After leaving Eton, I received an Ensign's commission in the First
Guards during the month of December, 1812. Though many years have
elapsed, I still remember my boyish delight at being named to so
distinguished a regiment, and at the prospect of soon taking a part in
the glorious deeds of our army in Spain. I joined in February 1813,
and cannot but recollect with astonishment how limited and imperfect
was the instruction which an officer received at that time: he
absolutely entered the army without any military education whatever. We
were so defective in our drill, even after we had passed out of the
hands of the sergeant, that the excellence of our non-commissioned
officers alone prevented us from meeting with the most fatal disasters
in the face of the enemy. Physical force and our bull-dog energy
carried many a hard-fought field. Luckily, nous avons change tout
cela, and our officers may now vie with those of any other army in an
age when the great improvements in musketry, in artillery practice, and
in the greater rapidity of manoeuvring, have entirely changed the art
of war, and rendered the individual education of those in every grade
of command an absolute necessity.
After passing through the hands of the drill sergeant with my friends
Dashwood, Batty, Browne, Lascelles, Hume, and Masters, and mounting
guard at St. James's for a few months, we were hurried off, one fine
morning, in charge of a splendid detachment of five hundred men to join
Lord Wellington in Spain. Macadam had just begun to do for England
what Marshal Wade did in Scotland seventy years before; and we were
able to march twenty miles a day with ease until we reached Portsmouth.
There we found transports ready to convey a large reinforcement, of
which we formed part, to Lord Wellington, who was now making his
arrangements, after taking St. Sebastian, for a yet more important
event in the history of the Peninsular War--the invasion of France.