2. Military mad: war and the Grand Tour

Travelling in the late 1770s, Sir Francis Basset, a member of the Cornish gentry, undertook his Grand Tour with his tutor, the Revd William Sandys. This was during the War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–9), a relatively minor conflict between a Saxon-Prussian alliance and the Austrian Hapsburg monarchy which involved a succession of raids and counter-raids rather than major battles. Even so, the death toll was an estimated 20,000 troops and civilians. As the war took place in Bohemia and Silesia, Basset had ample opportunity to avoid the conflict; however, he very deliberately travelled into ‘the field’ to visit a friend, the Prussian general Prince Leopold of Brunswick. Socializing in the middle of an active conflict had its repercussions. One morning in 1778, while breakfasting at a mill, the Saxon-Prussian troops were surprised by 5,000 Austrian Cossacks. Outnumbered, the Prussian army prepared to fight. Basset refused to leave, despite Leopold urging him ‘to go off while there was time to escape’. Fighting in the ranks, he witnessed the dangers of war at close hand. Recounting the story thirty years later to the artist Joseph Farington, Basset recalled how ‘Many were killed; the brains of a serjeant struck Him’. Fortunately for Sir Francis, the day was saved by the Prussian cavalry whose charge broke the Austrian ranks and allowed the army to take 2,000 prisoners.¹

Basset’s violent, bloody Grand Tour experience of war was not an anomaly. His decisions, experience and consequent memories were shaped by an enduring collectively held belief that military leadership and its accompanying skills were an inherent part of elite responsibilities and identity. As an elite educational institution, the Grand Tour was intended to give scope and opportunity to the development of military skills and virtues. For eighteenth-century Grand Tourists, war and its accoutrements were simultaneously a touristic spectacle, a social occasion and an educational opportunity. By participating in them, Tourists learned vital military skills, demonstrated their continued commitment to martial leadership as an important elite responsibility, and were able to celebrate martial virtues, abilities and bodies as markers of a successful elite masculine performance.

Recent studies have challenged the general premise that tourism is ‘a phenomenon that needs peace in order to flourish’ by highlighting the ways in which tourist locations benefit from and even develop out of conflict.² Historical precedents of military tourism have been found in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and relating to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793–1802, 1803–15).³ Scholars have also increasingly recognized the complex, ambivalent nature of the relationship between war, civilian travel and tourism in the eighteenth century.⁴ War in this period was a semi-permanent feature which was violent and dangerous but also limited to certain geographical areas, fought by private royal armies, and regulated by a series of accepted conventions.⁵ The convention of treating all nationals, including citizens, as hostiles was not implemented until Napoleon’s 2nd Prairial Decree (May 1803).⁶ Prior to this, civilian travellers could become prisoners of war but were generally free to travel, providing they had permission. Continental wars were therefore an inconvenience rather than an impediment to travel.⁷ Conflict added an additional layer of danger and disruption through requisitioned horses and accommodation, marauding soldiers and the increased possibility of being apprehended as a spy, but it rarely rendered international trade, travel and communication impossible.⁸

It is now understood that Grand Tourists had a ‘relaxed view’ of travelling during wartime, but it is still asserted that conflict ‘was merely to be avoided’ and that military tourism had no place in the eighteenth century.⁹ Such assertions are based on the premise that the elite at that time had been demilitarized by the military, administrative and financial revolutions under William III. As a result, they increasingly defined their virtues, freedoms and civic liberties as a freedom from the obligation to bear arms, rather than a right to them.¹⁰ This elite, it is argued, not only pursued a non-militarized Grand Tour, they also reshaped previously military aspects of classical, Renaissance and courtly discourses to fit with this emerging environment of commercial and polite exchange.¹¹

Other historians have placed more emphasis upon the continuity of a military service elite, particularly on the concept’s late eighteenth-century re-emergence. Linda Colley, for example, argued that the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars resulted in a surge in members of the British elite presenting themselves as engaging wholesale in military conflict. Everything from boxing, portraiture, uniforms and martial classical republic and chivalric ideals were harnessed to achieve an ostentatious culture of heroism, service and sacrifice designed to display their military leadership and valour.¹² Similar displays of elite martial masculinity have been identified earlier in the century, following the Seven Years’ War and during the War of American Independence. Seeking to explain this, historians have collectively argued that intense periods of national self-scrutiny and doubt to which elite men responded were successively ushered in by the relative military inactivity of the 1720s and 1730s, followed by the abrupt entry in 1739 into the War of Austrian Succession, the disastrous start to the Seven Years’ War in 1756, the dramatic expansion of British territories following British victory in 1763, and, finally, the shattering, unexpected loss of America after the War of American Independence.¹³

These episodes prompted a cyclical crisis of confidence over British masculinity and its capacity to defend home, nation and empire. From the mid eighteenth century onwards, social commentators demanded a more robust, martial, patriotic, civic-minded form of manhood.¹⁴ This call resulted in the revival of chivalry as an idealized set of masculine behaviours that were unambiguously male and British. Defined by a love of arms, hazardous enterprise and adventure, and a respectful love of women, eighteenth-century chivalry was a seemingly ideal blend of robust civility. It also allowed for a celebration of British national identity and history that was increasingly defined in terms of a proud military heritage. The primal heroism and prowess of ancient Britons, Saxons and medieval knights was favourably contrasted against their effeminate, luxurious descendants.¹⁵ This period did not just see a cultural shift. Alongside the ongoing expansion and professionalization of Britain’s army and navy, the second half of the eighteenth century saw the birth of the New Militia movement from 1757. Renewed enthusiasm for an organized civic defence against invasion – centred on the figure of the masculine citizen soldier – was championed as a neoclassical panacea to the perceived problems of moral decline and effeminacy, and was led by the military leadership of the local elite.¹⁶

Grand Tourists travelling after the Seven Years’ War and the New Militia Bill of 1757 were clearly influenced by these cultural and political changes. Sir Francis Basset, for example, very deliberately fashioned his career and masculine identity as an exemplar of militia service.¹⁷ Less than a year after being splattered with brains in Bavaria, Basset played a key role in countering the perceived threat of a Franco-Spanish armada during the War of American Independence. As lieutenant-colonel of the North Devon militia, he marched Cornish miners to Plymouth and strengthened the coastal defences. This patriotic act was rewarded with the baronetcy of de Dunstanville in November 1779. When Farington heard Basset’s Grand Tour war stories in 1809, during the height of the Napoleonic Wars, he made much of Basset’s and Leopold’s honourable behaviour, and of the posthumous romanticization of the prince’s reputation as a chivalric figure following Leopold’s drowning while rescuing others in a flood.¹⁸ Basset’s self-presentation was, it seems, a success and the Grand Tour played an important role within this.

Yet examination of Grand Tour military activities and agendas prior to the 1750s shows that the concept of the military service elite did not simply re-emerge in the second half of the eighteenth century. Instead, the Grand Tour played an important role in preserving this element of elite masculinity throughout the period by maintaining the early modern and seventeenth-century practice of offering a martial itinerary that encompassed academic tuition in the art of war as well as visits to – and sometimes participation in – battlefields of historical interest and sites of current conflicts. This was deemed to be a highly effective military education and was part of the elite’s enduring self-perception of a military service that carried over seventeenth-century notions of admirable male conduct into the second half of the eighteenth without interruption.

This element of the Grand Tour is almost entirely absent from the period’s published literature, but is far more clearly articulated within familial discourses. Between these, and the young elite men’s own writings, it can be seen how Grand Tourists were encouraged to appreciate their military responsibilities, perform a martial masculinity, and esteem the example set by the continent’s martial societies and leaders. Through observing famous military men and armies, Tourists were inspired to admiration, emulation and friendship. However, this also created scenarios in which retreating from military danger became very difficult, as the Basset example demonstrates. Sir Francis used the story to portray his younger self as exemplifying a masculine martial identity firmly grounded in deliberate risk-taking and displays of chivalric courage. Nevertheless, an adherence to masculine codes of honour and friendship also meant he had little choice but to fight if he wished to maintain a mutual standing of honour, bravery and respect with Leopold of Brunswick. Basset’s response to danger was therefore directly influenced not just by a desire to impress Leopold but also by a deep-seated cultural expectation that gentlemen should prove their elite masculinity through experiencing battle.

Driven by a militarized concept of honour, eighteenth-century elite men were expected to confront, overcome and endure danger. In doing so, they were meant to experience situations that others believed would refine and prove their status as men of honour, courage and virtue. This was an idealized standard of behaviour. Regardless of whether they actually chose to confront or evade active conflict, the potential for experiencing military danger therefore played an important role in men’s decision-making and their subsequent narratives of those choices.

The martial itinerary

Writing in 1765, John Holroyd, later 1st earl of Sheffield, observed the physical damage done to Dresden and Prague by Frederick the Great and the Prussian army during the recent Seven Years’ War. The ruins of one beautiful Prague palace reminded him of a plum pudding on account of ‘the Prussian taste in placing their cannon balls … with all that beautiful irregularity’.¹⁹ Dresden meanwhile resembled ‘minced pyes [more] than Plum Pudding’; a scene that left him ‘shocked & disgusted by the effects of the royal amusement War’.²⁰ Though conscious that ‘some Calamities of War are unavoidable’, he was disapproving of the level of destruction suffered by Dresden and Prague, noting that ‘a Goth can make distinguishing additions’.²¹ Holroyd actually enjoyed many aspects of military conflict. Having already served in the military during the Seven Years’ War, he enthusiastically described himself as ‘military mad’ and ‘more desperately military than most things existing’.²² His disapproval here was less about war itself and more about the dishonourable conduct of the Prussian army. The Prussians had laid siege to Prague, and the city’s occupying Austrian army, between the Battles of Prague (6 May 1757) and Kolin (18 June 1757). In July 1760, Dresden was also unsuccessfully besieged by Frederick the Great in an effort to reassert control over Saxony. As Holroyd’s critical tone suggests, the Prussians’ heavy bombardment of these civilian urban areas was widely condemned across Europe. Even twenty years on, the marks of this destruction were still a matter of interest. When Philip Yorke, later 3rd earl of Hardwicke, reached Dresden in 1777, he made time to ‘to see the marks of the Bombardment the K. of Prussia treated the Town with’.²³

