Saluting and the paying of compliments may be said to be no more than good manners.

An old French writer is quoted as saying “The Salute and other military compliments have their own raison d’etre”.  They encourage a proper pride in the uniform; they effectively combine discipline with the respect due to superiors, while at the same time elevating the soldier in his own eyes, by reminding him of all that is implied by the profession of arms and its traditions of chivalry and courtesy”.

Compliments and salutes are reciprocated at the highest levels up to and including Heads of State and can therefore be hardly construed as acts of servility but, rather indicative of a feeling of mutual trust and respect.

The origin of the hand salute has a number of theories.  The earliest suggestion of a military salute is to be found on Stone Age rock paintings.  Stones and spears were in the common armoury at that time.  Stones were usually thrown by the right hand whilst the left bore the spear.  To show peaceful intent when approaching a stranger it was apparently the custom to raise the open right hand above the head and trail the spear, point to the rear.  There is also some evidence to suggest that the armies of Ancient Babylon and Egypt raised their open right hand as a form of soldierly greeting.

A less plausible theory is that in medieval times the victors at tournaments would shade their eyes with the hand on approaching the Queen of Beauty to accept their prizes or be blinded by her dazzling loveliness.  One popular misconception has long been that it is the Sovereigns Commission being saluted and not the man.  This has no substance; in the Royal Navy for instance, Warrant Officers and Midshipmen are saluted but neither are commissioned.

The most probable origin of the modern salute is one based on the mutual trust and respect, already mentioned, exercised by the nobility in the days of chivalry.  Knights on meeting each other placed themselves in an attitude of defencelessness by uncovering their heads or raising their visors.  Headdresses, whether iron casque, shako, bearskins or cloth helmet, have not always been easy to remove and so the preliminary movement of raising the hand to the head became accepted as the earnest intention of completing the whole movement.

From the start of the Standing Army, saluting was by removal of the headdress, and according to John Locke, who witnessed a review of the Gardes du Corps in Paris in 1678, the French observed a similar practice.

The Coldstream Guards would appear to have been the first to have departed from this practice as a Regimental Order of 1745 reads: “The men ordered not to pull off their hats when they pass an officer, or speak to them, but only to clap up their hands to their hats, and bow as they pass by.” This may have started a practice, or confirmed an existing one, which spread to other regiments.

Ten years later there is evidence that the Horse Guards frowned upon the innovation, which had not received official approval for Standing Order for the Army No 135 of 1755 stated that ‘NCOs and soldiers are to pull off their hats to all officers (whatsoever Corps they belong to) whenever they pass them.” The original custom was thus restored.

The Royal Scots were next to resist and this is traced to their Standing Orders of 1762, an extract of which states: “As nothing disfigures the hats or dirties the lace worn more than taking off the hats, the men for the future are only to raise the back of their hands to them with a brisk motion when they pass an officer”.  Here is one reason for not removing headdress - the danger of soiling them.

The Standing Order of 1755 was republished in ‘The Rudiments of War’ in 1777, which shows that it was in force at the later date.

This would appear to have been the last attempt to check modernisation of the salute as at the beginning of the 19th Century the salute with the hand, palm to the front was firmly established.

It is interesting to note that for many years saluting was performed with the hand farthest from the officer.  This involved saluting with the left hand when passing an officer on the right hand side.  To certain sections of Indian troops saluting with the left hand was an insult and the present practice was instituted in 1918.

The present day salute is a symbol of greeting, or mutual trust and confidence, initiated by the junior in rank, but with no loss of dignity on either side.  Theoretical dogma aside, long practical experience has demonstrated the relationship between saluting and good discipline, on and off the battlefield.

Turning the Head and Eyes

In medieval times the population was rigidly divided.  There were free-men and bondmen or serfs.  The freemen were trained archers and their freedom signified that they were always available for war, whilst bondmen were not permitted to bear arms.  It was customary for a freeman to look a knight in the face as he passed but the bondman was obliged to bow his head and look to the ground.  The custom of eyes-right / left symbolises equality in the Queen’s Service of her men-at-arms.

The Sword Salute

Until recently the salute with the sword was reminiscent of Crusader days when the Knight kissed the hilt before entering the conflict.  The hilt represented the Cross and the motions of the salute roughly described a cross.  In the present salute some of the motions have been omitted.  The ‘Recover’ is symbolic of kissing the cross,

The Rifle Salute

The weapon is held in such away as to be entirely harmless and even held as a token of submission (Present Arms).
The salute at the slope is in fact the first motion of the Present Arms.  A sentry’s salute to an officer of or above Field Rank is the full salute with the rifle. Junior officers receive the preliminary movement only.  One reason why sentries do not present arms after dark is because in the early days it was too dangerous, owing to the difficulty of distinguishing between friend and foe.

