Recruitment in the British Army such as French Royalists, Germans, Greeks and Corsicans to supplement its forces. In 1813 one fifth of the army, 52,000 men, were such volunteers. The British Army in 1813 contained over 250,000 men, though this was much larger in comparison to the army at the beginning of the war, the all volunteer British army was still much smaller than that of France, which with conscription had an army over 2.6 million. From 1798 onwards, structural, training and logistical reforms implemented or authorised by the Duke of York (as commander-in-chief of the army) slowly improved the lot of the ordinary soldier.
Recruitment in the British Army war, joining the Army could still mean effectively joining for life, which was frequently brutally cut short. For instance, a posting to the Caribbean in 1790 was seen as a near death sentence, as thousands of men died or were disabled by disease there. The Army still struggled to raise the troops required to replace the discharged, wounded and dead as the war against France continued. As early as 1794, 18,596 soldiers died on active service and another 40,639 men were discharged. This would remain a constant theme during the Napoleonic wars, and the British Army also used foreign volunteers,