Ramsay Weston Phipps
Encyclopedia
Ramsay Weston Phipps was an Irish-born military historian and officer in Queen Victoria
's Royal Artillery
. The son of Pownoll Phipps, an officer of the British East India Company
's army, he was descended from the early settlers of the West Indies; many generations had served in the British, and the English military. Phipps served in the Crimean War
, had a stint of duty at Malta
, and helped to repress the Fenian uprising in Canada in 1866.
Phipps is known for his study of The Armies of the First French Republic and the Rise of the Marshals of Napoleon I, a five volume set published posthumously from 1926–1939 by Oxford University Press
. He also edited L.A. Fauvelet de Bourrienne's
Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, a three volume work published in 1885 and Madame Campan's
The private life of Marie Antoinette, queen of France and Navarre; with sketches and anecdotes of the courts of Louis XVI, published in 1889.
of Lincolnshire, raised a regiment of horse for Charles I
. Another of his ancestors was Lord Chancellor of Ireland in the reign of Queen Anne
. Captain James Phipps settled the Island of St. Christopher
, in the West Indies in 1676. The family was rewarded for its loyalty with titles and lands in Ireland. Ramsay Phipps was also a cousin of the Earls of Mulgrave
.
In 1791, Phipps' grandfather, Constantine (1746–1797), rented the Hotel d'Harcout in Caen
, France, from the Duke of Harcourt; in 1793, he returned briefly to England in 1793 for the wedding of one of his daughters, leaving eight of his children in France. When War of the First Coalition broke out in 1793, the children were separated from their parents. Ramsay Phipps' father, Pownoll Phipps (1780–1858) and his siblings grew up in the French city during the French revolution, and lived under the threat of anti-English violence. Only after the Treaty of Campo Formio
could the children return to England, arriving on 2 October 1798, all of them fluent in French; Pownoll Phipps reportedly spoke with French-accented English for the rest of his life. By the end of October, Pownoll had a commission as a lieutenant and joined the Bengal Army
of the East India Company
. The following June, he embarked for India on the Bombay-built ship Britannica.
Upon arrival in India, Pownoll Phipps joined the force under command of Colonel Arthur Wellesley
. He participated in Sir David Baird
's expedition from India to Egypt in 1801, for which participation he eventually became a Knight of the Crescent
. Phipps married Henrietta Beaunpaire; orphaned by the French Revolution, she had taken refuge with him and his siblings at the Hotel d'Harcout, on 10 August 1802, in Calcutta. Pownoll Phipps' second wife, Sophia Matilda Arnold, was Benedict Arnold
's daughter. Phipps retired from the East India Company service on 1 July 1825, with the rank of colonel
. Living for a time in London
, he was a popular regular at Exeter Hall
events. A well-versed, informed and articulate speaker and storyteller, Phipps was a gallant gentleman, readily at ease in all society, and very friendly: "a tall, stout, officer-like person, about 60-years of age, with white hair, short, sharp features, and a pleasant cast of countenance." He also had a strict sense of honor. In 1857, a year before his death, he wrote a letter to the Editor of The Times
, in which he asserted his belief in the good character and quality of the Sepoy
s, despite the popular outrage against the them during the Indian Mutiny. Pownoll Phipps developed bronchitis after presiding over the closing of an art exhibit in Clonmel, Ireland; he died in November 1858. His funeral was attended by Protestant and Catholics, and the procession was over a mile long.
Ramsay Weston Phipps was the second son of Pownoll Phipps and Phipps' third wife, the Irish-born Anna Charlotte Smith. Born at the family estate, Oaklands, in Tipperary
, Ireland, he was named Ramsay in honor of an uncle who pioneered slave emancipation in the West Indies, and Weston after another uncle, a scientific clergyman. By 1841, his father had returned to England, to reside in Kent
, where the family lived in Yalding
. They lodged at the Parsonage with a local farmer, Ramsey Warde; Ramsey Warde was also a relative of Phipps' mother. The family of four included three-year-old Ramsay, his older brother, Pownoll (age five),Pownoll William Phipps, born 1 November 1835, matriculated at Oxford University, Pembroke College
, on June 1854 at age 18; he graduated with his bachelor's decree in 1858, followed by his masters degree in 1861. From 1859–1871, he held various curacies. He was Vicar of Knapton on Hill from 1871–1873, rector of Upton Slough from 1873–1886. After 1886, he was rector at Chalfont St. Giles. See Foster, Joseph Foster. Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886 and Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500–1714. Oxford: Parker and Co., 1888–1892, p. [1112]71. Married Elizabeth Dampier Risley, daughter of Shuckburgh Risley, 26 Jul 1859, Camden, Middlesex, St Pancras Parish Church. See London Metropolitan Archives, Saint Pancras Parish Church, Register of marriages, P90/PAN1, Item 123. his mother (age 30) and his father. Eventually, two more children joined the family: Henrietta Sophia and Robert Constantine, twins born 23 September 1841. The boy died 9 October, but Henrietta lived into adulthood, marrying Lieutenant-Colonel William Smith. After suffering a bout of measles
in spring 1847, Ramsay Phipps attended Mr. Barron's School at Stanmore with his older brother, Pownoll, with the intent to following his brother in a year or two to Rugby
in Warwickshire
.
. In 1849, at the age of 11, he put on a uniform, and he wore it, or a variation of it, until his retirement in 1887. Phipps later attended the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. After his graduation, he expected a commission in the Royal Artillery
, and while awaiting it, he lived for a few months with his uncle at Carragh, Ireland; his lieutenant
's commission arrived, dated 1 August 1855, and with it instructions him to join his Royal Artillery unit at Woolwich
, for service in the Crimean War
. He reached the Crimea in November 1855, and participated in the Siege of Sevastopol. Assigned to the Matthew Dixon's 5th Company, 9th Battalion, he was part of the right siege train, and his chief occupation was blowing up the Sevastapol docks. He was still small for his age, and looked very young, which drew teasing from his company. The siege work was difficult and the living conditions were brutal; he recounted to his brother that the soldiers were plagued not only by the Russian fire, but by dysentery, bad food, and wintering in tents. He returned to England the following year on the Imperatrice, arriving in March 1856. Although he was given a medal to wear when Queen Victoria reviewed the troops, it was later collected from him; the decision was made at higher commands that only those who had landed in the Crimea prior to September 1855 would be awarded the Crimea Medal
.
