BREVET, in France, denotes any warrant granted by the sovereign to an individual in order to entitle him to per form the duty to which it refers. In the British service, the term is applied to a commission con • on an officer a degree of rank imm • ly above that which he holds in his particular regi ment; without, however, conveying a power to receive the corresponding pay. Brevet rank does not exist in the royal navy, and in the army it neither descends lower than that of captain, nor ascends above that of lieutenant-eolonel. It is given as the reward of some particular service which may not be of so import ant a nature as to deserve an immediate appointment to the full rank: it however qualifies the officer to succeed to that rank on a vacancy occurring, in preference to one not holding such brevet, and whose regimental rank is the same as his own.
In the fifteenth section of the Articles of War it is stated that an officer having a brevet commission, while serving on courts-martial formed of officers drawn from differrent regiments, or when in garrison, or when joined to a detachment composed of different corps, takes prece dence according to the rank given him in his brevet, or according to the date of any former commission ; but while serving on courts-martial or with a detachment composed only of his own regiment, he does duty and takes rank according to the date of his commission in that regi ment. Brevet rank, therefore, is to be considered effectual for every military purpose in the army generally, but of no avail in the regiment to which the officer holding it belongs, unless it be wholly or in part united for a temporary with some other corps. (Samuel's Hint. Account of the British Army, p. 615.) Something similar to the brevet rank above described must have existed in the French service under the old monarchy, for. according to Pere Daniel (tom. ii. p. 217, 227), the colonel-general of the Swiss troops had the power of nominat infc subaltern officers to the rank of cap tains by a certificate, which enabled them to hold that rank without the regular commission. The same author states also
that if any captain transferred himself from one regiment to another, whatever might be the date of his commission, he was placed at the bottom of the list in the regiment which he entered, without, however, losing his right of seniority when employed in a detachment com posed of troops drawn from several differ ent regiments.
The introduction of brevet rank into the British army, as well as that of the half-pay allowance to officers on retiring from regimental duty, probably took place soon after the Revolution in 1(;88. But the practice of granting, when officers from different regiments are united for particular purposes, a nominal rank higher than that which is actually held, appears to have been of older date ; for in the Soldier's Grammar, which was written in the time of James I., it is stated that the lieutenants of colonels are captains by courtesy, and may sit in a court of war (court-martial) as junior c iptains of the regiments in which they command. (Grose, Military Antiquities, vol. ii.) It was originally supposed that both officers holding commissions by brevet and those on half-pay were subject to military law ; but, in 1748, when the inclusion of half-pay officers within the sphere of its control was objected to as an unnecessary extension of that law, the clause referring to them in the Mutiny Act was omitted, and it has never since been inserted. In 1786 it was decided in parliament that brevet officers were sub ject to the Mutiny Act or Articles of War, but that half-pay officers were not. (Lord Woodhouselee, Essay on Military Law, p. 112.) Brevet command was frequently conferred on officers during the late war ; but the cause no longer existing, the practice has declined, and at present there are very few officers in the service who hold that species of rank.