I79°] BUNBURY DESCRIBES THE ARMY 13

the generations that succeed them, that their words about them read like platitudes. In order, therefore, to understand the point of Moore's next letter, it is necessary to have first read the following description of the British army at or a little after this time, from the graphic pen of Sir Charles Bunbury.

" Men of the present generation," writes Sir Charles in 1854, " can hardly form an idea of what the military forces of England really were when the great war broke out in 1793. Our army was lax in its discipline, entirely without system, and very weak in numbers. Each colonel of a regiment managed it according to his own notions, or neglected it altogether. There was no uniformity of drill or movement, professional pride was rare, professional knowledge still more so.

" Every department of the staff was more or less deficient, particularly the commissariat arid medical branches. The regimental officers in those days were, as well as their men, hard drinkers; and the latter, under a loose discipline, were much addicted to marauding and acts of licentious violence, which made them detested by the people of the country. Some of the cavalry, dashing fellows in a fight, piqued themselves on being 'rough and ready/ to which might justly be added, * drunken and disorderly.1

"But the most crying infamy was that which resulted from the employment of crimps on a large scale. Our Government made contracts with certain scoundrels (bearing the King's commission!), who engaged to furnish so many hundred men each for such and such sums of money. The deeds of atrocity, to say nothing of the frauds, which attended the working of this