From this time onward he became entirely absorbed in his profession.
It is true that he had always been interested in it; but there is no
question that Barrow was the man who had shown him the fascination of
scientific generalship. While making the reputation of the 19th,
Barrow had unhappily lost his own life. He died as the result of
re-opening an internal wound while tent-pegging in the following year.
French determined to carry on his work, and at Norwich the training
of the 19th Hussars rapidly became famous throughout the Army.

One young officer, now General Bewicke Copley,[6] was attached to the
19th from another regiment in order to study their methods. He tells
how he was greatly struck by the brilliant work which French was
doing. His strict discipline and his terrific ideas of what training
meant, may have struck some of his young subalterns as scarcely
yielding them the ideal existence of the _beau sabreur_. Probably they
were right; but they were being licked into a state of amazing
efficiency.

In 1887 it fell to Sir Evelyn Wood's lot to inspect the regiment.
Pointing to French, he asked his Colonel, "Of what value is that man?"
The reply was, "He is for ever reading military books." And he has
been reading them ever since!

A couple of years later he attained the rank of Colonel, with command
of his regiment. Very soon Sir Evelyn was to discover the answer to
his question. For he was anxious at that time to introduce the
squadron system. French was the one commanding officer who carried it
out. In spite of the very large amount of extra work it entailed, he
was willing to take any number of recruits and train them in the new