But America had taught much. It is, perhaps, not too much to say that the campaigns there had turned men’s minds in the direction of the fighting of the future, the value of independent fire action, and--a century before it was seriously organised--the value of mounted infantry. Bunker’s Hill, and even Lexington, had borne grave testimony to the value of fire action. Tarleton, in Carolina, with his mounted troops from the old 63rd Regiment of the line, had proved conclusively the value of a mobile infantry. It took long, doubtless, for these ideas to bear fruit, but they did so in due course. The originally mounted infantry man--the dragoon--had ceased to be. He had become part of the cavalry of the time. He was to be revived, but not for another hundred years, to do his original duty, that of a mounted man fighting on foot, and then under another name. Much besides had happened militarily in this period of the army’s story besides the campaigns already referred to. The “Horse Guards” as Army Headquarters had been so created in 1751. Light troops had been added in 1755 to the dragoons, some of which were eventually to come on the establishment, when amalgamated, as light cavalry regiments; and about the same time second battalions were added to existing regiments, and of these, fifteen, numbering from the 61st to the 75th, commenced later on an independent existence. Many of these had been raised for a campaign, disbanded, and re-formed more than once. Thus the 73rd, formed as a second battalion to the 42nd after the disaster of Ticonderoga, took that number in 1786, but it had been held successively by a second battalion of the 34th, then by the 116th and the present 71st. These sudden alterations of strength in the Army List produced evils and suffering in every way. It was stated in 1763, after the reduction, that there were upwards of 500 ex-officers in gaol for debt, because of want of employment. Most of the regiments, both old and new, had flank companies of light infantry and grenadiers, which were detached to form, for the time, separate battalions during a campaign; and the former were the precursors of the light infantry battalions of later years. The old force of Marines was disbanded in 1748, to reappear seven years later as a more purely naval force under the Admiralty, instead of being an army force, borne on the military establishment, and lent, more or less, to the navy. The Royal Artillery, first organised in a small way by Marlborough, had become an independent body as far back as 1715, but it was not till 1743 it appeared on the estimates, nor until 1751 that officers were commissioned. Similarly with the Royal Engineers. At first practically civilians, military rank was not given them until 1757. The army was growing up into a more complete machine. [Illustration: _Fire Arms._ _Arquebus (Match Lock) 1537._ _Firelock (Wheel Lock) 1620._ _Musket (Brown Bess) 1800._ _Magazine B.L. (Lee-Metford) 1896._ _Plug-Bayonet._