Imagine it is 1808 and you are a recruiting officer for the regular army. Your task is to find new soldiers for your regiment. Without a system of military conscription, you face significant challenges. Unlike the navy’s recruiting parties, you are not allowed to press gang people into military service. How big is your task? What challenges will you face, and how can you succeed?

The Scale and Challenge of Your Task

Simply put, your task is enormous and difficult, with a lot of competition. Between 1803 and 1815, about 650,000 people served in the regular army, militia, or as volunteers. The 1804 militia list shows that the main target group for military recruitment—men in Britain between 18 and 30 years old without children—comprised 562,601 individuals.

From 1808 to 1815, the army will recruit about 120,000 men through regular enlistment. However, this is insufficient to fill the gaps or raise new battalions. About 100,000 men are transferred from the militia to the regular forces, but even this is not enough. In 1810, the recruiting deficit is nearly 14,000. This deficit improves slightly to about 10,000 men per year from 1811 to 1814. Overall, the army never managed to recruit enough men to make up for losses due to desertion, discharge, or death.

Competition and Other Challenges

Without a military conscription system in Britain, you are competing for manpower with nearly every other business in the country. As the war continues and manpower becomes scarcer, many manufacturers increase their workers’ salaries to retain them. Additionally, the navy and the East Indian Army are also your competitors.

The manpower shortage is so severe that you also explore these recruiting methods:

• International Recruitment: You enlist soldiers from foreign countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Russia, and Africa. You integrate Spanish and Portuguese troops into British units.
• Reducing Service Time: Initially, enlistment was for life (until a man was too infirm to serve or the army reduced in size). To encourage enlistment, you reduce the service period to seven years.
• Let go of winning the War for Talents: You offer convicted criminals the choice between army service, prison, or penal transportation to the colonies. This can be useful if you need someone with special skills, like forging the enemy’s currency.

In addition to competition, you must deal with human resources marketing challenges. If your colonel or regiment has a bad reputation or poor battle record, it will be even harder to find new recruits, even among those who dream of a military career.

Recruiting Tools

Several tools are at your disposal to persuade men to leave their civilian lives behind:

• Exaggerated Tales: Tell exaggerated stories about the glamour of army life.
• False Promises of a Bounty: Offer a large sum of money for enlistment, although most of it will be lost to various ‘deductions’, such as for uniforms. Often, the recruit won’t see any of the money.
• Alcohol: Ply men with drink and get them to sign the enlistment contract.
• The King’s Shilling: Give a shilling to a recruit to bind his enlistment contract.

Use posters to announce the arrival of your recruiting party in a village to attract a crowd. Don’t hesitate to use grandiose promises, such as:

‘All those who prefer the Glory of bearing Arms to any servile mean Employ, and have Spirit to stand forth in Defence of their King and Country against the treacherous Designs of France and Spain in the Sussex Light Dragoons, commanded by Lt Col John Baker Holroyd, Let them repair to. Where they shall be handsomely Cloathed, most compleatly Accoutred, mounted on noble Hunters, and treated with Kindness and Generosity’.

(Recruiting poster for Lieutenant-Colonel Holroyd’s Light Dragoons, 1780)

People enlist for various reasons: patriotism, family tradition, escaping from a boring job or poverty, the chance of exciting adventures, or traveling to another country. Find a fitting storyline for each potential recruit. You might say:

‘If any gentlemen soldiers, or others, have a mind to serve Her Majesty, and pull down the French king; if any prentices have severe masters, any children have unnatural parents; if any servants have too little wages, or any husband too much wife…’

(The Recruiting Officer, George Farquhar)

Recruiting Locations

You are allowed to recruit within your regiment’s designated area. When the colonels are given ‘beating warrants’, your search begins. Form a recruiting party consisting of an officer, a sergeant, and one or two drummers. The drummers help attract attention and create an exciting atmosphere, a method known as recruiting ‘by beat of drum’.

Visit villages, inns, and country fairs — much like modern HR officers taking part in fancy vocational training fairs that feature free rides in a Ferris wheel to convince young people to join their companies.

Onboarding

Once you have found new recruits, complete the 18th-century version of onboarding:

• Pay the promised king’s shilling to your recruits.
• Take the men to a perfunctory medical examination.
• Have the recruits see the magistrate to confirm they are legally entitled to serve in the army and fit for service.
• Have them swear an oath of loyalty to the King.
• Warn the recruits of the severe penalties for mutiny and desertion.

An attestation form could look like this:

An afterthought …

With regards to candidate experience, your recruiting methods might receive mixed ratings.

John from Yorkshire:  Great booze and a convivial night out with the recruiting party of the 14^th Foot. Woke up with a heavy head and a shilling in my hand (WTF?!?) . Next thing I knew I was walking with 30 other guys to a barrack. All my own clothes were taken away. I now own nothing but a uniform and some equipment. Guess I better make do with it … . Drills start again soon; boy, these guys are serious about it!

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Sources

• Roger Knight: Britain against Napoleon, Penguin Books, 2014
• Richard Holmes: The Soldier’s Trade in a Changing World, BBC History Trails (https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/wars_conflict/soldiers/soldier_trade_in_world_03.shtml)
• The National Army Museum and its Online Collection, London / UK (https://www.nam.ac.uk/)

Article by Anna M. Thane, author of the novel
“Von tadellosem Ruf” (http://amzn.to/2TXvrez)