BRAVE BRITISH SOLDIERS
AND
THE VICTORIA CROSS.

Corporal Robert Shields, 23rd Regiment (Royal Welsh Fusiliers), finding the Body of his wounded Adjutant, Lieut. Dyneley.

BEETON’S BOY’S OWN LIBRARY.

BRAVE BRITISH SOLDIERS
AND
THE VICTORIA CROSS.

A General Account of the Regiments and Men
of the British Army.

And Stories of the Brave Deeds which Won the Prize
“for Valour.”

Edited by S. O. BEETON.

With Sixteen Full-Page Engravings and Illustrations
in the Text.

LONDON:
WARD, LOCK AND TYLER,
WARWICK HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW.

BEETON’S
BOY’S OWN LIBRARY,
COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS.

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• 14. BRAVE BRITISH SOLDIERS AND THE VICTORIA CROSS.
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LONDON: WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER.

TO THE READER.

This book is written for Boys. The majority of the articles were expressly prepared for the “Boys’ Own Magazine,” and the interest which their appearance excited, coupled with the favourable notices they won, encouraged the Editor to publish them in a connected form.

Boys—worthy to be called Boys—are naturally brave. There is not, so far as we are aware, any etymological connexion between the words boy and brave; but there is an association of ideas, which if it does not make the terms interchangeable, is still strongly suggestive of their being one and the same. The expression brave man is easily understood, but to us, brave Boy looks like a pleonasm. A man has experience. He has tested—if there be any good thing in him—his courage in the rough exploits of the world’s campaign. He has tilted, mayhap, with Quixotic chivalry against windmills, and in the encounter has been discomfited; he has awakened from his bright dream to a sad reality; he has been tempted to turn prosaic—inclined sometimes to beat his sword into a sickle, to gather in for his own special use the golden wheat from anybody’s cornfield, and to make those late foes of his—the windmills—grind up the corn to make his bread. Now he is no longer brave. His views of life are taken from a new point of sight. He smiles at the boy’s enthusiasm, and counts himself wise in his man’s selfishness. But a man who has done battle, who has been thrown in the lists, who has been ready to mount and splinter lance again, who in the gaining of experience has lost nothing of the Boy’s boldness—such a man is brave.

The drift of these remarks is that experience may ruin a Boy’s “pluck”—may give him the vulpine sagacity of Reynard in place of the courage of Leo Africanus.

But a Boy is brave. Youth is the season of confidence. “Your young men shall see visions” while our “old men shall dream dreams.” What visions are those which rise up before the young—what brave words to speak, what brave actions to do—how bravely—if need be—to suffer! “The young fellows,” said an old soldier to the writer, “are always pushing forward in a battle charge—they are in a mighty hurry to smell powder—the veterans fall into the rear!” Do they?—ah, well, ’tis the lesson, perhaps of experience! But is it better than the Boy’s eagerness to be foremost?—is it not—answer brave hearts—better to die planting the colours on the wall, than to share the spoil which others have won?

This is the leading thought in this book about Soldiers—it is meant to keep alive the bravery of youth in the experience of manhood. The editor of the book is very sensible of the incompleteness of the work. He knows that it is defective in many places, but it is honest. A good many of the papers were written by one who was then far away on a foreign station doing brave service; some of the papers are the work of dead hands. The articles have been put together as carefully as circumstances would allow, but there has been an anxious care on the Editor’s part to retouch as little as possible the work of absent contributors. He offers the book to the Boys of England—not as the best piece of work that can be done—but as a volume they will read with delight and keep as a souvenir of pleasant hours. He is of opinion that anything which helps to make Boys more in love with true courage is good work done—he believes that bravery excites bravery, just as iron sharpeneth iron; and so he has confidence in this book being useful—a record of brave deeds that shall make its readers echo the words of King Harry—

“If it be a sin to covet honour

I am the most offending soul alive.”

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT.

OUR SOLDIERS AND THE VICTORIA CROSS.

CHAPTER I.
OUR SOLDIERS AND THE VICTORIA CROSS.

It has been our lot in life to live very much among soldiers, and we like to write and talk about them. We hope that our readers will not be averse from hearing something of a class in whom we have all a common interest. It is true that English boys are not quite so warlike in their tendencies as French; they neither worship la gloire nor dress like manikin soldats. Swords and guns are not their only playthings, nor are feeble imitations of sanguinary contests their only pastimes. We here delight in all manly games and sports, for which French men and boys have little taste, and we thus acquire a muscular development and hardiness of frame which enable us to bear any amount of fatigue. It was a saying of the grand old Iron Duke that all his battles were won on the playground at Eton; by which we suppose he meant that his officers, most of whom were Eton boys, received there such a physical training as fitted them to be heroes in the strife. Still, it is one of those epigrammatic sayings in which truth is sacrificed for effect; for what could the duke, with all his officers, have done without the brave privates who composed his forces, and to whom he rendered justice on another occasion by saying that with such an army he could go anywhere and do anything?

