United Kingdom

These developments in radical ideology were made more significant by simultaneous developments in radical organization. In January 1792 a small coterie of London artisans led by a shoemaker, Thomas Hardy, formed a society to press for manhood suffrage. It cost only a shilling to join, and the weekly subscription was set at a penny so as to attract as many members as possible. These plebeian reformers, making use of Britain’s growing communications network, corresponded with similar societies that had sprung up in response to the Revolution in the English provinces and in Scotland. In October 1793 Scottish radicals held what they styled a British Convention in Edinburgh, and a few of the English corresponding societies managed to send delegates there. They issued a manifesto demanding universal manhood suffrage and annual elections and affirming their faith in the principles of the French Revolution.

In terms of the number of men involved, these initiatives were always limited. Corresponding societies were far more widespread in London and the industrial north than in predominantly rural areas such as central Wales. Only a small proportion of rural and industrial labourers, as distinct from artisans, seems to have joined them. Even in the radical bastion of Sheffield (population 31,000) the local corresponding society attracted only 2,000 members, and most of these did not attend its meetings regularly. A minority of these activists were overtly Francophile and some may have wanted a French invasion of Britain and the establishment of a republican regime. Most corresponding-society members, however, seem to have been deeply attached to the British constitution and to have wanted only to reform it. But if these societies were not extensive or proto-revolutionary, they were still important and recognized as such. Contemporaries realized that for the first time in the 18th century working men throughout the nation were beginning to organize to achieve political change.

Pitt’s ministry acted ruthlessly to suppress them. Leading Scottish radicals were arrested and given harsh sentences. In England habeas corpus was temporarily suspended, laws were passed prohibiting public meetings and demonstrations, and Thomas Hardy was tried for treason but acquitted. By 1795 the corresponding societies had formally ceased to meet. A minority of radicals, however, continued to agitate for reform in secret, some of them engaging in sedition. Particularly prominent in this respect were Irish dissidents. By now large numbers of Irish immigrants lived and worked in British towns. Some of them sympathized with the Irish Rising of 1798 and formed secret societies to overturn the government. Several Irish agitators were involved in the Spithead and Nore naval mutinies of 1797 that for a time immobilized the Royal Navy. In 1803 an Irishman and former shipmate of Horatio Nelson, Edward Despard, was executed in London for plotting a coup d’état. Just how dangerous and well-supported these various incidents were is uncertain. But there can be no doubt that successive British wartime administrations felt obliged to devote extensive resources to maintaining order at home. even though they were also fighting an unprecedentedly massive war abroad.

The Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were massive in their geographic scope, ranging, as far as Britain was concerned, over all of the five continents. They were massive, too, in terms of expense. From 1793 to the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815 the wars cost Britain more than £1,650,000,000. Only 25 percent of this sum was raised by government loans, the rest coming largely from taxation, not least from the income tax that was introduced in 1798. But the wars were massive most of all in terms of manpower. Between 1789 and 1815 the British army had to expand more than sixfold, to about a quarter of a million men. The Royal Navy, bedrock of British defense, aggression, trade, and empire, grew further and faster still. Before the wars it had employed 16,000 men; by the end of them, it employed more than 140,000. Because there was an acute danger between 1797 and 1805 that France would invade Britain, the civil defense force also had to be expanded. The militia was increased, and by 1803 more than 380,000 men were acting as volunteers in home-based cavalry and infantry regiments. In all, one in four adult males in Britain may have been in uniform by the early 19th century.

Despite these financial and military exertions, British governments found it extremely difficult to defeat France. In part this was because Pitt the Younger’s abilities were more suited to peace than to war. But the main reason the conflict was so protracted was France’s overwhelming military superiority on land. The historian Paul Kennedy has written of British and French power in this period: