A nation at war: the military dimension

A soldier in the
Derbyshire Militia, 1780

The long war

The Revolutionary Wars, which became the Napoleonic Wars after 1799, turned out to be the greatest and most costly conflict Britain had ever fought. Pitt saw it as a war against an expansionist France that was breaking treaties and destroying the peace of Europe, and also as a war against home-grown subversion. Most believed that the war would be short. In fact, it lasted for twenty-three years.

During this long war, Britain was France’s most consistent enemy. It was a war described by Napoleon as the war of the elephant and the whale: France could not defeat Britain at sea, but the British could only defeat the French on land by coalition-building, an expensive and frequently unreliable strategy. It took six coalitions to bring about the final defeat of France. 

Britain entered the war from a position of weakness. Pitt had rehabilitated the national finances partly at the expense of military expenditure. In particular, the army was too small – 15,000 men in the British Isles with perhaps twice as many again deployed to India and the West Indies.

Pitt as war leader

This raises the question: was Pitt a good war-time Prime Minister? Arguably not. Britain entered the war unprepared and undermanned. The strategy was ill thought out, and Fox was right to pick out the confusion of war aims. Furthermore, Pitt's financial measures rested on his mistaken assumption that the war would be short. He underestimated French fighting capability and France’s sense of patriotic identity. However, he has acquired a reputation as a great war-time leader because Britain was not defeated and because his allies after his death praised him as ‘the pilot who weathered the storm’.

Britain’s attempt to defeat revolutionary France in the 1790s rested on three strategic pillars: 

1. supporting the European allies with cash and troops; 
2. using the navy to pick off French colonies, especially in the Caribbean; 
3. offering practical aid to opponents of the Revolution within France.

1 and 2  had been the policy followed by Pitt’s father in the Seven Years' War. However, the new war refused to follow this pattern - in the short term at least.

The armed forces

The danger of a massive French invasion was so great and so protracted that the government was compelled to call Britons for the defence of the nation. The result was an unprecedented mobilisation on a scale that would not be attempted again until the First World War.

The Army

There were three ways in which men could serve in the army. 

1. As regular soldiers. 
2. In the county militias. 
3. In the volunteer regiments formed to counter the threat of a French invasion. 

The part-time and voluntary forces had reached almost half a million men by 1804. The number of men serving in the regular army  rose from 40,000 in 1789 to a quarter of a million in 1814. This was out of a population assessed at 15.7 million in 1801, the year of the first census.

Regular soldiers

Traditionally Britain, like other European nations, had fought its wars with the aid of mercenaries, mainly Germans, and supplemented with artisans and labourers who enlisted voluntarily in the armed forces, and with men seized by press gangs against their will. 

Recruitment was chaotic, as different recruiting parties competed with each other. Faced with this chaos, the government authorized the formation of 100 independent companies each of 100 men. The cost of recruiting fell to the individual who raised the company, but it guaranteed him a commissioned rank relative to the numbers he raised. If he couldn’t find a regiment to receive him he went on half pay and could draw army pension for life.

When married men joined the army, their families often had to resort to the parish. In Sunderland in September 1793 the overseers of the poor of Sunderland estimated that the poor rate would treble. The war, therefore, exacerbated the problem of poverty.


Most of the recruits came from the unemployed - also from apprentices who wished for adventure (though this was forbidden, and several young men came before the quarter-sessions for enlisting while apprenticed). Many enlisted while drunk.

When the army had difficulties in recruiting, it resorted to crimps, civilians who were tasked with persuading men to join the army. They lacked the legal powers of the naval press gangs and had to persuade rather than force men to join. The employment of crimps led to great hostility, as they were seen as kidnappers. In 1794 there were anti-crimp riots in London.

The militia

The only civil defence force in operation was the militia. This had been remodelled in 1757 when Parliament ordered that every English and Welsh county was to supply a given quota of men between the ages of 18 and 45 and pay them out of the rates. 32,000 men ‘all of them good Protestants’ were to be chosen by ballot and subjected to martial law in time of active service; during peacetime they were to be dispatched for a month’s military training every year under the voluntary leadership of the gentry.

The system was unpopular and inefficient, with the burden of militia service falling overwhelmingly on the illiterate poor. The lords lieutenant, who were in charge of the militia, appointed poorly-paid clerks to carry out the organisation. Detailed administrative work (for example, assessing which parishes were deficient in quotas) was not carried out.

Magistrates had to swear in the militiamen. They and the mayors and constables had to organise transport and tented camps and to allocate billets in local inns. Reimbursement for innkeepers was often insufficient, and innkeepers often petitioned for barracks.
Parliament authorized a weekly allowance for a wife and each lawful child under 10 of a militiaman (if they did not follow the regiment). This came from the rates and was much resented by ratepayers.

There were numerous exceptions - men under 5ft 4 inches, peers, army and militia officers, members of the English universities, Anglican and Dissenting clergy, articled clerks, seamen, apprentices, Thames watermen. A balloted man could avoid service by paying a £10 fine or by finding a substitute. The newspapers advertised agencies that could find substitutes.

Unsurprisingly, county quotas were rarely met, and attempts had to be made to adjust them to the changing balance of population. In 1796 the proportion of eligible men serving in the militia in the heavily agricultural counties of Dorset, Bedfordshire and Montgomeryshire was more than one in 10, but was far less in the more industrialised counties, which had experienced rapid population growth: only one in 30 for Yorkshire or one in 25 for Lancashire, were eligible.

