So William Cobbett goes to his regiment. And while others are swilling, or gambling, or idling, he is continually training. Rapid promotion is the result. At the end of little more than a year, he is Sergeant-Major, having been placed in that proud position over the heads of fifty other sergeants.
While, however, he was only corporal, he was made clerk of the regiment, a post which brought him in an immensity of labour, a great deal of which was due to the ignorance or unworthiness of his superior officers. The studies, too, were not neglected:--
“I was studying at one and the same time, Dr. Lowth’s _Grammar_, Dr. Watts’s _Logic_, the _Rhetoric_ of some fellow whom I have forgotten, a book on _Geometry_, … Vauban’s _Fortifications_, and (_ex-officio_) the famous Duke of York’s _Military Exercise and Evolutions_, explaining these latter by ground-plans.… Never did these cause me to neglect my duty in one single particular; a duty of almost every hour in the day, from daylight till nine o’clock at night.” … “When I was sergeant-major … I found time to study _French_ and _Fortification_. My _chef-d’œuvre_ in the latter was the plan of a regular sexagon with every description of outwork. When I had finished my plan, on a small scale, and in the middle of a very large piece of drawing-paper, I set to work to lay down the plan of a siege, made my line of circumvallation, fixed my batteries and cantonments, opened my trenches, made my approaches, covered by my gabions and fascines,--at last effected a mine, and had all prepared for blowing up the citadel.” … “When I was in the army, I made, for the teaching of young corporals and sergeants, a little book on _arithmetic_; and it is truly surprising in how short a time they learned all that was necessary for them to know of that necessary department of learning. I used to make each of them copy the book.”
Those were days when a man might rise above the rank-and-file.[4] Cobbett himself had the promise of an ensigncy, when he came to make application for his discharge. As a matter of course, such officers, through their skill, prudence, and general knowledge, became the crack men of their regiments; the best practically-instructed men, perhaps, in the army. For the rest, the average officer must have been a curious make-up; sent into the army, often as early as fourteen years of age--without any special training--he was there for his social position; and, except when on active service, passed a frivolous sort of existence; often so ignorant of his professional duties (_i.e._ everything beyond daily routine) that they were habitually shirked, excepting when the colonel was a Tartar, or when a clever _factotum_ could be found among his subordinates.