What rot Alan! We alternately kicked French bottoms and saved them from their neighbors with great success for years and years on the continent, starting at Crecy and going through Agincourt, the campaigns of Marlborough, Wellington in Portugal, Spain and France, Waterloo, the Crimea, and the First and Second World Wars. But there's no doubt that it took a while for us to get hang of the new French Revolutionary tactics, which is when the poor old Duke of York comes in, staggering haplessly around Flanders vastly outnumbered, with his men freezing and starving in ditches. But it was an ill wind - there was a young officer who 'learned what not to do, and that is always something' - he later became the Duke of Wellington.
   The Duke of York, by the way, while not much use on the ground, was a damn good army reformer, something he never gets remembered for.