend fortifications, roads, bridges, canals and public works, the geologists did little to assist them in the ways that military geology was to assist the engineers of both Allied and German forces in the 1914–1918 and 1939–1945 world wars (Rose et al. 2000). Moreover, the River Nile and associated waterways plus cisterns and shallow wells provided an adequate water supply, without the need or means to supplement this by deep boreholes sited with geological guidance: a skill developed largely in the twentieth century (Rose 2004b; Robins et al. 2007). The geologists were deployed to undertake exploration rather than military geology, for there were no geological or, initially, even high-quality topographical maps to guide them. They did record information on raw materials in the expeditionary force area and occasionally notes on water supply: tasks familiar to twentieth century military geologists in both American and European armies. They were not, however, military geologists in the modern sense in that they were not involved in the planning or conduct of military operations, or used to prepare specialist maps (Rose & Clatworthy 2008a, b).

It is the Prussian general (later Field Marshal) Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (1742–1819)¹ who has often been credited with first making use of a geologist in military uniform: Professor Karl Georg von Raumer (1783–1865), during the 1813–1814 war of German liberation from French Napoleonic domination. Raumer had been a student of Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749–1817) at the Freiberg Mining Academy in Saxony in 1805–1806 (his fieldwork in 1806 deferred to 1807–1808 to avoid Naploeon's military campaigns in Germany), and became Professor of Mineralogy at the University of Breslau in the then Prussian province of Silesia (now part of Poland) in 1811. Betz (1984), Hatheway (1996), Kiersch (1998) and Kiersch & Underwood (1998) have followed earlier German authors in claiming that Blücher consulted Raumer for information on the terrain of Silesia before triumphing over the French at the second Battle of the Katzbach, on 26 August 1813, and that Raumer was therefore the first geologist to help plan a military operation. However, it is now clear (Linnebach 1912; Rose 2005c) that he was used as a normal staff officer and not as a geologist; that he was away from Blücher's army carrying dispatches for some time prior to the Battle of the Katzbach and so was not available for consultation at that critical time; and that he was absent from the entire Battle itself.

Raumer served on the staff of Blücher's Army of Silesia until the allies entered Paris in March 1814, Napoleon abdicated soon afterwards, and the war thus came to an end. In Paris he repeatedly visited the School of Mines, establishing a friendly rapport with an English visitor, the Geological Society's founder President, George Bellas Greenough (1788–1855). Familiar with the geology of the Paris area from pre-war visits, Raumer took Greenough on several local fieldtrips. Raumer was demobilized in early May 1814, awarded the Iron Cross for his military service and returned to a distinguished academic career, initially at Breslau. There in 1816 he was visited by Greenough, accompanied by the Oxford academic William Buckland (1784–1856), the end of the war ending the (arguable) isolation of British from German geologists and the consequent development of separate schools of thought during wartime (Torrens 1998). In 1817 Raumer became one of the earliest Foreign Members of the Geological Society, continuing until he died in 1861 (Woodward 1907).

The first true military geologist was arguably not Raumer, but Johann Samuel Gruner (1766–1824), otherwise known as Johann Samuel von Grouner. A distinguished Swiss mining geologist, Gruner had also studied under Werner at the Freiberg Mining Academy, and later became Director-General of all Swiss mines in the ‘Helvetic Republic’: briefly a French satellite state (Häusler & Kohler 2003). He participated in military operations during the War of 2nd Coalition, which ended the French Revolutionary Wars, when French troops campaigned in Switzerland against an Austro-Russian army. Later emigrating to Bavaria, when in 1814 Bavaria joined Prussia in the German War of Liberation from Napoleonic rule he commanded a volunteer rifle battalion in the campaign to drive Napoleon's army back to Paris. Drawing on his experience both as a geologist and soldier, he wrote a memorandum in 1820 on the relationship between geology and the science of war. The first such work in its field, this was published posthumously (Grouner 1826), but made no discernable impact either on geology or military training, in Germany or elsewhere. German perceptions of the military applications of geology developed only with the advent of World War I (Rose et al. 2000).

In general, geologists were not to be used as such on the field of battle until the twentieth century world wars (Rose & Rosenbaum 1993a, b, 1998; Rose & Clatworthy 2007a, b; 2008a, b). Nevertheless, many influential early members of the Geological Society of London had careers that were affected at some point by the hostilities of 1792–1815. Examples are described here from amongst the founders, early presidents, council members and executives of the Society.

Military affiliations among the Geological Society's founders

Of the 11 Society founders who dined together in London on 13 November 1807 (Herries Davies 2007; Lewis 2009, table 4), in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, Jacques-Louis, Comte de Bournon (1751–1825), James Franck (1768–1843) and Greenough already had military associations, and Richard Phillips (1778–1851) was soon to acquire them.

Jacques-Louis, Comte de Bournon, from whom the mineral bournonite (a sulphide of copper, lead and antimony) is named, was born into an aristocratic family. His home, the Château de Fabert, lay near the fortress city of Metz in NE France (Herries Davies 2007, 2009), a city in which Dolomieu had served as a soldier in his youth (Rose 2008b). Although de Bournon had studied mineralogy in Paris under Jean-Baptiste Romé de Lisle, his chosen career initially was that of a professional soldier. He rose to become a captain of artillery, a Lieutenant of the Maréchaux de France, and a knight of the Royal and Military Order of St Louis (Bournon 1808, title page). However, as a devoted royalist, he left France when his republican countrymen seized the French royal family in 1791, and fought against the Republic in the opening campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars. By 1793 he was in England: a member of London's émigré community. There his life-long interest in mineralogy helped to provide an income and, as Herries Davies (2007) has described, it was in order to facilitate publication of his mineralogical monograph (Bournon 1808) that had caused most of the group of friends – which founded the Geological Society – to come together initially. De Bournon was thus a professional and veteran soldier whose energies had been diverted from a military career into mineralogy (and so to geology) by the fortunes of war. Between 1810 and 1813 he was to serve on the Council of the Society as its first Foreign Secretary (Woodward 1907).

James Franck was a physician by profession (Lewis 2009); however, he also had a distinguished military career. After graduating from the University of Cambridge as a Bachelor of Medicine in 1792, on 10 June 1794 he was appointed to serve as a ‘Physician’ with the British army (Hart 1843, p. 418). On 12 November he was assigned for service on the Mediterranean island of Corsica (Peterkin & Johnston 1968, p. 84). At that time, Physicians were commissioned into the Army on the recommendation of the Physician-General, and were always men with higher medical qualifications than the ‘Surgeons’. As the élite of the medical profession in the service, they ‘were paid at a rate very much higher than that received by the Regimental or Staff Surgeons’ (Peterkin & Johnston 1968, p. xxxvii). A Royal Warrant of 12 March 1798 specified that a medical degree of Oxford or Cambridge, or a licence from the College of Physicians in London, were desirable prerequites for appointment, although some latitude was allowed both before and after this date. In wartime, as indeed 1794 then was, a Physician was appointed to the Staff of the Commander-in-Chief of each Army or Expeditionary Force and became his personal medical attendant. Others were appointed to the larger hospitals or garrisons (Peterkin & Johnston 1968, p. xxxviii).

