Samuel Bagshawe, the orphaned son of a Derbyshire gentleman, enlisted in the Army as a private soldier in 1731. When he died in 1762, at the height of the Seven Years' War, he was colonel of a regiment of foot soldiers, raised in Ireland at his own expense, and also an MP. But this promotion was only achieved after a struggle against crippling disability, for in 1746 he had lost a leg by cannon shot in the abortive raid on the Breton arsenal and dockyard of Port l'Orient.