Holroyd and Yorke used the enduring evidence of destruction in eighteenth-century cityscapes as a means of remembering and learning from contemporary military conflicts.²⁴ This technique, similar to the process of imaginatively overlaying the Italian landscape with its classical past, was also applied to the countryside across the Dutch Republic, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Charles Legge, younger brother of Viscount Lewisham and himself destined for a military career, was excited to travel through Germany in 1776 because it was a region famous for its recent conflicts. Reflecting this, the brothers’ itinerary was focused on seeing ‘most of the fields of battle’.²⁵ To imaginatively turn unmarked fields back into sites of conflicts – among them the battles of Minden (1759), Aix la Chapelle (a battlefield and location of the 1748 treaty) and Lobositz (1756) – required hard work and good resources. When Holroyd devoted himself to reimagining the countryside between Vienna and Dresden in the context of ‘the most remarkable Battles [that] have been fought during the last two wars’, he travelled with an Austrian officer who could assist him in this act of reconstruction.²⁶ In order to undertake a similar task, Philip Yorke purchased a ‘very exact’ plan of the Battle of Lobositz, which he then compared to the terrain itself, and he went over ‘the Ground of the Battle of Prague in May 1756’ with a military friend, Major O’Sullivan. Two years later, after crossing the Alps, he toured the Savoyard fortress of Susa with his tutor, Colonel Wettstein. His companion, who had been garrisoned there during the War of Austrian Succession when the fortress was ‘taken in the y. 1744 by Don Philip’, provided him with a first-hand account of the action.²⁷

This commitment to viewing land and cityscapes in the light of recent conflicts reflected Tourists’ deep desire to understand the political and military state of other European powers.²⁸ This understanding was proactively pursued in young men’s reading habits and topics of study. Yorke, for example, studied political history at Leiden University, ‘modern history’ in Vienna and read books covering the ‘history of the last war in Germany … contain[ing] a number of Plans & Charts with descriptions of the different Battles & operations’.²⁹ Nor was this interest limited solely to past conflicts. Grand Tourists had a voracious appetite for domestic and international news, and took an active interest in Europe’s current military situation. They busily viewed fortresses, defences, garrisons, arsenals and naval ports, assessed troops and reviews, met and socialized with contemporary military commanders, and visited active camps, marches and battles.

The itinerary of Viscount Lewisham and his brothers in 1775–8 provides a good example of the levels of military touring that took place. Lewisham’s continental travels began with an impromptu attendance at a military review in Calais. His subsequent meandering route to Paris was designed to include a visit to Lille, ‘the object of our circuit’ and ‘the strongest fortress in France’. En route, he also took in arsenals, fortifications and garrisons at St. Omar, Lille, Donay, Pont St. Maxenne and Chantilly. A two-month stay at an academy in Tours allowed him, his brother William and their tutor, David Stevenson, to visit military sites in Lyons and various towns along the Loire before returning to Paris. From Paris, William returned to England and was replaced by another brother, Charles. After this, the military element of Lewisham’s Tour intensified. Lewisham, Charles and Stevenson attempted to view Brest’s military ports in Brittany but the sensitivity of this military site meant they were denied access. The party then travelled from the west coast of France to Brussels. From there, they took the opportunity to see the fortresses of Bergen-op-zoom and Breda in the Dutch Republic. In Germany and Austria, they enthused over the battlefield of Minden, Hanau’s ‘imaginative Fortification’, and the military reviews in Brandenburg, Potsdam and Prague.³⁰ As Figure 2.1 demonstrates, this was not an unusual itinerary. Grand Tourists across the century engaged in a wide variety of military activities and sites across Europe. Of particular interest were the French defences looking towards the English coast, the famous fortifications of the Low Countries, the historical battlefields in Switzerland, the more recent battlefields in Germany and Austria, and the relatively accessible frontier lines between France, Germany and Switzerland.

The motivation for these military-based activities was three-fold. As the records of many Tourists from throughout the eighteenth century make clear, the military first offered drama, spectacle and entertainment. During a Grand Tour that lasted from 1707–9, and covered the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Italy, James Compton, later 5th earl of Northampton, set out with the deliberate intention of experiencing the War of Spanish Succession. In a letter to the 4th earl, Compton’s tutor James Hay described the spectacle of Marlborough’s army mobilizing for battle in 1707 as ‘this delightful sight’.³¹ That such observations were considered a touristic practice is evident in the existence of guides, plans and souvenir hunting. Seventy years on, Lewisham’s collection of two ‘Curiosities’, a bullet and button from the field of Minden, was typical of the young men’s habit of salvaging the trappings of war and other curiosities from their travels.³² Second, in addition to ‘the pleasure of seeing’, attendance at military spectacles offered opportunities for socializing with fashionable society. In April 1777 Philip Yorke observed that everybody was ‘running to see the Exercises’ in The Hague.³³ These large-scale military events were important highlights in the beau monde’s social calendar across Europe. They were therefore part of Grand Tourists’ agenda of sociopolitical networking.³⁴ Visits to Prussia and Austria were even sometimes timed to coincide with major military reviews. Military tourism could also advance social networking on a more intimate level. Writing to his aunt in January 1766, John Holroyd proudly boasted of the Count de la Lippe’s hospitality. Upon learning of his interest in the battlefield of Minden, the Count ‘sent his aid de Camp & two others who had been at The Battle of Minden to attend me & explain particulars’.³⁵ Gaining access to highly sensitive military sites was an even greater social coup. In January 1755, during the escalation of sensitivities with France at the start of the Seven Years’ War, the powerful French General and statesman, the Duc de Belle Isle, personally ordered that Charles Lennox, 3rd duke of Richmond, could see the ‘Fortifications mines & in short all I wanted to see’ in French Flanders. In recounting this to his guardians, Richmond was not just demonstrating his keen interest in military sites and contemporary politics; he was also taking an opportunity to vaunt the extent and favour of his international connections.³⁶

Figure 2.1. Map and key of sites where Grand Tourists engaged with military activity, c. 1730–80. See Appendix 1 for a database listing the individual visits to military sites that comprise the map.

Third, and most significantly, young elite men saw the time spent on historic battlefields, military reviews, armouries and fortresses as educational. The Grand Tour was a means of training young men as Britain’s future political, social and military leaders. These activities were therefore intended as opportunities to learn about the art and reality of war. Destined to follow family tradition and serve in the cavalry, George Herbert was instructed to pay particular attention to ‘Manoeuvres of Troops on Horseback’ when attending ‘Parades, Exercises, & Artillery Parcs’.³⁷ Lewisham’s tutor, David Stevenson, hoped that Charles’s ‘Thirst after military knowledge’ would be increased by seeing ‘some of the finest, & best-disciplin’d Troops in the Universe’ during the 1776 Prague and Potsdam reviews.³⁸ Philip Yorke certainly believed that watching the Austrian and Prussian troops in action ‘would inspire with military ideas those who were the least inclined to them’.³⁹ Yorke may have simply been telling his two uncles what they wished to hear but, genuine or not, such statements of enthusiasm offer further evidence of the educational importance attached to these activities.

Grand Tourists attempted to view and write about these sites as officers-in-training. In seeking to exercise their skills in assessing a country’s military strength, they produced lists of regiments and made judgements that were often somewhat trite and prejudicial. Charles Legge, for example, was ‘particularly pleased’ to ‘make the Comparison between the Austrians, Prussians and our own … the Austrians are certainly well disciplined & fight as if they were attached to their Master the Prussians thro’ Fear & the English for Old England but for parade Troops the English certainly bear the belle’.⁴⁰

Charles emphasized that this exercise in judgement was only possible because he had seen these troops, rather than just read about them. The value of observation and experience was also stressed in young men’s accounts of battlefield sites. Having studied the movements and terrain of the battle from verbal, written and cartographical sources, Yorke then traced those movements on the landscape.⁴¹ ‘Seeing the Country, & the Ground of the Operation of the two armies’ consolidated his understanding of how terrain dictated the effectiveness of tactics and manoeuvres.⁴² For example, he judged the steep gradient of one historic battlefield in Switzerland as ‘a most horrid’ place for fighting.⁴³ By riding up the mountain of Chiska to take in a view of the terrain of the battlefield of Prague, and by comparing this to his cartographical and reported knowledge, Yorke retrospectively acted out suitable pre-battle preparations.⁴⁴ At the same time, Grand Tourists observed how continental military leaders also made similar use of retrospective lessons. The Austrian army’s 1776 Prague review, attended by Lewisham and Charles, was a re-enactment of the 1757 Battle of Prague ‘as it ought to have been defended’. This training exercise used the same location and even some of the soldiers from the original battle.⁴⁵ Whether through scenarios like the Prague reviews, attending former battlefields with experienced military officers, or recorded histories, Tourists consistently sought to learn the art of war by drawing the military past into the present.

Grand Tourists did not just acquire military skills through studying historical terrains, fortresses and troops. They also observed internationally famous commanders in action on the military, political and social stage. Writing in November 1765, John Holroyd rapturously described meeting ‘the Great Generals whose names are so well known in the Gazettes’, including Marshals Duan, O’Donnel and Loudon – the latter ‘most deservedly esteemed one of the best generals in Europe’.⁴⁶ Reflecting on these men’s past and present actions was an opportunity to assess the skills and virtues of an esteemed or a less successful military commander. While watching the Prague reviews, Charles Legge described how they shifted from military exercises to an act of commemoration when the Austrian emperor ordered a salute to be fired for Marshall Schweneir, the Prussian general, who had died during the Battle of Prague. Schweneir had led a desperate charge after Frederick the Great callously told him that Spandau, the town where state prisoners were held, was the only place to which he could retreat. Distraught at the threat of dishonour, Schweneir chose instead to fight to the death. Through watching this commemoration, Charles and Lewisham received a heady set of lessons that glorified Schweneir’s sacrifice, celebrated the Austrian military’s chivalric honouring of a nobly fallen foe, and looked disapprovingly on the king of Prussia’s cold behaviour.⁴⁷

Observation was but one part of a Grand Tour military curriculum. The Tour also offered a more formal and skills-based education through attending academies of varying sizes and descriptions across Europe, particularly in France, Savoy, Germany and Switzerland. Academies were an important, highly popular educational option for British and European nobility until at least the 1780s.⁴⁸ Until recently, academies have been treated as exclusively polite in nature and predominately concerned with educating students in social deportment.⁴⁹ However, to fully understand the breadth of the educational opportunities available to Tourists, it needs to be recognized that there were at least two categories of institution – the military and the more general aristocratic academy – and to acknowledge the overlapping curricula between the two.

