"Revolution in Britain during Napoleonic wars? " Topic

Could there have been a revolution in Britain during the French Revolution or the Napoleonic Wars? Could make an interesting scenario …

There was.
link

Although Ireland wasn't part of Britain then. Act of Union 1800 sorted that out.

depends on your definition.

irish, certainly.

Catholic / Jacobites ? – maybe, they certainly thought their could and kept enough troops back just in case.

French style social revolution? not likely, the conditions were not really comparable.

there could easily have been unrest – as their was immediately after the wars, but it would likely have been agrarian and containable – as it was.

There were a number of Luddite disturbances around 1812 which you could extend, I suppose.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

Oh go on Pete, recommend Hobsbwaum and Rude.

and I'll recommend E.P. Thompson, and maybe Chrisopher Hill.

It may not have happened, but it was seriously and genuinely feared by the establishment at the time.

There were several instances of violent conflict between what we would call demonstrators – those opposed to mechanisation, etc – and the militia and regular units. Militia and regular units were required to 'maintain order' at the direction of magistrates.

There were also strikes/mutinies at Spithead and Nore that the establishment feared could lead to revolution. Again, the militia and, I believe, regular units were called out to 'maintain order'.

The Corn Laws – taxes introduced to pay for the wars – caused serious rioting in London.

The Corn Laws were introduced by the Importation Act 1815, so just after the period in question.

Indeed. My mistake. Apologies.

There are still folk bands in the UK to this today who sings songs from the era praising Napoleon.

Also remember that both Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstoncraft were both British and influenced the Revolutions of the time.

There are still folk bands in the UK to this today who sings songs from the era praising Napoleon.

Really….!?! Glad I can't stand folk music then. They think replacing what we had with a genuine self-obsessed, vicious tyrant would have been a good idea.?

Doug

Conditions for a social revolution similar to that of France were simply not present.

while there could be and were isolated uprisings and expressions of discontent, there was never enough concentrated within England to produce what we used to call a revolutionary situation, and therefore, no revolution was possible.

There could have been regional uprisings of significance – msot notably, Ireland and Scotland, and there certianly were lots of people sympathetic to radical change, but not enough to achieve what happened in France.

It is also noteable that the while central europe had a year of revolutions a generation later, Britain managed to contain that pressure and ended up offering sanctuary to the revolutionaries themselves- this is not something you do when you are fearful of social unrest at home.

isolated riots, agrarian discontent, early industrial militancy, sure – but not enough to achieve a revolution.

And the aims were always local and restricted – calls for changes to an existing law, or restrictions on a new industrial practice, or extensions on the franchise – all
stuff within the existing social order.

Never a full change in the social order.

if you are looking for a game, then I'd go for either another irish rebellion with french / continental backing, or a jacobite uprising.

but the key thing there is – they are both looking for a Catholic sucession, which would never gain support from non catholics.

A french landing in Scotland in support of an expected jacobite uprising would make a good campaign, but key to it working would be to have sod all non-french joining it.

Just dont tell the french player that. (he can make the same mistakes I did when we ran just such a game a few years back)

The British were able to keep the rabble in check by sending them off to Austrialia. About 165 thousand were sent, many for crimes which were trivial. Therefore they didn't have to keep them in jail or release them to the general population to become an anti-government underclass.

It was alleged by the Government that the London Corresponding Society, were in league with the jacobins and obtaining arms.

This led to the show trials of 1794, which collapsed, humiliating the Pitt Administration.

Paranoia outstripped reality by a considerable margin. As has been mentioned, the conditions for widespread support were not present. The civil disturbance tended to be pro-establishment, hence the Church & King mobs directed against suspected radicals in towns like Birmingham.

There were also the Militia revolts in 1813. The first of two took over the entire city of Bristol and another town for several days before other militia and cavalry arrived to put down the rebellion. It is detailed in Fortesque's book "The Lord Lieutenants".

@ Doug em4Minitures;

As opposed to the Prince Regent and his Mad Dad? Might be worth a try…

Britain is odd that way. All the reasons for revolution, but it never happened. The ruling class controlled everything, with only 60,000 in all of England allowed to vote for representatives in the Commons, and none in the House of Lords. Most laws, like the corn laws and enclosure acts were specfically to keep grain prices high [all grain was called 'corn'] and take away the common lands from farmers. The wealthy controlled the government and often worked to disinfrancise the common folks when they could make a buck from it. Read some of the cultural and financial histories of the period. This 'don't disturb the wealthy' approach to Tory government was slowly reformed, but it took a long time and still allowed such things as the 1840s Irish Patato Famine to occur without any government intervention to eleviate the suffering.

The enforced price of bread and such laws left many agitating for 'revolution' and it certainly was behind the 1815, 1816 and 1817 riots leading to events like Peterloo.

That is not to say that other conservative nations of the time were any better….

<<…..and still allowed such things as the 1840s Irish Patato Famine to occur without any government intervention to eleviate the suffering. >>

It is a common misconcpetion that the Tory Government "allowed" the Potato Blight and its related horrors to happen; in fact, once it became clear how bad things were, the attempts made to bring food and other aid were considered sufficiently advanced for the time that they were later adopted by countries such as France and the Netherlands. The vast majority of deaths were not from starvation (a recent examination of 660,000 surviving death certificates noted only 1 in 30 cited "malnutrition"), but the "camp fevers" resulting from folk crowding into urban areas to obtain the relief that was being provided. We who have grown up in "welfare" societies should be wary of judging a period of history that had a very different mindset towards poverty and natural disaster.

