" And his duty did
not consist in occasional drilling and reviews, but in serious
marches, sometimes of thirty miles in a day, and camping under canvas.
One encampment, on Winchester Downs, lasted four months. Gibbon does
not hesitate to say that the superiority of his grenadiers to the
detachments of the regular army, with which they were often mingled,
was so striking that the most prejudiced regular could not have
hesitated a moment to admit it. But the drilling, and manoeuvring, and
all that pertained to the serious side of militia business interested
Gibbon, and though it took up time it gave him knowledge of a special
kind, of which he quite appreciated the value. He was much struck, for
instance, by the difference between the nominal and effective force of
every regiment he had seen, even when supposed to be complete, and
gravely doubts whether a nominal army of 100,000 men often brings
_fifty_ thousand into the field. What he found unendurable was the
constant shifting of quarters, the utter want of privacy and leisure
it often entailed, and the distasteful society in which he was forced
to live.
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