Early history With the increasing importance of artillery defences by the mid-Nineteenth century (and the usual reluctance of the British Government to fund an expansion of the regular military forces), a military reserve artillery force became a pressing concern to aid in maintaining the fixed defensive batteries (the units tasked with these duties were referred to either as
garrison artillery or
coastal artillery). Through the Eighteenth Century, and up to the end of the
Napoleonic Wars and the
American War of 1812, the military reserve forces that supported (but were not part of either) the
British Army and the
Board of Ordnance Military Corps (which included the Royal Artillery, the
Royal Engineers, and the
Royal Sappers and Miners) included the
Militia (which was normally an all-infantry force), and the mounted Yeomanry. During wartime, these were supplemented by Volunteer units that were normally disbanded with peace. Royal Artillery coastal batteries were often brought up to strength with drafts from the British Army or the militia, or by temporarily re-tasking militia units or raising volunteer artillery corps. In
Bermuda, from the Seventeenth Century until after the American War of 1812, men with status and the required funds were appointed as
Captains of forts (which spared them from any obligation to serve in the Militia), in command of fortified coastal batteries manned by volunteers through peace and war.
Reorganisation In 1852, with fear of an invasion of Britain by France, the reserve forces were re-organised. The Militia, which had become a
paper tiger, changed from a conscripted force to one in which recruits voluntarily engaged for a term of service. It also ceased to be an all-infantry force. As the most critical shortage was of garrison artillery, a number of Militia Infantry regiments were re-tasked as
Militia Artillery, and new militia units were also raised as artillery. The Militia Artillery units, which (like other reserve units) were raised under the Lords-Lieutenants of counties, who appointed officers), and were all tasked with garrison duties at fixed batteries. The invasion scare also led to the re-establishment of the
Volunteer Force as a permanent (though only part-time, except when embodied for emergencies) branch of the British military. This force (which differed from the Militia primarily in that its volunteers did not engage for a term of service, and might quit with fourteen days notice, except while embodied) contained a mixture of artillery, engineering and infantry units. Similar militia and Volunteer units were also raised in various British colonies. During the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, the military forces were re-organised through a succession of reforms, with the Board of Ordnance abolished after the Crimean War. Its military corps, including the Royal Artillery, as well as its civilian Commissariat, transport and stores organs were absorbed into the British Army. The Militia and the Volunteer Force units were more closely integrated with the British Army, though remaining separate forces. In 1882, the Militia Artillery units lost their individual identities, becoming numbered brigades organised within Royal Artillery territorial divisions, of which the British Isles were divided into eleven. In 1889 the number of divisions was reduced to three, and the Militia Artillery brigades were renamed again, mostly regaining some variation of their original territorial names. The
Home (i.e.,
British Isles) Militia Artillery collectively had constituted a
Corps of Militia Artillery, within which units had been numbered in order-of-precedence until 1882. The Home Militia as a whole also formed a numbered
Corps of the British Army in the Twentieth Century. Separately from the Home Militia, Militia units of Bermuda, Malta and the Channel Islands were numbered together also on the British Army order-of-precedence of corps (amongst themselves, they were ordered in accordance with the precedence of their parent corps). Other colonial Militia Artillery units not funded by the War Office were considered auxiliary forces and did not appear on the British Army order-of-precedence (making them British military units, but not part of the British military force titled the British Army, nor constituting separate armies or parts of separate armies).
Disbanding When the Volunteer Force and the Yeomanry in the United Kingdom were merged to create the
Territorial Force in 1908, the Militia was redesignated the
Special Reserve. At the same time, plans were made to convert all of the Royal Garrison Artillery (Militia) units to Royal Field Artillery, but all were instead disbanded (although Militia Artillery units remained in some of the colonies, and these were not redesignated as Special Reserve. The most notable of these was the
Bermuda Militia Artillery, which, like the
Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps, formed part of the
garrison of the important
Imperial Fortress colony of Bermuda). The remainder of the Special Reserve was redesignated as the Militia again after the First World War and permanently suspended. ==Ranks and insignia==