After his return to England, Ramsay Phipps was quartered at the Tower of London
. After this assignment, he was sent to Plymouth, serving at the Prince of Wales Redoubt. In 1861, Phipps was stationed in South Shoebury, Essex. He was promoted to the Royal Artillery's unique rank of second captain on 7 April 1864, and appointed brigade adjutant
on 14 October 1868. The brigade adjutant functioned as the staff officer for the brigade commander: he supervised all brigade books and records, monitored the execution of orders, supervised the education and training of subalterns, prosecuted in all courts-martial proceedings, and accepted and transmitted all orders.
Ramsay Phipps married Anne Bampfylde, the daughter of a Bath physician, in September 1864. With a few exceptions, most of Phipps' posts included garrison duty in southern England in the vicinity of the Royal Artillery barracks at Woolwich. Phipps traveled to the United States, arriving in Boston on 30 April 1866; he went to Canada to participate in operations against the Fenian
uprising. In 1869, his brother and a friend sought to climb the Zermatt
and the Schreckhorn
, during which climb the friend fell over 1000 feet (304.8 m) to bottom of the Lauteraar glacier
. In the emergency, Ramsay Phipps joined his brother in Grindelwald
while guides recovered the body.
In 1881, Phipps was stationed in Ireland; his wife remained in Bath, living in the prestigious Royal Crescent
(No. 19), with her three children, a female cousin, and several servants. Phipps was promoted to major on 12 April 1873, to brevet
lieutenant-colonel on 1 July 1881, and substantive lieutenant-colonel on 26 April 1882.
Phipps had little tolerance for foolishness and retained a professional soldier's dislike of civilian interference in military affairs, and ineffective administration, whether from civilians or government. In 1887, shortly after his retirement, he wrote a letter to the editor of The Times addressing some of the highly publicized problems of desertions from the ranks. "War Office civilians," he wrote, "like the plan of indiscriminate enlist, as it swells their list of recruits. Then, when the list of deserters grows, they put on long faces, and say, 'it must be those wicked officers.' The officers would stop this plan in a day if they were allowed." The problem with recruiters, Phipps maintained, lay in the need for quantity, not quality. "What fools you civilians are to pay for these blackguards," he wrote. "If you would let the officers select their men, for the first year or so, you would have fewer men on paper, fewer men in prison, and just as many men for service....I will then give you another hint for saving money...why not do away with the Inspector-General of Recruiting, and spend his pay in horse artillery, who would be very ornamental and very serviceable? What use is the Inspector General?" He had retired from active service in 1883, and Phipps fully retired in 1887, after attaining the rank of colonel.
Phipps and his wife had seven children, five of whom survived into adulthood. The first son, Edmund, born 1867, died less than two months later while the family was stationed at Plymouth
. During a short stint on Malta
in 1869, a daughter Mary was born and died immediately. Edmund Bampfylde was born in 1869, and followed a career in education; he attended New College, Oxford
, and became a Deputy Secretary on the Board of Education
. In 1906, he married Margaret Percy Phipps, who was Mayor of Chelsea for two terms. In 1916, he was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath, followed by a knighthood in 1917; he served in the Ministry of Munitions during the latter part of World War I. Charles Fossett, born in 1872, and Henry, the youngest son, pursued military careers. Charles and Henry were awarded the Distinguished Service Order
for their roles in the British Expeditionary Force in 1914. Charles attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Garrison Artillery
during World War I, assigned to the VI Corps
Heavy Artillery, and in 1918 moved to Parkgate, in Dublin. Henry married Lorna Campbell in 1906, and they had three children. Henry eventually attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Artillery, and died on 24 August 1949. The youngest, Gertrude Annie, was born on 13 December 1876. She married in 1907 to Lieutenant Colonel E.C. Sandars, CMG, also a Royal Artillery officer; the couple had a daughter, Elizabeth.
Phipps' wife died in October 1885. In 1888, Phipps settled with his three youngest children at Chalfont St Giles
. The 1891 Buckingham census shows Phipps on the Royal Artillery retired list and living at a country manor house, The Stone, with his sons, 21-year-old Edmund, a student at Oxford University, and 16-year old Henry, a student at Wellington, and 14-year-old Gertrude. Four servants supported this small family, including a cook, a lady's maid for Gertrude, a housemaid, and a scullery maid. In 1901, Henry had left the family household, but Edmund and Gertrude still lived with their father in St. Giles. Phipps remained at The Stone until 1920.
, maintained a foot in the social world of London and the academic world of Oxford. Phipps was chairman of the magistrates for the Burnham division, sitting at Beaconsfield
, and was a member of the County Standing Joint Committee and the County Licensing Committee. He also attended annual Diocesan Conferences at Oxford.
Phipps pursued his life-long interest in the Napoleonic Wars
. In 1885, he edited a revised edition of what was then the standard authority on Napoleon, Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne's
Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte. He also wrote the revision's chapters XXIV and XXVI. Subsequently, he edited a new edition of the surgeon Barry Edward O'Meara
's Napoleon at Saint Helena, another Napoleonic Wars classic, to which he wrote a new introduction: O'Meara had been Napoleon's doctor on Helena. Historians praised Phipps' introduction as a convincing exposition against the treatment of Napoleon on Helena. In 1889, he edited a revised edition of Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan's
The private life of Marie Antoinette, queen of France and Navarre; with sketches and anecdotes of the courts of Louis XVI, which was also well received.
; the majority of them were placed in the Codrington Library
. He selected All Souls for its established reputation in military history, and for the Codrington's collection left to it by Sir Foster Cunliffe, who had been killed in action in 1916. The collection, called the Phipps Collection, numbered more than 2,000 volumes, and includes Napoleon's published correspondence, that of the marshals, and has been kept up to date with modern works issued by the Historical Department of the French General Staff.
By the 1920s, there was still little published in English about the French marshals, and Phipps' proposed Lives of the Marshals was enthusiastically anticipated by scholars of the French Revolution
and the Napoleonic Wars. Despite his diligent activity on the project, Phipps' work was complicated by the regular appearance of new material, which he felt he had to read, verify, and digest; he sometimes incorporated the new material into his own work, and sometimes counter-balanced it with other material. Phipps was convinced of the importance of his subject, particularly the experience of the future marshals in the Republican armies. The French field armies of the Revolutionary Wars (1793–1800) formed the military education of the future marshals. Although there was great interest in the marshals, little had been published in either French or English about their early military experience. Phipps called these revolutionary armies the Schools for Marshals. Furthermore, he postulated, "the Consulate and the Empire cannot be judged until the Revolutionary period has been studied in detail."
