3-028-239 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Easter Volunteer Review: the 1st Middlesex Artillery on the march from London to Brighton, 1870. British soldiers take part in an annual event near Brighton: a '...sham fight on Easter Monday, in which the Volunteer Rifle Corps of London and the neighbouring counties, with a few coming from Lancashire or Yorkshire, mustered to the number of 26,000 on Brighton Downs...a large part of metropolitan volunteer forces went down to Brighton on the Saturday, or on Good Friday, sure of passing the holiday time agreeably in that pleasant seaside town. The 1st Middlesex Artillery, or Hon. Artillery Company, was one of the corps which travelled by the high-road, instead of by railway; and our Artist has delineated the scene in a village through which it passed, where the inhabitants seemed glad to welcome the citizen defenders of their native land'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.