Upon the stationary condition of the corps a celebrated officer of the royal engineers has made the subjoined correct remarks:—[173] “From the close of the American war till the year 1811, all the companies of royal military artificers were kept permanently fixed at their respective stations, both at home and abroad, where they remained for life, in what may, for military men, be styled a state of vegetation; so that they were, at that period, a vast number of men who had actually grown grey in the corps, who had never entered a transport, nor made a single day’s march from the head-quarters of their company. To the men at Gibraltar and other foreign stations the service of the corps was thus rendered almost equivalent to transportation for life. Everywhere they intermixed with civilians; they married in a proportion unknown in any other corps; so much so, that the number of women and children belonging to one company was often equal to that of a battalion of the line.”[174] ----- Footnote 173: Pasley’s ‘Elementary Fortification,’ note a, p. iv., vol. i. Footnote 174: There was a William Painter at Gibraltar, whose affluence was something extraordinary. He enlisted into the corps in July, 1798, and though a man of very useful intelligence, only attained the rank of second-corporal in 1807. He tried to procure his discharge to return to his estate in Cornwall, but such was the pressure for men, his desire was negatived. His humble position, however, did not prevent his living in ease and luxury. He kept his servants, horses, and, it is said, his carriage, and entertained and enjoyed very good society. Well could he do all this, for, coupling with his own receipts his wife’s settlement, he possessed an income of _eleven hundreds pounds a-year_! He died at the Rock, August 13, 1811, aged 45 years. By his Will he left 5000_l._ stock to his two sons—John, and William Grible; 300_l._ to Sub-Lieutenant Falconer and his family, and a few smaller legacies to relatives and an attached servant, besides considerable landed property, houses, and the usual legal addenda of “messuages, tenements, and hereditaments” at Gwennap in Cornwall to his elder son John, “and his heirs for ever.” The widow, under a jointure, was in receipt of 550_l._ a-year. As if to show how likely fortune is to be overtaken by calamity, Sub-Lieutenant Falconer, five days after the death-bed remembrance of the corporal, was fired at from an open window by private Samuel Fraser. The ball luckily missed him, but whizzed sufficiently near to be alarming. The ruffian was sent to a condemned regiment in commutation for his sentence of one thousand lashes! ----- Under the new arrangement the companies were distributed as follows:—