A chaplain belongs, of course, to the non-combatant class in the army. It is not his duty to appear in the field, or to take part in battles. He has to remain at the hospital, and to administer the consolations of religion to the wounded and the dying; but he is precluded by his profession from being present at, or taking part in, any battle.

It is for this reason, perhaps, that we have always had a certain pleasure in listening to soldiers as they fought their battles over in hospital, and recounted their experience to one another. It was all strange and new to us, as, we dare say, it will be to most of those who read this book.

The soldiers of whom we speak all took part in and survived the Crimean war. Their manly breasts are all adorned with the different medals awarded to them; two of them wear the Victoria Cross. One early object of our curiosity was to ascertain what are the sensations or feelings of a soldier on entering battle, or being exposed to fire for the first time. Now, the answer we invariably received will, perhaps, take some of our readers by surprise. They felt nothing of that warlike intoxication ascribed to the old Vikings on the eve of the combat; they had none of that strange joy ascribed by the patriarch to the war-horse at the sound of the trumpet, nor were they exactly afraid; but there was a certain uneasy sensation experienced by all as the bullet whizzed past the ear, and comrade after comrade dropped, sometimes with a sharp cry of pain, sometimes giving no sign.

This feeling some of them graphically described as similar to that which a bather experiences before plunging into the water; ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte; after the first dip Richard is himself again. But our readers are not to suppose that the soldier shows the same hesitation in advancing to charge as the bather on the brink of the stream. If he did he would be a coward, and be scorned by all his comrades. To make the two cases parallel, we must suppose a thousand bathers rushing forward to the stream at once. Now, though an individual bather standing alone might stop short on reaching the water, and pause before taking a header, a thousand bathers rushing forward at once, would plunge into the water without hesitation. The dread of shame, of exposure, of ridicule, would nerve the least courageous for the final leap. There is, moreover, such a strong feeling of sympathy diffused among large bodies of men acting in concert that the strength of the stronger is imparted to the weaker. Now, it is the same with soldiers advancing to the charge. All of them feel the cold shiver like that of the bather approaching the water, but they march shoulder to shoulder, and with them are some old soldiers who have been under fire before. The younger ones are encouraged by their example, and many a lad who has trembled on first smelling powder has proved himself a hero in the fight.

We have read in books that soldiers sometimes weep while fighting hand to hand and sorely pressed—not tears of cowardly terror by any means, but such tears as the strongest of men will shed in hours of fierce excitement. Wellington wept as he embraced Blucher after the Battle of Waterloo. This, indeed, has been denied, but it is not difficult to believe it true. There are moments in the lives of all men, even the most reserved and self-contained, when the hidden fountains of feeling well over and find an outlet through the eyes, and we should not think a whit less highly of our soldiers did they shed a few tears of valiant rage while victory was still doubtful. But these tears, we suspect, are purely imaginary. For ourselves, we never met with a single soldier who confessed that he had shed tears himself, or seen others weep. We are sure that they would not have denied it if they had yielded to any such weakness, for, as a class, soldiers are the most truthful of men. All with whom we conversed agreed in affirming that our men were very quiet while fighting hand to hand with the enemy. There would be occasionally a shrill cry of pain from the wounded, or a short cry of triumph from the man who struck down his opponent, but generally, all the dread work of the battle-field was done in silence. All admitted that the most fearful sound during a battle was the cry of a wounded horse; it was so like that of a human being in his death agony—shrill, piercing, heartrending. The horses seem to become almost human in the hour of battle, to share in all the wild passions of the combatants, and to exult equally in the hour of victory.

But while our men fought in silence, the Russians were very noisy both in advancing and in fighting. They uttered the most savage yells, as if they thought to inspire our men with terror by the mere noise they made. They soon discovered that Englishmen are not so easily frightened; but they still continued to shout from mere habit. Their officers also encouraged them in this custom, giving them, moreover, drink to make them pot-valiant. Notwithstanding this, we have always heard our soldiers frankly speak of the Russians as “foemen worthy of their steel.” Brave men, we know, learn to respect one another even in the field, and the Russians are certainly one of the bravest nations in Europe. They still retain, however, many of the characteristics of savage life; they have not yet learned to act on the old Roman maxim, “Debellare superbos, parcere victis.” They often bayoneted our men when left defenceless and wounded. It is but just to add that they expected no mercy when left in the same condition, and seemed overwhelmed with surprise when our men treated them with the same generous tenderness as though they had been comrades instead of foes.