On 4 April 1800 Franck was promoted to the rank of Inspector of Hospitals (Hart 1843; Peterkin & Johnston 1968). Peterkin & Johnston (1968, pp. xxv, xxxi) note that there existed at that time, in addition to the Regimental Medical Officers (surgeons and their ‘mates’, i.e. warrant officer assistants) who served with regiments of foot guards, cavalry and infantry, a distinct separate medical staff whose duty was concerned with hospitals other than the small regimental hospitals. With the exception of the hospitals in some garrisons both in Britain and abroad, and, later, a few large general hospitals, these hospitals existed only in time of war. Their officers were gathered together on the outbreak of war, as required, typically from the ranks of the general medical profession, or from those who had served on former campaigns and had retired on half-pay.

Franck served as an Inspector of Hospitals during the British campaign of 1801 to expel French forces from Egypt. Napoleon Bonaparte had returned to France in late 1799 to seize power as First Consul, but the survivors of the French army he had led into the country in July 1798 remained as a formidable force: some 25 000 men dispersed at stations throughout Egypt. In March 1801 the British mounted a combined naval and military operation in the eastern Mediterranean to defeat them. The naval force comprised some 180 ships under Admiral Lord Keith; the military comprised about 15 000 men, of 31 regiments or battalions, under Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby (Walsh 1803; Daniell 1951; Herold 1963; Ryan 1983). On 8 March Abercromby's troops fought their way ashore at Aboukir Bay, some 20 km from Alexandria. Abercromby was to fight two more battles in the vicinity of Alexandria later in March, being mortally wounded in the second. Nevertheless, French forces in Cairo were compelled to surrender on 27 June, and to evacuate from Egypt between 31 July and 7 August, the ‘savants’ having been evacuated earlier, in May, as open warfare brought their activities to a close. The remaining French forces surrendered at Alexandria, after siege, on 2 September. Their repatriation began on 14 September, bringing the French invasion of Egypt to an end.

Franck was at first appointed the principal medical officer for the British campaign, but, although regarded as a physician of some distinction, he was ‘without war experience and he was superseded by Inspector of Hospitals Thomas Young’ (Cantlie 1974, p. 265). Young was an officer who had served Abercromby well on previous occasions. Franck assisted Young in Egypt (Lewis 2009), and seemingly then had no time or inclination to pursue geological interests. Moreover, the British expeditionary force lacked the colonial ambitions of the French, so operated without the support provided by geologists and other ‘savants’ attached to the French army. There was no British attempt to create an official record comparable with the Description de l'Égypte (Jomard et al. 1809–1828), or to emulate its extensive description of geology (Rozière 1812a) and lavish illustration (Rozière 1812b) of Egyptian rocks and fossils.

The campaign over, and war with France ended by the Treaty of Amiens on 27 March 1802, Franck returned to England, where he temporarily retired on half-pay on 25 June 1802. Warfare resumed in Europe in May 1803, but Franck was restored to full pay only on 1 August 1805, and reverted once more to half-pay on 25 December 1806 (Peterkin & Johnston 1968, p. 84). However, on 28 April 1808 Franck was again restored to full pay, prior to service in the Peninsular War which raged across Portugal and Spain (the Iberian Peninsula) between 1808 and 1814. A British expeditionary force landed in Portugal in the summer of 1808, and on 21 August inflicted a sharp defeat on occupying French forces at Vimiera (Holmes & Evans 2006). Of the 30 000 British troops assembled near the start of the campaign, 10 000 had arrived under the command of Sir John Moore after an abortive expedition to Sweden, ‘and with him came a substantial number of medical staff officers: Dr. Franck was Inspector of Hospitals, and Dr. William Fergusson Deputy Inspector; there were also two physicians and four surgeons’ (Cantlie 1974, p. 301).

The campaign of 1808 soon left the British army in undisputed control of Portugal, with Franck as its principal medical officer (Peterkin & Johnston 1968, p. 84; Cantlie 1974, p. 420). However, in the following winter, a British force that had advanced into Spain under the command of Sir John Moore was compelled to make a poetically celebrated retreat to the coast at Corunna,² and there evacuated in January 1809 (Holmes & Evans 2006). Later that year, remaining British forces commanded by Sir Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) campaigned in Portugal and then briefly into Spain. In 1810 the British fought primarily to defend the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, constructing the formidable ‘Lines of Torres Vedras’, but from March 1811 the character of the war changed, as the French were forced into the first of a series of retreats. However, by 30 October 1811 Franck was so unwell that he was scheduled for repatriation to England (Lewis 2009).

Franck's post in the Peninsula was filled temporarily by Deputy Inspector Bolton, and from 10 January 1812 by Dr (later Sir) James McGrigor. Cantlie (1974, p. 339) was later to comment that ‘it is not to decry the ability of Dr. Franck when we say that with McGrigor's appearance on the scene a new era began for the Medical Department in the Peninsula’. Swinson (1972, p. 302) has affirmed that ‘It was not until 1812 in the Peninsula that the first organized medical service was instituted by Wellington. On 10 January that year he appointed Dr. James McGrigor as his Principal Medical Officer and consulted him almost daily’. However, it seems that Wellington considered Franck to be a competent Inspector of Hospitals, as, when Franck was invalided to England, Wellington was concerned at his departure, and when later newspaper reports expressed criticism and questioned Franck's ability, Wellington was supportive of Franck rather than his critics (Cantlie 1974, p. 332).

Back in Britain, Franck retired on half-pay with effect from 25 October 1812 (Peterkin & Johnston 1968, p. 84), and was elected to the council of the Geological Society for the two years 1812–1814 (Woodward 1907). The 1812 edition of the Army List (War Office 1810–1862)³ shows that Franck, in his final year on full-pay, served in the Army's Medical Department headed by John Weir as Director-General, with Charles Ker [sic] MD and William Franklin MD as Principal Inspectors. Franck himself was listed beneath these as third in seniority of seven Inspectors, above 23 Deputy Inspectors, 24 Physicians, 109 Surgeons, 10 Assistant Surgeons, plus five Purveyors, 25 Deputy Purveyors and 17 Apothecaries.

The 1813 and 1814 editions of the Army List record Franck as the first of the few Inspectors ‘On the English half-pay’, but the 1815 edition lists him as the sole member of the Medical Department categorized amongst ‘Retired and Reduced Officers receiving Full Pay’, his seniority given as 28 April 1808, the date of his Peninsular War appointment. From 1816 until his death on 27 January 1843 (Peterkin & Johnston 1968, p. 84) annual editions of the Army List record him as receiving only half-pay (between 1816 and 1818 named incorrectly as James Frank), normally amongst about 20 Inspectors, but from 1825 with seniority credited as from 4 April 1800, his initial date of appointment to the rank. On 29 July 1830 a Royal Warrant changed the rank of Inspector of Hospitals to that of Inspector-General, and accordingly in ‘the London Gazette of 11 January 1831 it was notified that the titles of the officers on the half-pay as Inspectors had been altered to that of Inspector-General from 29 July 1830, “but this change is not to be attended with any additional expense to the Public”’ (Peterkin & Johnston 1968, p. lxi). Franck is duly shown in the Army List as an Inspector-General rather than an Inspector from 1832 to 1843, from 1834 his seniority placing him as first of these.

