Reasons for joining

[Boyar Son]

Why do soldiers of the gunpowder (when guns were being used more often in europe to the end of Nepoleonic style armies) join?

Obviously there is a good chance you'll die once the whole front line of an opposing army opens fire, its loke litteraly a wall of lead.

[Conradus]

In most times there were always men willing to join up when they got a warm meal. I don't think that changed when you got more chance to end up killed before the fight began. Also most navies used to enlist people, whether they wanted it or not. And then there are the idealists,...

[TinCow]

I actually think that casualty rates generally declined with the invention of firearms. While the front ranks would certainly take extremely high casualties during an exchange of volleys, the likelihood of an individual soldier finding himself in that situation tended to decline, thus reducing the overall probability of being wounded or killed. This general decline was most signficantly due to the fact that the ease of use of gunpowder weapons (along with other technological advances) allowed nations to start fielding much larger forces. With exponentially more people fighting, your odds of being unlucky enough to be caught in the front lines at the exact moment of a heavy attack were minimal.

I have no statistics to prove this off the top of my head, but I bet we can dig some up.

[Ironside]

Also about the only way to get rich fast (by looting). The other option was to stumble over a buried treasure (and that happens often...)

[Innocentius]

...propaganda? Enlistment?

[Kagemusha]

secured income. wish to adventure and see other places. To avoid the normal life. Life for most during those times wasnt nice or easy. If you were a peasant,that meant manual labour from sunrise to sundown each and everyday, with not so great diet. For a young man military career was an viable option to make a living,specially if he was a one of the younger children,that the parents couldnt have left anykind of inheritance,since it would have gone to the oldest male child.
From army you would get a place to sleep,food and clothes and also small pension as you retired.All that a normal man would have wanted those days. Ofcourse there was risk to die,but there were plenty of risks for dying those days,even without gepardizing oneself intentionally.

[Derfasciti]

I find myself thinking this again and again and I've gotta say it seems like a good question. Why the heck WOULD someone wanna join up? But as the other members have pointed out, there were some real bonuses. Looting was still not a major moral problem for many soldiers back in those days. You could get some nice money.

A guaranteed meal would surely be an attractive choice and i'm not certain but the chances of dying would've prolly been downplayed.

Also, people back then lived in a much harsher time than we do now. Sure, you could get killed on a battlefield. But did you wanna live out your life as a farmer just struggling to make ends meet or did you want to live a life of adventure with a full belly?

[Boyar Son]

Also about the only way to get rich fast (by looting). The other option was to stumble over a buried treasure (and that happens often...)

Truly the master of useless knoweledge

[CountArach]

The Draft was imposed on them in the majority of cases.

War was also extremely glorified, in fact war was glorified until the end of World War 1.

[Peasant Phill]

Napoleon's armies forced men to recruit by some kind of lottery. I'm not really clear on the way this lottery worked though.

I always wondered if movies like 'the last of the Mohicans' had it right about the warfare of that time. The infantry would march forward to meet the enemies infantry while under artillery fire. Then they seemed to take their turn firing at ach other. It seems dumb to let the opponent get a first round off before you fire.
I would expect a platoon (or whatever a such a group was called) to try to gait the soldiers they faced to fire to early and then close the gap quickly and fire while the enemy was reloading.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I've always wondered if there was any specific procedure for selecting who would stand in the front ranks in a gunpowder era unit Say if it was random after how the unit would position itself, then there would surely have been a lot of movement in the unit to try and get behind some of the others and a lot of disorder. So surely there must have been some procedure for it? And some fairness and taking turns being up front, to assure that not the "front rank soldiers" would desert before every battle... Or extra pay or other rewards for it?

[KARTLOS]

with british soldiers it was a generally a feeling of altruism, they generally wanted to make the world world a better place. Whether it was the frenchy, the zulu or the hun there was alot of wrong uns out there who needed to be put in there place.

[Trax]

Often the soldiers had the feeling of fatalism beaten and preached into them..
"You are not going to die unless it is the Gods will" and "There is a marked bullet for everyone, when your time comes it desn't matter where you are, it's going to hit you"

[macsen rufus]

War was also extremely glorified, in fact war was glorified until the end of World War 1.

For many volunteers in WWI, it seems as though they may have expected something more like a cricket match. In an age lacking the mass media we take for granted, just how many really understood, before it was too late, the real nature of what they were getting into? Certainly propaganda and nationalistic fervour played their part, as did the prospects of booty, regular meals and "adventure". Also, I'm sure everybody expected they'd be on the winning side.

