Thank you - Owen is completely new to me and I'll follow it (him?) up. As I understand it, militia regiments had on occasion been sent from Britain to Ireland (and vice versa?) on an ad hoc basis before 1811, but that in 1811 the government regularised the process and it became quite common. At the same time the ministers established a permanent system of drawing around 10,000 recruits for the army from the militia each year. Finally in early 1814 a militia brigade volunteered to join Wellington in the south of France, and did so, but rather too late to be of any real use. I suspect that the precedent of using the militia for overseas operations provoked some disquiet, but I can't remember any details.

Rory