It is thus clear that the period of extended warfare generated a major career opportunity seized by James Franck, and that Army medical full pay or (more typically) half-pay provided him with an income for nearly 50 years. He was one of the last senior medical officers in the British army before the reforms introduced by his Peninsular War successor James McGrigor pioneered the development of a more modern medical corps.

George Bellas Greenough had a very different background, as described elsewhere in this volume (Kölbl-Ebert 2009). His influence on the Society was considerable and many aspects of his life have already been well documented (e.g. by Wyatt 1995; Kölbl-Ebert 2003; Herries Davies 2007). He was one of the Society's founders, its first treasurer (for one month) and its first President; in 1810 he became one of its first (seven) trustees; he compiled a Geological Map of England and Wales (Greenough 1820) largely under the Society's auspices; in 1825 he became one of the first (five) Fellows when the Society gained its Charter (Boylan 2009); and on his death in 1855, he became a significant benefactor to the Society. A lawyer by training but with a lifestyle financed by inherited wealth, he served his country as a Member of Parliament. For 16 years he served also as a soldier in Britain's reserve army (Rose & Rosenbaum 1993a; Rose 2000).

On 2 November 1803, barely six months after the onset of the Napoleonic Wars, Greenough had been elected a private soldier in the Light Horse Volunteers of London and Westminster. This regiment formed a corps separate from the regiments of militia, yeomanry and volunteer infantry, which then comprised most of the units in the British reserve army (Rose 2000). Founded in 1779, it was older in foundation, and had diffferent and rather unusual terms of service, as defined in its standing orders by June 1815 (Collyer & Pocock 1843, appendix, pp. iii–xi, and quotes below). The unit was commanded by a colonel rather than a lieutenant-colonel. In peace time its affairs were directed not by its commanding officer alone but by a Committee ‘consisting of the Field officers, the Adjutant, Quartermaster, Regimental Sergeant-Major, the Senior Officer present of each troop, and two Privates or Non‐Commissioned Officers for each troop, chosen by ballot’. All members had to join as private soldiers and even to enrol as a private: ‘Every gentleman must be either proposed or seconded by one of the Committee’. Rather than being paid for their services, members had to pay to join: ‘Every Light Horse Volunteer furnishes himself, at his own expense, with uniform and accoutrements and pays a certain sum on his admission, and an annual subscription [and] provides and keeps a horse at his own expense’. Officers were elected and promoted by ballot at a general meeting ‘and their names sent up by the Colonel to the Secretary of State for the approbation of His Majesty’. They were thus not subject to the Lord Lieutenant of the county in the manner of other reserve army units. Even private soldiers had the right to be presented to the sovereign when attending court in uniform. Individual commitments were truly voluntary: ‘The Light Horse Volunteers … trust to an esprit de corps and point of honour for attendance’. The unit had an obligation to be called out in support of the Civil Power when necessary – but without pay. On 30 June 1808, in the year following his election as a Member of Parliament and also foundation of the Geological Society, Greenough was commissioned as a lieutenant, one of six lieutenants and so subordinate to only nine officers of senior rank in the regiment (Fig. 1). He was to serve as a lieutenant for 11 years.

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Fig. 1.

A squadron officer of the Light Horse Volunteers in review order uniform of the period 1811–1817. Although the illustration is not necessarily of G.B. Greenough himself, it depicts an event in Hyde Park, London, on 20 June 1814, and portrays a type of uniform that he would have worn during his commissioned service in the corps. From a coloured illustration in Collyer & Pocock (1843).

Greenough resigned his commission in 1819, following an event on 16 August at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, which shocked the country (Rose 2000). Details of the event have proved controversial both in fact and interpretation, then and subsequently. In essence, a political meeting had been called that drew a crowd of 50 000, perhaps 60 000, men, women and children. Fearful of so large a gathering, the local magistrates sent in reserve army cavalry, the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, to arrest the principal speaker. When these inexperienced horsemen became dispersed and hemmed in, troops of regular army cavalry (the 15th Hussars) were ordered to disperse the crowd by the flat, rather than the edge, of their sabres. The panic as the crowd tried to flee led to 11 deaths and about 400 people being injured. There was an immediate national outcry among both radicals and Whigs against the Tory government, and many members of Yeomanry Corps resigned in protest at a perceived abuse of military power for political ends. Greenough made his own protest. He resigned from the Light Horse Volunteers and published an identical resignation letter (dated 18 October) plus letter extract (dated 2 November) in national newspapers: the Morning Chronicle of Friday 5 November 1819 and The Times of Saturday 6 November: COPY OF A LETTER FROM G. B. GREENOUGH, Esq. Lieutenant of the Light Horse Volunteers of London and Westminster, to Colonel Bosanquet, the Commander of the Corps. Dear Sir, – In explanation of the motives which induce me to trouble you with this letter, I beg to refer you to two documents, both of them but too notorious, the one a letter from Lord Sidmouth, his Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department, conveying the thanks of the Prince Regent to the Magistrates of Manchester, for their conduct on the 16th of August last; the other a declaration of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London, congratulating the lovers of social order on the dignified posture of vigour and resolution which the several authorities throughout the country are assuming, at a period when an unexampled abuse of magisterial authority is from one end of the Kingdom to the other a topic either of regret or alarm. These two documents have deprived me of that assurance which is obviously indispensable to every honest man who allows his name to continue on the roll of Light Horse Volunteers, an assurance that he will not be called upon as a Member of that Corps to endanger or destroy the lives of the unarmed, the innocent, the unsuspecting, men, women, and children – fellow-subjects, friends and neighbours. In loyalty to the King, in attachment to the constitution, in a desire to counteract, by all legal means, the machinations of those bad men who wilfully impute the distress of the poor to false causes, in order to give effect to their recommendation of desperate remedies, I yield to no man either in the Cabinet or in the Court of Alderman, but I cannot consent to serve any longer in a Corps, in which the only security I have for not being engaged in civil warfare, is the discretion and temper of the Ministers who advised such thanks and the Magistrates who framed such a declaration. With these sentiments, I beg the favour of you to take whatever steps may be necessary to enable me to resign the Commission which I have the honour to hold in the Regiment under your command. I request also that you will have the goodness to communicate my resignation to the Committee in any way, which, under the circumstances, you may deem expedient. I have the honour to be, Dear Sir,Your obedient faithful Servant, G. B. G. Parliament St, Oct 18, 1819 Extract of a Letter from Lieutenant Greenough to Colonel Bosanquet, dated London, Nov. 2, 1819. I beg leave then, with every feeling of respect, both towards you and the corps under your command, to repeat the request contained in my former letter, but I am concerned to say, with one modification. When the letter was written, I desired only that the motives which induced me to resign should be known to you. I am now desirous that they should be made known to the Committee. The dismissal of Lord Fitzwilliam from the Lord Lieutenancy of the West Riding of Yorkshire, for having promoted an inquiry into the unconstitutional proceedings at Manchester, and an addition of 10,000 men to the regular army, for the purpose of intimidating the people, are circumstances which require that the motives of my resignation should be distinctly avowed. The day is come when the friends of a free Government must speak out unless they mean to be silenced for ever. I remain, &c. G. B. GREENOUGH These letters provoked both public and private correspondence (Rose 2000), but their acceptance soon ended Greenough's reserve army commitment. It was a commitment additional to geology that had absorbed a minor, but definable, element of his energies over a significant timespan.

Richard Phillips, the fourth founder with known military associations, was primarily a chemist, and a Quaker until disowned in November 1811 (Torrens 2009). His life has been documented by James (2004). In about 1818 he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst (Fig. 2). Thomas Livingstone Mitchell (1792–1855), a Scotsman who was to become famous as a surveyor and explorer in Australia (Branagan 2009), gained a commission as a 2nd lieutenant in the 1st Battalion, 95th Regiment (of Rifles), in 1811, served in the Peninsular War, and was subsequently tasked with making plans of Peninsular sites, based at Sandhurst from 25 September 1819 (Foster 1985). Whilst at Sandhurst, Mitchell attended Phillips' evening lectures from 11 February to 17 March 1820 on chemistry, and shortly thereafter ‘the course on Geology’ (Foster 1985, p. 84): a course which helped him prepare ultimately for admission as a Fellow of the Geological Society (on 20 April 1827), shortly before his emigration to Australia. It therefore seems that despite his pacifist Quaker origins, by about 1820 Richard Phillips was teaching geology in courses that could be attended by army officers, about three years before such teaching is known to have been instituted at the United States Military Academy, West Point (Rose 2008a).

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Fig. 2.

The Royal Military College, Sandhurst, c. 1820. From the Sandhurst Collection: published by kind permission of the Curator, Dr Peter Thwaites.

The Royal Military College itself was a product of the 1793–1815 wars (Anon. 1849; Smyth 1961). Its Senior Department was founded at High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire in 1799⁴ and transferred to Farnham in Surrey in 1813, moving to Camberley near Sandhurst in 1820–1821, where it transformed into the Staff College in 1858. Its Junior Department⁵ was founded at Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire slightly later (1802), moving to Sandhurst in 1812.

The 1793–1815 wars thus created very early opportunities for the teaching of geology in England in a military context (although such teaching at Sandhurst did not become truly significant until 1858, as described below). Introduction of any science teaching was, however, somewhat of a novelty. In 1818 the establishment by subject of professors and masters at the Junior Department comprised a total of 31 teachers in eight subject groupings: fortification (four teachers), French (five teachers), German (two teachers), mathematics (four teachers), arithmetic (three teachers), classics and history (four teachers), landscape drawing (three teachers), military drawing (six teachers); drawing being important since topographical maps sufficiently detailed for military use were still in the process of development (Smyth 1961). The emphasis in the curriculum was not to change greatly for 40 years (Anon. 1849). Early teaching in the Senior Department built largely on the subjects taught in the Junior Department, notably geometry, algebra, fortification and drawing.

Military affiliations among the Society's early Presidents

Amongst the early Presidents of the Society, G. B. Greenough, the Honourable Henry Grey Bennet (1777–1836), John MacCulloch (1773–1835), Roderick Impey Murchison (1792–1871), Henry Thomas De la Beche (1796–1855) and Joseph Ellison Portlock (1794–1864) had well-known military affiliations, and between them served nine out of the first 26 presidencies, leading the Society for a total of 22 of its first 51 years (Woodward 1907; Herries Davies 2007).

Greenough, whose military activity has been described previously, served as the Society's first President from 1807 to 1813, again in 1818–1820 and yet again from 1833 to 1835, making a unique total of three terms and 10 of the first 28 years.

The second President, Henry Grey Bennet, served from 1813 to 1815. The second son of the 4th Earl of Tankerville, Bennet had been educated at the prestigious Eton School from 1788 to 1792 (Thorne 2004), and then (according to the Army List of 1794) joined the army on 16 October 1792. He was commissioned on 25 April 1793 at the age of 16 as an ensign in the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards,⁶ barely three months after France had first declared war on Great Britain. He served for five years, being promoted to the list of lieutenants/captains in his regiment on 3 October 1794, before leaving the army in 1798 to study law at Lincoln's Inn, London, and Peterhouse College, Cambridge. Then between ‘interludes as assistant to William Drummond, [British] envoy at Naples [from 1801 to 1803], and captain of militia volunteers, he was called to the bar in 1803’ (Thorne 2004, p. 105).

Elected Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury in 1806, Bennet shared the political Whig-Radical sympathies of his friend Greenough (Rose 2000). Failing to gain re-election in 1807, he returned to Parliament in 1811 until resignation in 1826 and emigration to Italy. A member of the Geological Society from 1811, he served on its Council from 1812 to 1824, and again from 1825 to 1826, but, apart from this influence in the Society's early affairs, Bennet seemingly made no significant contribution to geology.

The fourth President, John MacCulloch, who served from 1816 to 1818, is described and illustrated elsewhere in this volume (Bowden 2009). A man distinguished as a surgeon and malariologist, as well as a geologist, his life in general has been well documented (Cumming 1980, 1983, 2004; Flinn 1981; Rose 2005b; Rose & Renouf 2005). After graduating as a doctor of medicine from the University of Edinburgh in 1793, he remained at Edinburgh and was thus stimulated by geological ideas being widely discussed in academic circles (Porter 1977) until he began a military career as a surgeon's mate in the Royal Artillery on 15 August 1795 (Peterkin & Johnston 1968; Flinn 1981).

At that time the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers were commanded by the Master-General of the Ordnance, who held his appointment directly from the Crown and so was not subject to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army (the ‘Army’ thus comprised principally regiments of guards, cavalry and infantry). The medical departments of the Ordnance and the Army were distinct, until the Board of Ordnance (over which the Master-General presided) was abolished in 1855. Until 1804 ‘Ordnance’ medical officers held only warrants from the Master-General of the Ordnance, not commissions from the Crown, and not until 1814 was a separate heading ‘Ordnance Medical Department’ inserted in the Army List. In the army generally, the ‘medical and surgical qualifications of the Mates were not likely to be of a high order. Some were properly qualified men, but the greater number had little other qualification than that they had been apprentices to a surgeon in general practice, and had attended courses in Anatomy, Surgery and Medicine in some University, College or Medical School. At the same time many were highly educated men’ (Peterkin & Johnston 1968, p. xxv). In the Royal Artillery, the designation ‘Surgeon's Mate’ was changed to ‘Assistant Surgeon’ in May 1797. Peterkin & Johnston (1968, p. 111) cite John MacCulloch (erroneously as James McCulloch) as an Assistant Surgeon of the Ordnance Medical Department from 1 January 1804, but Cumming (1983) states that he was a senior assistant surgeon by 1803.

In addition to performing normal duties as a surgeon, MacCulloch was made assistant to a surgeon, William Cruickshank, who was chemist and assayist to the Board of Ordnance. In 1804 MacCulloch took over Cruickshank's duties. These included lecturing on chemistry at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, established since 1741 to educate cadets seeking commissions as officers in the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers (Smyth 1961). Other duties were primarily responsibility for analysing the purity of sulphur and nitrate shipments imported for gunpowder manufacture, and the efficacy of gunpowder delivered from the mills. His appointment was formalized from 10 October 1806 (Peterkin & Johnston 1968, p. 111), when he retired as a military assistant surgeon and was appointed full-time as the Ordnance chemist.

In the years 1805 and 1807 MacCulloch spent his summer holidays touring parts of the Peak and Lake Districts and the West Country, during which he visited mines and made notes about rocks (Cumming 1983). His fieldwork developed into a search for a non-siliceous crystalline limestone suitable for use as millstones for grinding gunpowder and its constituents. The Napoleonic Wars then in progress had prevented importation from Belgium of the ‘Namur stone’ hitherto used. From 1 September 1809 until the end of the war in 1814 this fieldwork became a task authorized and funded by the Ordnance (Flinn 1981), and MacCulloch thus became the first geologist to be militarily employed in Britain. He was almost pre-empted by William Smith, ‘Father of English geology’ (Knell 2009), when in 1805 Sir John Sinclair of the Board of Agriculture unsuccessfully proposed that Smith be attached ‘as a geologist’ to the Ordnance engineers then topographically mapping the country (Torrens 2003, p. xxvii). However, from 1814 to 1821 it was MacCulloch who was appointed by the Board of Ordnance to serve each summer as geologist to the Trigonometrical Survey (Cumming 1983), a project that was ultimately to generate the first geological map of Scotland (MacCulloch 1836). In the winter months he continued to lecture and undertake chemical analyses at Woolwich.

In addition, MacCulloch gained an appointment as a lecturer at the East India Company's military college, at Addiscombe in Surrey (Fig. 3), in chemistry from 1814, and geology also from 1819. Teaching was to cadets aged between 14 and 18, who attended the college for four–six terms, amplifying a curriculum in which prominence was given to mathematics, fortification, Hindustani and military plan drawing, supported by civil drawing, classics and French (Vibart 1894). As such, MacCulloch introduced the teaching of geology to a military curriculum a generation before such teaching at Woolwich and Sandhurst (Rose 1996, 1997a), and taught the only course in systematic geology at that time to be taught in England outside the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. His book A Geological Classification of Rocks (MacCulloch 1821) deserves credit as the first textbook written specifically to complement an annual British geological lecture course; the first comprehensive, systematic, descriptive, catalogue of rocks to be prepared by a British author (Cumming 1980); and arguably the first British geological textbook to be written primarily for engineers. It was generated (and publication financially supported) as a course book by the East India Company's military college at Addiscombe, following MacCulloch's appointment as part-time lecturer in geology. Its opening dedication is specifically to ‘the honourable Court of Directors of the United East India Company’, and the directors' names are listed in full. A further potential course book, A System of Geology (MacCulloch 1831), drafted in 1821 according to its preface, was less successful. It received more limited financial support from the Court and so lacks a dedication. MacCulloch held his appointment at Addiscombe until his death, from a tragic carriage accident, in 1835.

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Fig. 3.

The East India Company's military college (now demolished) at Addiscombe, Surrey. From Vibart (1894).

The 12th President, Roderick Impey Murchison (Fig. 4), served from 1831 to 1832, and then for a second term, from 1841 to 1843. He was the stepson of an army officer, for his mother had married Colonel Robert Macgregor Murray after the death of her first husband (Morton 2004). After education at Durham Grammar School, he gained entry to the Royal Military College, then at Great Marlow, in 1805: at the age of 13 and at the second attempt (being qualified for entry as effectively the ‘son’ of an army officer).

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Fig. 4.

Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, Bt., F. R. S. (1792–1871), veteran infantry officer of the Peninsular War, and second Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland. He wears the Military General Service Medal 1793–1814, with clasps awarded for service in the Peninsular War. From Woodward (1907), courtesy of the Geological Society of London.

Before the age of 16, Murchison was commissioned in 1807 as an ensign in the 37th Regiment of Foot but joined his regiment (then based at Cork in Ireland) late in the year, after six months supposedly to complete his education. In 1808 the regiment ‘joined a small army of about eight thousand men, later to be reinforced to thirty thousand, under Sir Arthur Wellesley [later to be ennobled as Duke of Wellington], which set sail from Cork to Portugal and the Peninsular War’ (Morton 2004, p. 20). The regiment went into action in August, notably at the Battle of Vimiera, where Murchison carried its colours: the flag that formed a rallying point in battle. Promoted to lieutenant, he served in the subsequent campaign into Spain, led by Sir John Moore, and in which Franck served as principal medical officer: a march that began in September but ended under winter conditions of great hardship, a retreat to Corunna where Moore was mortally wounded, and his force being evacuated by sea in January 1809.

Back in southern England, Murchison remained with his regiment on home duties for most of 1809, based at Horsham Barracks in Sussex. In the autumn, however, he was appointed ‘aide-de-camp’ to his uncle, General Mackenzie of Fairburn, and joined him in Sicily. They returned to England only in 1811, when the General's health deteriorated. The General was soon appointed to a command in the north of Ireland, and after a tedious period of barrack duty with his old regiment in Horsham, Murchison joined him in Armagh. He was promoted captain in January 1812, but saw no further action.

When peace was agreed in 1814, his uncle gave up his staff appointment and Murchison moved to London, temporarily retired on half-pay. When Napoleon escaped from exile in 1815 and initiated the campaign leading to the Battle of Waterloo, Murchison transferred from the infantry into a commission on full pay in the cavalry, the Inniskilling Dragoons, in the hope of action and promotion. But only six troops of his regiment were sent across the Channel, and his was not amongst them. He remained in the depot at Ipswich in Suffolk. When the war finally ended, he married, soon resigned his commission and channelled his considerable energies into other pursuits. In 1824 he became a member of the Geological Society and embarked on a glittering geological career that included his appointment in 1855 as the second Director (in 1866 re-titled Director-General) of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland (Geikie 1875; Morton 2004; Herries Davies 2007).

The 20th President, Henry Thomas De la Beche, who served from 1847 to 1849, had also attended the Royal Military College at Great Marlow. The only son of Thomas De la Beche (1755–1801), a brevet major (later lieutenant-colonel) in the Norfolk regiment of fencible cavalry (Secord 2004), he was admitted as a cadet in 1810, but seemingly authoritative assertions such as that of Flett (1937, p. 26) that ‘He entered the Army after passing through the Military School, but soon retired from the service’ and Bailey (1952, p. 21) that ‘on the close of the Napoleonic wars he decided to renounce his martial ambition’ seem to derive from earlier ambiguous or erroneous biographical statements (Rose 1996). There is no record in the Army List that he was ever granted a commission. Rather, McCartney (1977, p. 4) has pointed out that his career at the Military College lasted less than two years and was terminated at a time of unruly behaviour amongst some of the cadets: ‘Henry De la Beche, 8 October 1811, removed by order of the Commander-in-Chief’.

De la Beche became a member of the Geological Society in 1817 and later the founding director of what was to become the British Geological Survey. The Survey was founded as the result of a military initiative: ‘Early in the spring of last year an application was made by the Master-General and Board of Ordnance to Dr. Buckland and Mr. Sedgwick, as Professors of Geology in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and to myself, as President of this [Geological] Society, to offer our opinion as to the expediency of combining a geological examination of the English counties with the geographical survey now in progress' (Lyell 1836, p. 358). De la Beche had been ‘acting under the Direction of the Board of Ordnance’ (Greenough 1834, p. 51) from at least 1834, and seemingly from 1832 (Flett 1937, p. 21), and that military direction continued from foundation of the Ordnance Geological Survey until ‘It was formally transferred from the control of the Master-General and Board of Ordnance to the First Commissioner of Her Majesty's Woods, Forests, Land Revenues, Works and Buildings’ in 1845 (Flett 1937, pp. 45–46). This military financial support is generally credited to the influence of Lieutenant-Colonel T. F. Colby, at that time superintendent of the Ordnance Trigonometrical Survey.