The first of these academy types emerged out of the gradual professionalization of the military and was dedicated to providing an increasingly rigorous training for European military officers. The British elite had only one formal option for domestic officer training. This was the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, founded by the Board of Ordnance in 1741, which produced artillery officers and engineers. Based on curricula taught at French and German military academies, Woolwich provided the technical ‘know-how’ necessary to command a professional army through training in fortifications, artillery, mathematics, geography, drawing, architecture, topography and perspectives, which developed skills in surveying and the making of military maps.⁵⁰ But as the artillery rarely appealed to elite young men pursuing a military career, Britain’s absence of academies for commissioned officers left it well behind in relation to the facilities available on the continent.

Military historians have typically presumed that this lack of facilities meant that British officer training lagged behind their continental counterparts. The British officer corps, it is argued, continued to stress qualities such as personal comportment, gentility and social status over professional skill, and only started training after an officer joined a regiment.⁵¹ Yet Matthew McCormack has demonstrated how aristocratic parents compensated for this deficiency both before and after the establishment of the Woolwich Academy by sending sons destined for the military to seek out continental options.⁵² One such individual was Lord Herbert who, in addition to being encouraged to attend as many military events as possible, spent nine months (November 1775–July 1776) at the military academy in Strasbourg. During this time, his parents – Henry Herbert, 10th earl of Pembroke and Elizabeth, countess of Pembroke – provided his tutors with an extensive memorandum and a two-week timetable that was deliberately designed to ensure that their son was fit ‘for a military line of life’ (see Figure 2.2).⁵³

Figure 2.2. A two-week daily timetable, written by George, Lord Herbert, later 11th earl of Pembroke’s parents in 1776, for his stay in Strasbourg (Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, MS. 2057/F4/278, ‘Instructions’, 1776).

By permission of the 18th earl of Pembroke and Montgomery and the Wilton House Trustees, Wilton House, Salisbury.

Tutored by a scholar and a military officer, Herbert studied languages (Italian, German, Latin, Greek), history, geography (‘Use of the Globes’, ‘with Maps’), astronomy, natural sciences, philosophy, literary works (the ‘English Poets’), music and the latest in legal thinking, including William Eden’s Principles of Penal Law (1771). This was accompanied by a rigorous focus on the theoretical and professional dimensions of the military: ‘mathematicks’, drawing, fortifications and parade, alongside ‘Raising Plans, observe Artillery &c, & all kinds of Figures & Accounts-keeping’. Finally, his physical form and martial skills were addressed through riding, fencing (‘chiefly with the left hand’), dancing, shooting ‘with Bulledgun & Pistols with Floyd’, tennis and swimming.⁵⁴ These documents give an insight into the nature of Herbert’s formal military academy education and the widespread aims of an elite education.

Most young men on a Grand Tour did not, however, attend an exclusively military school. Instead, they attended the second, more common type of eighteenth-century academy: institutions that were often founded by leading seventeenth- and eighteenth-century princes and aristocrats across France, Germany, Austria and Savoy, and which were devoted to a more general aristocratic education. Herbert was no exception. Alongside attending Strasbourg, he also spent at least three months (December 1779– February 1780) at Turin’s famous Accademia Reale. Other popular options included the academies of Wolfenbüttel, founded by Duke Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel in 1687; Lunéville, created by Duke Leopold of Lorraine in 1699; and the various academies that were not attached to courts, but were run by educators in Paris and the Loire region. The ethos of these academies has recently been defined as ‘ritterakademien’; an educational tradition that combined Renaissance-inspired values and practices with older chivalric educational patterns and more contemporary concerns.⁵⁵ As Paola Bianchi observed, these institutions provided ‘modern education for gentlemen destined for public life’.⁵⁶ This included but went beyond equipping them with the social elegance required for polite society. The most prestigious academies offered a wide-ranging and often effective training for the typical trio of aristocratic careers of court, diplomatic and military service.⁵⁷ Turin’s Accademia Reale, for example, attracted students from Italy, Germany, Austria, Britain, Poland and Russia. Many of these later became important commanders, diplomats, politicians and courtiers across Europe.⁵⁸ The Accademia Reale’s success was not just due to its curriculum. Established in 1678 by Duke Carlo Emanuele II, it was physically attached to and part of the Sardinian royal court. Attending the Accademia Reale therefore created opportunities to observe the upper echelons of aristocratic society, courtly etiquette and diplomatic exchange in action.⁵⁹

Military training was at the very heart of these academies’ curricula. The Accademia Reale, for example, was even described, in one early nineteenth-century account, as an ‘Ecole militaire … pour l’éducation de la jeune Noblesse’.⁶⁰ Descriptions of the resident Savoyard kings and their nobility throughout the eighteenth century often focused upon the politeness of their court and their ‘warlike’ temper. In 1739, Joseph Spence, tutor to Henry Fiennes Pelham-Clinton, 9th earl of Lincoln, described Savoy as ‘a nation of soldiers … the only military people in Italy’.⁶¹ Victor Amadeus II had been ‘a lover of war’ and though his son – Charles Emmanuel II – was more peaceful, he nevertheless ‘does everything in his power’ to encourage ‘a strong military spirit’ among the Savoyard nobility. As a result, ‘there’s scarce a gentleman in the country that does not know how to manage his arms and ride a war-horse’.⁶² It was commonly understood that the Accademia Reale was central to achieving this aim. Its curriculum gave prominent attention to the provision of physical and military exercises. These included dancing, vaulting, horse riding, simulation of battles and attacks on strongholds, and mathematics, in a combination that was strikingly similar to the curricula offered at the military academies in Woolwich, Strasbourg and elsewhere.⁶³ When Herbert attended in 1779–80, for example, he immediately resumed many of the activities he had undertaken at Strasbourg’s military academy.

At times, however, the martial nature of an academy’s curriculum – particularly the core activities of riding, fencing and dancing – was hidden in plain sight. Scholars have traditionally, and correctly, associated these three activities with achieving a polite, elegant deportment, but they were also closely connected to martial skill and culture. Matthew McCormack, for example, has highlighted how dancing – the least obviously martial of these practices – was nonetheless an integral part of French and British military training. Georgian military men, together with civilian dancing masters, emphasized the shared origins of dance and drill, and argued that dancing was a form of intense bodily cultivation ‘specifically tasked with preparing men’s bodies for war’.⁶⁴ When Pembroke insisted that Herbert ‘be really very constant, & attentive to riding, Fencing, & Dancing sans relache’ at the Accademia Reale, his concerns were not simply with his son’s social accomplishments but equally with his martial education.⁶⁵ To the eighteenth-century eye any academy curriculum teaching riding, fencing and dancing, whether connected to a court or not, would have appeared martial in nature and would have been deemed part of a military education. Take, for example, Charles Lennox, the 3rd duke of Richmond’s confident declaration that he was now ‘well prepared’ to join the military in 1752, having learned ‘Riding, Fencing, Drawing, & Mathematicks’ at a Genevan academy, and having decided to ‘particularly apply [himself ] to Landscapes, Gunnery & Fortification’.⁶⁶

For British elite commissioned officers of a certain rank and wealth, it was therefore relatively easy to receive the same training as their continental counterparts. Yet the widespread nature of a military-based academy education also suggests that martial skills and knowledge were deemed to be equally important for young elite men whose future careers lay elsewhere. Here the experiences of Lewisham and Henry Fiennes Pelham-Clinton, 9th earl of Lincoln, neither of whom were intended for the military, are instructive. It might be argued that the martial elements of Lewisham’s Grand Tour were intended to prepare his younger brother, Charles Legge, for his future military career. Yet Lewisham, the heir whose future would lie in politics and managing the family estate, received the same education as Charles during their time together; and, as already shown, Lewisham was already engaged in a military education prior to Charles’s arrival through touring military sites and attending academies in Paris and Tours. The duke of Newcastle similarly endorsed an education in courtly, diplomatic and military skills when he gave Lord Lincoln, his nephew and heir, permission to extend a six-month stay at the Accademia Reale in 1739, so that he might ‘make some real progress in my exercises’.⁶⁷ Lincoln’s tutor, Joseph Spence, had already remarked several times how the king, Charles Emmanuel II, used the Accademia Reale to encourage the discernibly ‘military air’ of the Savoyard nobility and maintain Savoy as ‘a nation of soldiers’. Consequently, Newcastle must have been aware, and approved, of the continuing military aspect of Lincoln’s formation.⁶⁸ The military dimension of young men’s continental training was therefore often an accepted, but understated, dimension of a broader education in the service of a much wider set of professional accomplishments.

