He was educated at Rugby School under Thomas Arnold and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He accepted a cadetship in the Indian Army at the age of twenty-three, and after joining the 2nd Bengal Grenadiers he went through the First Anglo-Sikh War in which he was wounded. He was soon after transferred to the 1st European Bengal Fusiliers. In one of his letters home at this period he calls the campaign a "tissue of mismanagement, blunders, errors, ignorance and arrogance", and outspoken criticism such as this brought him many enemies throughout his career, who made the most of his character faults.