The Society's 26th President, Joseph Ellison Portlock, who served from 1856 to 1858, was a professional soldier throughout his career (Bigent 2004b) and the last of the Society's Presidents to have Napoleonic military associations. After passing through the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in July 1813, and served briefly in England before promotion to lieutenant on 13 December (Rose 1996). In April 1814 he was posted for active service in Canada, serving in August as the junior of two engineer officers in the trenches (Elting 1995) during the siege of Fort Erie, and in September–October helping construct the bridgehead and defensive lines at Chippawa, at which Lieutenant-General Sir Gordon Drummond made a successful stand and ‘saved Upper Canada’ (Bigent 2004b, p. 981) from invasion by forces of the United States that, since 1812, had been allied with Napoleonic France. Following the close of hostilities he took part in numerous expeditions of exploration within Canada before returning to England in October 1822.

In 1824 Portlock was selected for employment with the Ordnance Survey as its work extended into Ireland: first at the planning headquarters in London, and from 1825 with T. F. Colby to initiate fieldwork in Ireland itself. There he remained attached to the trigonometrical branch of the work, of which he soon became the senior and ultimately the sole officer. An account of the origin and early progress of the geological department of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland is given in the preface to its ‘first’ (and only) report, by Portlock (1843, pp. iii–xi, quoted below). He acknowledges the ‘most promising beginning’ to geological study made by J. W. Pringle, on Colby's initiative, but its discontinuance due to pressure of basic topographic work. Subsequently geology was ‘permitted, but not commanded’ under Portlock's nominal charge, until 1832, when he ‘commenced the formation of a geological department’. In 1834 he began work on a Memoir of Londonderry intended to describe not only the geology of the region, but also its natural history and ‘Productive Economy’. In 1837 he directed his attention more exclusively to the geological department. He formed at Belfast not only a geological and statistical office, but also a museum for geological and zoological specimens, and a laboratory for the examination of soils. ‘It is only from this time, then, that the geological branch of the Survey […] can be considered as an organised work’. However, in 1840 plans to continue the Londonderry Memoir were abandoned, the office, museum and laboratory at Belfast ‘broken up, and everything connected with the department removed to Dublin’. There Portlock was directed ‘to prepare for publication all the geological data’ collected for Londonderry and adjacent areas. The work was completed and the Preface signed in January 1843, and it was published later that year as a substantial, extensively illustrated report ‘under the authority of the Master General and Board of Ordnance’ (Portlock 1843, title page).

Promoted to second captain on 22 June 1830, Portlock was later promoted to first captain in September 1839, and in 1843 he returned to the ordinary duties of a Royal Engineer officer (Rose 1996). Further promotions followed: to brevet major 9 November 1846, lieutenant-colonel 13 December 1847, colonel 28 November 1854 and major-general (on retirement) 25 November 1857. He served variously in Corfu, England and again, briefly, in Ireland, maintaining an active geological influence. He wrote an elementary textbook on geology (Portlock 1849) that was reprinted annually in 10 editions, and contributed substantial articles on geology (Portlock 1850) and palaeontogy (Portlock 1852) to the massive three-volume Aide-Mémoire (Lewis et al. 1846–1852) published to equip engineer and artillery officers of the British and East India Company's armies with technical information. His book was noteworthy for making the point that ‘the Soldier […] may find in Geology a valuable guide in tracing his lines both of attack and defence’ (Portlock 1849, p. 14).

Military careers of some early councillors

Thomas Frederick Colby (1784–1852), who had sent Portlock to Ireland and used his influence to provide financial support for De la Beche's geological mapping in England, was another career soldier (Portlock 1869; Bigent 2004a). Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in December 1801 at the age of 17, and soon assigned to the Ordnance Survey (Rose 1996), he was promoted first lieutenant on 6 August 1802, second captain 1 July 1807, captain 5 March 1812, brevet major 19 July 1821, lieutenant-colonel 29 July 1825, colonel 10 July 1837 and, finally, major-general 9 November 1846 on retirement.

In 1814, whilst a captain, Colby was elected a member of the Geological Society and was influential in arranging the appointment of MacCulloch to assist the Ordnance by geological work in Scotland. He served on the Society's Council 1815–1818, 1819–1820 and 1822–1825 until his departure from England to direct the Trigonometrical Survey in Ireland.

The Trigonometrical Survey of Great Britain was extended into Ireland from 1824. As plans were made in London, Colby lived in an atmosphere of science. He belonged to nearly every scientific institution in the metropolis, attended their public meetings and dined three or four days a week at their clubs. He was appointed superintendent of the whole of the Ordnance Survey in 1826. One of his first actions was to establish a geological branch in Ireland, and entrust this to a fellow Royal Engineer officer, Captain J. W. Pringle (although the first memoir including geology was to be published under his own name (Colby 1837) after reactivation of the branch by Portlock).

John William Pringle (c. 1791–1861) (known as John Watson Pringle from 1836, vide Rose 1997b), a colonel's son, was also a professional soldier: a cadet at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich from 24 March 1807, commissioned into the Royal Engineers as a second lieutenant on 23 August 1809, promoted to first lieutenant 1 May 1811 and second captain on 21 July 1815 (Rose 1999).

Pringle served at Chatham from September 1809 until January 1811, before posting to serve in the Peninsular War from January 1811 to July 1814. There he served initially in Lisbon's defensive ‘Lines of Torres Vedras’. However, in 1813 and 1814 he served with Wellington's army as it advanced across Spain and into France, being wounded in battle at the River Nive but fit again to serve at Orthes, where a decisive victory over the French was won on 27 February 1814. In April Napoleon abdicated and the war was over. The war ended, Pringle was posted in March 1815 to ‘The Netherlands’ (at that time comprising both Holland and Belgium), and consequently was one of 11 Royal Engineer officers to participate in the Battle of Waterloo: the only one to be injured.

After the war, as manpower in the British army was reduced to a peace time establishment, Pringle transferred to half-pay from 1 May 1817. He travelled to France and later Freiberg in Saxony, where he is reported to have received training in geology under the distinguished mineralogist Friedrich Mohs (famous for proposing in 1822 the 10-point scale of mineral hardness subsequently widely adopted). After further travels, he was appointed to the Trigonometrical Survey in June 1826 and assigned to the post of ‘Superintendent of the Geological Survey of Ireland’ from 14 November 1826: a role well documented by Herries Davies (1974, 1983, 1995) and Wyse Jackson (1997). By 1828 Pringle had only one subordinate fully trained in geological survey (Lieutenant J. E. Portlock) and four partly trained (Lieutenants G. F. Bordes, R. S. Fenwick, W. Lancey and A. W. Robe), and the Geological Survey was terminated abruptly on 1 September 1828 to return the officers to their priority task: topographic survey. Little of its work survives: notably a draft map prepared in 1828 for the parish of Aghanloo, County Londonderry (Fig. 5), and two geological crosssections, also from County Londonderry – the first by Lieutenants Fenwick and Lancey RE dating from 28 November 1827; the second by Lancey alone dating from 6 January 1828 (Rose 2008c, fig. 1).