As discussed in the introduction, early modern practices of learning often used observation, immersion and participation as teaching tools. The Grand Tour’s military curriculum was no exception. It was important to learn military theories and skills within an academy environment, and to observe and assess safe military sites and manoeuvres. But the Tour’s military curriculum also provided the opportunity to observe and participate in live military operations. These involved attending active military camps, sieges, frontlines and battles. During the War of Polish Succession (1733–8), for example, various Grand Tourists in Italy, including Sir Hugh Smithson and Sir Harry Lydall, went out of their way to visit the French army near Mantua. In 1734, Simon Harcourt, 1st Earl Harcourt, went further by remaining in Parma to witness the Battle of Parma from the ramparts.⁶⁹

Grand Tourists and tutors were aware that attending live military sites simply to observe and to enjoy military hospitality involved an element of risk and the increased possibility of active participation. What became a reality for Basset in 1778–9 was a near-miss for earlier Tourists like Compton and Richard Aldworth Neville. In 1707, having camped with Marlborough’s army for a time and then enjoyed accompanying it on the march to battle, Compton, Hay and their companions were almost caught up in a skirmish.⁷⁰ Similarly in 1743, during the War of Austrian Succession, Aldworth Neville and his friends spent several days with the army of the Austrian commander, Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine. During this time, they were hosted by Baron Franz von der Trenck, commander of the Austrian paramilitary Pandurs unit, and the Dutch commander, Prince Karl August Friedrich of Waldeck and Pyrmont. The army was encamped along a river with the French on the other side, and preparations were underway to advance. Aldworth Neville wanted to examine one of the bridges being built for this purpose. Upon doing so, he was warned that ‘the French that we saw just on the other Side of the River, w’d certainly shoot at us,’ and so he ‘prudently kept back’.⁷¹

Compton and Aldworth Neville are examples of Grand Tourists who undertook an observational exercise that risked becoming a participatory one. But some Tourists headed into military situations with the deliberate intention of taking part. In doing so, they continued a seventeenth-century practice known as ‘military volunteering’. As defined in a 1702 Military Dictionary, ‘Volunteer[s]’ were ‘gentlemen, who without having any certain post or employment in the forces under command, put themselves upon warlike expeditions and run into dangers only to gain honour and preferment’.⁷² As Roger Manning has explored, seventeenth-century volunteering allowed young men to acquire their first taste of battle and to learn tactics and values from experienced commanders. But in addition to being a training exercise, volunteering was also an elite social convention through which young men were initiated into military manhood by enabling them to ‘seek out danger and verify their honour’ on the battlefield.⁷³ Experience of battle was still common among elite men during the later seventeenth century. Manning has calculated that between 1650 and 1700, more than half of all British peers saw military action. In 1700 alone a total of 211 out of 408 titled peers either volunteered or were in military employment.⁷⁴ The early modern Tour played a substantial role in facilitating this experience by incorporating military volunteering within its itineraries. Tourists were expected to undertake training in French academies and to visit the Netherlands in order to volunteer with the Dutch and Spanish armies.⁷⁵ So established was this expectation that the less martially inclined also participated, however briefly and reluctantly. For example, John Evelyn, the diarist, writer and eventual founding member of the Royal Society, recorded how he was ‘receiv’d a Voluntéere’ in August 1641 during his Grand Tour. He reluctantly trailed his pike for around ten days before escaping from ‘the confusions of Armies, & sieges’ as swiftly as possible.⁷⁶

Manning contended that volunteering declined in the early eighteenth century as armies became more professionalized and volunteers more difficult to accommodate. However, he also acknowledged that this remains an underdeveloped area of research, and that varied forms of voluntary military engagement may have continued in other formats and under other names.⁷⁷ The letters, diaries and itineraries of early eighteenth-century Grand Tourists strongly indicate that this was indeed the case – with the option of volunteering being actively considered during the War of Spanish Succession. In this period Tourists and their families often conducted lively discussions on whether, when and where they should volunteer. In 1701, Henry Bentinck, Lord Woodstock and later 1st duke of Portland, his father, Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st earl of Portland, and Woodstock’s tutor, Paul de Rapin de Thoyras, vehemently disagreed on whether the young man should join the German campaign in Italy or wait to fight in Holland.⁷⁸ Woodstock eventually joined the latter campaign.

Volunteering remained a possibility during the War of Austrian Succession in the 1740s. In 1741, Newcastle begged Lincoln to ‘not be so mad (pardon the expression) as to think of making a campaign’.⁷⁹ Around the same time, William Windham’s behaviour and purchase of a Hussar uniform led to an enduring rumour among the Norfolk gentry that he might have volunteered with the Austrian army. ⁸⁰ While Windham’s true intentions remained the stuff of speculation, other young men did volunteer – among them Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s notoriously problematic son, Edward, and Windham’s friend, George Townshend, 1st Marquis Townshend. Both took part in the Battle of Dettingen in 1743.⁸¹ In his manuscript memoirs, Townshend recalled how prior to leaving for his Grand Tour, he had been ‘presented by his father at St. James’ Court as he was to serve the Campaign in Germany as a Volunteer’. He then fought at Dettingen (June 1743) as an ‘additional aide de camp’, ‘visited the Austrian Army on the Rhine’ and went to Paris, Switzerland and Besançon.⁸² These last three locations had distinct attractions for the fighting man. Paris was home to various military academies, Switzerland employed a civic militia model of defence and Besançon had an excellent example of Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban’s most recent citadel fortifications. Townshend then went to The Hague and attempted to raise ‘a Regiment of two Battalions of Irish for the Service of the States’. Much to his disgust, this idea failed. He returned to England in 1745, attained a military commission and served under the duke of Cumberland. In addition to his active military service, Townshend later played a central role in the establishment of the 1756 New Militia Bill and militia movement.

While the military curriculum remained an important element of Grand Tours of the later eighteenth century, fewer opportunities arose to take part in continental conflicts from the 1750s onwards as most theatres of war shifted to colonial locations. Importantly though, young elite men’s voluntary efforts did not cease. Instead of seeking to serve while on the continent, they were directed more towards preparing to serve in the militia upon their return to Britain. Military volunteering still made an occasional appearance, of course. Basset is one such example, as is Richmond who tried his guardians’ patience in October 1754 by asking if he could attend Admiral Keppel’s military expedition to America as a volunteer. In claiming that it would ‘be very instructive’, Richmond made his case by characterizing volunteering as an educational opportunity.⁸³ However, the duke of Newcastle, understandably reluctant to allow his underage charge to go to America, refused the request.

It is striking that the many volumes of conduct literature and education manuals, published during the eighteenth century and dealing with the Tour, make no reference to the military aims and activities that are so abundantly present in archival records. It is therefore important to locate this part of the eighteenth-century Tour in the context of early modern educational theory and practice. Military instruction was discussed at length by humanist Renaissance and seventeenth-century pedagogical writers.⁸⁴ In one of the earliest and most enduringly influential of these works – On Noble Customs and Liberal Studies of Youth (1402–3) – Pierpaolo Vergerio argued that bodily exercise, especially training for war, was essential for good citizenship. Youths should learn the art of a wide range of weapons, and ‘be ready for combat hand to hand or in troops, in the headlong charge or in skirmish. We cannot forestall the realities of war, its sudden emergencies, or its vivid terrors, but by training and practice we can at least provide such preparation as the case admits’.⁸⁵

Humanist educators also proposed that young men should take part in actual battle situations. Pietro Aretino advised one young nobleman in 1549 that, ‘I consider it of little importance or none that Your Excellency has set yourself to studying treatises and compendiums upon the art of war. A man of your talents and your valour should rather have some great captain for his instructor … You should study and consider things military in actual warfare and not in the classroom’.⁸⁶

The influence of the Flemish scholar, Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), is also worth noting in this context. A tutor to Maurice of Nassau, prince of Orange, Lipsius promoted a neostoical school of thought that drew upon classical examples to advocate a severe and controlled manliness, disciplined national activity, constancy and devotion to duty. This was particularly influential in shaping the prince’s ‘Netherlands Movement’ and the resulting military reforms made to the army of the Dutch Republic.⁸⁷ As a key ‘school of war’, the Netherlands became a popular destination for early modern Grand Tourists. Moreover, the ‘Netherlands Movement’ maintained an enduring influence upon the European nobility and military. For example, the French noblesse d’épée continued to centre their culture, values, morals and professional ethics upon this branch of neostoicism throughout the seventeenth century.⁸⁸ This in turn influenced members of the seventeenth-century English aristocracy who looked increasingly to French examples on matters of masculine education and military training.⁸⁹

Renaissance instructions on martial theory and pedagogy were reiterated in seventeenth-century conduct literature, with the additional recommendation that the Grand Tour offered the best opportunities for honing skills and gaining experience. James Howell’s Instructions and Directions for Forren Travell (1650) identified Paris as the best location for learning ‘to Ride, to Fence, to manage Arms, to Dance, Vault, and ply the Mathematiques’.⁹⁰ Observation and participation, meanwhile, were ideally to take place in the Netherlands and the court of Brussels, which Howell labelled ‘the very Cockpit of Christendom, the Schoole of Armes, and the Rendevous of all adventurous Spirits, and Cadets, which makes most Nations of Europe beholden to them for Soldiers’. In Howell’s opinion, a visit to one of these military courts and to any army in motion was ‘time well spent’.⁹¹ In his conduct manual, The Compleat Gentleman (1678), Jean Gailhard also proposed that an ideal Grand Tour curriculum should cater to those ‘who have a martial spirit’.⁹² Tourists, Gailhard argued, should learn skills upon which ‘depends a mans life, either in a single, or more general fight’, and that were ‘of a great use in War, because they fit the body for hardship’.⁹³ This included riding, fencing, running, wrestling, leaping, ‘Vaulting, Trailing the Pike, spreading Colors, handling the Halbard, or the two handed Sword’.⁹⁴

Eighteenth-century Grand Tourists like Lincoln, Holroyd, Lewisham, Yorke and Herbert appear to have directly inherited their military-based activities and curricula from early modern mentalities and practices. The enduring nature of these itineraries firmly challenges the assertion that the eighteenth-century elite disavowed military temperaments and training for politer pursuits. Rather, British elite society continued to perceive military leadership as part of their rights and responsibilities, and saw the Grand Tour as a means of preparing for this role. Through exposure to the examples of British and continental elite martial masculinities, Grand Tourists internalized a belief that men of a certain social status were born and bred to be honourable, courageous military leaders. This belief was expressed through pride in the martial reputations of men in their families, enthusiasm for their military education and role, and through an innate confidence in their personal martial virtues, abilities and bearing.

