Ballots and Bounties: The Politics of Recruitment

Abstract :

In 1807, William Windham, the ex-Secretary for War of the Talents government,¹ declared that the recruitment of the army was an issue that ‘naturally branched into a variety of views, that it might well serve as a standing dish to the House for some time, and that they would always find plenty to say on it’.² Although said in jest, and was well received as such in the House of Commons, his jibe was an accurate reflection of the parliamentary debates on recruitment from 1807 to the end of the war. Government intervention to maintain the army meant that politics and party circumstances influenced policy. Between 1803 and 1811, the UK’s various ministries tried five different methods to strengthen the army and replace the mounting casualties, symptomatic of the fact that finding men for the army was a divisive issue during the Napoleonic Wars.