Besides the blatant jingoistic retruitment drives, there were also rather devious ones. I don't know how it might have operated in other countries, but Britain certainly had press-gangs for the navy, who could (and did) just grab people off the street, or out of the pub. For the army there was the "King's Shilling" - a small fortune at the time, I'm sure, for the average working/non-working man. Normally paid out conventionally upon signing up, it was also used deviously by slipping it into a man's drink unawares - if he then drank that drink he was deemed to have accepted the King's Shilling, and was an enlisted man. Due to this practice, glass-bottomed tankards became popular!

[Randarkmaan]

I would expect a platoon (or whatever a such a group was called) to try to gait the soldiers they faced to fire to early and then close the gap quickly and fire while the enemy was reloading.

Like in the Patriot where the British march against the Americans, get fired on one time by the Americans, get within close range and fire one devastating volley, breaking them. When marching the soldiers just look like their looking out at nothing in particular and trying not to think. That scene is one of the things I like about that movie. Also love the fact that they play "British Grenadiers".

[CBR]

Obviously there is a good chance you'll die once the whole front line of an opposing army opens fire, its loke litteraly a wall of lead.

Although there are examples of units losing most of the first rank in just one salvo, that was pretty rare really. Plus artillery did something like 50% of the killing if not more and cannon balls had enough energy to go through multiple ranks.

And in the end soldiers might have had bigger concern about diseases. For example, the US army in the ACW lost twice as many men to disease than battle.

Another thing to consider is overall battlefield lethality. A losing army could recieve horrible losses in the pursuit and that is something that was pretty rare in later Napoleonic battles. As armies now occupied a much larger area it was easier to get away, as well as more difficult to inflict a total rout on the losing side.

Now all this might not be something a half drunk young man considers when he signs the contract, but at least it shows that gunpowder didnt really make enlisting more suicidal than earlier.


CBR

[Mithradates]

I reckon pay was a fairly large insentive. Bands of recruiters would no doubt roam the country saying how good the pay was and it was fairly decent. What they didnt realise was that they had to pay for most of their own equipment which put them in enough debt to make the actualy salary costs negligible.

[The Stranger]

they thought as throughout ages war was glory... untill tey got out of it... i mean even till nam american soldiers enlisted because it was their "duty" and so many think that when they join the army

[Didz]

Why do soldiers of the gunpowder (when guns were being used more often in europe to the end of Nepoleonic style armies) join?

As far as the 19th Century British Army was concerned the biggest incentive to join was to escape poverty. A substantial portion of the volunteers were from Ireland and even English Regiments could expect between 10% and 35% of their recruits to be Irish. The biggest incentive to enlist was the bounty paid which varied according to the need for recruits. In 1805 the bounty was £12 guinea's by 1812 it had risen to £23 17s 6d, if you signed up for life, which which was a small fortune for a labourer at the time. Most Irish recruits signed up for life.

According to one recruiting Sergeant, weavers and ploughboys were the easiest to enlist though they required different forms of persuasion. Ploughboys were inevitably persuaded by the idea that they could become Sergeants just like you, whilst Weavers were normally persuaded by idea's of excitment and adventure which got them out of their boring mundane shops.

Another major source of recruits was the militia. The militia were not the army and could not be required to serve oversea's. Any man between the age of 18 and 40 could be drafted into the militia unless they were in a reserved occupation, and Army recruiting parties sometimes resorted to extreme measures to persuade these men to transfer to 'the real army'. There were stories of militia battalions being paraded continuously until the required number of volunteers transferred to the army.

The French of course introduced conscription and so men had no choice but to join their army unless they could afford to pay for a substitute. Therefore, the French Army consisted of a much more diverse mixture of men from the lower social orders than did the British. This was reflected in the way the French allocated their recruits to various Corps, with the more intelligent and literate men being earmarked for the Guard or Elite formations.

Obviously there is a good chance you'll die once the whole front line of an opposing army opens fire, its loke litteraly a wall of lead.

Not really....the accuracy of a musket was less then 15% even at close range so even a full battalion volley of 600 men would only achieve about 90 hits. There are stories of such volleys dropping the entire front rank of the enemy, but one needs to remember that a French column was was formed at least six ranks deep and so the front rank only contained about 80 men.

Battle casualties overall were quite high by modern standards but most of these casualties were caused by artillery fire not musketry.

I've always wondered if there was any specific procedure for selecting who would stand in the front ranks in a gunpowder era unit

There was, certainly in the French Army. Most armies maintained elite companies such as as the British grenadier companies who were expected to lead any attack and were paid more for doing so. The French also had men who volunteered to stand in the front rank of any formation. They were generally referred to as 'the lost children' and they were paid extra money for volunteering. Another factor was that generally speaking men who were to lead such attacks were given extra drink. Certainly, eyewitness accounts suggest that the vast majority of Frenchmen who led the cavalry and infantry attacks at Waterloo were drunk. British regiments also issued extra quantities of both gin and rum prior to battle with those likely to be in the most danger getting the lions share.