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Fig. 5.

Part of a coloured geological map of the County Londonderry parish of Aghanloo, Northern Ireland, original at a scale of six inches to the mile (1:10 360) – one of the first government-sponsored geological maps of any part of the United Kingdom, made by Royal Engineer officers in 1828. Geological annotations (black on the figure) have been added in red ink to a printed base map, and a blotched carmine wash has been added to indicate the extent of plateau basalts in the NE. From Rose (1999), after [Herries] Davies (1974); reproduced by permission of the National Archives of Ireland.

Pringle returned to England in March 1829, and served at Woolwich until August 1831, from 1830 as Public Examiner for Commissions at the Royal Military Academy and with the regimental rank of captain from 16 March 1830. He remained on the active list until 1832, but then retired: on full pay because of wartime wounds. Pringle had been elected to Fellowship of the Geological Society on 2 March 1827 on return to England from Ireland, and served on its Council from 1831 to 1832, and again from 1833 to 1834. He resigned on marriage and took up permanent residence in Bath in 1847: coincidentally the year in which the Military General Service Medal 1793–1814 was instituted (33 years after its last qualifying action). Pringle was awarded the medal with three clasps, for service in the Peninsular War and actions at Nivelle, Nive and Orthes, adding this to his Waterloo medal awarded earlier (the first British medal to be awarded to all ranks serving in a military campaign). He was promoted to the rank of major with effect from 28 November 1854, and his death certificate records that he died as a retired major, on 12 October 1861.

Military affiliations among the Society's first executives

Of the first five executives of the Society who served in its early years, from 1829 to 1862 (as listed by Herries Davies 2007, p. 319), three with military connections contributed 28 out of those 33 years of service: W. Lonsdale, D.T. Ansted and T. Rupert Jones.

William Lonsdale (1794–1871) was the Society's curator and librarian from 1829 to 1838 (Pierce 2004; Woodward 1907, p. 308; non Herries Davies 2007, p. 319), and as his health failed, assistant secretary and librarian from 1838 to 1842. Initially, he too was destined for the life of a professional soldier: he was commissioned as an ensign in the 4th (or Royal) Regiment of Foot on 1 February 1810, joining two brothers serving in the same regiment (Rose 1996). Promoted lieutenant on 15 May 1812, he served in the Peninsular War and was present at the battle of Salamanca, for which he much later received the Military General Service Medal with one clasp. He also served in the Waterloo campaign and so earned the Waterloo medal. However, with peace-time reduction of the army following the end of the war in 1815, he retired on half-pay on 25 March 1817 and remained in that status until his death. Co-founder with Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873) and Murchison of the Devonian System, his contributions to geology were recognized by the Society by the award of its Wollaston Fund in 1833, 1844, 1846 and 1849, and in 1846 the Wollaston Medal. Yet, a relative commented (Rose 1996, pp. 135–136): Though he did not apply to be again [militarily] employed, he always appeared to have liked the life he had in the army, and had always a strong interest in military matters, and especially in his old regiment. He worked hard for Geology, but with us he was the old soldier to the last. Whether it was an innate love of method, or whether it was the result of military discipline [….] no one can fail to be struck with the regularity and order impressed on everything to which Lonsdale put his hand.

David Thomas Ansted (1814–1880), a Fellow of the Society since 1838 and late in life perceived by some of his contemporaries as a geologist of eminence (Reeve 1864; Thackray 2004), was employed as its vice-secretary from 1844 to 1847. This newly-defined post made him head of the Society's permanent staff, with responsibilities (further defined in 1845) to edit the publications of the Society, have custody of all manuscript papers and, in effect, to be present at the Society's apartments for three hours per day on three days per week (Rose & Renouf 2005). He was responsible for the library catalogue and the meetings programme, and for preparing the first issues of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society as this replaced the Transactions as the Society's premier publication. However, the Society's Council was never satisfied with his performance, and when in January 1847 a Council resolution criticized him for a ‘lack of zeal and diligence’ he speedily resigned his appointment.

A graduate of the University of Cambridge, Ansted's interest in geology had been kindled there by attending lectures given by Professor Adam Sedgwick. He received his MA in 1840, and was elected a Fellow of Jesus College. Also, in 1840, he was appointed Professor of Geology at King's College London: a post he held until 1853. In 1844 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and published his first book, a textbook on geology (Ansted 1844). The next year he published a short, simplified summary of it (Ansted 1845). These became standard reference books in Britain. Duties at the Geological Society in London caused Ansted to give up residence in Cambridge early in 1845, and later that year he was additionally appointed lecturer in geology at the East India Company's military college at Addiscombe: thus, directly succeeding John MacCulloch, after the lectureship had effectively lain vacant for 10 years. He joined an institution founded initially to help meet the high demand for trained military officers during the 1793–1815 wars, in a post initiated by MacCulloch because he was able to convince its Directors from wartime experience of the potential value of a knowledge of natural resources to a military profession. One of his books was awarded as a class prize at Addiscombe, and presumably formed the basis of at least his early lectures at the college. Ansted taught geology at Addiscombe until 1861, when as a result of the war following the ‘Indian Mutiny’ of 1857, the East India Company lost its sovereign powers, its army was united in direct Crown allegiance with the British army, and the college at Addiscombe closed as cadet training became focused at Woolwich and Sandhurst (Rose 1996, 1997a). An Addiscombe graduate published a noteworthy article on the military applications of geology (Smith 1849) during Ansted's tenure of the lectureship, but seemingly without any influence from the Addiscombe lectures (Rose 1997a).

Thomas Rupert Jones (1819–1911) was the Society's assistant-secretary, curator and librarian from 1850 to 1862, and served on its Council for the four periods 1865–1870, 1876–1877, 1878–1881 and 1883–1889. Rupert Jones had a civilian medical background: he was apprenticed as a surgeon from 1835 to 1842, and worked as a medical assistant from 1842 to 1850 (Rose 1996; Woodward & (revised by) Cleevely 2004). However, he was an enthusiastic amateur geologist and palaeontologist, hence his appointment to the Society's staff. The post was not well paid, and in 1858 he achieved an additional appointment: lecturer in geology at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, a post for which he must surely have been recommended by the Society's then President, Major-General Portlock. Like Ansted, he thus joined an institution founded as a consequence of the 1793–1815 wars, but in an appointment whose creation probably owed much to the timely advice of war veteran Portlock, an Inspector of Studies at the Royal Military College, and from May 1857 until 1862 a member of the newly formed Council of Military Education (Rose 1997a). Rupert Jones taught at Sandhurst from appointment as Lecturer on Geology on 26 March 1858, and Resident Lecturer from May 1862 (when he resigned his Society posts) until he retired on reduction of the Royal Military College on 31 December 1870.⁷

