The army of the Napoleonic Wars

Britain's long struggle against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France (from the 1790s to 1815) was fought by a small, professional, volunteer army - very different from the mass citizen armies of a century later.

• Recruitment relied on volunteers and the militia; the ranks were drawn largely from the poorest, held together by savage discipline including flogging.
• Command and tactics: the Duke of Wellington led the army through the Peninsular War (1808-14) and to final victory over Napoleon at Waterloo (1815). At sea, Nelson's victory at Trafalgar (1805) secured British naval supremacy.
• Experience: for the ordinary soldier, war meant harsh discipline, disease and poor supply as much as battle.

Theme to track: across the option, watch how the experience of the ordinary soldier and the relationship between the army and the people change - from a small professional force to a nation in arms.

The army of 1815

Crimea: failure, scandal and reform

The Crimean War (1854-56) exposed how badly the army had stagnated since 1815. British troops fought hard at the Alma, Balaclava and Inkerman and besieged Sevastopol, but administrative collapse killed more men than battle.

• At Balaclava (1854) a garbled order sent the Charge of the Light Brigade against the wrong guns - a symbol of command failure.
• Reporting changed everything. The Times correspondent William Howard Russell sent home dispatches on the suffering of the troops, and Roger Fenton produced some of the first war photography (1855) - powerful primary sources for you to evaluate.
• Florence Nightingale at Scutari, and figures such as Mary Seacole, transformed military nursing and sanitation. Public outrage over the scandals fed pressure for reform.

Source skill: Fenton's photographs and Russell's dispatches are exactly the kind of material Section A asks you to weigh - consider who made them, why, and what they can and cannot tell you.

Reforming the army

The Boer War and the drive for efficiency

The Second Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa was a shock. A modern imperial army struggled against mobile Boer commandos and turned to blockhouses, farm-burning and concentration camps to break the guerrilla war.

• Emily Hobhouse exposed the appalling death rates in the camps, forcing a public reckoning.
• The poor physical condition of many would-be recruits alarmed politicians, feeding a wider anxiety about 'national efficiency' and the fitness of the population for war.
• The result was renewed modernisation: the Haldane Reforms (1906-12) created a Territorial Force, a ready British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and a proper General Staff - the army that would go to France in 1914.

Which era of warfare?

Tap an event, then the era it belongs to.

The First World War and the nation in arms

The First World War was warfare on an utterly new scale, drawing in the whole of society:

• Technology and tactics: the machine gun and massed artillery produced deadlocked trench warfare on the Western Front. Poison gas was first used on the Western Front in 1915, and tanks made their debut at the Somme in 1916. Commanders had to learn how to break the deadlock.
• The Somme (1916): the first day, 1 July, remains the bloodiest in British military history - a byword for the cost of the Western Front.
• A citizen army: after the volunteer rush of 1914-15, Britain introduced conscription for the first time with the Military Service Act (January 1916).
• The home front: the Defence of the Realm Act (1914), rationing, propaganda and the mobilisation of women in munitions made this a total war that touched every household.

A first for Britain in 1916

Lions led by donkeys?

No part of the option is more contested than the command of the British army on the Western Front:

The popular 'lions led by donkeys' view - that brave soldiers were squandered by incompetent generals - was sharpened by Alan Clark in The Donkeys (1961) and echoed by the disillusioned war poets. Against it, John Terraine defended Douglas Haig as an 'educated soldier' whose methods, however costly, led to victory. More recently, revisionists such as Gary Sheffield (Forgotten Victory, 2001) argue that the BEF climbed a 'learning curve' - improving its tactics, artillery and use of new technology - to become the war-winning force of 1918.

Exam skill: when a source or essay takes a side, test it. Weigh the casualties of the Somme against the eventual advances of 1918, and judge how far the 'donkeys' or the 'learning curve' better fits the evidence.

Interpretation to historian

Tap an argument on the left, then the historian or view most associated with it.

Reading a revisionist

Build the spine of the option

Tap the events in chronological order, earliest first.

How Paper 3 is assessed

Edexcel Paper 3 (Option 35.2): 2 hours 15 minutes, 60 marks, 30% of the A-level. It is 'themes in breadth with aspects in depth'.

• Section A (AO2): analyse and evaluate a primary source - assess its value for an enquiry using provenance, content and context.
• Section B (AO1): an essay on a depth aspect of the period.
• Section C (AO1): essays on the breadth themes across c1790-1918.

Note: Section A rewards judging a source's value (AO2), not labelling it 'biased'. Sources like Fenton's photographs or Russell's dispatches carry value precisely because of who made them and why.

The Boer War's legacy

The big ideas to carry into the exam

You now have the arc of option 35.2 and the debate over Western Front command. Press Finish to see your score.