Volunteer Army (British)
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The Volunteer Army was a citizen army of part-time rifle corps, created as a popular movement in the 19th Century.
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[edit] The British Army Following The Crimea
Following the Crimean War, it was painfully clear to the War Office that, with half of the British Army dispositioned around the Empire on garrison duty, it had insufficient forces available to quickly compose and despatch an effective expeditionary force to a new area of conflict, unless it was to reduce the British Isles' own defences. During the Crimea, the War Office had been forced to send Militia and Yeomanry to make up the shortfall in regular soldiers.
What was painfully clear to the citizenry of those Isles, when there was a threat of invasion by the much larger French Army in 1858 (following an assassination attempt on Emperor Napoleon III), was that, even without sending a third of the Army to another Crimea, Britain's military defences had already been stretched invitingly thin. This vulnerability to a potential European invasion continued to be underlined by subsequent events on the continent (The Austro-Prussian War of 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War of 1872), and by the development of steamships and repeater rifles.
[edit] Creation of The Volunteer Army
The response of the citizenry was to raise its own Volunteer Army. Overseen by a civilian body, this was composed of locally-organised units. The members served voluntarily, gathering in their spare time to practice drill and riflery. Members were unpaid, except when embodied for active service, or training in military camps, when they also became subject to Military Law. A volunteer was actually expected to pay for his own uniform and equipment, including his rifle. A volunteer could quit his corps at any time, by giving fourteen days notice, except while embodied on active service, or for training in a military camp. The Volunteer Army could be called up for active service by the Government when there was threat of invasion, but volunteers could not be sent overseas without their consent. The organisation and the orders of each of the corps required the approval of the War Office, but they varied widely in their efficiency at first. Officers received their commissions from county lieutenants, but few had any military training. Although the militia had become largely moribund, and the yeomanry were unable to mount a useful military force, the Volunteer Army quickly became very popular, and, despite the initial reservations of professional officers, the War Office took an increasing interest in its organisation, equipment and training. With the British Army traditionally underfunded, to the benefit of the Royal Navy, the advantages of this large, but economical reserve of trained soldiery were inescapable to the generals. In time, the various small corps were collected into regionally organised battalions, and these into brigades. Retired officers filled the senior positions in these brigades, and serving Officers and NCOs assisted the companies with their training. Units were embodied periodically to train along side the Regular Army in military camps. By these methods, the efficiency of the Volunteer Army was raised, and the training and methods of its units were standardised, with each other, and with the Regular Army.
[edit] The Territorial Army
By 1907, when its civilian administration teetered on the brink of insolvency, the Volunteer Army had become indispensable to British defence planning, as well as an enabler of the Regular Army's drawing its own forces away from home defence stations. Consequently, the Government took over the Volunteer Army completely, re-organising it as the Territorial Army in 1908. In addition to the introduction of terms of service for volunteers, this meant that most of the units, themselves, lost their unique identities, becoming Territorial battalions of the local Regular Army regiment. At the same time, the remaining Militia and Yeomanry units were folded into the Territorial Army.