[Incongruous]

The Great War (or the napoleonic war if you will) was the costliest war in European history (in terms of population lost). Battles were often massive slaughering fields, where opposing armies would hammer at each other for around a day. Usually within the range of each others muskets. Press gangs were the best tool usually, along the parades through towns telling the young lads how great it would all be. Britain I know used criminals, not sure about other nations.

[Didz]

@Bopa
Press-gangs were only used in Britain by the Royal Navy and then only as a last resort and by unpopular ships and captains who could not attract enough volunteers. The Army only ever took volunteers, although many of these volunteers were acquired under the duress of poverty, drink or misrepresentation. The idea that large numbers of men volunteered to avoid prison is not true according to regimental records, the number of such men in British regiments was actually quite insignificant, and again it seems to have occurred mainly where regiments were unpopular and finding it hard to acquire volunteers from the rest of the population. Regiments desitined for service in tropical climtes found it particularly hard to recruit due to the rumours of desease and so tended to take on more criminals that those destined for war service in Europe.

As far as I know, neither the French nor any other European nation press-ganged men into their army. The French merely issued a another draft if they needed more men, though by the end of the war they were drafting 14 year olds because of the shortage of manpower.

Not sure how Prussian, Austria and Russia dealt with recruiting. I suspect Prussia would have relied upon volunteers as at the time there seemed to be a high level of national pride in Germany and a lot of veteran soldiers to draw upon.

However, some states obviously used other methods. The Dutch-Belgian Army of 1815 consisted of several regiments which were made up of mostly ex-soldiers from Napoleon's Imperial Guard and still wore their French uniforms, whilst at the same time they had several regiments of Germans from the State of Nassau in their army.

Mercers tells us that at least one regiment the Brunswick Corps consisted of nothing but young boys, who were so pertrified by battle that their NCO's were having to thump them to get them to close the gaps in their ranks caused by enemy cannon fire.

Wellington complained to the War Office prior to Waterloo that many of their German allies were fielding regiments full of children and old men just to maximize the bounty they received from the British government for troops supplied and that in many cases these regiments were appearing in Belgium missing most of their officers, who either didn't exist or preferred to remain at home.

[Fisherking]

Oh come on now! What ever term you want to use most of the English Army for hundreds of years was pressed into service. Towns and Cities were given quotas of men to form regiments and they pressed anyone and everyone that was at hand. They were herded together and marched to ports before too many of them could melt away. Usually reliable regiments came from the poorest regions where the army may actually be as good or better than what they left.
Desertion was rife for most of the period.

Officers were recruited usually with the promise of land at the end of the campaign, especially in Ireland.
Later on bounties were paid for enlistment to provide an incentive to join.

Most casualties were from disease sometimes starvation and men often deserted just to feed themselves.
Most of the fighting was in Ireland until the mid 18th century when things began to change a bit and men actually had some hope of returning home after a war…

[Didz]

Oh come on now! What ever term you want to use most of the English Army for hundreds of years was pressed into service.

Nope! thats not how it worked. Even at the start of WW1 most of the men who flocked to the army were volunteers. It was only later in the war that conscription was introduced.

The methods used to obtain the volunteers might have been somewhat dubious, but nevertheless there was never a full scale draft system for the army, only the militia.

[Geoffrey S]

As has been stated accuacy of earlier gunpowder weapons was atrocious. Frontlines weren't obliterated in the first volley, musket fire was a relatively minor killer in such battles compared to artillery and disease, which didn't depend on where one stood in the lines. And after accuracy got too good, later nineteenth century for instance near the end of the Civil War or the Franco-Prussian War, more defensive tactics were developed.

In the end this would lead to the familiar trench warfare of WOI, though obviously in a number of cases the mentality of the higher officers hadn't changed sufficiently; it was precisely this conflict between modern technology and self preservation which caused such dissatisfaction with the handling of WOI and the adoption of more mobile warfare focused on smaller groups.

[Incongruous]

Volunteers in the modern sense were few and far between, the seargents marching through towns showing off nice clean uniforms and talking about nice barracks were very effective. They would also get groups of men drunk and get them to sigh up that way. I know Britain never used conscription, but they weren't nice about it either. I have no idea what battalion records say as I have not been allowed access to them, I only stated that I knew Britain used criminals. Also, wasn't at least a third of the Peninsular army Irish? Or some other high proportion.

