Volunteers

  Between 1854-1858, British citizens were expressing great concern that the French, who had increased the size of their Navy, were planning to invade Britain. 

The reasons for the formation of the rifle volunteers were due to the increasing tensions between England and France following an assassination attempt on Emperor Napoleon III in January 1858. It emerged that the would-be assassin, Felice Orsini, had travelled to England to have the explosives used in the attack manufactured in Birmingham. The new threat of invasion by the much larger French Army, was extremely worrying to both the government and the public, as Britain's military defences were already spread thinly across the empire. In April 1859 war broke out between France and the Austrian Empire,and there were fears that Britain might be caught up in a new European conflict.

As a result of public anxiety of the possibility of French aggression, Lord Derby’s Government authorised the formation of Volunteer Rifle Corps in May 1859. There were twenty six Volunteer Corps in Surrey. In 1861, these Corps were grouped together into Surrey Rifle Volunteer Battalions for administrative reasons.

These rifle corps became the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Volunteer Battalions of the Queen's (Royal West Surrey) Regiment

This was a throwback to the volunteer regiments raised during the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the 19th century, where most counties had created a regiment in case France had managed to cross the channel.

At the same time as the Volunteer Regiments began forming in 1859, Lord Palmerston instigated the Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom. The government began building a series of forts and defensive positions along the coast and in a ring under London, as a secondary defense to fall back on if the French army managed to land in the South. The western-most of these forts is in Guildford, Henley Fort at the top of The Mount. (This is where our reenactment society was first formed.)

The volunteer movement has been largely forgotton nowadays, however if you look carefully you can see the trail from the victorian beginnings even now. In 1908 the volunteer regiments were formed into the Territorial army, which still stands to this day.

The Queens (Royal West Surrey) 2nd Volunteer Battalion adopted a dark blue uniform with red facings and trim, with a green Austrian knot above the cuff. They trained using rifle drill as an alternative to the standard army drill and were armed with the Martini Henry rifle.

By 1881, there were 254,000 Volunteers under arms in the United Kingdom.