‘A Citizen and Not a Soldier’: The British Volunteer Movement and the War against Napoleon

Abstract

The massive conscription-based armies raised by Napoleonic France forced all European states to consider how to increase their military manpower, and Britain was not an exception in this regard. Moreover, manpower demands in Britain were fuelled in the 1790s by a fear of insurrectionary movements, or at the very least domestic disturbance. In both these areas the British Army had traditionally provided the government with its ‘internal defence’ force, but in also acting in an imperial role and as an offensive expeditionary force, the army was liable to be dangerously overstretched.¹ These manpower demands, the increased threat of invasion, and the titanic nature of the struggle between Britain and France during the period 1793–1814 led the government to create a mass part-time army for home defence. This posed all sorts of questions for the government and local authorities over the discipline, organisation, and military role of such a force. As significant as government grappling with the problem of mass mobilization was the impact this had on the men themselves. For the first time, a large proportion of the male population was brought, however tenuously, into some form of armed service at the behest of the state. Exploring the impact of mass mobilization on the identity of those who joined Britain’s part-time forces demonstrates that these men often took into these new forces assumptions about terms and conditions drawn from civilian life, illustrating the fragile and subtle border between the civilian and the soldier, which was under constant negotiation throughout the period.