The government responded with the Supplementary Militia Act (1796) which demanded a further 60,000 militiamen from England and another 4,400 from Wales, taking care to ensure that the quotas were more equal. In 1797 the militia was extended to Scotland for the first time.

These two acts brought up the total strength of the militia to about 100,000. From this time onwards the militia became an accepted part of British life.

Adrian Lukis, who played the
militiaman George Wickham in
the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

Volunteers

In addition, ‘gentlemen’ were encouraged to found their own private volunteer corps of infantry or cavalry. No state subsidies were given to these early volunteers; the government wanted respectable men with a stake in the country - the leaders to be gentry and professions, the men to be tradesmen and farmers. Very often these forces were more remarkable for their elaborate uniforms than their efficiency. It seems that the only labouring men who showed enthusiasm to volunteer were those living in the coastal counties, who felt they had most to lose from a French invasion. It was only when there was a nation-wide fear of invasion that the poor identified in a significant way with the fate of the nation.

Volunteers enlisted from a variety of motives. Unemployment was a powerful factor. In addition, those who volunteered were usually exempt from the militia ballot, and militia training was much tougher than volunteer training. Part-time volunteer service offered companionship in the company of friends; it also offered tradesmen and shopkeepers the opportunity to tout for custom. In the Bristol volunteers, one sixth of the 848 men who joined it earned their everyday livings in the food and drinks trade, and a further 80 were shoemakers and haberdashers.

The Navy

The role of the Royal Navy was crucial. Because the British maintained their maritime supremacy, they were able to ferry troops to the theatres of war. Most importantly, they maintained (and increased) their global commercial empire, and with it the financial resources to build up coalitions.

In contrast to the Army, the Navy was a sophisticated and effective fighting force and was the largest item in the national budget. In 1793 it had 54 battleships in commission and another 39 ready. It was directed by the Board of Admiralty, which was composed of civilian and naval members, headed by the First Lord, and and was responsible for the overall allocation of resources, the movements of fleets and ships, commissions and promotions.

Before individuals could be given command of ships they had to be judged competent to do so. Unlike the Army, promotion in the Navy depended on merit. Before Nelson could be made second lieutenant in 1777 he was examined by three assembled captains – though one of them was his uncle, so connections counted as well!

The press gang

The government entered the war with a depleted navy of 15,000 men. At first it hoped it would be able to man the navy with volunteers. On 1 December 1792 a royal proclamation offered bounties to volunteers: £3 to an able seaman, £2 to an ordinary seaman between the ages of 25 and 50 and £1 to a landsman between 20 and 35. Several men accepted, but many were reluctant to volunteer. In anticipation of this reluctance, regulating offices were established in the major ports and press warrants prepared ready for issue. The warrants were issued in February 1793 and gangs combed the ports looking for seamen.

Contrary to popular belief the actions of the press gangs were limited by law. There were many exemptions: all persons under 18 years of age and over 55; seamen with less than two years seagoing experience; apprentices with less than three years’ experience. Generally in the early stages of the war, only seamen were likely to be impressed - reluctant landsmen were a liability. Seamen were easy to spot - they dressed and walked distinctively. But impressment led to a shortage of merchant seamen, and in April 1793 Parliament passed an act allowing British merchant ships to have ¾ of the crew foreign nationals. This left British seamen vulnerable to the press gang when they arrived back on land. 

There were two kinds of gangs on shore.

(a) those run by land-based recruiting officers from recruiting houses
(b) those sent ashore from warships for a quick raid to boost numbers.

Men seized by the press-gang were offered the option of volunteering so they could take up the bounty.

'The Neglected Tar', c. 1800
An impressed sailor is forced
to abandon his grieving family.

Regulating officers were called Yellow Admirals, meaning admirals without flagships of their own. Some of these were corrupt and disreputable, but not all of them. (Captain Peter Rothe (Tyne and Wear) released 22 of the 60 men seized, acknowledging that they were ships’ carpenters or apprentices and therefore exempt.) The regulating officer had to live in the district, and it was in his own interests to establish a rapport with the inhabitants. 

It was very different with the gangs sent from men of war. In October 1792 a frigate captain ignored the advice of the regulating officer and landed a press gang in Liverpool. During the fracas, one of the midshipmen killed the master of a merchant ship. The population destroyed two recruiting houses, and the local authorities made no move against them.

In 1796 a quota system was introduced, which enlisted into the fleet reluctant young men not from seafaring backgrounds, such as urban artisans. This is undoubtedly one of the factors behind the 1797 mutinies. But in spite of problems, Pitt’s government managed to increase the naval personnel to 133,000 by 1801. 

The execution of the naval mutineer,
Richard Parker, 30 June 1797.

An armed people?

The government was keenly aware of the threat of domestic disorder, but by the winter of 1797 as fears of a French invasion grew, it moved to enlist plebeian support. There was a frantic search for exact numbers.

In 1798 the Defence of the Realm Act demanded from each county details of the number of able-bodied men in each parish. A further survey was done in 1803. In 1800 Parliament ordered the first census. For the first time since Domesday Book, the state was attempting to compile precise information on its people.

The government took a political risk in creating a nation under arms, though it had no choice.

‘A nation where formal political power was concentrated in the hands of the propertied few, and where perhaps only one adult male in 50 had the vote, had no alternative but to look to the mass of its inhabitants to win its wars and preserve its independence.’ Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation (1992), p. 318.