There were several factors that made it as bad as it was, most of which – ranging from the enormous damage caused by the Great Storm of 1839, through changed patterns of bird and fish migration due to global warming at the end of the 1650-1850 mini ice age, to the refusal of many farmers (of all levels of wealth) to adopt crop rotation and the methods of harvesting/re-sowing of the potato that unfortunately guaranteed re-infestation of the following year's crop – were beyond the control of any Government department. Ironically, it was the 1847 Liberal/Whig government which made the problem worse, not Tory landlords, through its religious sensibilities that deemed the whole thing an act of God which it was blasphemous to interefere with, and its "laissez-faire" attitude to the (self-)regulation of selling/exporting food by Irish merchants (the merchant classes were the party's main vote base, remember).

It has been said that the main difference between Ireland and the rest of the UK was that religious differences meant that landlords did not have to face their tenants across the aisle in church every Sunday, and see the state of them. What is also interesting is that the Blight also struck Scotland (especially the Highlands and Western Isles) and west Wales – both of which suffered higher percentage death tolls than Ireland, though not the massive migrations – and one or two parts of England.

It is a common misconcpetion that the Tory Government "allowed" the Potato Blight and its related horrors to happen;

Well, perhaps the word 'allowed' was off, but the British government's belief in limited government and Adam Smith's economics led them to put off and underplay any help that they did offer, and whatever methods were developed, and I haven't read anything of that sort, so I'd be interested in any sources you migh know. I am sure the religious differences were part and parcal of the issue. I know that what help was delivered to Ireland was administered by Englishmen through the landed Gentry, so even there, some biases and favortism was involved.

Paranoia outstripped reality by a considerable margin.

Probbaly true, but in no way precluding a scenario based on the paranoid perception. Have local luddite or hunger unrest coincide with disaffection among the militia over reported deployment overseas, and things might get a bit out of hand before reliable troops (and are they really?) could be brought in from further afield… Nothing to change the course of the war mind you, but certainly enough for a few evenings' worth of fictitious gaming.

<<…..but the British government's belief in limited government and Adam Smith's economics led them to put off and underplay any help that they did offer…..>>

Well, people make a lot of this, but of course the other side of that coin is the primacy of the liberty of the individual over the interest of the state (which in turn has led directly to modern-day human rights), rather than the power of compulsion of the state over the individual, as in the Roman, Napoleonic and Soviet legal codes. Both systems have their faults, and you have to take the rough with the smooth.

<<….. and whatever methods were developed, and I haven't read anything of that sort, so I'd be interested in any sources you migh know…..>>

I'm not really sure what this refers to, but I'll try to add some detail.

There was a massive programme of building workhouses in Ireland, to the point where there were 300,000 places, as against 200,000 in England & Wales. Whilst people today throw up their hands in horror at the mere mention of the name, they were quite decent edifices when originally built – for some reason they are always shown as decrepit and dirty in period dramas, even though they would have been brand new at that time – and were a big improvement on starving in the gutter (in 1779, Dr Johnson quotes a London magistrate who remarks that in the area covered by his circuit alone – there were, I think, five in London overall – 20 people a week, so 1,000 a year, were starving to death on the street).

<<I know that what help was delivered to Ireland was administered by Englishmen through the landed Gentry, so even there, some biases and favortism was involved.>>

I don't think this is entirely true. Ludlow Beamish, scion of the Cork brewing family and author of the famous history of the KGL, received a gold medal paid for by public subscription for his efforts in administering aid to the local community. he was by no means unique, but – as with generous landlords who fed tenants, or provided work programmes, a lot of the positive stuff was written out post-1922. Many wealthy landlords were several times removed from the eviction problem because of the plethora of sub-leasing that went on in Ireland at that time, each inferior landlord having, of course, to ask proportionally more rent to cover his own and still make money. (It is worth noting, according to Packenham's "Year of Libterty", that quite a few 1798 rebels were outraged at being accused of treason because their fight was against their landlords, not the King.)

Several charities were set up in England and Scotland for relief of the Irish people, during 1845. Victoria was patron of some of them, and ended up donating £30,000.00 GBP of her own money (the £5.00 GBP, compared to £100.00 GBP for Battersea Dogs Home, is a deliberate misconstruction) or about Eur.3M at today's values. These charities raised susbtantial sums of money, which seemed to find their way to Ireland, but not much more than that. There were certainly attempts to "convert" Catholics to Protestantism in return for food, but this involved Irish evangelical groups and didn't (as far as I am aware) involve th government or English people.

The systems of local benefit (parish council based) did not work in Ireland because although Catholics were required to pay tithes to the Church of Ireland, they were not given the same access to relief that Catholics in England were usually given in spite of their Dissenter status. Also, Irish land law provided that a tenant had a notional interest in the freehold of the land, which made him ineligible for local or higher forms of relief. This did not apply in Scotland, or in England & Wales, as far as I know. Odd as it may sound, in cases where a landlord (who was often also a tenant under a superior lease, rather than the actual landowner) was destitute, it was actually a kindness to evict the tenant as it made him and his family eligible for relief. In 1848, an act was passed requiring a landlord to compensate an evicted tenant for any improvements he had made to the property.

Was that the kind of info you were looking for?