Military service and elite martial masculinities

With the exception of many of the Italian elite, a large part of the eighteenth-century European nobility remained closely connected to military service.⁹⁵ By 1740, Prussia’s army numbered more than 80,000 men, with almost every officer a nobleman. By 1806, close to 90 per cent of Prussian nobility were attached to the military, offering the most visible example of the continuation of the martial neostoic influence in an eighteenth-century aristocratic culture.⁹⁶ Contemporaries considered Prussia’s total state of militarization unusual, but it was also situated within a wider German aristocratic tradition of military entrepreneurship and professionalism. As far back as the early seventeenth century, the travel writer, Fynes Moryson, reported that the German nobility valued courage, military virtue and lineage over learning.⁹⁷ This stereotype endured throughout the eighteenth century, as the Hessians, Saxons, Bavarians – along with men from Brunswick – were typified as skilled mercenaries and lovers of war who served in high-ranking positions in other countries’ armies as well as their own.⁹⁸ Austria’s nobility was far less militarized but their culture still honoured service in the militia. Foreign nobility who gained access to Austro-Bohemians of similar high rank through their military service – men such as Charles of Lorraine, Eugene of Savoy, Ernst Laudan, Francis Lacy and Maxmillian Browne – attained positions of honour, repute and international fame.⁹⁹ The noblesse d’épée retained a powerfully influential role in French aristocratic society.¹⁰⁰ During the reign of Louis XIV (1643– 1715) over 90 per cent of the French elite pursued a military career. Little had changed by the elections to the Estates General in 1789, when more than four-fifths of noblemen had backgrounds in the armed forces.¹⁰¹ With such careers highly valued, the principal military commands remained the exclusive preserve of powerful noblemen and princes, such as the Maréchal de Villars, Prince de Conti and Maréchal duc de Richelieu. Sons hailing from épée families typically followed their fathers into a military career. The Count de Montbarrey (1732–96), for example, was only twelve when he entered his first active service and suffered his first wound.¹⁰²

The British elite also maintained high levels of military service throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, particularly via the recruitment of younger sons.¹⁰³ In dominating the leadership of the army, navy and militia, the British aristocracy were, as David Bell argued, another instance of an international collection of the ‘hereditary nobilities that still defined themselves, ultimately, in terms of military service’, and for whom military virtues and leaderships were hallmarks of ‘high European culture’. As Bell observed, aristocratic and gentry officers had far more in common with their counterparts on the other side of the battlefield than with their own men, irrespective of nationality.¹⁰⁴

This military element must not be forgotten when considering what continental elite society offered eighteenth-century British Tourists. European elite cultures such as the French aristocracy were understood to combine military honour with social grace, simultaneously inhabiting the royal court, the urban centres of fashion and Enlightenment thought, and the military campaign.¹⁰⁵ Grand Tourists frequently delighted in meeting famous figures who effortlessly blended all these elements in their masculine performances. Yorke’s experience of dining with the leading military commander, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, in September 1777, left him almost speechless with admiration: ‘To attempt to give a description of the affability & Politeness of that great man would be a work for a masterly Pen. It surpassed anything I could have imagined’.¹⁰⁶ Through watching, admiring and engaging with these exemplars, Grand Tourists were being taught to value a European code of elite masculinity that placed considerable value on military service and the martial values of honour, courage and command.

Grand Tourists did not just look to the continent for martial inspiration. They were also keenly aware of the military standing of their own families and rank. This awareness, unsurprisingly, was most clearly communicated by those whose fathers had highly active service records. Charles Lennox, the 2nd duke of Richmond, for example, had served as aide-de-camp to George I and II, and had seen combat at the Battle of Dettingen and during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. After Richmond’s death in 1750, his son, the 3rd duke, repeatedly expressed ‘the most determined Resolution to follow His great Example’.¹⁰⁷ The 3rd duke’s guardians, along with members of the royal family, encouraged him in this ambition, informing him that the late duke would have been most pleased that he wished to follow his father’s lead.¹⁰⁸ Likewise, when the 10th earl of Pembroke confided to Newcastle during his 1750s Grand Tour that he too had a ‘Desire of Coming into the Army’, Newcastle praised the notion as honouring the precedent set by the 9th earl, who had served in the Coldstream and Horse Guards.¹⁰⁹ The 10th earl went on to attain the rank of major-general and staff during the Seven Years’ War within just ten years of his commission. Even for an aristocrat, this was extremely rapid advancement, and he eventually became a leading authority in cavalry training.¹¹⁰ As already shown, the 10th earl in turn encouraged his son – George Herbert, the future 11th earl – to take up a military life in the 1770s. The 11th earl also enjoyed an active military career, in which he distinguished himself during the early stages of French Revolutionary War.¹¹¹

Families like these were akin to the French noblesse d’épée in highly prizing and maintaining military prowess across multiple generations. Yet even sons who were not inclined towards a military career took great pride in their fathers’ martial reputations. During his 1750s Grand Tour, George Simon Harcourt, Viscount Nuneham, later 2nd Earl Harcourt remarked that he could not think of war with France ‘without horror’. Even so he also proudly reported back Count Calenberg’s assertion that ‘no one ever had so great a disposition for the Army’ as Nuneham’s father, Simon Harcourt, 1st Earl Harcourt.¹¹² The 1st earl’s career had moved between serving in the military, court and diplomatic corps, and his martial virtues and inclinations had attracted comment during his own Grand Tour. In 1734, Richard Pococke praised Harcourt’s ‘good nature & good sense’, as well as noting that he ‘much inclined to the sword’.¹¹³ The difference between Nuneham’s and his father’s interest in the sword is a reminder that a pride in and an enthusiasm for military service did not necessarily have to coincide. Even the most reluctant warrior recognized that military service was an integral part of his aristocratic identity. Horace Walpole was completely uninterested in a military career when he undertook his Tour in 1738–41. Nevertheless, he was well versed in military terminology and theory and was scathing towards one young unnamed Irishman who ‘learnt fortifications, which he does not understand at all’.¹¹⁴ For Walpole, a grasp of military matters was a mark of elite status. To betray ignorance was to expose one’s poor breeding and birth.

When Walpole’s cousin, Henry Seymour Conway, returned from his Grand Tour in 1740, he was promoted to the rank of captain-lieutenant in the 8th dragoons. He continued his military education in Britain with a tutor who instructed him in mathematics and fortifications.¹¹⁵ Missing Walpole, he wrote hoping that his cousin’s recent election to parliament would force his return to England: ‘Seriously, tell me, dear Horry, when you think of returning … I am indifferent whether you choose to serve your country in the chamy or the togue’.¹¹⁶ Few young men needed to make a stark choice between the military (the ‘chamy’ was the chamois doublet of the soldier) and politics (the ‘togue’, the toga of a Roman senator). Rather the military and roles in the defence of the nation were part of a patchwork of elite responsibilities. Even the office of lord lieutenant, the crown’s representative in a county or region, meant holding overall responsibility for raising and commanding the local militia.

Young elite men were raised in the knowledge that military leadership would one day form part of their duties. They were taught to celebrate and honour past and present elite martial commanders, and their Grand Tour education included a wide range of military instruction. They also held a deep-seated belief that as aristocrats they were born to the sword and command. This was part of a generally held belief that the accoutrements of nobility, honour and virtue were imparted by virtue of one’s breeding and family lineage. All the training these young men received was intended merely to refine an innate ability born of elite lineage – as is evident in diary entries made by George, Lord Herbert towards the end of his Tour.¹¹⁷

In March 1780, Herbert entered France which was then at war with Britain over the future of the North American colonies. In his journals and letters, Herbert dramatically recorded that he was now among the enemy and could no longer wear his British military uniform. A glance at his father’s correspondence reveals that this restriction was determined more by social nicety than danger.¹¹⁸ Herbert, however, deliberately chose to invest his sartorial state with a degree of subterfuge and used it as an opportunity to make claims about the martial nature and bearing of his body. Despite not wearing a uniform, Herbert twice recorded that his military identity was recognized by fellow officers. Commenting on a journey by water diligence with eighteen other passengers, including five Swiss officers, Herbert cast himself as a mysterious figure as ‘many of [the passengers] have been plaguing their own Souls and mine to know what I am’.

A second, related incident occurred a week later at the Marseille fortress where, despite claiming to be among the enemy, he happily dined with the company. Again, ‘They soon found out I was of their Trade though I with my dress, endeavoured to disguise it’.¹²⁰ Herbert had received his commission and a considerable military education, but he had not yet seen active service or even met his regiment.¹²¹ Nevertheless, it was his assertion that other military men could perceive his ‘trade’ and ‘military appearance’ through his bearing and deportment.

Herbert’s faith in his inbred martial lineage was not an isolated example. Throughout the century other Grand Tourists made it clear they believed that this innate ability, combined with their continental education, meant they were suitably prepared to command the military and militia.¹²² In July 1779 Philip Yorke – who despite his interest in battlefield sites, did not come from a family with strong martial traditions – wrote to his uncle that:

Yorke’s stated willingness to fulfil his patriotic duty and fight also seemed to be influenced by a fear that unless he did so, his honour would be compromised. It is telling, for instance, that his offer to serve in the militia was directly followed by an observation that ‘a number of my acquaintances’ had already committed to doing so. Continental travel therefore placed men in a quandary. On the one hand, it provided a valuable military education, as is clear in Yorke’s confident assertion that he would be ‘a great proficient in Tactics’. On the other, Tourists feared being left vulnerable to accusations that they were using travel as an excuse to avoid fighting. The months prior to and during conflicts such as the War of Spanish Succession, Seven Years’ War and the War of American Independence therefore often saw an increase in Grand Tourists and tutors either wishing to return to their regiments or offering to serve in some capacity.¹²⁴

This was the subject of a heated exchange between Herbert, his tutor, Captain John Floyd, and his father, Pembroke in 1778–9. Believing either a deployment or invasion to be imminent, Herbert and Floyd ardently wished to return to their regiments and were worried that Pembroke’s refusal would result in accusations of cowardice. Pembroke issued a sharp rebuke:

Seventy-eight years earlier, having begun a Grand Tour in 1701 – and with the War of Spanish Succession escalating in intensity – Henry Bentinck, Lord Woodstock, had faced an almost identical predicament. His father was implacable in his determination to send him abroad, causing Woodstock to express acute fears that his absence would be misconstrued as cowardice. Conscious that several young men had been mocked for not serving during the previous war, Woodstock believed ‘es que si je m’absentais en pareil temps mon honneur en pourrait soupir en quelque manière’ [and if I abstain at a similar time, my honour would suffer in the same way].¹²⁶ It was a concern he raised repeatedly throughout his travels.

While the violent, militaristic origins of elite male concepts of honour are well understood, as noted in chapter 1, scholars have primarily been interested in exploring elite honour in relation to the rise and fall of duelling. Yet the fears expressed by Herbert, Floyd and Woodstock on their Grand Tours demonstrate that the arena of war remained crucial to how eighteenth-century men performed and defended their honour. Retreating from an opportunity to fight compromised a man’s honour and masculinity, as it essentially indicated an unwillingness to physically defend one’s reputation.

Irrespective of whether Grand Tourists ended up fighting or not, war remained idealized as a test of elite manhood. As the reference to Sir Francis Basset demonstrated, the elite mentality of honour and reputation created a culture in which one was expected to embrace a confrontation with war. The hazards of conflict therefore offered just as much of a challenge to a man’s integrity and reputation as a verbal insult or jostled elbow. Where Grand Tourists, tutors and their families were determined not to risk the dangers of conflict, these cultural expectations had to be carefully negotiated in order to preserve a young man’s reputation. Take, for example, the experience of Lord Compton and his companions in 1707. As already shown, Compton spent several weeks camping with and observing Marlborough’s army and even accompanied it on the march to battle for two days.¹²⁷ The natural conclusion of these activities might have been to fight with Marlborough as a military volunteer. However, Compton and his party then departed for safer environs. This sensible but perhaps surprising conclusion was instigated by James Hay, the tutor and voice of adult authority, who, mindful of his duties to Compton’s father, wrote that he had been determined not to ‘risqué my Ld Compton’s person’. Yet, Hay also expended considerable effort in recording how Compton and the other young gentlemen met his decision with scorn. They, he claimed, would have ‘gladly gone on’ and flung ‘wanton Curses’ at Hay for exercising his authority over them.¹²⁸ As such, Hay sought to achieve the dual aim of demonstrating that he was fulfilling his duty of care and that Compton’s fighting spirit was intact.

In 1741 a similarly honourable retreat from military danger was carefully negotiated by the duke of Newcastle on behalf of his nephew, Lincoln. Having flourished in the martial environment of Turin, Lincoln might have been expected to volunteer for, or at least visit, one of the various armies gathering around Europe during the War of Austrian Succession. Newcastle wrote earnestly against this, soliciting that ‘lest you should, I must earnestly press you to return to England as soon as you can’.¹²⁹ Rather than outlining the dangers of such a decision, Newcastle instead focused on the impropriety of an English nobleman being in Italy, when ‘Nobody can tell what may be the consequences of a general war in Italy’.¹³⁰ By framing his condemnation in the expectation that a young, full-blooded male would naturally desire to fight, Newcastle effectively pre-empted Lincoln from having to state his desire to do so. His nephew could now rest secure in the presentation of a martial masculinity and honour without having to actively demonstrate it. The thought that went into upholding an untarnished image of military-based courage and honour demonstrates just how important these qualities were in establishing and maintaining a reputation for eighteenth-century elite masculinity.

Figure 2.3. Pompeo Batoni, ‘Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, Thomas Apperley and Captain Edward Hamilton’ (NMW A 78, 1768–72).

By permission of Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Cymru/National Museum of Wales.

The accomplished Grand Tourist embodied a diverse blend of qualities, in which martiality was expected to coexist with more ostensibly civilized values. In the words of one late seventeenth-century conduct manual, ‘Letters and Arms should not only accord, but be inseparably conjoyn’d’.¹³¹ This inextricable entwining of the military with the other elements of elite education and identity is captured in Pompeo Batoni’s Grand Tour portrait of the wealthy Welsh nobleman, Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn with his two companion-tutors, Thomas Apperley and Captain Edward Hamilton (Figure 2.3).¹³² Painted between 1768 and 1772, the canvas shows the trio as educated, fashionable and cultured gentlemen, holding and gesturing to a remarkable quantity of objects that symbolize their interests and tastes. Represented by the elegant figure of Hamilton, whose flute reinforces the connection between music, graceful movement and war, the military is harmoniously placed alongside youth, learning, classicism and the arts. Even the painting’s overall composition echoes portraits of military commanders and their staff around command tables.¹³³

Throughout the eighteenth-century Grand Tour, the military was a cohesive part of an elite gentleman’s world, identity and education.¹³⁴ With access to a programme of academies, curricula and visits to military sites, the Grand Tour was deliberately used to construct and form elite young men in their martial identities and skills. While individual Tourists invested different amounts of time and enthusiasm in these activities, the majority engaged in at least some form of military education and viewed martial virtues and abilities as a mark of successful elite masculinity. This represents a remarkable degree of continuity from the early modern period into the nineteenth century, in which generations of Grand Tourists and elite families continued to accept that military leadership formed part of their elite rights and responsibilities.

This finding in turn complicates the argument that the late eighteenth century saw a re-emergence of an elite masculinity centred on military service. Rather, there seems to have been an intensification in how the British elite articulated this element of their identity. Certainly, Grand Tourists travelling after the 1750s were more consistently voluble in voicing their enthusiasm for military matters. This was accompanied by a trend in comparing admirable examples of continental martial conduct with chivalric, classical and primitive martial precedents. Watching the Austrian army muster troops in Vienna in March 1778 for the War of Bavarian Succession, Philip Yorke described the Croatian regiments as ‘true martial people’. ‘Rough unpolished & not fond of being idle’, as well as committed to simple diets and fasting, the Croats to him bore comparison with Roman legions, Spartans and modern-day Scottish Highlanders.¹³⁵ The nature of these enthusiastic pronouncements and comparisons indicates how far later eighteenth-century Grand Tourists were influenced by wider anxieties raised by the Seven Years’ War and other conflicts.

Somewhat conversely, this articulation was accompanied by an apparent decline in more direct and dangerous Grand Tour engagements with military conflict. Current evidence simply cannot support claims that the practice of volunteering continued to form a rite of initiation to the same extent that it had in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Unlike their predecessors, including Woodstock, Compton, Harcourt, Townshend, Windham, Aldworth Neville and Lincoln, a substantial majority of later Tourists never came close even to weighing up the desirability of taking part in armed conflict. This decline may be understood in relation to shifting theatres of war and a dwindling of opportunity. Between the Treaty of Paris (1763) and the start of the French Revolutionary War (1793), the sites of conflict shifted to colonial and trading territories, with substantially less military engagement on Continental soil. Interestingly, it is worth noting that when opportunities once again presented themselves during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, volunteering once again increased.¹³⁶ Prior to this conflict, Grand Tourists compensated for an absence of opportunity through an enthusiastic participation in the military and militia upon their post-Tour return to Britain. Here, again, their participation was shaped by continuity with a traditional martial culture. The New Militia movement was led by men like Townshend and Windham, who had undertaken their Tours in the 1730s and 40s and were very much formed by an older Grand Tour tradition of the military curriculum and volunteering.

Understanding how military behaviours, virtues and identities shaped eighteenth-century masculinities and responses to the dangers of war is central to a full appreciation of wider elite attitudes towards danger. Military-based concepts of honour, bravery and courage remained vitally important to eighteenth-century elite masculinity. To acknowledge this is to appreciate how far encounters with danger played a central role in testing and affirming young men’s claims to certain virtues. This need to defend one’s honour through physical displays of courage drove men to train for and participate in warfare, as well as to engage in duelling practices. At the same time, these physical demonstrations also went beyond the martial into a range of other dangerous and challenging situations. As chapters 3 and 4 will explore, this mentality of enduring, confronting, overcoming and benefiting from physical danger shaped how young elite men engaged with sport, exercise, the hardships of travel and with natural phenomena while on the Grand Tour. These activities and environments offered other means of encountering physical danger and were, from the mid century, increasingly understood as substitutes for the dwindling opportunities to prove oneself on the battlefield. As will be shown, sports and arduous travel enabled the elite community to demonstrate that the Tour remained a valuable means to construct hardy, robust and healthy elite men in command of martially inspired virtues such as courage, stoicism, honour and endurance.

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1 J. Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington. Vol. X (July 1809–December 1810), ed. K. Cave (New Haven, Conn. and London, 1982), p. 3753.

2 R. Butler and W. Suntikul, ‘Tourism and war: an ill wind?’, in Tourism and War, ed. R. Butler and W. Suntikul (London, 2013), pp. 1–35.

3 See, e.g., C. Kennedy, ‘From the ballroom to the battlefield: British women and Waterloo’, in Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790–1820, ed. A. Forrest, K. Hagemann and J. Rendall (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 137–56; A. V. Seaton, ‘War and thanatourism: Waterloo 1815–1914’, Annals of Tourism Research, xxvi (1998), 130–58; E. Duché, ‘Revolutionary ruins: the re-imagining of French tourist sites during the Peace of Amiens’, in Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour, ed. R. Sweet, G. Verhoeven and S. Goldsmith (London, 2017), pp. 203–21.

4 J. Black, The British Abroad: the Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century (Stroud, 1992), p. 166.

5 See G. Daly, ‘Napoleon’s lost legions: French prisoners of war in Britain, 1803–1814’, History, lxxxix (2004), 361–80, at pp. 361, 365–6; H. V. Bowen, War and British Society, 1688–1815 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 1, 3; S. Conway, War, State and Society in Mid-Eighteenth- Century England (Oxford, 2006), p. 1.

6 For an exploration of the effect of this decree on the British abroad, see E. Duch, ‘A passage to imprisonment: the British prisoners of war in Verdun under the first French empire’ (unpublished University of Warwick PhD thesis, 2014).

7 For an insight into the often-confused status of civilian travellers prior to the 1803 decree, see the exchanges between French and British diplomats and ministers at the start of the War of Austrian Succession in The National Archives, SP 78/223, Secretaries of State: State Papers Foreign, France, May–Aug. 1740.

8 R. Sweet, Cities of the Grand Tour: the British in Italy, c.1690–1820 (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 10–12; B. Dolan, Exploring European Frontiers: British Travellers in the Age of Enlightenment (Basingstoke, 2000).

9 J. Towner, ‘The English tourist and war, 1500–1800’, in Tourism and War, pp. 50–1, 53, 58.

10 J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, i: the Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 100–9.

11 M. Myrone, Bodybuilding: Reforming Masculinity in British Art, 1750–1810 (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2005), pp. 6–8. See also P. A. Rahe, ‘Antiquity surpassed: the repudiation of classic republicanism’, in Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society, 1649–1776, ed. D. Wootton (Stanford, Calif., 1994), p. 239.

12 L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (2nd edn., New Haven, Conn. and London, 2002), pp. 180–97. See also Paul Langford’s discussion of the concept of a service elite in Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1991).

13 Colley, Britons; A. Page, Britain and the Seventy Years War, 1744–1815 (London, 2015).

14 For examples of how this anxiety was manifested, see K. Downing, ‘The gentleman boxer: boxing, manners, and masculinity in eighteenth-century England’, Men and Masculinities, xii (2012), 328–52, at pp. 330–1; Myrone, Bodybuilding, pp. 9–11; K. Harvey, Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 141–3.

15 M. Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven, Conn. and London, 1981), pp. 15–28; M. Cohen, ‘“Manners” make the man: politeness, chivalry and the construction of masculinity, 1750–1830’, Journal of British Studies, xliv (2005), 312–29, at pp. 315–17; Myrone, Bodybuilding, pp. 2, 3, 9–11, 150–1, 255.

16 See M. McCormack, Embodying the Militia in Georgian England (Oxford, 2015); J. R. Western, The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: the Story of a Political Issue, 1660–1802 (London, 1965). For debates concerning the creation of a Scottish militia, see J. Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue (Edinburgh, 1985); and R. Carr, ‘The gentleman and the soldier: patriotic masculinities in eighteenth-century Scotland’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studie s, xxviii (2008), 102–21.

17 R. Thorne, ‘Basset, Francis, Baron de Dunstanville and first Baron Basset (1757–1835)’, ODNB <https://doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1637> [accessed 29 May 2015].

18 Farington, Diary, p. 3753.

19 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 34887, fo. 181, John Holroyd, later 1st earl of Sheffield, Berlin, to Mrs Atkinson, 7 Nov. 1765.

20 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 34887, fo. 181, John Holroyd, later 1st earl of Sheffield, Berlin, to Mrs Atkinson, 7 Nov. 1765.

21 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 34887, fo. 181, John Holroyd, later 1st earl of Sheffield, Berlin, to Mrs Atkinson, 7 Nov. 1765.

22 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 34887, fo. 122–13, Holroyd, St Quintin, to Baker, 9 May 1763; Add. MS. 34887, fo. 185, Holroyd, Hanover, to Baker, 23 Dec. 1765.

23 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 36258, Philip Yorke, later 3rd earl of Hardwicke’s Grand Tour journal, 10 and 17 Oct. 1777.

24 See also remarks on the regeneration of Turin, following the French army’s extensive bombardment in 1706 during the War of Spanish Succession (1701–14) and Victor Amadeus II’s subsequent rebuilding project with the architect Filippo Juvarra, in Joseph Spence: Letters from the Grand Tour, ed. S. Klima (Montreal, 1975), p. 227.

25 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 34887, fo. 178, Holroyd, Vienna, to Mrs Holroyd, 3 Oct. 1765.

26 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 34887, fo. 178, Holroyd, Vienna, to Mrs Holroyd, 3 Oct. 1765.

27 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 36258, Yorke’s journal, 9 Sept., 1777, 10 and 27 Oct. 1777, 13 May 1779, 9 Sept. 1779.

28 See Black, British Abroad, ch. 10, for a description of the wider observations made by Grand Tourists about countries’ political, economic and social states.

29 See, e.g., Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 35378, fo. 45, Yorke, The Hague, to Philip Yorke, 2nd earl of Hardwicke, 25 May 1777.

30 See George Legge, Viscount Lewisham, later 3rd earl of Dartmouth, Charles Legge and David Stevenson’s correspondence at SRO, D(W)1778/V/874, D(W)1778/V/885, D(W)1778/V/890.

31 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 38507, fos. 15–16, James Hay, Brussels, to George Compton, the 4th earl of Northampton, 15 Aug. 1707.

32 SRO, D(W)1778/V/890, Charles Legge, Hanover, to Dartmouth, 30 July 1776.

33 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 35378, fo. 43, Yorke, The Hague, to Hardwicke, 16 Apr. 1777.

34 See, e.g., S. Hughes Myerly, British Military Spectacle: from the Napoleonic Wars through the Crimea (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1996), pp. 139–65.

35 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 34887, fo. 187, Holroyd, The Hague, to Mrs Holroyd, 10 Jan. 1776.

36 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 32734, fo. 81, Charles Lennox, 3rd duke of Richmond, Leyden, to Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st duke of Newcastle, 25 Jan. 1754.

37 WSHC, MS. 2057/F4/278, ‘Instructions’ (1776).

38 SRO, D(W)1778/V/886, Stevenson, Berlin, to Dartmouth, 18 Aug. 1776; D(W)1778/V/896, Colonel Fawcett, Hanover, to William Legge, 3rd earl of Dartmouth, 30 July 1776.

39 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 35378, fo. 101, Yorke, Dresden, to Hardwicke, 23 Oct. 1777.

40 SRO, D(W)1778/V/840, Charles, Vienna, to Lady Dartmouth, 19 Sept. 1776.

41 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 36258, Yorke’s journal, 24 Oct. 1777.

42 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 36258, Yorke’s journal, 23–27 Oct. 1777.

43 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 36259, Yorke’s journal, 22 June 1779.

44 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 36258, Yorke’s journal, 27 Oct. 1777.

45 SRO, D(W)1778/V/840, Charles, Vienna, to Lady Dartmouth, 19 Sept. 1776.

46 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 34887, fo. 181, Holroyd, Berlin, to Mrs Atkinson, 7 Nov. 1765; Add. MS. 34887, fo. 156, Holroyd, Leghorn, to Mrs Holroyd, 4 Sept. 1764.

47 SRO, D(W)1778/V/840, Charles, Vienna, to Lady Dartmouth, 19 Sept. 1776.

48 Mark Motley argued that French, particularly Parisian, academies declined sharply after the 1680s, as the careers of French nobles depended increasingly on access to the royal court alone – see Becoming a French Aristocrat: the Education of the Court Nobility, 1580– 1715 (Princeton, N.J., 1990), pp. 129, 164–7. However, from an international perspective, academies appear to have retained their popularity into the 1780s, see ‘Appendix III’ in Turin and the British in the Age of the Grand Tour, ed. P. Bianchi and K. Wolfe (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 399–410.

49 For pioneering work on the polite nature of the academies, see M. Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity: National Identity and Language in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1996).

50 A. Bermingham, Learning to Draw: Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2000), pp. 80, 83–4.

51 C. Kennedy, Narratives of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Military and Civilian Experience in Britain and Ireland (Basingstoke, 2013), p. 46.

52 M. McCormack, ‘Dance and drill: polite accomplishments and military masculinities in eighteenth-century Britain’, Cultural and Social History, viii (2011), 315–30, at pp. 324–6.

53 WSHC, MS. 2057/F4/29, Henry Herbert, 10th earl of Pembroke, London, to George Herbert, later 11th earl of Pembroke, 20 May 1779.

54 WSHC, MS. 2057/F4/278, ‘Instructions’ (1776).

55 R. Ansell, ‘Foubert’s Academy: British and Irish elite formation in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Paris and London’, in Sweet, Verhoeven and Goldsmith, Beyond the Grand Tour, pp. 47–8; P. Bianchi, ‘The British at the Turin Royal Academy: cosmopolitanism and religious pragmatism’, in Bianchi and Wolfe, Turin and the British, pp. 97, 99–101; Bianchi, ‘La caccia nell’educazione del gentiluomo. Il caso sabaudo (sec. XVI–XVIII)’, in La caccia nello Stato sabaudo I. Caccia e cultura (secc. XVI–XVIII), ed. P. Bianchi and P. Passerin d’Entrèves (Turin, 2010), p. 19; Bianchi, ‘Una palestra di arti cavalleresche e di politica. Presenze austro-tedesche all’Accademia Reale di Torino nel Settecento’, in Le corti come luogo di comunicazione: gli Asburgo e l’Italia (secoli XVI–XIX), ed. M. Bellabarba and J. P. Niederkorn (Berlin, 2010), pp. 135–6, 140, 152–3.

56 Bianchi and Wolfe, ‘Introduction’, in Bianchi and Wolfe, Turin and the British, pp. 8–9.

57 R. Ansell, ‘Irish Protestant travel to Europe, 1660–1727’ (unpublished University of Oxford DPhil thesis, 2013), pp. 223, 225, 231; Bianchi, ‘Una palestra’, pp. 135, 145.

58 Bianchi, ‘Una palestra’, pp. 140–1, 46–8.

59 Bianchi, ‘Una Palestra’, pp. 135–6, 140, 145, 150–3; Bianchi, ‘La caccia’, p. 19.

60 M. Paroletti, Turin et ses curiosités (Turin, 1819), p. 242, quoted in Klima, Joseph Spence: Letters, p. 227, n. 1.

61 Spence’s Notebook 3, in Klima, Joseph Spence: Letters, p. 277.

62 Spence, Turin, to Mrs Spence, 16 Dec. 1739, in Klima, Joseph Spence: Letters, p. 234; Spence, Turin, to Mrs Spence, 18 May 1740, in Klima, Joseph Spence: Letters, pp. 278–9.

63 Bianchi, ‘Una palestra’, pp. 140–1.

64 H. Guilcher and J.-M Guilcher, ‘L’enseignement militaire de la danse et les traditions populaires’, Arts et traditions populaires, xviii (1970), 273–328; McCormack, ‘Dance and drill’, pp. 317, 323, 320–2, 324, 326. See M. Mattfeld, Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship (University Park, Pa., 2017) for related discourses on riding.

65 WSHC, MS. 2057/F4/29, Pembroke, London, to Herbert, 20 Apr. 1779.

66 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 32726, fo. 145, Richmond, Geneva, to Newcastle, 18 Feb. 1752.

67 Henry Fiennes Pelham-Clinton, 9th earl of Lincoln, Turin, to Newcastle, 25 Nov. 1739, in Klima, Joseph Spence: Letters, pp. 226, 230.

68 Spence’s Notebook 3, in Klima, Joseph Spence: Letters, p. 277; Spence, Turin, to Mrs Spence, 18 May 1740, in Klima, Joseph Spence: Letters, pp. 278–9; Spence, Turin, to Mrs Spence, 16 Dec. 1739, in Klima, Joseph Spence: Letters, p. 234.

69 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 22987, fo. 87, Richard Pococke, Milan, to Mrs Pococke, 12 June 1734.

70 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 38507, fos. 15–16, Hay, Brussels, to Northampton, 15 Aug. 1707.

71 Berkshire RO, MS. D/EN/F.54-5, Richard Aldworth Neville’s Grand Tour journal, 1743–44.

72 A Military Dictionary Explaining all Difficult Terms in Martial Discipline, Fortification and Gunnery … by an Officer Who Served Several Years Abroad (London, 1702), quoted in R. B. Manning, Swordsmen: the Martial Ethos in the Three Kingdoms (Oxford, 2003), p. 104.

