Mutinies Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (2 ed.)
...could be punished by death ( see Death penalty ) and under the Defence Force Disciplinary Act 1982 ( see Law, Military ) the maximum penalty for mutiny is life imprisonment. The Australian armed forces have not experienced mutinies of the scale that afflicted the French Army in 1917 , when the troops of 54 divisions refused to obey orders, but Australian personnel have staged in excess of 40 mutinies, some involving over 100 personnel. Australian mutinies, however, have generally occurred in rear areas and been peaceful and short-lived. The most...
Indian Mutiny (1857–8) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
...killed while leading cavalry in June, and Nana Sahib mysteriously disappeared, allegedly to Russia whose agents also played a part in the mutiny. Lord Canning declared the mutiny officially over on 8 July 1859 , but before that the long reign of the EIC was over. The company was dissolved and the British government took over direct administration of India, which was ruled until 1949 by a viceroy. The Indian Mutiny was one of those conflicts, like the American civil war , where so many of the vital threads of history came together and in which so many...
Espionage and Sedition Acts of World War I (1917) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to American Military History
...also produced a movement to protect the civil liberties of all Americans. The Espionage Act ( 15 June 1917 ), enacted quickly by Congress following the U.S. declaration of war on Germany, authorized federal officials to make summary arrests of people whose opinions “threatened national security.” The measure prohibited willfully making false reports with intent to interfere with the success of the military or naval forces, inciting insubordination, disloyalty, or mutiny in the military, and obstructing recruitment or the enlistment service of the United...
Defence Act Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (2 ed.)
...found guilty of mutiny or desertion could not bypass the requirement that the Governor-General, on advice from his Australian ministers, had to confirm such sentences, with the result that of all British forces, only Australia did not execute any of its own combatants. The restrictions of the act were further demonstrated in 1938 when the CGS called for the creation of permanent field units that could supply trained men to militia units once war had broken out and which could also be used to guard vital points. Because the act prohibited the raising...
First Tactical Air Force Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (2 ed.)
...results. The ‘Morotai mutiny’ prompted the removal of Cobby and his replacement by Air Commodore Frederick Scherger and an inquiry headed by J. V. Barry , QC. This latter confirmed the dissatisfaction within the formation and assigned the blame to Cobby and his senior staff. General Kenney , commanding Far East Air Force, interviewed the eight dissenters and concluded that they had acted in good faith; when the RAAF considered taking disciplinary action against them, Kenney threatened to appear for the defence. The ‘mutiny’, like many other problems...
Death Penalty Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (2 ed.)
...enshrined in section 98 of the Defence Act 1903 , and could be awarded for four offences—mutiny, desertion to the enemy, treachery leading to the fall of a garrison, and treasonous correspondence—but the sentence had to be confirmed by the Governor-General before it could be carried out. The main source of opposition to the imposition of the death penalty on Australian soldiers was not the execution of Morant and Handcock in the Boer War , which at the time evoked little public sympathy. Section 98 of the Defence Act 1903 was based on a number of pieces of...
justice, military Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
...by the introduction of the Mutiny Act, normally passed annually, to which the prerogative articles were subordinate. In 1777 , the power to make articles of war was embodied in the Act. In the British army, the articles of war were replaced in 1881 by the Army Act. The Army Act is an Act of Parliament dealing with the discipline, court martial , and enlistment of the army and has in itself no permanent operation. It is annually brought into operation by the Army Act (which was reformed in 1955 to become the Army and Air Force Act). By this system of annual...
engineering, military Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
...In sieges, the engineer's duty was not merely to act as a technical expert, but also to conduct troops forward to the point of attack when a fortress was stormed. In the British army, a standard cry was ‘follow the sapper’, the term for those who, under engineer officers, dug the saps or shelter trenches used in the attack on fortresses. If the demolition of an obstacle required the use of explosives, the engineers placed the charges and ignited the fuses. Among many heroic episodes of the Indian Mutiny campaign was that of the Powder Bag party,...
pay, military Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
...to be substantial to act as an inducement. And when conscription became the norm in most European states in the 19th century there was no need for such inducement. Many conscript armies maintained two pay scales, one for conscripts and a better one for those who signed on as regulars, and many a conscript retained an abiding memory of his service being marked by shortage of money. ‘My saddest memory of the war’, wrote George Coppard of WW II, ‘is my continual state of poverty.’ Although the immediate cause of the French army's mutiny in 1917 was the...
