But in the Peninsula, youth and ignorance of military history do not appear to have interfered with successful leading, and he who delights to read of gallant deeds will find, in the accounts of the various fights, scores of episodes in which boy officers set brilliant examples to their men, and by their valour at a critical moment often saved the day. Such were the leaders of Forlorn Hopes and of similar desperate enterprises, and it would seem as if these lads must have matured much more rapidly than do the boys of the present age. Yet it may be that the rank and file were so magnificent that, at ordinary times, they were capable of being driven with a silken thread. That the soldiers, in spite of Wellington's dictum as to their being "the scum of the earth," were magnificent, is certain, and it is equally certain that they were devoted to their officers. There is scarcely a regiment in the army whose history does not record some gallant act performed by a soldier to save the life of an officer; and these rugged veterans went out of their way to show kindness to the boy subalterns in times of sickness or of hardship. It may be thought that, with older officers, the frequent outbreaks of indiscipline which sullied the good name of Wellington's soldiers might have been avoided. But who can say whether the great captain would have benefited in the long-run? Occasionally his operations were delayed by the marauding and drunkenness of his troops, but there is no proof that his plans ever broke down owing to the youth of his regimental officers, and he never appears to have complained that they were too young, though he may have hinted that a few of his generals were too old, for some of them were ten years older than himself.[74] But it may seem extraordinary that officers of the army as a whole should have been so young towards the end of the Peninsular War, for one has always imagined that, under the Purchase System, promotion was remarkably slow. Still, the wastage produced by the long war was enormous; deaths, wounds, and disease ploughed deep into the commissioned ranks; and to keep up the supply of officers was no easy matter. Officers, captains as well as subalterns, were transferred from the militia to the regular army;[75] from time to time non-commissioned officers were promoted ensigns, for good service in the field; but the majority of commissions were given to cadets of the Royal Military College,[76] at the average age of fifteen, or to boys, equally young, appointed direct to regiments.