A follow-up to the above: well --
now, finally, after all these years, I understand the overall joke in
The Pirates of Penzance:
- Victorian police were certainly not cowardly, at least not most of the time;
- There were definitely pirates about in the Channel, but the English Navy mostly curtailed their activities by the mid-1800s (about 20-25 years before PoP) ... which explains why the pirates confine themselves to roaring, acting manly, and drinking "pirate sherry". (Those are some sophisticated pirates!)
- The Major-General's named daughters ... although the chorus ones act demure (as they'd be expected to), Mabel all but throws herself at Frederick. (Edith is just there to sing a solo, not to act).
- And, of course, the Major-General himself, who knows everything ...
except how to fight.
(I knew that one a long time ago, but the rest just clicked into place now).
I'm also pretty sure that the Major-General was based on Prince George, 2nd Duke of Cambridge, who served as C-of-C of the British Army from 1856 to 1895. He was deeply devoted to the traditional structure of the British Army and favored social standing over merit-based promotions. He was also aided by his close relationship with Victoria to resist the late-19th-century reforms which sought to modernize the army, establish a modern general staff, and limit the independent power of the Horse Guards.
When he was pressured to accept professional staff training and intellectual merit over aristocratic privilege, he flatly declared: "Brains? I don't believe in brains!" and added that professional military intellect was a "high-brow scheme to mess people about". If he hadn't existed in real life, he might have been invented by
Punch magazine.
Unfortunately, his sticking to the tactics that won the day against Napoleon crippled the British Army in the wars of the 1880s and 1890s, especially against the Boers. His forced resignation in 1895 came too late to help them, and the deep institutional decay he fostered took a massive toll in British lives before the War Office was completely overhauled in 1904. The Esher Reforms completely rebuilt the British military from the ground up, so that by 1914, the BEF was capable of holding the German advance into Belgium and France.
If these reforms hadn't gone through, who knows - the army might even have revolted. Imagine an army marching through Mons or somewhere in 1914 as they would've done in 1815, with infantry squares and flying flags and beating drums etc.
They'd be ripped to pieces.
