year he was accused of peculation and other offences to the emperor, who caned him severely and deprived him of his plenipotentiary powers, despite his undeniable services in Persia, but for which Peter could never have emerged so triumphantly from the difficult Persian war of 1722–23. Catherine I. made Voluinsky governor of Kazan for a short time, and he held the same post for two years (1728–30) under Peter II. But his incurable corruption and unbridled temper so discredited the government that he was deprived of the post shortly after the accession of Anne. From 1730 to 1736 Voluinsky served in the army under Münnich. In 1737 he was appointed the second Russian plenipotentiary at the abortive congress of Nemirov held for the conclusion of peace with the Porte. In 1738 he was introduced into the Russian cabinet by Biren as a counterpoise against Andrei Osterman. Voluinsky, however, now thought himself strong enough to attempt to supersede Biren himself, and openly opposed the favourite in the Council of State in the debates as to the indemnity due to Poland for the violations of her territory during the war of the Polish Succession, Biren advising that a liberal indemnity should be given, whereas Voluinsky objected to any indemnity at all. Biren thereupon forced Anne to order an inquiry into Voluinsky's past career, with the result that he was tried before a tribunal of Biren's creatures and condemned to be broken on the wheel and then beheaded. On the scaffold, “by the clemency of the empress,” his punishment was mitigated to the severing of his right hand followed by decapitation. The whole business seems to have been purely a piece of vindictiveness on the part of Biren.
See R. N. Bain, The Pupils of Peter the Great (London, 1897); D. A. Korsakov, From the Lives of Russian Statesmen of the XVIIIth Century (Rus.) (Kazan, 1891). (R. N. B.)
VOLUNTEERS, a general term for soldiers who are not professionals nor permanently embodied under arms in peace. Although it would be difficult to say when the principle of volunteer organization for national defence was first adopted in England, it is certain that voluntary military societies existed in various parts of the country in the reign of Henry VIII., who in fact granted a charter in 1537 to the “Fraternity or Guylde of Saint George: Maisters and Rulars of the said Science of Artillary as aforesaid rehearsed for long-bowes Cros-bowes and Hand-Gonnes.” This ancient corps is now the Honourable Artillery Company of London. Although the Honourable Artillery Company has always been a distinct association, it was at one time (notably during the Great Rebellion) a centre of instruction for the City-trained bands, and in later times the H.A.C., divided into artillery and infantry units, has been assimilated as regards training and obligations to the Volunteer or Territorial Forces. Charters of a similar kind were granted to a Colchester society in 1619 and to one at Bury St Edmunds in 1628. In the 16th and 17th centuries also various temporary corps outside the militia or trained-band organization were called volunteers. At Boston, Massachusetts, there is established a corps bearing the name of the “Antient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts.” This company was formed in 1638 after its London prototype.
The notion of a large organized Volunteer Force, however, seems to have originated in England at the time of the Militia Bill of 1757, which was amended in 1758 so as to allow the militia captains to accept volunteers instead of the ordinary militiamen who were compulsorily furnished pro rata by each parish. In 1778 the volunteers were still voluntary substitutes for militiamen, though formed in separate companies of the militia unit, but volunteer corps soon began to form themselves independently of the militia. In the meantime a large volunteer force had sprung up in Ireland. In 1779, Ireland being threatened with foreign invasion, a levy of 20,000 Protestants was made by the gentry in the north. The 20,000 Protestants had grown in 1782 to 100,000 of all arms and both creeds, and they used their strength effectively for political purposes. After the establishment of the parliament at Dublin, and the general peace of 1783, attempts were made to use this army for party purposes, and the moderate men in parliament therefore hastened to disband it. But this military coup d’état was not forgotten in England. Ireland indeed supplied 70,000 volunteers during the Napoleonic wars, practically in place of her militia quota. But the rebellion of 1798 kept alive the memory of 1782, and about 1804 the government disarmed and disbanded them.
The English and Scottish volunteers, disbanded in 1783, were promptly revived when the French Revolutionary Wars produced a new and more formidable enemy. Volunteer corps, some dependent as companies upon the militia, others independent units, were raised in 1794, volunteer service counting as militia service for the purposes of raising the county, town or parish quota. This was followed in 1798 by the formation, for purely local defence, of the Armed Associations, the equivalent of the modern “rifle clubs.” At the peace of Amiens the 340,000 volunteers then serving were nearly all disbanded, but one or two crops passed into the regular army as entire regiments, and some others managed to avoid disbandment until the renewal of the war revived the whole force. The danger of invasion was then at its height, and in a few months the force numbered 380,000 men, or 3½% of a population which already kept up a regular army and a militia. But the training of this mass was very unequal; the numbers fell off as the likelihood of invasion decreased, and in the reaction from the first enthusiasm it began to be questioned whether the volunteers could be of much value under the easy conditions of service prevailing. In 1808, therefore, the Local Militia was formed, in which the terms of enlistment and training abilities were both stricter and better defined. The greater part of the volunteers transferred themselves to the Local Militia, which by 1812 (aided by the ballot) had reached a strength of 215,000 as against the 70,000 of the remaining volunteers. With the general peace of 1814 all these forces except the H.A.C. and the Yeomanry (q.v.) disappeared.
After an interval of nearly half a century the warlike attitude of France caused British citizens once more to arm for the protection of their country. The British army and navy had declined in strength and efficiency; France, on the other hand, by the energetic development of her military and naval power and the early application of steam to ships of war, brought the possibilities of the invasion of England in 1846 within measurable distance. England at this time was awakened to the gravity of the situation by the publication of a letter from Wellington to Sir John Burgoyne,[1] followed by a well-timed pamphlet by Sir Charles Napier, entitled The Defence of England by Volunteer Corps and Militia. The French danger, in abeyance during the Crimean War, was revived in 1857, when the tone of the French press became more and more menacing. The war in China, the Indian Mutiny and difficulties with the United States taxed the regular army to the utmost; while at home, besides the actual garrisons, there were barely 36,000 militia. This threatening condition of affairs tended to aggravate, if not to produce, a serious commercial panic. It was then that the volunteer movement began, and the Orsini episode and the openly expressed threats of French officers were all that was necessary to free the pent-up enthusiasm.
A few rifle clubs were already in existence, and two of these, working as military bodies from the outset (1852–53), became the two senior volunteer battalions—1st V.B. (now 4th Bn.) Devonshire Regt., and Victoria Rifles (now 9th Bn. London Regt.). But it was not until the situation became acute that the War Office took the step of raising the “Volunteer Force.” A circular letter, dated 12th May 1859, from the secretary for war to the lords-lieutenant of counties in Great Britain authorized the formation of volunteer corps. The general enrolment took place at first under the old statute (44 Geo. III.). The main provisions of that act, however, were found inapplicable to the altered conditions under which invasion was now possible, and they failed also to provide for the maintenance of the volunteer force on a permanent footing in peace. A new act (Volunteer Act 1863) was therefore passed, the most important provision of which was that apprehended invasion should constitute a
- ↑ See Life and Letters of Field-Marshal Sir John Burgoyne.
