Peace--general peace at all events--had reigned from 1783 to 1789, when the French Revolution broke out. With the merits or demerits of that great struggle this story has nothing to do; but none the less the overthrow of the monarchy of France not only created an almost continuous condition of war for a quarter of a century, but helped most materially to raise to the highest pitch the Continental opinion as to the military value of Great Britain. Its naval strength throughout that quarter of a century was most fully proved. It remained for the stubborn fighting power of the land forces to be displayed during the same eventful period. French anger, English panic, had dragged the latter into open war with France, and that not without allies. All the world began by being against the new Republic: small wonder, then, that in her new-born freedom she turned bitterly against her world-wide antagonists, and fought them all. That she did not fully conquer them was largely due to one small State--England. The wealth of the latter, even then comparatively greater than the Continent, her naval preponderance, infinitely greater, as events proved, than that of her antagonist, though her numerical fighting strength as compared with the Continental powers was but small, and her insular position, made her eventually almost the arbiter of Europe, when the great struggle drew to an end. As usual, the actual number of the army throughout the years from 1793 to 1808 constantly varied. The 150,000 men under arms in 1780 was reduced to 40,000 the next year, was increased the year after to about 55,000 in Great Britain, and fell in 1784 to 18,000 at home, 12,000 in the “Plantations,” and some 6000 in India. The provision for the latter force was made by a new and special vote. The importance of the growing empire in the East was being at last recognised. The system of levying troops continued much the same. Men were enlisted voluntarily by heavy bounties, and when that attraction failed, the pressgang, or even the prisons, was then employed to raise recruits. Unless disbanded at the end of a campaign, they served for life, or till worn out; but the dawn of a short-service system appeared in 1805, when the period of service was fixed at seventeen years.[32]