ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to look at the effectiveness of the military in fulfilling its public order role during the nineties and at some of the contemporary attitudes to this role. It discusses the soldiers' policing role, and how this role was authorised by the Law and perceived by individuals. The chapter looks at the government's policy of barrack building, begun in 1792, and assesses to what extent this was a police measure. The food shortages of 1795-96 and 1799-1801 provoked widespread disorder and, especially during the second crisis, at times the language of popular disorder adopted the language of the French Revolution. The Hammonds maintained that during the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, the north and midlands and the manufacturing areas of the south-west resembled "a country under military occupation." The chapter explores the political reliability of the military is probed, together with the threat to public order which the military sometimes constituted.