Consequently, the scope of his work expanded. On the one hand, Phipps wished to avoid rehashing the same information that was available, but the careers of the marshals required some duplication. The published works were often filled with inconsistencies, not only in the French sources, but from the French to the English sources. The French sources frequently misinterpreted the English sources, and vice-versa. Phipps wrote both an introduction to his work and a summary of the histories of the armies of the Republic
and the Consulate
, from 1791 to 1804, and at certain points in his narrative, he paused to review the positions of the various future marshals and other well-known generals. He reflected on the development of their experience, the characteristics of their leadership, and the relationships to one another and to Napoleon. Critically, he posited that generals rarely improved with practice.
Ultimately the work that emerged was a massive typescript unfinished upon Phipps' death in June 1923. It included an introduction, a summary of the armies, a detailed history of the armies and the coup d'etat in Paris, a complete history of the French armies in Spain 1808–1814, plus accounts of Napoleon's 1814 campaign in which the marshals played such an important role and an account of the marshals during the First and Second Restorations. It also included material on the lives of the individual marshals and notes on the ministers of the Empire, who had been the subjects of Phipps' original plan. At some point in the compilation of this typescript, Phipps realized that he would not live to finish his work. He hoped that his children might be able to prepare it for publication, and he made some provision for the publication of all or a part of his manuscript. After Phipps' death, with the assistance and encouragement of Charles Oman
, the authority on the Peninsular War
, his son, Charles F. Phipps, supervised the publication of the first three volumes. Charles died in June 1932 before proofing the final galleys of volume three and prior to the publication of volumes four and five. Volumes four and five were left in the hands of Phipps' "very capable granddaughter" and literary executor, Elizabeth Sandars.
In the first volume, Phipps' analysis covers a categorization of the marshals, although the narrative itself is largely confined to the Armée du Nord. In the beginning, he points out, the French army was well disciplined and the class of non-commissioned officers was "especially good." As the integration of the so-called volunteers—the revolutionary conscripts—into the units of regular troops undermined morale, discipline, and conditions, the army's cohesion fell apart. Phipps highlighted in particular the problems of armies moving without magazines or supplies. His analysis of the classes of marshals—citizen, soldier, officer—offers a noteworthy and solid refutation of the marshals as a class of leadership rising from the rough soldiery; his criticism of the French Revolutionary army system resulting from the two amalgamations is acute, targeted and well-documented. However, by limiting his sources to only those in English or French, in which he also was fluent, Phipps necessarily restricted his details, ignoring the actions of the Austrians and the Russians. The evidence, though, is always well assembled, even though, by volume three, it becomes much more sparse.
Of the five volumes, the second may be the most interesting: it dealt with more interesting times, and more consistent military operations. The army of the north was a "bad army," and the story of its command is one of "honest and brave men hurried in turn to the guillotine, or of less honest men going over to the enemy." Some of Phipps' own eccentricities also appear in volume two; he frequently lapses into sarcasm, revealing his disdain for civilian administration of military affairs, and there are points at which he fails to follow through fully on his criticism; for example, he holds back on his critique of Jean Victor Moreau despite his assertion that he wanted to demolish once and for all the myth that Moreau was as great a soldier as Napoleon. Phipps adeptly describes the game of cat and mouse that Moreau, Jean Baptiste Jourdan, and the Archduke Charles
played with one another in the summer of 1796 as their armies criss-crossed south-western Germany; neither general came to grips with the other until October, and even then, after the Battle of Schliengen
, Charles was content to chase Moreau and Jourdan over the Rhine, not to demolish the French army. They were lacking, Phipps postulated, the instinct and nerves of Napoleon.
The problems associated with Phipps' lack of professional training as an historian become clear by the third volume. Despite his reading of newly published works, Phipps' idea of what constituted new material included the publications of memoirs and journals of the participants, not the extensive secondary literature and array of historiographical material in the periodic literature written by professional historians seeking to understand the French revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.In a 1905 letter, he refers to Revue des Deux Mondes of 15 July 1905, in which the Marquis Gicquel des Touches describes his grandfather's experience in the Battle of Trafalgar
on the French 74-gun Intrépide. See R. Phipps, "The Tactics of Trafalgar." The Times. Friday 11 August 1905, p. 5, Issue 37783, col. 3. Accessed 15 June 2010. Consequently, Phipps' perceptions of the French revolution remained rooted in the outdated theories of Archibald Alison
, Adolphe Thiers
, and others, while ignoring some of the new theories of Albert Sorel
, François Victor Alphonse Aulard
and Albert Mathiez
. His military background emerged clearly in his hostility to the meddling of the French government in the affairs of soldiers.
Despite his amateur standing, Phipps plowed through an alarmingly confusing mass of material, especially that covering the 1796–1797 campaigns in Ireland and the Pyrenees. He hacked through a tangle of French material to provide a path for the English language reader. This feat in itself made volume three a useful tool; furthermore, Phipps offered an even-handed treatment of the suppression of Lyon and Toulon, two French cities whose revolts alarmed the Revolutionary government. Despite his lack of professional training, Phipps provided a valuable assessment to these widely studied revolts.
Reviewers also gave credit to Elizabeth Sanders, Phipps' granddaughter and literary executor, for her skillful handling of the last two volumes. The purpose of the work becomes even more apparent and direct under her management and editing of the material. The role of the future marshals becomes more clear in the campaigns of 1797, and especially in the Italian campaign; her handling of the material kept it fully focused on the future marshals Massena, Augereau, Berthier
, and Brune.
By the time of the publication of the final volume, Phipps' work had established for itself a place in the pantheon of Napoleonic literature. It "will always be regarded as a valuable source," well-known to students of the Napoleonic era, and the last volume, critics maintained, was "as interesting as its predecessors." Not only did Phipps achieve his goal of creating a record of the development of the marshals, but his volumes have become a useful history of the progress of the wars themselves, from 1792 to 1799. The true value of the first volume, and indeed the subsequent four, lies in its repeated use as a reference work.
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
's Royal Artillery
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery , is the artillery arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
. The son of Pownoll Phipps, an officer of the British East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
's army, he was descended from the early settlers of the West Indies; many generations had served in the British, and the English military. Phipps served in the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
, had a stint of duty at Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
, and helped to repress the Fenian uprising in Canada in 1866.
