While most of the Regular Army was fighting overseas, the coasts of England and Wales were defended by the embodied Militia, but Ireland had no equivalent force.

The new Act was based on existing English precedents, with the men conscripted by ballot to fill county quotas (paid substitutes were permitted) and the officers having to meet certain property qualifications.

[11] The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars saw the British and Irish militia embodied for a whole generation, becoming regiments of full-time professional soldiers (though restricted to service in Britain or Ireland respectively), which the regular army increasingly saw as a prime source of recruits.

They served in coast defences, manned garrisons, guarded prisoners of war, and carried out internal security duties.

A large French expeditionary force appeared in Bantry Bay on 21 December and troops from all over Ireland were marched towards the threatened area.

With this force he successfully defended the town from attack on 1 June, after which the King's County Militia was accepted as a reliable regiment.

[19] In return a number of Irish militia regiments offered to serve on the mainland afterwards, a proposal supported by the Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-Chief of Ireland, Marquess Cornwallis.

The King's County regiment embarked in June 1799 with a strength of 760 privates, 285 women and 259 children, and garrisoned the island for a year while the French invasion threat was still high.

[23] Over the following years the regiments carried out garrison duties at various towns across Ireland, attended summer training camps, and reacted to various invasion scares, none of which materialised.

[26] Napoleon abdicated in April 1814 and with the end of the war most Irish Militia regiments marched back to their home counties and were disembodied.

[2][4][6][33][37] In 1894 a group of masked militia officers broke into the quarters of Surgeon Major Fox at Birr Barracks and assaulted two of his servants.

The servants initially identified Maj Warner Hastings, 15th Earl of Huntingdon, as one of the masked assailants, but he was found to have a solid alibi and was acquitted.

[38] On 7 March the battalion embarked on the RMS Kildonan Castle with a strength of 18 officers and 476 ORs in six companies under the command of Col Holroyd Smyth.

It formed a chain of outposts on the adjacent hills to connect up the junction with Steynsburg to the west and Burgersdorp in the north, with detachments stationed at Bamboo Bridges and Wandersboom.

On 2 October the Boers were reported to be marching on Stormberg, the garrison was reinforced with Cape Police, and a strong inlying picquet established to protect the vital railway junction, while all other available troops went out to try to intercept the enemy.

Here they continued their harassing tactics with frequent attempts to destroy rail lines, meaning that the men of 3rd Bn were under arms day and night until December.

[4][6] During this period the Right Half Bn at Stormberg provided the crew of a small Armoured train, The Leinster Lily, which patrolled the lines.

A detachment of 100 men from 3rd Bn under Maj Barry was attached to the Kimberley Column for six months, operating in pursuit of the Boer guerrillas.

[4][6] On 9 October the battalion moved to Modder River to protect the repaired railway bridge and to man the blockhouse line between Enslin and Spyfontein, with Lt-Col Luttman-Johnson appointed commandant of the district.

The duties were onerous, and the band and battalion staff had to take their turn in the blockhouses, some of which only had three men to work on the railway line by day and keep watch at night.

[2][4][6] Both colonels Smyth and Luttman-Jonshon were awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO)[39] After the Boer War, the future of the militia was called into question.

There were moves to reform the Auxiliary Forces (Militia, Yeomanry and Volunteers) to take their place in the six Army Corps proposed by the Secretary of State for War, St John Brodrick.

Daily working parties of 250 men were put to digging trenches to protect the naval base of Queenstown under the supervision of the Royal Engineers.

On 20 August the battalion moved from Shanbally Camp into Victoria Barracks at Cork, which had been vacated by the 2nd Bn going to France with the British Expeditionary Force.

Additional training courses had to be introduced, covering anti-gas measures, night operations etc.. During 1915 3rd (R) Bn sent 51 officers and 2042 ORs to the 1st, 2nd and 6th Bns in the field.

Meanwhile, the officer cadets at Fermoy were equipped with full service kit and sent to guard the munitions factory at Wexford, later forming flying columns to round up suspects.

[52] On 24 June 1917 the battalion was turned out at midnight when Sinn Féin demonstrators wrecked the recruiting office and nearby shops in Cork.

The troops were confined to barracks to avoid confrontation during a subsequent visit to Cork by the Sinn Féin leader Éamon de Valera.

On 25 May the 4th and 5th (Extra Reserve) Bns of the Leinsters (the old Queen's County and Royal Meath Militia), stationed at Dover and Glencorse Barracks respectively, were closed down and their remaining personnel transferred to 3rd (R) Bn at Portsmouth.

[33][59] On the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War the English counties had drawn lots to determine the relative precedence of their militia regiments.