In the 1790s, Great Britain faced a recruitment crisis. Swathes of men had been called up to fight Revolutionary France. This left the British Army thinly stretched, especially in the garrisons scattered across the British Empire. With a recruitment crisis brewing, the army resorted to recruiting boys aged between 13 and 16. Three regiments were designated ‘experimental’ battalions: 22nd (The Cheshire), 34th (Cumberland) and 65th (2nd Yorkshire, North Riding) Regiments of Foot. These regiments recruited boys who were destined to grow up in the army before being sent east to serve in the burgeoning empire of Britain’s Honourable East India Company.

Boys in Red Coats is the first full-length study to examine the recruitment, training and deployment of these boys. The war with France was a catalyst for the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, the Duke of York, to future-proof recruitment in the army and provide a source of manpower fit for the far reaches of the British Empire. Some parishes across England seized the opportunity to reduce the growing cost of poor relief and to relieve unrest in the counties, actively encouraging boys to join the army. As a result, a number of young boys raised in these battalions were sent to fight Xhosa warriors in South Africa, indefatigable Maratha defenders in the great citadels of India, and French and Arabian pirates in Mauritius and the Persian Gulf. Those boys who survived and returned home were veterans of some of the harshest fighting conditions in the nineteenth century.