Phipps is known for his study of The Armies of the First French Republic and the Rise of the Marshals of Napoleon I, a five volume set published posthumously from 1926–1939 by Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
. He also edited L.A. Fauvelet de Bourrienne's
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne , French diplomat, was born at Sens.He was educated at the military school of Brienne in Champagne along with Napoleon Bonaparte; and although the solitary habits of the latter made intimacy difficult, the two youths seem to have been on friendly terms...
Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, a three volume work published in 1885 and Madame Campan's
Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan
Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan, born Henriette Genet was a French educator and lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Antoinette before and during the French Revolution....
The private life of Marie Antoinette, queen of France and Navarre; with sketches and anecdotes of the courts of Louis XVI, published in 1889.
Family
Ramsay Weston Phipps descended from generations of military and political men. Colonel William Phipps, a YeomanYeoman
Yeoman refers chiefly to a free man owning his own farm, especially from the Elizabethan era to the 17th century. Work requiring a great deal of effort or labor, such as would be done by a yeoman farmer, came to be described as "yeoman's work"...
of Lincolnshire, raised a regiment of horse for Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
. Another of his ancestors was Lord Chancellor of Ireland in the reign of Queen Anne
Anne of Great Britain
Anne ascended the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702. On 1 May 1707, under the Act of Union, two of her realms, England and Scotland, were united as a single sovereign state, the Kingdom of Great Britain.Anne's Catholic father, James II and VII, was deposed during the...
. Captain James Phipps settled the Island of St. Christopher
Saint Kitts
Saint Kitts Saint Kitts Saint Kitts (also known more formally as Saint Christopher Island (Saint-Christophe in French) is an island in the West Indies. The west side of the island borders the Caribbean Sea, and the eastern coast faces the Atlantic Ocean...
, in the West Indies in 1676. The family was rewarded for its loyalty with titles and lands in Ireland. Ramsay Phipps was also a cousin of the Earls of Mulgrave
Henry Phipps, 1st Earl of Mulgrave
Henry Phipps, 1st Earl of Mulgrave GCB, PC , styled The Honourable Henry Phipps until 1792 and known as The Lord Mulgrave from 1792 to 1812, was a British soldier and politician...
.
In 1791, Phipps' grandfather, Constantine (1746–1797), rented the Hotel d'Harcout in Caen
Caen
Caen is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the Calvados department and the capital of the Basse-Normandie region. It is located inland from the English Channel....
, France, from the Duke of Harcourt; in 1793, he returned briefly to England in 1793 for the wedding of one of his daughters, leaving eight of his children in France. When War of the First Coalition broke out in 1793, the children were separated from their parents. Ramsay Phipps' father, Pownoll Phipps (1780–1858) and his siblings grew up in the French city during the French revolution, and lived under the threat of anti-English violence. Only after the Treaty of Campo Formio
Treaty of Campo Formio
The Treaty of Campo Formio was signed on 18 October 1797 by Napoleon Bonaparte and Count Philipp von Cobenzl as representatives of revolutionary France and the Austrian monarchy...
could the children return to England, arriving on 2 October 1798, all of them fluent in French; Pownoll Phipps reportedly spoke with French-accented English for the rest of his life. By the end of October, Pownoll had a commission as a lieutenant and joined the Bengal Army
Bengal Army
The Bengal Army was the army of the Presidency of Bengal, one of the three Presidencies of British India, in South Asia. Although based in Bengal in eastern India, the presidency stretched across northern India and the Himalayas all the way to the North West Frontier Province...
of the East India Company
East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
. The following June, he embarked for India on the Bombay-built ship Britannica.
Upon arrival in India, Pownoll Phipps joined the force under command of Colonel Arthur Wellesley
Duke of Wellington
The Dukedom of Wellington, derived from Wellington in Somerset, is a hereditary title in the senior rank of the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The first holder of the title was Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington , the noted Irish-born career British Army officer and statesman, and...
. He participated in Sir David Baird
Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet
General Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet GCB was a British military leader.-Military career:He was born at Newbyth House in Haddingtonshire, Scotland, the son of an Edinburgh merchant family, and entered the British Army in 1772. He was sent to India in 1779 with the 73rd Highlanders, in which he...
's expedition from India to Egypt in 1801, for which participation he eventually became a Knight of the Crescent
Order of the Crescent
The Imperial Order of the Crescent was a chivalric order of the Ottoman Empire. It was instituted in 1799 by Sultan Selim III when he wished to reward Horatio Nelson, an Anglican Christian, for his victory at the Battle of the Nile...
. Phipps married Henrietta Beaunpaire; orphaned by the French Revolution, she had taken refuge with him and his siblings at the Hotel d'Harcout, on 10 August 1802, in Calcutta. Pownoll Phipps' second wife, Sophia Matilda Arnold, was Benedict Arnold
Benedict Arnold
Benedict Arnold V was a general during the American Revolutionary War. He began the war in the Continental Army but later defected to the British Army. While a general on the American side, he obtained command of the fort at West Point, New York, and plotted to surrender it to the British forces...
's daughter. Phipps retired from the East India Company service on 1 July 1825, with the rank of colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
. Living for a time in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, he was a popular regular at Exeter Hall
Exeter Hall
Exeter Hall was a hall on the north side of The Strand, London, England. It was erected between 1829 and 1831 on the site of Exeter Exchange, to designs by John Peter Gandy, the brother of the visionary architect Joseph Michael Gandy...
events. A well-versed, informed and articulate speaker and storyteller, Phipps was a gallant gentleman, readily at ease in all society, and very friendly: "a tall, stout, officer-like person, about 60-years of age, with white hair, short, sharp features, and a pleasant cast of countenance." He also had a strict sense of honor. In 1857, a year before his death, he wrote a letter to the Editor of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, in which he asserted his belief in the good character and quality of the Sepoy
Sepoy
A sepoy was formerly the designation given to an Indian soldier in the service of a European power. In the modern Indian Army, Pakistan Army and Bangladesh Army it remains in use for the rank of private soldier.-Etymology and Historical usage:...
s, despite the popular outrage against the them during the Indian Mutiny. Pownoll Phipps developed bronchitis after presiding over the closing of an art exhibit in Clonmel, Ireland; he died in November 1858. His funeral was attended by Protestant and Catholics, and the procession was over a mile long.
