About 1777 the Thirteenth were converted into Light Dragoons, and much smaller men were enlisted. The example of Frederick the Great was now being followed on the Continent, and Cavalry was being trained for greater speed and hand-to-hand fighting. The Infantry firearm of the Thirteenth gave place to a short carbine, and some changes were made in the uniform, the old three-cornered hat making way for a Cavalry helmet. Bayonets were still carried, but evidently there was some idea of making the Dragoon more of a horseman and less of a foot soldier. Nevertheless the state of the British Cavalry at that time as to equipment and drill was very antiquated. “The military value of their training,” says Barrett, “was practically _nil_.” And, to add to their disadvantages, they were now cursed with the system of “proprietary Colonels.” How this system came about is not clear, but towards the end of the eighteenth century it was in full force. In Munden’s day the Colonel had been “the active officer in command, and always present, unless on leave, whether at home or in the field.” Sixty years later, when the old traditions of Marlborough’s time had been lost, the Regiment was really commanded by the Lieutenant-Colonel, while the Colonel had become an absentee, seeing the Regiment perhaps once or twice a year. Yet it was in a sense looked upon as his private property. “The system,” says Barrett, “was a bad one. To bad Colonels were due the crying abuses of the pay system as well as those of the clothing system--the systematic robbery of the soldier, the mean frauds by which an income was literally swindled out of Government or sweated off the backs of the men; and the abuse of the power of the lash was owing to the same cause.” In 1787 the Colonel of the Thirteenth, a member of Parliament, “lived mainly in London while the Regiment was in Ireland.” Arms were bad, desertions frequent, and the duties of the Regiment consisted chiefly of hunting down members of the various lawless societies in Ireland, Whiteboys and Peep-o’-Day Boys, and the like. In spite of all these heartbreaking drawbacks the regimental officers seem to have done something to make the men efficient, for at times the reports of inspecting Generals are good enough, though evidently the standard was not high; and in 1794, no doubt because of the French Revolution and the outbreak of war on the Continent, the strength had been increased to 446 men and 393 horses. The Thirteenth, however, was not yet to be employed in the Continental war. It was now, after its two campaigns against the Jacobites, followed by fifty years of peace duty, to have its first taste of service abroad, but this was not to be in warfare against a civilised enemy.