It may therefore be said that skirmishers first took their place in the organisation of Continental armies about 1774, but years before that the question of their employment had been freely discussed. As early as 1754 Comte Lancelot Turpin de Crissé had published a work on the Art of War, in which he dealt with the uses of light troops at some length, and the British army had had its bodies of trained light infantrymen certainly before 1758.[41] In all probability they originated about the year 1757, when the British generals, fighting against the French in America, found that the latter's Red Indian allies perpetually annoyed them on the march and on other occasions, and determined to meet them in their own methods of fighting. Consequently, every regiment in America was ordered to select "the most enterprising officers and the most active of the privates with the appellation of _Rangers_." Lord Howe, then commanding the 55th Regiment, but in 1758 raised to the command of the army in the field, was immensely impressed by the Red Indian methods of warfare, and was supported by several commanding officers, who realised the absurdities of tight clothes and movements in solid formation, when engaging the enemy in the rough forest country of the New World. The success which attended the experiment of the _Rangers_ led to the formation of a light company in every regiment, and the valuable services which these companies performed during the next few years fully justified their existence. And the matter was carried still further, for, in 1758, a whole regiment was equipped for light work, and named Gage's Light Infantry.[42] In that year, however, while leading a desperate attack on the French, Howe was shot dead, at the head of the _Rangers_, in the hour of victory.