If Richard Cromwell had been as capable as his Dad?

I just don't see it. If anything, British armed forces kept perfoming relatively worse since Crimean war.
That has a large part to do with the fact that a large portion of the military budget went to the navy or that the British military as a whole didn't receive as much funding as their enemies.The British army immediately before WWI for example was a force of around two hundred thousand IIRC(this discounts the colonial forces of course,and there wasn't that much funding going towards the colonial forces because there's fears that they would rebel). After WWI,the British military as a whole went through major budget cuts.There's also the fact that the British Empire after the Crimean War had to place emphasis on quantity rather than quality due to their need to defend the largest Empire the planet has ever seen.While the quality of the British army officer corps was shit in general before the end of the Crimean War,there's the fact that the British army in general was a much better trained and equipped force than their Continental rivals.
 
Though the Charge of the Light Brigade is probably the most famous single incident of the Crimean War, at least in English-speaking countries, we shouldn't forget that the British actually won Balaclava -- and indeed the Alma and Inkerman, too. Not to mention the logistical feat of keeping an army over 30,000 strong supplied and in fighting condition thousands of miles away from British territory. I don't really think the Crimea is very good evidence for the "British army was shit" meme.
 
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