When Sam Rice joined the 51st, Lieut.-Colonel (afterwards Sir John) Moore had held the command for three years, but was even then only in his thirty-second year; for his promotion had been rapid, and he had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the thirteenth year of his service. That Moore was a strong man goes without saying, and that he was a man of very exceptional talents the world discovered subsequently. A perfect gentleman, of unblemished character, a reliable and zealous soldier, he was able to bring a great influence to bear on those whom he commanded, and he had a special gift for training young officers. It was in this respect that Sam Rice benefited by being appointed to a regiment with such a commanding officer, and he learned under Moore things which he never forgot. At that time the condition of a regiment depended entirely upon the commanding officer, for in the last decade of the eighteenth century the British army was not in a very satisfactory state. Sir Henry Bunbury,[12] who made a study of such matters, wrote sixty years afterwards: "Men of the present generation can hardly form an idea of what the military forces of England really were when the great war broke out in 1793. Our army was lax in its discipline, entirely without system, and very weak in numbers. Each colonel of a regiment managed it according to his own notions, or neglected it altogether. There was no uniformity of drill or movement, professional pride was rare, professional knowledge still more so. The regimental officers in those days were, as well as their men, hard drinkers; and the latter, under a loose discipline, were much addicted to marauding and acts of licentious violence, which made them detested by the people of the country."