Rupert Jones also taught at the adjacent Staff College (Fig. 6), re-established in 1858 and with new buildings from 1862, and he continued to do so until retirement in 1882. He supposedly taught the relations of geology to topography, to questions of sanitation, and to water supply; in other words, the practical applications of the science (Woodward 1907). Certainly he seems to have inspired an early paper by a Staff College graduate (Hutton 1862) that was eminently practical in its focus. But the geology examination paper amongst those printed for the Royal Military College in 1859 (Anon. 1859) provided 20 questions that tested only basic knowledge of mineralogy, petrology, palaeontology and stratigraphy, e.g. ‘How do you distinguish the ammonite, goniatite, ceratite and nautilus?’ and ‘Name the specimens of minerals, rocks and fossils marked 1 to 12’. The mineralogy and geology paper printed in the set for the Staff College had a very similar non-applied focus, its 16 questions including ‘Mention some fossils by which you would be able to distinguish a silurian from the carboniferous limestone’. Such questions were seemingly a fair reflection of the teaching provided. Printed notes for the geology course at the Royal Military College in 1866 (Anon. 1866) list 14 lectures given weekly between 2 August and 16 November (each lecture given on two successive days) and justify the teaching as the final part of an introductory lecture in terms of its use in searches for water and coal, and choice of routes for roads. However, the following lectures provided an introduction to sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks, to stratigraphy and structure, and to the geology of England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland and areas of British military interest overseas, such as Gibraltar and Malta. Most are based on Page's Introductory Textbook (Page 1854). The syllabus was similar in succeeding years and at the Staff College at that time (Morris & Jones 1870). Few army officers perceived a direct military relevance in such teaching, and when Rupert Jones retired he was not replaced.

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Fig. 6.

Staff College, Camberley: the Professors in 1874. The professor of geology, T. Rupert Jones, is standing bareheaded at the left rear. Others are, from the left: (rear row) Lieutenant-Colonels Parsons, Farrell, Schaw and Barker; (front row) Professors Dowson and Charante, Colonel Hamley, Dr Atkinson, the Revd J. F. Twisden and Dr Overbeck. From Rose (1997a), courtesy of the Joint Services Command and Staff College, and the Institution of Royal Engineers.

Conclusion

It is thus clear that the Geological Society of London contained amongst its early influential members a significant number of veterans of military operational service: de Bournon had served against revolutionary France in Europe in 1792; Cordier for Napoleon in Egypt in 1798; Franck against the French in Egypt in 1801; Franck, Murchison and Pringle against the French in Portugal and Spain at times between 1808 and 1814; von Raumer in the 1813–1814 war of German liberation from French Napoleonic domination; Portlock against invading Americans in Canada in 1814; and Pringle and Lonsdale in 1815 against Napoleon at Waterloo.

Several members were trained for a military career. That of De la Beche never progressed beyond education at a military college. De Bournon's career was cut short by the fortunes of war; Franck retired to half-pay thorough illness; Pringle retired ultimately on account of earlier war wounds; Lonsdale and Murchison, as well as Franck and Pringle, gave up military careers when the wars ended and British armed forces were consequently reduced to a peace-time establishment. The aristocrat Henry Grey Bennet abandoned a nascent military career in the Grenadier Guards for one in the law and politics; whereas Colby and Portlock completed their careers as distinguished senior officers of the Royal Engineers. Those like De la Beche and Murchison who had been trained in landscape drawing as cadets, or who like Colby and Portlock were highly experienced in military topographic survey, no doubt found these aspects of their military background a helpful basis for developing geological map work.

The Society's founder President, Greenough, found time to serve as an officer in the British reserve army whilst guiding the Society in its early years and preparing his Geological map of England and Wales (Greenough 1820).

The wars consequent on the French Revolution of 1789 and the threat of invasion of Britain stimulated detailed topographic mapping of the nation as a whole, for military purposes, funded and directed by the Board of Ordnance. The Ordnance Survey was founded (as the Trigonometrical Survey of the Board of Ordnance) in 1791 under the direction of Major Edward Williams and Lieutenant William Mudge⁸ of the Royal Artillery (Owen & Pilbeam 1992). The first topographical map published by the new Survey (in 1801) was a one-inch-to-one-mile map of Kent, the county most likely to face invasion from France. The Board of Ordnance, advised by Colby, complemented topographic mapping by also financing pioneering national geological mapping projects in the UK: MacCulloch (from 1814 to 1821) in Scotland, Pringle (from 1826 to 1828) and Portlock (from 1830 to 1843) in Ireland, and De la Beche (from about 1832 to 1845) in England and Wales – leading to establishment of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland in 1835, a Survey funded under civilian auspices since 1845.

The war also impacted on military training establishments in Britain (Fig. 7), for all except the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich were founded in an attempt to professionalize the British army in the face of Napoleonic threat, and the Academy itself was reorganized as a response to that threat. The Senior Department of the Royal Military College (later transformed into the Staff College) trained young officers aspiring to positions of higher command; the Junior Department of the Royal Military College (later amalgamated to form the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst), founded as a school for the sons of army officers, such as Murchison and De la Beche, soon came to train cadets seeking commissions as officers in the infantry and cavalry. The Honourable East India Company's College at Addiscombe trained cadets seeking commissions in the Company's armed forces, while the Royal Military Academy provided the more technical training required by cadets seeking commissions as officers in the ‘Ordnance’ corps, the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers. The School of Military Engineering (Ward 1909) provided training, in the early years for Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) and soldiers but soon also for engineer officers on graduation from the Royal Military Academy, in engineering techniques (e.g. skills in topographical cartography, taught to NCOs and soldiers from an earlier date than commissioned officers).

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Fig. 7.

Military training establishments in nineteenth-century Britain. After Jones (1974), courtesy of the author and the British Cartographic Society.

Geology was among the subjects taught at various times during the nineteenth century in each of these institutions, and military funding thus created employment opportunities for several early members. Geology was taught at the Royal Military College in about 1820 by Richard Phillips; at the Staff College, Camberley, from 1858 to 1882 and at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from 1858 to 1870, by Rupert Jones, and later at the Staff College by a Major Mitchell and then Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Cooper-King. It was also taught at the Honourable East India Company's College, Addiscombe, by John MacCulloch from 1819 to 1835, and by David Ansted from 1845 to 1861; at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich by James Tennant from 1848 to 1868; and at the School of Military Engineering Chatham from about 1888 to 1896 by A.H. Green (Rose 1997a). Of these, only Rupert Jones held a full time appointment to teach geology at a military institution; others were visiting lecturers or taught geology only as a subsidiary subject.

Warfare delayed geological fieldwork (e.g. that of Karl von Raumer in Germany in 1806) and somewhat isolated continental geologists from those of England, arguably leading to separate schools of thought (Torrens 1998). However: The British Government became increasingly aware during the Napoleonic Wars of the contrast between the organization of science teaching on the Continent under state patronage and the paucity of official interest and encouragement in this country [Britain]. When it was seen how quickly Napoleon was able to mobilize the French scientific and technological teaching for the war effort, successive British administrations during the first decades of the nineteenth century came to realise that some attempt must be made through the use of central funds to encourage both teaching and research in these neglected fields. (Edmonds 1979, p. 33).

As a consequence of this wartime awareness, William Buckland, Reader in Mineralogy at the University of Oxford since 1813 (and later a President of the Geological Society), was appointed also to a new Readership in Geology in 1818, coincidentally as Adam Sedgwick (another future President) was appointed to the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology at the University of Cambridge. As Herries Davies (2007) has eloquently described, in the peace that followed the long war, geology and the Geological Society thrived.