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8vo, 22.5cm, vii,159,xxviiip., folding sheet of music for the melody "Bugle Sounds", original boards, later velum spine, modern paper label, varying degrees of foxing, small circular stain appears on two pages, scarce, our first copy. (cgc) With: Autograph Signed Letter of Major General Sir Henry Torrens. 1816. One page, docketed leaf. Dated House Guards. 29th June 1816. Documents arranging a pension for Helen Fraser. Very good. Sir Henry Torrens was born at Londonderry, Ireland in 1779. He was educated at a Dublin military academy and received his first military commission at the age of 14 when he was made an ensign in the 52nd Regiment of Foot. He served in Portugal (1798), in Holland (1799), and later in Nova Scotia, Egypt and India. He saw action in 1799 at the battles of Hoorne and Egmond van Zee and was wounded at the latter. The regiment he commanded in Nova Scotia was the Surrey Rangers, which he did for one year before returning to England in the autumn of 1801. In 1820 he was appointed adjutant-general of the forces and during his tenure of the appointment he made a complete revision of the 'Regulations for the Exercise and Field Movements of the Infantry of the Army.' They were much in need of it, and he accomplished the task in a manner which gave general satisfaction, embodying the improvements which had been introduced and practiced by different commanders in recent wars (The Compact Edition of the Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. II, 1975). This revision of the British army manual was published in 1824 and was titled Field exercise and evolutions of the Army as revised by Major-General Sir Henry Torrens. The current offering is a shorter version of the latter which is 335 pages, and it is arranged differently. Its introduction states, in part: His Excellency the Commander-In-Chief has found it indispensable to supercede by the following Compilation which he has made chiefly from the late Treatise, all those Rules and Regulations which have therefore been in use for the instruction of the Militia Forces in this Province: and thus to provide for that conformity with the recently established practice of the British Army, which can only be obtained by extending to the Militia Forces, the instructive advantage of the improved code. Torrens died in August, 1828 in Welwyn, England. Seller Inventory # 37700
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