When he entered the army it was at a time of peace, when England was recovering from her long and disastrous American war, and the French Revolution with all its horrors had not yet convulsed {8} Europe. It was well for the young soldier that peaceful garrison duty at home was his lot for a few years. There was plenty of work in store for him abroad. In 1790 he purchased his lieutenancy and for a time was quartered in Guernsey and the neighbouring island of Jersey. At the same time, though not in the same regiment, there was quartered with him Mr. Francis Gore, exactly of his own age, who had entered the army about the same time, and who was destined in after years to be associated with him in Canada. In 1791, having raised an independent company, Isaac Brock was gazetted as captain and exchanged into the 49th, then ordered on foreign service in the West Indies. He was now no longer a stripling but a man of twenty-two, of commanding stature, very erect, of a strong athletic build, with a frank open countenance and very winning manners. Though of a very gentle disposition he yet possessed that quickness of decision and firmness in peril which on many trying occasions during his military career proved most useful qualities. From 1791 to 1793 he was quartered in Barbadoes and Jamaica. During those years, though still at peace, England had spent three millions in increasing her navy, and was, therefore, well prepared to hold her supremacy on the sea. In 1793 the war that the great minister, Pitt, had vainly tried to avert, broke out, and from that {9} time until the peace of Amiens in 1801, England was engaged in a desperate struggle with her hereditary foe led by the consummate genius of Napoleon.[4] On December 1st, 1793, the French Convention declared war on Great Britain and Holland. Pitt thought that the war would be brief, but he had miscalculated the power and resources of the enemy, and for more than seven years it raged without intermission. [Sidenote: Service in West Indies] Service in the West Indies had proved disastrous to Brock, for he fell ill of a fever there which nearly cost him his life, and to which his young cousin succumbed. Through this illness Brock was most tenderly and skilfully nursed by his servant Dobson, who followed his fortunes and was his faithful friend throughout his life. On his recovery, Captain Brock was ordered home on sick leave, and the healing salt breezes of his native island soon restored him to health. In September, 1794, it was the intention of the royal court of Guernsey to raise a local regiment for the defence of the island and the majority in it was offered to Captain Brock, then on leave. He accepted conditionally, but the appointment which would have changed his whole career fell {10} through, as the intention of the government was not carried out.