Ramsay Weston Phipps was the second son of Pownoll Phipps and Phipps' third wife, the Irish-born Anna Charlotte Smith. Born at the family estate, Oaklands, in Tipperary
Tipperary
Tipperary is a town and a civil parish in South Tipperary in Ireland. Its population was 4,415 at the 2006 census. It is also an ecclesiastical parish in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, and is in the historical barony of Clanwilliam....
, Ireland, he was named Ramsay in honor of an uncle who pioneered slave emancipation in the West Indies, and Weston after another uncle, a scientific clergyman. By 1841, his father had returned to England, to reside in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, where the family lived in Yalding
Yalding
Yalding is a village and part of Yalding civil parish in the Maidstone District of Kent, England.The village is situated six miles south-west of Maidstone at a point where the Rivers Teise and Beult join the River Medway....
. They lodged at the Parsonage with a local farmer, Ramsey Warde; Ramsey Warde was also a relative of Phipps' mother. The family of four included three-year-old Ramsay, his older brother, Pownoll (age five),Pownoll William Phipps, born 1 November 1835, matriculated at Oxford University, Pembroke College
Pembroke College, Oxford
Pembroke College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, located in Pembroke Square. As of 2009, Pembroke had an estimated financial endowment of £44.9 million.-History:...
, on June 1854 at age 18; he graduated with his bachelor's decree in 1858, followed by his masters degree in 1861. From 1859–1871, he held various curacies. He was Vicar of Knapton on Hill from 1871–1873, rector of Upton Slough from 1873–1886. After 1886, he was rector at Chalfont St. Giles. See Foster, Joseph Foster. Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886 and Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1500–1714. Oxford: Parker and Co., 1888–1892, p. [1112]71. Married Elizabeth Dampier Risley, daughter of Shuckburgh Risley, 26 Jul 1859, Camden, Middlesex, St Pancras Parish Church. See London Metropolitan Archives, Saint Pancras Parish Church, Register of marriages, P90/PAN1, Item 123. his mother (age 30) and his father. Eventually, two more children joined the family: Henrietta Sophia and Robert Constantine, twins born 23 September 1841. The boy died 9 October, but Henrietta lived into adulthood, marrying Lieutenant-Colonel William Smith. After suffering a bout of measles
Measles
Measles, also known as rubeola or morbilli, is an infection of the respiratory system caused by a virus, specifically a paramyxovirus of the genus Morbillivirus. Morbilliviruses, like other paramyxoviruses, are enveloped, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA viruses...
in spring 1847, Ramsay Phipps attended Mr. Barron's School at Stanmore with his older brother, Pownoll, with the intent to following his brother in a year or two to Rugby
Rugby School
Rugby School is a co-educational day and boarding school located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, England. It is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.-History:...
in Warwickshire
Warwickshire
Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...
.
Military career
Before he could enter Rugby, Phipps was offered instead a cadetship and entered the government preparatory school at Carlshalton, in SurreySurrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
. In 1849, at the age of 11, he put on a uniform, and he wore it, or a variation of it, until his retirement in 1887. Phipps later attended the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. After his graduation, he expected a commission in the Royal Artillery
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery , is the artillery arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
, and while awaiting it, he lived for a few months with his uncle at Carragh, Ireland; his lieutenant
First Lieutenant
First lieutenant is a military rank and, in some forces, an appointment.The rank of lieutenant has different meanings in different military formations , but the majority of cases it is common for it to be sub-divided into a senior and junior rank...
's commission arrived, dated 1 August 1855, and with it instructions him to join his Royal Artillery unit at Woolwich
Woolwich
Woolwich is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.Woolwich formed part of Kent until 1889 when the County of London was created...
, for service in the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
. He reached the Crimea in November 1855, and participated in the Siege of Sevastopol. Assigned to the Matthew Dixon's 5th Company, 9th Battalion, he was part of the right siege train, and his chief occupation was blowing up the Sevastapol docks. He was still small for his age, and looked very young, which drew teasing from his company. The siege work was difficult and the living conditions were brutal; he recounted to his brother that the soldiers were plagued not only by the Russian fire, but by dysentery, bad food, and wintering in tents. He returned to England the following year on the Imperatrice, arriving in March 1856. Although he was given a medal to wear when Queen Victoria reviewed the troops, it was later collected from him; the decision was made at higher commands that only those who had landed in the Crimea prior to September 1855 would be awarded the Crimea Medal
Crimea Medal
The Crimea Medal was a campaign medal approved in 1854, for issue to officers and men of British units which fought in the Crimean War of 1854-56 against Russia....
.
After his return to England, Ramsay Phipps was quartered at the Tower of London
Tower of London
Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the City of London by the open space...
. After this assignment, he was sent to Plymouth, serving at the Prince of Wales Redoubt. In 1861, Phipps was stationed in South Shoebury, Essex. He was promoted to the Royal Artillery's unique rank of second captain on 7 April 1864, and appointed brigade adjutant
Adjutant
Adjutant is a military rank or appointment. In some armies, including most English-speaking ones, it is an officer who assists a more senior officer, while in other armies, especially Francophone ones, it is an NCO , normally corresponding roughly to a Staff Sergeant or Warrant Officer.An Adjutant...
on 14 October 1868. The brigade adjutant functioned as the staff officer for the brigade commander: he supervised all brigade books and records, monitored the execution of orders, supervised the education and training of subalterns, prosecuted in all courts-martial proceedings, and accepted and transmitted all orders.
Promotions
|
Ramsay Phipps married Anne Bampfylde, the daughter of a Bath physician, in September 1864. With a few exceptions, most of Phipps' posts included garrison duty in southern England in the vicinity of the Royal Artillery barracks at Woolwich. Phipps traveled to the United States, arriving in Boston on 30 April 1866; he went to Canada to participate in operations against the Fenian
Fenian
The Fenians , both the Fenian Brotherhood and Irish Republican Brotherhood , were fraternal organisations dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic in the 19th and early 20th century. The name "Fenians" was first applied by John O'Mahony to the members of the Irish republican...
uprising. In 1869, his brother and a friend sought to climb the Zermatt
Zermatt
Zermatt is a municipality in the district of Visp in the German-speaking section of the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It has a population of about 5,800 inhabitants....
and the Schreckhorn
Schreckhorn
The Schreckhorn is a mountain in the Bernese Alps. It is the highest peak located entirely in the canton of Berne. The Schreckhorn is the northernmost Alpine four-thousander and the northernmost summit rising above 4,000 metres in Europe....