Justice, Military Reference library
The Oxford Companion to American Military History
...for Its Reform , Cornell Law Quarterly , 33 (1947), pp. 195–234. Frederick B. Weiner , Courts‐Martial and the Bill of Rights: The Original Practice , Harvard Law Review , 72 (1958–59), pp. 1–304. Frederick B. Weiner , American Military Law in the Light of the First Mutiny Act's Tricentennial , Military Law Review , 126 (1989), pp. 1–88. John M. Lindley , A Soldier Is Also a Citizen: The Controversy over Military Justice in the U.S. Army, 1917–1920 , 1990. Jonathan Lurie , Arming Military Justice: The Origins of the United States Court of Appeals,...
gender and war Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
...throughout history. To sacrifice one's life for one's country in war has been regarded as the highest form of patriotism, but a failure to fight is the act of a coward or evidence of physical or mental sub-maleness. History records the possibly mythological Amazons of the Crimea and the blood-curdlingly real ‘Amazons’ of Dahomey , also a few well-known fighting warrior queens, such as the Indian Mutiny leader Lakshmibai of Jhansi and Boudicca of the Iceni, plus a number of transvestite women soldiers like Barry . There have been rather more...
coup d'état Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
...the preferred method in Hispanic countries has been the cuartelazo , the ominous confining of itself to barracks by the garrison of the capital, usually enough to achieve the objectives of the military leaders. The so-called Curragh mutiny, for example, was a threatened British cuartelazo , and a threat of refusal to act in support of the civil power took place as recently as 1968 in France. This is not to deny that Latin America has seen more military coups than any other continent: until the 1980s, Bolivia had had more governments than it had years of...
communications, military Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
...by both the British and the French, who built repeater towers along their respective coasts. The electrical telegraph was invented in 1837 by the American Samuel Morse . The British first used it for military purposes during the Crimean war , while during the Indian Mutiny isolated British forces kept in touch with one another using the commercial telegraph system. This was dependent on a reliable source of electricity and could, of course, be interrupted very easily by cutting the wires (or, much later, ‘tapped’ into by the enemy). The telegraph...
war finance Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
...had only been able to impose for the duration of his war. What can be seen as the completion of the 1688 English revolution came after the scandals of the Crimean war and the Indian Mutiny with the 1866 Exchequer and Audit Act, designed to prevent the War Office and the Admiralty from circumventing annuality by selling assets without reference to parliament. The Act established that all income should be paid directly to the Treasury and not accumulated in discrete accounts under departmental control, and that at the end of any year all outstanding...
British army Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
...‘Glorious’ Revolution was the 1689 Declaration of Rights, which stated that without the consent of parliament, a standing army was illegal, and also established that parliament had the right to vote funds for the maintenance of the army. Moreover, the institution of an annual Mutiny Act effectively gave parliament a veto over the very existence of an army. Control of the army had shifted decisively from the monarch to parliament, although monarchs and other royal figures continued to have immense influence. Suspicion of a standing army did not vanish, and the...
Monash, General Sir John (27 June 1865–8 October 1931) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (2 ed.)
...Haig-like tenacity he relentlessly drove the Australian Corps forward against an enemy that he rightly judged was losing even defensive capability. Monash might have judged the enemy correctly but in some cases he drove his own men beyond endurance. Elements in the 1st Battalion mutinied in early September—more because of exhaustion than ill-discipline. Nevertheless most troops continued to fight, in Bean's words, ‘to the extreme limit of their endurance’. In these last campaigns Monash was not at his best. No doubt exhaustion was taking its toll on the Corps...
Civil‐Military Relations: Civilian Control Of The Military Reference library
The Oxford Companion to American Military History
...civilian control rested on dividing authority over the military between Crown and Commons so that neither could rule by force: Parliament would approve the existence of a military establishment through its power of the purse (appropriating money annually) and by passage of a mutiny act to govern the internal order of the forces. The monarchy retained command, deployed the regiments and ships, and raised and administered them in peace and in war. In the century before independence, the colonies experienced a similar struggle between legislative and executive....
Vietnam war Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
...negotiate an end to the war. Hanoi even planned to re-enact the siege of Dien Bien Phu ; by January 1968 , 40,000 PAVN soldiers were laying siege to the firebase at Khe Sanh and its garrison of 7,000 US Marines. The Tet attacks failed to prompt a southern uprising and military mutiny. With the exception of the battles of Saigon and Hué, Allied forces quickly repelled attacking Vietcong units. At Khe Sanh, the US Marines, supported by thousands of air sorties, stood firm and inflicted enormous casualties on PAVN. But the Tet offensive was a brilliant political...
war correspondents Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Military History
... Hemingway , and Evelyn Waugh , who all honed their imaginations, literary ability, and knowledge of human nature, as well as their reputations, as war correspondents. Russell ( c. 1820–1907 ) reported on the Crimean war for The Times and went on to report on the Indian Mutiny , the American civil war , the Paris Commune , and the Zulu war . His career coincided with the beginning of the golden age of the war correspondent. This was a result of the near-simultaneous appearance of the railway and the telegraph , combined with a massive expansion...
Army, U.S. Reference library
The Oxford Companion to American Military History
...its sacrifices unappreciated. Lagging enlistments and desertion led authorities to accept British prisoners, white servants, and African Americans in the service. Restlessness in the ranks grew worse because of inadequate provisions, clothing, and pay. Several regiments mutinied during the last years of the war. American leaders voiced more serious concern over the officers' discontent about Congress's failure to provide back pay and to make firm assurances of postwar pensions or lump‐sum mustering‐out bonuses. The senior officers remained loyal to the...
