Europe's Deadly Triumvirate

Writing Ordnance and before that, War on Wheels, I have gained more than an insight into the birth of the modern arms trade. It is not surprising that in my quest for the story of the men and women who equipped the army I should find the inventors and makers of armaments. Whilst it might not be surprising, it is salutary.

As my own father said, when speaking of the RAOC, arming the British army goes back to the willow to arm the archers. It progresses through to gun powder and shot, cannon and ball. My starting point though is the rifled gun invented by William Armstrong. I talk of him quite a lot in Ordnance.

A recent biography of Armstrong by Henrietta Heald looks at the competition in armament manufacture in the years following the Crimean War. She looks at Armstrong, of course, but also Krupp in Germany and Schneider in France, together known as 'Europe's deadly triumvirate'.

She quotes Manchester's biography of Krupp. 'Over the next eighty years they were to be celebrated first as shields of national honour and later, after their slaughtering machines were hopelessly out of control, as merchants of death.'