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.
Tanks in the British Army such as the British A9 Cruiser Mk I slowly became less common. British tanks armament and use in the battles also had to change as German Blitzkrieg tactics and doctrine shifted towards faster medium and heavy tanks fighting large multi-tank battles, with the role of the infantry tank in assaults taken by simpler self-propelled artillery. In British practice, the main armament of the infantry tank went in three phases. The pre-Dunkirk British Army Matilda I had only a single machine gun, a compromise forced by the low cost to which they had been built. The Matilda II gained a capable