In consequence of the war and troubles in which his native province was involved, his education was much neglected; and though his great military genius in after years enabled him in some degree to supply the deficiency, he never ceased to regret the loss he had sustained, by those circumstances over which he had no control, but which, fortunately for himself, forced him to earn his bread by his sword as a soldier of fortune. He had learned little more than to read and to write, with a smattering of geography and geometry, when in 1731 he entered the Russian service as a cadet. He was then in his fifteenth year, and Anne, daughter of Ivan II., niece of Peter the Great, and consort of the Duke of Courland, was Czarina of Russia. The corps to which young Loudon was attached was a battalion of infantry; and after being two years in garrison with it, an opportunity was afforded him of making an essay in arms, when the war of the Double Election created disturbances in northern Europe. In 1733 Stanislaus Leczinski, whom Charles XII. had invested with the Sovereignty of Poland in 1704, and whom Peter the Great had dethroned, was chosen king a second time on his daughter being married to Louis XV., from whom he received a paltry succour, consisting of only four battalions of infantry; but the Austrian Emperor, on being assisted by the Russians, compelled the Poles to make _another_ selection, and the Elector of Saxony was raised to their throne by the name of Augustus III., while poor King Stanislaus was driven into Dantzig, where the Russians followed and besieged him. Loudon's regiment served with the blockading force, at the investment of this populous city, which is the capital of Western Prussia, and at that time had a population of two hundred thousand. Loudon was present during the siege and capture of Dantzig, from which, however, the ex-King of Poland made an escape, and renounced for ever the poor distinction of being monarch of a republic plunged in anarchy. In the year 1734, his regiment formed part of the army which was sent by the Empress Anne towards the Low Countries, and spread a terror along the frontier of Germany. In this campaign he marched from the banks of the Wolga to those of the Rhine. A peace being signed at Vienna, the forces marched to the Dnieper, the scene of so many sanguinary encounters between the Russ and Turk. This movement was to repel the Osmanlies and punish the Tartars of the Crimea, who had made an irruption into the southern province of Russia, and committed unparalleled outrages.