Introduction

Several thousand Britons volunteered or were recruited to private armies to participate in overseas military ventures. These were usually on the nationalist or liberal side in early nineteenth-century wars in South America, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Many were former British army soldiers, though others were new to soldiering. Some enlisted for ideological reasons to support political radicalism, particularly in times of repression by governments in Britain. The lack of rank-and-file memoirs for these overseas military adventurers makes it difficult to gauge how far politics was a motivator for enlistment. Politics motivated a number of officers, attracted by the romantic view of wars of liberation. Given the unofficial nature of these movements and the overall lack of formal records, it is difficult to estimate the numbers involved. These soldiers were often inspired by the long British radical tradition of supporting overseas liberation struggles, from the American Revolution onwards. Heroes included George Washington (USA), Tadeusz Kosciousko (Poland, 1794) and Andreas Hofer (Tyrol, 1809). They also looked to earlier people's heroes like William Tell, Wat Tyler and William Wallace. Some volunteers saw their adventures as contributing to international brotherhood and developing a theory of a people's war.

America

As early as the American Revolution, the rebels drew support from former British soldiers. Revolutionary generals such as Charles Lee (1731–82), Horatio Gates (1727–1806) and Richard Montgomery (1738–75) had formerly held king's commissions. Some unnamed former British rankers, like Thomas Paine himself, served in the Continental Army, or provincial militias, reflecting the widespread sympathy with the protesting colonists in Britain. George Washington had a strong antipathy towards employing British deserters or prisoners of war, but we know that in 1776, a sergeant and drummer were enlisted from the captured 26th Foot.

In the early nineteenth century, the USA could still attract military radicals willing to fight for the fledgling republic. With the peace of 1815 some even returned to the UK to promote reform: