A Military Course for the Government and Conduct of a Battalion,

£850 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A very beautiful copy of the much scarcer first edition of Simes’s illustrated military manual. A Military Course for the Government and Conduct of a Battalion is the third of five books published by Thomas Simes in the 18th century. The first three - The Medley (1767), The Guide (1772), and The Course (1777) - are described by Houlding, in his study of the eighteenth century training texts of the British Army,*Fit for Service,*as “massive but ill-organized compendia of material dealing with all aspects of regimental administration and routine, together with reprints of all current regulations and reproductions of most of the regular printed administrative forms (such as muster rolls and the like) used throughout the army” (p.219). These three publications, however, do not “differ much, one from another, in the contents; each was essentially a rehash of the volume preceding it, though distinguished by a steadily improving format” (ibid). Regardless, “Simes’s publications represented the most voluminous collection of basic material on regimental administration and daily routine to be prepared by anyone - private or public - during the century” (ibid) and enjoyed considerable popularity at the time of its publication. A great deal of the books success, however, can be attributed to its timely publication, coinciding with the American Revolution; as even Simes notes in his second dedication, “To the officers of the Army, From the rebellious conduct of the Americans it appears to

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