But the main change was in the extension of the principle of skirmishing which the American war had introduced. For a long time the “light companies” of battalions were designed to cover the front of the line during its advance and protect it while manœuvring. Built up for specific purpose into battalions, they formulated a drill of their own; which General Dundas in his _Principles of Military Movements_ condemns. The rapid movements adopted met with little favour from an officer imbued with the stiff rigidity of Prussian drill-sergeants. “The importance of light infantry has more particularly tended to establish this practice. During the late war their service was conspicuous, and their gallantry and exertions have met with merited applause. But instead of being considered as an accessory to the battalion, they have become the principal feature of our army, and have almost put grenadiers out of fashion. The showy exercise, the airy dress, the independent modes which they have adopted, have caught the minds of young officers, and made them imagine that these ought to be general and exclusive.” All this the drill-book of 1792 was designed to remedy, but though it produced uniformity, which was valuable, it failed to check the development of permanent light infantry battalions, such as composed the magnificent Light Brigade of the Peninsular days. But when, in 1804, a Camp of Instruction was formed at Shorncliffe under General John Moore, a new era to some extent began. Moore did not favour the rigid drill of Dundas’s drill-book of 1792. He “d--d the Eighteen Manœuvres,” which were looked on as essential for a well-trained regiment to undergo. He introduced the system of light infantry drill which was the basis of all such work in our army and in our drill-books up to 1870; and the regiments he trained, the 4th, 52nd, 57th, 59th, and 95th, came nobly to the front when the time arrived. The general was knighted a year later, and the 52nd presented him with a diamond star, valued at 350 guineas, in token of their appreciation of his services; while as colonel of the first regiment named officially “Light Infantry,” he chose for one of the supporters of his coat of arms a light infantry soldier. The other was a Highlander, in remembrance of the help one of the 92nd had given him when wounded at Egmont-op-Zee. Abroad, the formations were generally columnar, more or less, and the movements of these dense bodies was covered, as was the line elsewhere, by skirmishers from the light (flank) companies or light infantry battalions. The French also had foreshadowed two modern improvements in the use of balloons at Fleurus and the introduction of telegraphy by means of semaphores. In England, on the other hand, General Congreve had invented the war-rocket in 1805, and two years before, Sir Henry Shrapnell the “spherical case,” which afterwards took his name and which was first used with effect at Vimiera.