73 Manning, Swordsmen, pp. 8–9, 36, 105.

74 Manning, Swordsmen, pp. 18–19.

75 See J. Stoye, English Travellers Abroad, 1604–1667 (New York, 1968), pp. 110, 112–6, 128, 133; F. Tallett, War and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1495–1715 (London, 1992), p. 43; R. Asch, Nobilities in Transition, 1550–1700: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe (London, 2003), p. 57.

76 J. Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. De Beer (London, 1959), pp. 175, 526.

77 Manning, Swordsmen, p. 107.

78 See, e.g., University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections, MS. Pw A 1057; Paul de Rapin de Thoyras [unknown location] to Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st earl of Portland, 17 March 1701.

79 Newcastle, London, to Lincoln, 16 March 1740/41, in Klima, Joseph Spence: Letters, p. 366.

80 J. Shackleton, ‘William Windham II (1717–1761) in the uniform of a Hussar’ (jpeg image of portrait, Felbrigg, Norfolk, 1742–67).

81 The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. R. Halsband (3 vols., Oxford, 1965), ii. p. 273.

82 National Army Museum (NAM), MS. 6806-41-1-3, ‘MS list of George Townshend, Viscount Townshend’s Commissions, 1745–73’; MS. 6806-41-1-2, ‘Townsend’s autobiographical account of his life’, fos. 1, 5.

83 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 32737, fo. 181, Richmond, Vienna, to Lord Albemarle, 19 Oct. 1754.

84 Neostoicism and the Early Modern State, ed. G. Oestreich, B. Oestreich and H. G. Koenigsberger (Cambridge, 1982), p. 1; S. Anglo, The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2000), pp. 2, 28–9.

85 Pierpaolo Vergerio, De ingenuis moribus (Rome, 1475?), quoted in Anglo, Martial Arts, p. 29.

86 Quoted in J. R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450–1620 (Leicester, 1985), p. 145.

87 Oestreich, Neostoicism, pp. 29, 35, 79.

88 Manning, Swordsmen, pp. 31, 76–7, 120.

89 Manning, Swordsmen, p. 31.

90 J. Howell, Instructions and Directions for Forren Travell 1642 (London, 1650), pp. 26–8.

91 Howell, Travell, pp. 87–8.

92 J. Gailhard, The Compleat Gentleman, or, Directions for the Education of Youth as to their Breeding at Home and Travelling Abroad (London, 1678), pp. 46, 50.

93 Gailhard, The Compleat Gentleman, pp. 46, 50.

94 Gailhard, The Compleat Gentleman, pp. 51–2.

95 E.g., H. M. Scott and C. Storrs, ‘Introduction: the consolidation of noble power in Europe, c. 1600–1800’, in The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, i: Western and Southern Europe, ed. H. Scott (London and New York, 1995), pp. 41–6.

96 P. Dwyer, ‘The rise of Prussia’, in The Rise of Prussia 1700–1830, ed. P. Dwyer (Harlow, 2000), pp. 13, 15; E. Melton, ‘The Prussian junkers, 1600–1786’, in The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ii: Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, ed. H. Scott (London and New York, 1995), pp. 86–7.

97 Quoted in Asch, Nobilities, p. 56.

98 F. Geyken, ‘“The German language is spoke in Saxony with the greatest purity” or English images and perceptions of Germany in the eighteenth century’, in Britain and Germany Compared: Nationality, Society and Nobility in the Eighteenth Century, ed. J. Canning and H. Wellenreuthe (Göttingen, 2001), pp. 48–9, 56–7; McCormack, Embodying, pp. 40–1; Dwyer, ‘Rise of Prussia’, pp. 6, 9, 13, 15; H. Schulze, ‘The Prussian military state, 1763–1806’, in Dwyer, Rise of Prussia, pp. 201–19; Melton, ‘The junkers of Brandenburg-Prussia’, pp. 77, 83.

99 J. Van Horn Melton, ‘The nobility in the Bohemian and Austrian lands, 1620–1780’, in Scott, European Nobilities, ii. 115–16.

100 See J. Smith, The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600–1789 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1996); R. Mettam, ‘The French nobility, 1610–1715’, in Scott, European Nobilities, i. 114–41; J. Swann, ‘The French nobility, 1715– 1789’, in Scott, European Nobilities, i. 146–7.

101 Scott and Storrs, ‘Introduction’, p. 44; D. Bell, Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare As We Know It (Boston, 2007), p. 31.

102 Swann, ‘French nobility, 1715–1789’, pp. 162, 168.

103 For a typical example, see J. V. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England 1660–1914 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 408–10; J. Cannon, Aristocratic Century: the Peerage of Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 118–20.

104 Bell, Total War, p. 36.

105 Motley, French Aristocrat, p. 10; Swann, ‘The French nobility, 1715–1789’, pp. 167–8; Bell, Total War, pp. 21–4.

106 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 35378, fo. 84, Yorke, Gottingen, to Hardwicke, 1 Sept. 1777; Add. MS. 36258, Yorke’s journal, 11 Sept. 1777.

107 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 32723, fo. 31, Newcastle, Hanover, to the duchess of Richmond, 26 Sept. 1750.

108 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 32726, fo. 145, 18/02/1752, Richmond, Geneva, to Newcastle; Add. MS. 32726, fo. 193, Newcastle, Newcastle House, to Richmond.

109 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 32728, fo. 350, Newcastle, Hanover, to Lady Pembroke, 22 July 1753.

110 J. E. O. Screen, ‘Herbert, Henry, tenth earl of Pembroke and seventh earl of Montgomery (1734–1794)’, ODNB <https://doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13034> [accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

111 S. M. Farrell, ‘Herbert, George Augustus, eleventh earl of Pembroke and eighth earl of Montgomery (1759–1827)’, ODNB <https://doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13026> [accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

112 CBS, MS. D-LE-E2-22, George Simon Harcourt, Viscount Nuneham, Brussels, to his sister, Lady Elizabeth Harcourt, 13 Aug. 1756.

113 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 19939, fo. 17, Pococke, Milan, to Mrs Pococke, 12 June 1734.

114 Horace Walpole, Rheims, to Richard West, 20 July 1739, in The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, ed. W. S. Lewis (48 vols., New Haven, Conn., 1937–), xiii. 179–80.

115 Henry Seymour Conway [London], to Walpole, 23 July 1741, in Lewis, Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, xxxvii. 101.

116 Conway [unknown location] to Walpole, 25 Feb. 1740, in Lewis, Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, xxxvii. 45–6.

117 For similar expressions relating to the militia movement, see M. McCormack, ‘Liberty and discipline: militia training literature in mid-Georgian England’, in Soldiering in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1850; Men of Arms, ed. C. Kennedy and M. McCormack (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 159, 171.

118 WSHC, MS. 2057/F5/6, Herbert’s journal, 20 March 1780; MS. 2057/F4/29, Pembroke, Stony Stratford, to Herbert, 21 June 1779; MS. 2057/F4/29, Pembroke [unknown location] to Herbert, 30 Sept. 1779.

119 WSHC, MS. 2057/F5/6, Herbert’s journal, 24 March 1780.

120 WSHC, MS. 2057/F5/6, Herbert’s journal, 31 March 1780.

121 Farrell, ‘Eleventh earl of Pembroke’, ODNB <https://doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13026>.

122 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 34887, fo. 132, Holroyd, Lausanne, to Baker, 10 Nov. 1763; NAM, MS. 6806-41-1-2, Townshend’s account; Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 32726, fo. 145, Richmond, Geneva, to Newcastle, 18 Feb. 1752.

123 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 35378, fo. 357, Yorke, Basle, to Hardwicke, 23 July 1779.

124 E.g., SRO, D(W)1778/V/886, Stevenson, Vienna, to Dartmouth, 20 Dec. 1776; WSHC, MS. 2057/F4/29, Pembroke, London, to Herbert, 20 Apr. 1779; MS. 2057/F4/29, Pembroke [unknown location] to Herbert, 24 Sept. 1779; MS. 2057/F4/27, Lady Pembroke, Wilton House, to Coxe, 28 March 1777.

125 Pembroke, London, to John Floyd, 27 Apr. 1778, in Henry, Elizabeth and George (1734–80) Letters and Diaries of Henry, Tenth Earl of Pembroke and his Circle, ed. Lord Herbert (London, 1939), pp. 115–16; See also WSHC, MS. 2057/F4/29, Pembroke to Herbert, 29 Sept. 1779.

126 University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections, MS. Pw A 57/1-2, Henry Bentinck, Lord Woodstock and later 1st duke of Portland, The Hague, to Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st earl of Portland, 29 March 1701 (trans. Angela Barber, 24 Sept. 2009).

127 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 38507, fos. 15–16, Hay, Brussels, to Northampton, 15 Aug., 1707.

128 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 38507, fos. 15–16, Hay, Brussels, to Northampton, 15 Aug., 1707.

129 Newcastle, London, to Lincoln, 16 March 1740/41, in Klima, Joseph Spence: Letters, p. 366.

130 Newcastle, London, to Lincoln, 16 March 1740/41, in Klima, Joseph Spence: Letters, p. 366.

131 B. B. Gent, The Way to Honour. In three parts (London, 1678), pp. 21, 77–8, 106.

132 E. P. Bowron and P. Björn Kerber, Pompeo Batoni: Prince of Painters in Eighteenth- Century Rome (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2007), pp. 71–2.

133 My thanks to Richard Johns for this observation.

134 New historians in this field have explored the argument from the other perspective by identifying how military leaders also held dual identities as officers and gentlemen. See C. Kennedy, ‘John Bull into battle: military masculinity and the British army officer during the Napoleonic Wars’, in Gender, War and Politics: Transatlantic Perspectives, 1775–1830, ed. K. Hagemann, G. Mettele and J. Rendall (Basingstoke, 2010), pp. 131–2; G. Daly, ‘Liberators and tourists: British soldiers in Madrid during the Peninsular War’, in Kennedy and McCormack, Soldiering in Britain and Ireland, pp. 125–6.

135 Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 36258, Yorke’s journal, 24 March 1778.

136 K. Linch, ‘“A citizen and not a soldier”: the British volunteer movement and the war against Napoleon’, in Forrest, Hagemann and Rendall, Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians, pp. 205–21; A. Gee, The British Volunteer Movement, 1794–1814 (Oxford, 2003); J. R. Western, The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: the Story of a Political Issue, 1660–1803 (London, 1965), ch. 9.