Reasons for joining

[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.