, during which climb the friend fell over 1000 feet (304.8 m) to bottom of the Lauteraar glacier
Unteraar Glacier
The Unteraar Glacier is the larger of the two sources of the Aar river in the Bernese Alps. It emerges from the association of the Finsteraar Glacier and the Lauteraar Glacier and flows for about to the east down to the Grimselsee near the Grimsel Pass...
. In the emergency, Ramsay Phipps joined his brother in Grindelwald
Grindelwald
Grindelwald is a municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland. The village is located at above sea level in the Bernese Alps.-Winter sports:...
while guides recovered the body.
In 1881, Phipps was stationed in Ireland; his wife remained in Bath, living in the prestigious Royal Crescent
Royal Crescent
The Royal Crescent is a residential road of 30 houses laid out in a crescent in the city of Bath, England. Designed by the architect John Wood the Younger and built between 1767 and 1774, it is among the greatest examples of Georgian architecture to be found in the United Kingdom and is a grade I...
(No. 19), with her three children, a female cousin, and several servants. Phipps was promoted to major on 12 April 1873, to brevet
Brevet (military)
In many of the world's military establishments, brevet referred to a warrant authorizing a commissioned officer to hold a higher rank temporarily, but usually without receiving the pay of that higher rank except when actually serving in that role. An officer so promoted may be referred to as being...
lieutenant-colonel on 1 July 1881, and substantive lieutenant-colonel on 26 April 1882.
Phipps had little tolerance for foolishness and retained a professional soldier's dislike of civilian interference in military affairs, and ineffective administration, whether from civilians or government. In 1887, shortly after his retirement, he wrote a letter to the editor of The Times addressing some of the highly publicized problems of desertions from the ranks. "War Office civilians," he wrote, "like the plan of indiscriminate enlist, as it swells their list of recruits. Then, when the list of deserters grows, they put on long faces, and say, 'it must be those wicked officers.' The officers would stop this plan in a day if they were allowed." The problem with recruiters, Phipps maintained, lay in the need for quantity, not quality. "What fools you civilians are to pay for these blackguards," he wrote. "If you would let the officers select their men, for the first year or so, you would have fewer men on paper, fewer men in prison, and just as many men for service....I will then give you another hint for saving money...why not do away with the Inspector-General of Recruiting, and spend his pay in horse artillery, who would be very ornamental and very serviceable? What use is the Inspector General?" He had retired from active service in 1883, and Phipps fully retired in 1887, after attaining the rank of colonel.
Phipps and his wife had seven children, five of whom survived into adulthood. The first son, Edmund, born 1867, died less than two months later while the family was stationed at Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
. During a short stint on Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
in 1869, a daughter Mary was born and died immediately. Edmund Bampfylde was born in 1869, and followed a career in education; he attended New College, Oxford
New College, Oxford
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...
, and became a Deputy Secretary on the Board of Education
Board of education
A board of education or a school board or school committee is the title of the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or higher administrative level....
. In 1906, he married Margaret Percy Phipps, who was Mayor of Chelsea for two terms. In 1916, he was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath, followed by a knighthood in 1917; he served in the Ministry of Munitions during the latter part of World War I. Charles Fossett, born in 1872, and Henry, the youngest son, pursued military careers. Charles and Henry were awarded the Distinguished Service Order
Distinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, and formerly of other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat.Instituted on 6 September...
for their roles in the British Expeditionary Force in 1914. Charles attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Garrison Artillery
Royal Garrison Artillery
The Royal Garrison Artillery was an arm of the Royal Artillery that was originally tasked with manning the guns of the British Empire's forts and fortresses, including coastal artillery batteries, the heavy gun batteries attached to each infantry division, and the guns of the siege...
during World War I, assigned to the VI Corps
VI Corps (United Kingdom)
VI Corps was an army corps of the British Army in World War I. It was first organised in June 1915 and fought throughout on the Western Front.-Prior to World War I:...
Heavy Artillery, and in 1918 moved to Parkgate, in Dublin. Henry married Lorna Campbell in 1906, and they had three children. Henry eventually attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Artillery, and died on 24 August 1949. The youngest, Gertrude Annie, was born on 13 December 1876. She married in 1907 to Lieutenant Colonel E.C. Sandars, CMG, also a Royal Artillery officer; the couple had a daughter, Elizabeth.
Phipps' wife died in October 1885. In 1888, Phipps settled with his three youngest children at Chalfont St Giles
Chalfont St Giles
Chalfont St Giles is a village and civil parish within Chiltern district in south east Buckinghamshire, England, on the edge of the Chilterns, 25 miles from London, and near Seer Green, Jordans, Chalfont St Peter, Little Chalfont and Amersham....
. The 1891 Buckingham census shows Phipps on the Royal Artillery retired list and living at a country manor house, The Stone, with his sons, 21-year-old Edmund, a student at Oxford University, and 16-year old Henry, a student at Wellington, and 14-year-old Gertrude. Four servants supported this small family, including a cook, a lady's maid for Gertrude, a housemaid, and a scullery maid. In 1901, Henry had left the family household, but Edmund and Gertrude still lived with their father in St. Giles. Phipps remained at The Stone until 1920.
Career as military historian
Chalfont St Giles lies 25 miles (40.2 km) from London, and about the same distance to OxfordOxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, maintained a foot in the social world of London and the academic world of Oxford. Phipps was chairman of the magistrates for the Burnham division, sitting at Beaconsfield
Beaconsfield
Beaconsfield is a market town and civil parish operating as a town council within the South Bucks district in Buckinghamshire, England. It lies northwest of Charing Cross in Central London, and south-east of the county town of Aylesbury...
, and was a member of the County Standing Joint Committee and the County Licensing Committee. He also attended annual Diocesan Conferences at Oxford.
Phipps pursued his life-long interest in the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
. In 1885, he edited a revised edition of what was then the standard authority on Napoleon, Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne's
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne , French diplomat, was born at Sens.He was educated at the military school of Brienne in Champagne along with Napoleon Bonaparte; and although the solitary habits of the latter made intimacy difficult, the two youths seem to have been on friendly terms...
Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte. He also wrote the revision's chapters XXIV and XXVI. Subsequently, he edited a new edition of the surgeon Barry Edward O'Meara
Barry Edward O'Meara
Barry Edward O'Meara was an Irish surgeon and founding member of the Reform Club, who accompanied Napoleon to St. Helena and became his physician, having been surgeon on board the Bellerophon when the emperor surrendered himself. He is remembered as the author of Napoleon in Exile, or A Voice...
