At the time the Bastille fell, William Cobbett was plotting his individual assault upon privilege, corruption, and injustice. He was then a twenty-sixyear-old sergeant-major in the 54th Foot, stationed at Fort Howe in Fredericton, New Brunswick: an unusual soldier, embarked upon an unusual venture. Though he had been bred at the plough-tail, a passion for self-improvement spoiled him for a farmer; by February I784 he was an attorney's clerk in a dingy office in Gray's Inn, when, out of boredom with such drudgery, he enlisted as an infantryman. The American war was just over, peacetime common soldiers were generally the scum of society, so the tall, strong, inquisitive, confident, sober, punctual, intelligent, industrious, and literate Cobbett was an outstanding recruit, marked out for rapid promotion. While at the Chatham depot, before his posting to Canada, he subscribed to a circulating library and read avidly whatever would improve his mind; among noisy companions, he copied out Lowth's Grammar, got it by heart and repeated it over to himself when he was on sentry duty. The very fact that he had taught himself under such adversities to write correctly buttressed his self-confidence: once his knowledge of grammar was secure, he was able to look down on most men better born and more powerful than himself simply because he could always detect some grammatical error in their speech or writings. Soon after his arrival in North America, Cobbett was made clerk to the regiment, and in a short time was responsible for all the returns, reports and other official papers, so that 'neither adjutant, pay-master, or quartermaster, could move an inch without my assistance'.1 Within a year he was promoted over the heads of thirty sergeants to the rank of sergeant-major. Cobbett's years as a non-commissioned officer formed his character and perhaps did something, too, to shape the brisk, 'parade-ground' peremptoriness of his prose style. They also instilled in him a contempt for artificial distinctions. In his later recollections he tells many stories of his officers' incapacity and the extent to which they depended upon him. For example, when a revised drill-manual was brought into use: I had to give lectures of instruction to the officers themselves, the Colonel not excepted; and, for several of them, I had to make out, upon large cards, which they bought for the purpose, little plans of the position of the regiment, together with lists of the words of command, which they had to give in the field. There was I, at the review, upon the flank of the grenadier company, with my worsted shoulder-knot,