Early Life
Forbes was born on his family's Pittencrieff Estate in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland in 1707, the son of an army officer. After beginning to study medicine, he decided in his second year as a student to become a soldier and was accepted and commissioned as a lieutenant in the Scots Greys in 1735. He saw action in the War of the Austrian Succession and in the Jacobite rising of 1745, serving under the Duke of Cumberland as acting quartermaster-general.
Read more about this topic: John Forbes (British Army Officer)
Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)