's Napoleon at Saint Helena, another Napoleonic Wars classic, to which he wrote a new introduction: O'Meara had been Napoleon's doctor on Helena. Historians praised Phipps' introduction as a convincing exposition against the treatment of Napoleon on Helena. In 1889, he edited a revised edition of Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan's
Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan
Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan, born Henriette Genet was a French educator and lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Antoinette before and during the French Revolution....
The private life of Marie Antoinette, queen of France and Navarre; with sketches and anecdotes of the courts of Louis XVI, which was also well received.
Creation of his magnum opus
Initially interested in the ministers of the Empire, Phipps was diverted to a deeper interest in Napoleon's marshals, primarily by the difficulty of obtaining facts about them. He capitalized on the growing interest of both Britons and the French in the Napoleonic period by purchasing, as they came out, the many personal memoirs published by the descendants of the participants. Indeed, by 1920, he had acquired over 2,000 volumes, plus sundry maps and letters. That year, in failing health, he moved to the house of his son, Charles, in Carlyle Square (21), Chelsea, London. There was no room for the books at his son's house, so Phipps gave them to All Souls College, OxfordAll Souls College, Oxford
The Warden and the College of the Souls of all Faithful People deceased in the University of Oxford or All Souls College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England....
; the majority of them were placed in the Codrington Library
Codrington Library
The Codrington Library is a library in All Souls College, one of the colleges forming part of Oxford University in England.The library was founded through a bequest by Christopher Codrington , a Fellow of the College. Codrington bequeathed books worth £6,000 and £10,000 in money, which allowed the...
. He selected All Souls for its established reputation in military history, and for the Codrington's collection left to it by Sir Foster Cunliffe, who had been killed in action in 1916. The collection, called the Phipps Collection, numbered more than 2,000 volumes, and includes Napoleon's published correspondence, that of the marshals, and has been kept up to date with modern works issued by the Historical Department of the French General Staff.
By the 1920s, there was still little published in English about the French marshals, and Phipps' proposed Lives of the Marshals was enthusiastically anticipated by scholars of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and the Napoleonic Wars. Despite his diligent activity on the project, Phipps' work was complicated by the regular appearance of new material, which he felt he had to read, verify, and digest; he sometimes incorporated the new material into his own work, and sometimes counter-balanced it with other material. Phipps was convinced of the importance of his subject, particularly the experience of the future marshals in the Republican armies. The French field armies of the Revolutionary Wars (1793–1800) formed the military education of the future marshals. Although there was great interest in the marshals, little had been published in either French or English about their early military experience. Phipps called these revolutionary armies the Schools for Marshals. Furthermore, he postulated, "the Consulate and the Empire cannot be judged until the Revolutionary period has been studied in detail."
Consequently, the scope of his work expanded. On the one hand, Phipps wished to avoid rehashing the same information that was available, but the careers of the marshals required some duplication. The published works were often filled with inconsistencies, not only in the French sources, but from the French to the English sources. The French sources frequently misinterpreted the English sources, and vice-versa. Phipps wrote both an introduction to his work and a summary of the histories of the armies of the Republic
French First Republic
The French First Republic was founded on 22 September 1792, by the newly established National Convention. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First French Empire in 1804 under Napoleon I...
and the Consulate
French Consulate
The Consulate was the government of France between the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire in 1804...
, from 1791 to 1804, and at certain points in his narrative, he paused to review the positions of the various future marshals and other well-known generals. He reflected on the development of their experience, the characteristics of their leadership, and the relationships to one another and to Napoleon. Critically, he posited that generals rarely improved with practice.
Ultimately the work that emerged was a massive typescript unfinished upon Phipps' death in June 1923. It included an introduction, a summary of the armies, a detailed history of the armies and the coup d'etat in Paris, a complete history of the French armies in Spain 1808–1814, plus accounts of Napoleon's 1814 campaign in which the marshals played such an important role and an account of the marshals during the First and Second Restorations. It also included material on the lives of the individual marshals and notes on the ministers of the Empire, who had been the subjects of Phipps' original plan. At some point in the compilation of this typescript, Phipps realized that he would not live to finish his work. He hoped that his children might be able to prepare it for publication, and he made some provision for the publication of all or a part of his manuscript. After Phipps' death, with the assistance and encouragement of Charles Oman
Charles Oman
Sir Charles William Chadwick Oman was a British military historian of the early 20th century. His reconstructions of medieval battles from the fragmentary and distorted accounts left by chroniclers were pioneering...
, the authority on the Peninsular War
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
, his son, Charles F. Phipps, supervised the publication of the first three volumes. Charles died in June 1932 before proofing the final galleys of volume three and prior to the publication of volumes four and five. Volumes four and five were left in the hands of Phipps' "very capable granddaughter" and literary executor, Elizabeth Sandars.
Reception
Phipps' effort, and that of his literary executors, was well received as both interesting and informative. "The narrative is that of a gallant gentleman whose life was spent as a 'soldier of the Queen' and in contributing to the greatness of the British Empire, who narrates to his listeners the facts which he has gathered, after his retirement from the army, in the pursuit of his favorite hobby." The narrative itself is informal and charming, not only full of analysis, but also relaying interesting stories and anecdotes about the marshals themselves. Other reviewers found the narrative clear, but undistinguished and "fatigued."In the first volume, Phipps' analysis covers a categorization of the marshals, although the narrative itself is largely confined to the Armée du Nord. In the beginning, he points out, the French army was well disciplined and the class of non-commissioned officers was "especially good." As the integration of the so-called volunteers—the revolutionary conscripts—into the units of regular troops undermined morale, discipline, and conditions, the army's cohesion fell apart. Phipps highlighted in particular the problems of armies moving without magazines or supplies. His analysis of the classes of marshals—citizen, soldier, officer—offers a noteworthy and solid refutation of the marshals as a class of leadership rising from the rough soldiery; his criticism of the French Revolutionary army system resulting from the two amalgamations is acute, targeted and well-documented. However, by limiting his sources to only those in English or French, in which he also was fluent, Phipps necessarily restricted his details, ignoring the actions of the Austrians and the Russians. The evidence, though, is always well assembled, even though, by volume three, it becomes much more sparse.
