3-028-244 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Incidents of the Easter Volunteer Review, 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 inhabitants seemed glad to welcome the citizen defenders of their native land...[It was] a great military and popular gathering, which was one of the most successful, thanks to the fine spring weather, that have ever taken place'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.