The spot chosen for raising the new corps was Peshawur, then the extreme
outpost of the British position in India, situated in the land of men
born and bred to the fighting trade, free-lances ready to take service
wherever the rewards and spoils of war were to be secured. While fully
appreciating the benefits of accurate drill, and the minute attention to
technical detail, bequeathed as a legacy by the school of Wellington,
Lumsden upheld the principle that the greatest and best school for war
is war itself. He believed in the elasticity which begets individual
self-confidence, and preferred a body of men taught to act and fight
with personal intelligence to the highly-trained impersonality which
requires a sergeant's order before performing the smallest duty, and an
officer's fostering care to forestall its every need.

Holding such views, it is with no surprise we read that, while his men
were still under the elementary training of drill instructors borrowed
from other regiments, Lumsden led them forth to learn the art of war
under the blunt and rugged conditions of the Indian frontier. To march,
not through peaceful lanes, but with all the care and precautions which
a semi-hostile region necessitated; to encamp, not on the quiet village
green where sentry-go might appear an unmeaning farce, but in close
contact with a vigilant and active race of hard fighters, especially
skilled in the arts of surprises and night-attacks; to be ready, always
ready, with the readiness of those who meet difficulties half way,--such
were the precepts which the hardy recruits of the Guides imbibed
simultaneously with the automatic instruction of the drill-sergeant.

Nor was it long before Lumsden had an opportunity of practically
demonstrating to the young idea his methods of making war. The corps,
barely seven months old, was encamped at Kàlu Khan in the plain of
Yusafzai, when sudden orders came, directing it to make a night-march,