According to the article, a farm laborer might make £40 a year. A lieutenantcy the Foot Guard cost £2,050. One in a regular infantry regiment cost £700.
That would certainly keep the riff-raff out of the officer’s club.
Hunter Biden was commissioned in the U.S. Navy at 43 years of age when any other citizen would have been cut off at age 35.
The Crimean War caused the British to do away with purchased commissions. The charge of the Light Brigade was led by Lord Cardigan who had purchased his way to a colonelcy.
A seriously inept officer.
An who retired sold his commission, and for those without a significant private income the proceeds of the sale was often a crucial part of their retirement planning.
Officers who died, or were cashiered, could not sell their commissions, but the same rule applied to those who were promoted from the rank of Colonel, to that of General. I can't give you an example offhand, but apparently there were cases where Colonels were outraged to find themselves promoted to General because it deprived them of their colonelcy, the sale of which had been intended to finance their retirement.
Yes, and it played a critical role in the Charge of the Light Brigade, where the major officers involved were boneheaded yahoos who hated each other and looked down on any officers such as Captain Nolan who came from being promoted up in India.
The [excellent] British TV series “Sharpe” touches on this topic. The British Army ended up with some really incompetent commanders as a result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe_(TV_series)
The battle of New Orleans cost the British a few generals and colonels in a short period of time. Bad day for officers, good day for promotions for others.
The officer-enlisted relationship in the British army has always been very much class-based. Wealth was an easy way to separate the sheep from the goats. Which explains why so many generals had “Lord” or “Sir after the “General” in their title. Major-General Sir Arthur Wellesley, or Lieutenant-General Lord Chelmsford, and so-on. For reasons that evolved out of antiquity, they considered only the upper classes (and particularly the nobility) fit for command.
Not directly related but Rudyard Kipling pulled strings to get his only son, John, commissioned in the army at the start of WWI. He was made a Second Lieutenant two days short of his 17th birthday. Weeks later he was in France and in command of troops under fire. He went missing (never to be found) while leading his men in a charge at the Battle of Loos, aged 18 years and 43 days.
But he was qualified to be an Officer of the Line at the age of 17 because his father was a gentleman.