A Canton system was set up in the 1720's for the Prussians, a highly effective way of keeping man power up, the most able bodied men would join and train with a regular unit for a year while the rest did garrison duty.

[Didz]

Volunteers in the modern sense were few and far between, the sergeants marching through towns showing off nice clean uniforms and talking about nice barracks were very effective. They would also get groups of men drunk and get them to sigh up that way. I know Britain never used conscription, but they weren't nice about it either. I have no idea what battalion records say as I have not been allowed access to them, I only stated that I knew Britain used criminals. Also, wasn't at least a third of the Peninsular army Irish? Or some other high proportion.

That about sums it up, as I stated earlier.

You are quite correct that many men were recruited under false pretences and often whilst the worst for drink. However, they were still volunteers in the strict sense of the term. Even the exaggerated numbers of men who volunteered to avoid deportation or other criminal punishment were strictly speaking volunteers.

It worth also noting that this deceit was not totally one-sided. The bounty paid to volunteers was a same fortune by modern standards and some men attempted to abuse the system by volunteering to claim the bounty and then deserting and volunteering again repeatedly.

It’s also important to note that once the Ballot Act was changed to allow men from the Militia to transfer to the Army for a £10 guinea bounty quite a large proportion of volunteers came direct from the Militia. In 1809 for example 54,000 men came from the militia out of a total of 112,000 volunteers, almost half.

The numbers of Irish volunteers varied a lot over time and regiment. Scottish regiments had very few Irish volunteers (usually about 5%). Irish regiments were normally close to 100% Irish whilst most English Regiments could boast between 30% and 40%. It’s also worth noting that what went in the regimental records was what the volunteer, volunteered. So, it is possible that many Irishmen claimed to be English and vice-versa for their own personal reasons.

Another point worth remembering when considering both the British Army and the Royal Navy was that volunteers were accepted wherever they could be found. Thus, regiments serving abroad, such as the American colonies, rapidly gained a lot of volunteers from the colonists, and Royal Naval ships frequently contained a significant number of foriegn seamen, including Frenchmen.

A Canton system was set up in the 1720's for the Prussians, a highly effective way of keeping man power up, the most able bodied men would join and train with a regular unit for a year while the rest did garrison duty.

Presumably that system would have been disrupted by Napoleon after the annexation of Prussian territories for the Confederation of the Rhine. Do you know how the system worked after 1813 when the German speaking states regained their independence?

I know for instance that a number of former confederation regiments were fielded in 1815, but have no idea how they recruited fresh troops.

[Boyar Son]

British army were all volenteers?

When did the medieval style of forcing people into the ranks stop?

(plz dont say it went out with the medieval period, explanation or a least a little plz ...)

[ajaxfetish]

British army were all volenteers?

When did the medieval style of forcing people into the ranks stop?

(plz dont say it went out with the medieval period, explanation or a least a little plz ...)

Um . . . what medieval style of forcing people into the ranks are you referring to. I'm not familiar with the idea. I know of the French arriere-bans and similar ancient recruitment options, but those only applied to vassals, who had already voluntarily obliged themselves to provide military service to their lords. Armies such as the English armies of the Hundred Years War were mostly contractual volunteers or mercenaries. If I'm not mistaken, ministeriales in early feudal Germany were often serfs employed as soldiers, but that would be a limited use in both time and place. Do you have a specific society in mind where forced recruitment was the norm? Sources?

Ajax

[NagatsukaShumi]

Um . . . what medieval style of forcing people into the ranks are you referring to. I'm not familiar with the idea. I know of the French arriere-bans and similar ancient recruitment options, but those only applied to vassals, who had already voluntarily obliged themselves to provide military service to their lords. Armies such as the English armies of the Hundred Years War were mostly contractual volunteers or mercenaries. If I'm not mistaken, ministeriales in early feudal Germany were often serfs employed as soldiers, but that would be a limited use in both time and place. Do you have a specific society in mind where forced recruitment was the norm? Sources?

Ajax

You are correct about the Englih, one of the reasons the Wars of the Roses happened was that nobles had their own standing armies on contract basis'

[Marshal Murat]

I believe that the Prussians had something akin to a 'national militia', where all the citizens and junkers were technically in the army as either foot-soldiers and officers, but could buy replacements. I don't know if the re-organization changed the order of the army or how they recruited, but that is my understanding.


Most of the time, British citizens were drawn into the army through sergeants and officers making a big show about the valor of battle. Most were probably to escape poverty, earn some money, get out of the gallows.

Maybe I've been reading to many Sharpe novels, but thats how I always understood it.