Of the five volumes, the second may be the most interesting: it dealt with more interesting times, and more consistent military operations. The army of the north was a "bad army," and the story of its command is one of "honest and brave men hurried in turn to the guillotine, or of less honest men going over to the enemy." Some of Phipps' own eccentricities also appear in volume two; he frequently lapses into sarcasm, revealing his disdain for civilian administration of military affairs, and there are points at which he fails to follow through fully on his criticism; for example, he holds back on his critique of Jean Victor Moreau despite his assertion that he wanted to demolish once and for all the myth that Moreau was as great a soldier as Napoleon. Phipps adeptly describes the game of cat and mouse that Moreau, Jean Baptiste Jourdan, and the Archduke Charles
Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen
Archduke Charles of Austria, Duke of Teschen was an Austrian field-marshal, the third son of emperor Leopold II and his wife Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain...
played with one another in the summer of 1796 as their armies criss-crossed south-western Germany; neither general came to grips with the other until October, and even then, after the Battle of Schliengen
Battle of Schliengen
At the Battle of Schliengen , both the French Republican Army commanded by Jean-Victor Moreau and the Austrian army under the command of Archduke Charles of Austria claimed victories...
, Charles was content to chase Moreau and Jourdan over the Rhine, not to demolish the French army. They were lacking, Phipps postulated, the instinct and nerves of Napoleon.
The problems associated with Phipps' lack of professional training as an historian become clear by the third volume. Despite his reading of newly published works, Phipps' idea of what constituted new material included the publications of memoirs and journals of the participants, not the extensive secondary literature and array of historiographical material in the periodic literature written by professional historians seeking to understand the French revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.In a 1905 letter, he refers to Revue des Deux Mondes of 15 July 1905, in which the Marquis Gicquel des Touches describes his grandfather's experience in the Battle of Trafalgar
Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....
on the French 74-gun Intrépide. See R. Phipps, "The Tactics of Trafalgar." The Times. Friday 11 August 1905, p. 5, Issue 37783, col. 3. Accessed 15 June 2010. Consequently, Phipps' perceptions of the French revolution remained rooted in the outdated theories of Archibald Alison
Sir Archibald Alison, 1st Baronet
Sir Archibald Alison, 1st Baronet FRSE was a Scottish advocate and historian. He held several prominent legal appointments. He was the younger son of the Episcopalian cleric and author Archibald Alison...
, Adolphe Thiers
Adolphe Thiers
Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers was a French politician and historian. was a prime minister under King Louis-Philippe of France. Following the overthrow of the Second Empire he again came to prominence as the French leader who suppressed the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871...
, and others, while ignoring some of the new theories of Albert Sorel
Albert Sorel
Albert Sorel , was a French historian. He was born at Honfleur and remained throughout his life a lover of his native Normandy. His father, a rich manufacturer, wanted him to take over the business but his literary vocation prevailed. He went to live in Paris, where he studied law and, after a...
, François Victor Alphonse Aulard
François Victor Alphonse Aulard
François Victor Alphonse Aulard was the first professional French historian of the French Revolution and of Napoleon.He was born at Montbron in Charente...
and Albert Mathiez
Albert Mathiez
Albert Mathiez was a French historian, known for his work on the French Revolution.He was a student of Alphonse Aulard. His La Révolution française appeared in three volumes . He wrote it as a socialist , pro-Robespierre interpretation, where Aulard had been pro-Danton...
. His military background emerged clearly in his hostility to the meddling of the French government in the affairs of soldiers.
Despite his amateur standing, Phipps plowed through an alarmingly confusing mass of material, especially that covering the 1796–1797 campaigns in Ireland and the Pyrenees. He hacked through a tangle of French material to provide a path for the English language reader. This feat in itself made volume three a useful tool; furthermore, Phipps offered an even-handed treatment of the suppression of Lyon and Toulon, two French cities whose revolts alarmed the Revolutionary government. Despite his lack of professional training, Phipps provided a valuable assessment to these widely studied revolts.
Reviewers also gave credit to Elizabeth Sanders, Phipps' granddaughter and literary executor, for her skillful handling of the last two volumes. The purpose of the work becomes even more apparent and direct under her management and editing of the material. The role of the future marshals becomes more clear in the campaigns of 1797, and especially in the Italian campaign; her handling of the material kept it fully focused on the future marshals Massena, Augereau, Berthier
Louis Alexandre Berthier
Louis Alexandre Berthier, 1st Prince de Wagram, 1st Duc de Valangin, 1st Sovereign Prince de Neuchâtel , was a Marshal of France, Vice-Constable of France beginning in 1808, and Chief of Staff under Napoleon.-Early life:Alexandre was born at Versailles to Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Baptiste Berthier ,...
, and Brune.
By the time of the publication of the final volume, Phipps' work had established for itself a place in the pantheon of Napoleonic literature. It "will always be regarded as a valuable source," well-known to students of the Napoleonic era, and the last volume, critics maintained, was "as interesting as its predecessors." Not only did Phipps achieve his goal of creating a record of the development of the marshals, but his volumes have become a useful history of the progress of the wars themselves, from 1792 to 1799. The true value of the first volume, and indeed the subsequent four, lies in its repeated use as a reference work.
Publications
- Ramsay Weston Phipps. The Armies of the First French Republic and the Rise of the Marshals of Napoleon I, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926–39.
Edited works
- Jeanne-Louise-Henriette CampanJeanne-Louise-Henriette CampanJeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan, born Henriette Genet was a French educator and lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Antoinette before and during the French Revolution....
, The private life of Marie Antoinette, queen of France and Navarre; with sketches and anecdotes of the courts of Louis XVI, Revised edition edited by R.W. Phipps, London, Bentley, 1889. - Barry Edward O'MearaBarry Edward O'MearaBarry Edward O'Meara was an Irish surgeon and founding member of the Reform Club, who accompanied Napoleon to St. Helena and became his physician, having been surgeon on board the Bellerophon when the emperor surrendered himself. He is remembered as the author of Napoleon in Exile, or A Voice...
, Napoleon on Saint Helena. Revised edition edited by R.W. Phipps, 2 volumes, London: Bentley, 1888. - Louis Antoine Fauvelet de BourrienneLouis Antoine Fauvelet de BourrienneLouis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne , French diplomat, was born at Sens.He was educated at the military school of Brienne in Champagne along with Napoleon Bonaparte; and although the solitary habits of the latter made intimacy difficult, the two youths seem to have been on friendly terms...
, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, revised edition edited by R. W. Phipps, 3 volumes, London, Bentley, 1885.