The convention of holding the weapon so that it cannot be used is universal and very ancient.  The Arab grasps his spear and trails it with the point on the ground.  The Crusader offered his sword, hilt foremost, to be touched by his sovereign before going to war.  Even tanks, our modern engine of war, carry their guns pointing skywards during march past and point them to earth when passing the saluting base.

Gun Salute

The system of firing a number of guns to salute royalty and officers of high rank dates from the time when it required a considerable amount of time and effort to reload a gun.  The old muzzle loaders used shotted charges which were difficult to mix and required much skill on the part of the gunner.  When therefore, the charges were fired away as part of the salute, the ship or battery was consequently rendered defenceless and in the power of the individual so honoured.

Changing the Guard and Feu De Joie

It is safe to wager that pretty well every feature of Army Procedure, even the most trivial, has an origin of great interest and often of great antiquity.  Take, for instance, the ceremony of Changing the Guard.  Those who had the good fortune to witness this ceremony outside Buckingham Palace or St James may have noticed that, while the sentries are being posted and the main bodies of the ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Guards are standing facing each other, their respective officers pair off and march to and fro in the space between until the change of sentries has been completed, when they part company and take post again with their guards.

Of the innumerable officers who have thus paced up and down, how many have known that they were not doing something inserted in the ceremony merely to pass the time pleasantly while the sentries were being changed?  How many know that this movement originated away back in 1709 when Queen Anne, for some inexplicable reason, suggested that in order to invest the ceremony with a little added interest and animation, the officers of the ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Guards occupy the interval during the reposting to the sentries by dancing the stately paces of the minuet.
The royal request was carried into effect, henceforth astonished onlookers were regaled with the sight of the officers in their handsome, full-skirted jackets, silk breeches and hose and white wigs, advance towards each other and, after a ceremonious bow, hand their canes to a waiting orderly, and then proceed to dance a minuet to the music of violin, flageolet and cello.

It would seem however, that this innovation found no favour with the great warrior, the Duke of Marlborough.  Soon after his return from the Flanders campaign, the Duke attended the Guard changing at St James.  Striding into the centre of the courtyard, he harshly suggested that, as it was not customary for one man to dance with another, one of each pair of officers might enhance the spectacle by donning a skirt for the occasion or, better still pay greater attention to the conduct of their men, several of whom had left the ranks and were gathered under the balcony drinking mugs of ale.

The Duke, having expressed his views even more forcibly at the War Office, the terpsichorean portion of the ceremony was immediately changed to a simple walk.

The ceremony of Feu-de-Joie, a feature of military ceremonial seldom seen these days, originated in a demonstration of a new weapon before another queen - Queen Elizabeth I.  The new matchlock had just been adopted as a more reliable and handy weapon than the cumbersome wheel-lock, and Her Majesty was invited to a demonstration of the effectiveness of the new firearm at Tilbury.  The valiant musketeers, having completed the capers of loading and getting the forked rests in position, an operation which took nearly ten minutes, tensely awaited the order to fire a volley.  The order came all right, but the volley didn’t.  The primitive matchlock mechanism produced only a ragged series of bangs one after the other up arid down the lines.  The Queen took a very dim view of the performance and gave her opinion in language which caused all present to wish they were somewhere else.

However, it is a woman’s privilege to change her mind, and presently the Queen had an idea - why not use the one after the other firing business as a planned feature of military ceremonial.

The only trouble was the inability to ensure an unbroken ripple of fire right along the line.  This problem was solved by forming the men in three ranks, the second file letting go if his front rank man failed to “make fire”.  If both failed the third rank file came into action.  This procedure prevailed until the introduction of the flintlock, a weapon which was sufficiently accurate to ensure an unbroken chain of bangs right along the line.

The new ceremonial was endowed with the name “Joy Sounde”.  However, the French Army also adopted this novel form of musketry, for festive occasions and gave it the name of “Feu-de-Joie”.

Under this latter name the ceremony has passed down through the centuries as one of Britain’s favourite military displays, incidentally, the Navy’s system of gunfire saluting was copied from the Army’s “Feu-de-Joie” in 1730.

Source:
 Australian Army Military Traditions And Customs And How They Began 1870 – 1975, WO Wing, School of Infantry (Sep 1975)