Peasant Volunteers for Military Service during the Crimean War

Abstract

In the spring and summer of 1854 and 1855, following various government measures to reinforce the armed services, thousands of seigniorial peasants tried to volunteer for military service. These measures, however, expressly prohibited seigniorial peasants from volunteering without their owners’ permission, and the would-be volunteers were sent back. The purposes of this chapter are to examine the causes and significance of their ‘misunderstandings’ of the measures and to consider what the ‘volunteer phenomenon’ tells us about peasants’ aims, aspirations, mentalité and behavioural patterns.