'A Military Extinguisher!!', 1790 (c)

Coloured engraving by and after Isaac Cruikshank, 1780 (c); published by W Holland, 1790 (c).

The caricature lampoons the practice, common at the time, of advancing through the British Army by the purchase of a commission. It was unusual for an officer to progress through the service without buying at least one of his promotions. Those with sufficient wealth and status might reach senior rank at an early age. In the 1790s the Duke of York, campaigning in Flanders, wrote to a colleague 'Out of fifteen regiments of cavalry and twenty-six of infantry which we have here, twenty-one are commanded literally by boys and idiots.'

The extreme youth of some officers was a favourite target for satirists. Even so Army discipline was severe, and any soldier who had actually spoken to an officer in this way, however young, would probably have been flogged. From time to time attempts were made to regulate the worst abuses, but the purchase system was not finally abolished until 1871.