I n any army the officers are to some extent set apart from the men they lead. Their role, social background and status are often very different. As Lieutenant Nathaniel Hood of the 40th Foot rather pompously wrote: ‘Soldiers are but soldiers, and officers are soldiers and gentlemen. Under this consideration the line of distinction is preserved, the profession, through all its tracts of honour, guarded …’ In the 18th century this distinction was by no means as clear-cut as Hood and some of his colleagues may have liked, and as this study will show, the gulf between officers and men, although very real, was by no means as wide as is popularly believed, or indeed even as wide as it became in Victorian times. Nevertheless, the way in which officers in the armies of King George I, George II and George III were recruited equipped and trained was certainly different, and while ultimately they shared many of the hardships and dangers endured by their men, their experience of war was not the same.