In 1826, George, Lord Bingham, who had exchanged into the Seventeenth eleven months before, succeeded Colonel Stanhope in command of the regiment. We shall meet with him again as Lord Lucan twenty-eight years hence; not without results. Lord Bingham retained the command until 1837, and brought the regiment up to a very high pitch of efficiency. He was a keen soldier, who had taken the pains to study his profession; a very rare thing in those days; and had even taken the trouble to join the Russian army in the war of 1828–29 against the Turks, in order to gain experience of active service. He came to the Seventeenth at a time when such a commander was especially valuable, for the slack period of the British army, perhaps inevitable after the exertions of the great war, was telling heavily on the cavalry. The drill was stiff, unpractical, and obsolete--designed, apparently, to assimilate the movements of cavalry and infantry as far as possible to each other. It was so useful (this was the pretext alleged) for officers to be able to handle horse and foot with equal facility. “It is hardly credible,” writes a critic in 1832, “that the late regulations did not contain a single formation from column into line, in which one or more of the squadrons had not to rein back as a necessary and essential part of the movement.” Even when this was altered, officers were still posted in the ranks instead of in front of their troops. At this time, too, and for years after, changes of formation were always carried out to the halt. A regiment that required to take ground to the right, wheeled into “columns of troops to the right,” to the halt; then advanced as far as was necessary, then halted, and then wheeled into line, once again to the halt. In many regiments “field cards” were issued, “drawn out in all the pride of red ink,” with each movement numbered and marked in its regular succession; and thus the programme for the day of review was rehearsed for weeks beforehand. [Sidenote: 1829.] Lord Bingham had not long been in command before the uniform of the regiment was again changed. When the change was made I cannot with accuracy say; but in 1829 we find the white lapel-like facings on the jacket done away with, and a plain blue jacket with white collar and cuffs preferred in its place. The old red and white plume also disappears at this period for ever, and a black plume is worn in its stead. [Sidenote: 1830.]