The Royal Staff Corps was a

corps Corps (; plural ''corps'' ; from French , from the Latin "body") is a term used for several different kinds of organization. A military innovation by Napoleon I, the formation was first named as such in 1805. The size of a corps varies great ...

of the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

responsible for military engineering which was founded in and disbanded in . At the time, the Royal Engineers and Corps of Royal Sappers and Miners were administered as part of the Board of Ordnance. Relations between the Ordnance and the

Commander-in-Chief of the Forces The Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, later Commander-in-Chief, British Army, or just the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C), was (intermittently) the professional head of the English Army from 1660 to 1707 (the English Army, founded in 1645, was succ ...

Prince Frederick, Duke of York Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (Frederick Augustus; 16 August 1763 – 5 January 1827) was the second son of George III, King of the United Kingdom and Hanover, and his consort Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. A soldier by profess ...

, were poor and a major motivation for the Corps' creation was to provide a source of engineering expertise under his direct control. It was generally responsible for short-term military engineering works, with the Royal Engineers and Corps of Royal Sappers and Miners remaining responsible for permanent works, but the boundaries between the functions of the corps were blurred. The Royal Staff Corps answered to the Quartermaster-General instead of to the Board of Ordnance. On its disbandment, most of its personnel transferred to the Royal Engineers and the Corps of Royal Sappers and Miners.

References

British administrative corps Royal Engineers {{UK-mil-stub