This is the first major book concentrating on the volunteer force to be published for nearly a century. The volunteers were one of the largest mass movements of the eighteenth century, involving at their height about a quarter of the adult male population. Members included men as varied as William Wordsworth, Robert Burns, Sir John Soňane, William Pitt, and Henry Addington. Austin Gee considers how the volunteers were organized, who joined them and why, and their military and social activities.