title: Introduction
abstract: In spite of the anger and recriminations concerning the appalling conditions British soldiers had to endure in the Crimean winter of 1854–55, no sustained programme of army reform immediately emanated from it. While it seemed to many by early 1855, that aristocratic senior officers were no longer competent to run the army, and that a fundamental reordering of its organisation and practices was needed, the reforms which were enacted in the immediate aftermath of this war were modest and piecemeal