There are sometimes strange traits of character exhibited during the excitement of battle. Men may have been living under restraint for years, and come to believe themselves to be very different from what they are. Xenophon relates a story of a Greek soldier who, in consequence of a wound which had affected his brain, forgot the language he had spoken for many years, and began to express himself in his native tongue, which, before this accident, seemed to have entirely faded from his memory. Something analogous to this occurred at the Battle of the Alma, in the case of a sergeant of the Guards. He had once been much addicted to swearing, but had been enabled to vanquish this and other evil habits, and for many years had been looked up to by his comrades as a man of exemplary character. His company, while charging up the heights of the Alma, was surrounded by the enemy, and, after suffering severe loss, was obliged to retreat. In vain the poor sergeant endeavoured to rally them. He was borne along with the current. Overpowered with shame and rage, he gave way to a sort of madness, and swore such fearful oaths that we have often heard the men of his company say that it was something awful to hear him. Those who occupied the same tent with him relate that he spent most of the night after the battle in prayer, and was often heard sobbing like a child. He never spoke of the strange outburst of that day to any of his comrades, and they had the delicacy to avoid all allusion to the subject; but it was observed that he was more humble, kind, and considerate in his bearing towards them than he had ever been before. He survived the war and returned to England, where he enjoyed the respect of all who knew him, and was never known to indulge in the habit which gained the mastery over him at the Alma. He is now dead, but his surviving comrades speak with a sort of awe of the incident we have related.

One soldier of the Guards became raving mad at the Alma. It happened in this way:—The Russian fire struck down several of the men as they were advancing. The soldier of whom we speak was a young lad who had never smelt powder before. By his side was a comrade who belonged to the same district, and had enlisted at the same time. The latter was hit by a cannon-ball, and his brains were bespattered over the face of his friend, who became frantic, roaring and shouting like a madman. He imagined that his comrades were the enemy, and that he was fighting hand to hand with them. The whole company was thrown into confusion, and he wounded some of his comrades before he could be disarmed. He was conducted to the rear, fighting and struggling the whole way. The surgeons pronounced him to be a dangerous lunatic, and he was strapped down upon one of the beds in the hospital, with a sentinel to watch over him. That sentinel told us that he was never entrusted before or since with such an unpleasant duty. Owing to the shock which the brain had received, the poor madman could not rest for a moment. He fancied himself in the thickest of the combat, fighting with all the energy of despair, and swearing that his comrades should be avenged. He continued in this raving condition for about twenty-four hours, when, with the exultant cry of “Victory!” he expired. A similar incident occurred at Inkermann: in this case, also, the soldier survived only twenty-four hours.

Soldiers rarely feel much pain at the moment they receive their wounds, unless these be very severe, in which case they suffer much from thirst. There is one very gallant friend of ours—a non-commissioned officer—who was shot through the ankle in crossing the stream at the Alma. He knew not that he was wounded till the battle was over, but thought that his foot had got entangled among the vines in crossing the valley, and that he had sprained the joint. A good soldier never likes to go to hospital when there is any hard fighting, and our friend kept “a quiet sough,” as they say in the North, about his wound, and marched at the head of his company as if nothing had happened to him. His courage and endurance were rewarded: he was present at, and took part in, the Battle of Inkermann, where his gallantry attracted the notice of the commanding officer, on whose recommendation he obtained the medal and pension for distinguished conduct in the field. He was wounded also on this occasion, but his hurt was of a far more serious character. He was shot through the head: the bullet literally entered at one side, and came out at the other. He felt a sharp, stinging pain, and remembered nothing more till he regained his consciousness in hospital, and was surprised to learn that he had been some weeks under the doctor’s hands. He suffers no inconvenience from his wound now, except occasional dizziness and half-blindness after any excitement or exposure to the sun. Such a man in the French service might have risen to the rank of field-marshal, and obtained a name in the page of history. Well, after all, the great thing is to do our duty well in the position we occupy; and our friend, as sergeant-major of his distinguished regiment, is happier, probably, than if he had had greatness thrust upon him.

Though soldiers recover from their wounds at the moment, they are often very dangerous afterwards. The brain is often injured, and the disease goes on till the man loses his reason, or drops down dead. A poor fellow was hit on the crown of the head by a piece of shell in one of the trenches before Sebastopol. He was stunned at the moment, but thought so little of it that he did not even report himself wounded. For eight years he felt no pain, but one day, while on guard, he was seized with a sudden giddiness, and became insensible. He was conveyed to hospital in a cab, and on recovering his consciousness he found that he was suffering the most intense pain on the crown of his head. His sufferings were very great; the only relief he could obtain was through the application of chloroform.

We write all this knowing that English boys feel deep sympathy with, and profound admiration for, our soldiers, and to show that their powers of endurance, when disabled, equal in heroic worth their gallantry upon the field.

Not all our readers, perhaps, have seen the Victoria Cross. It is not very beautiful nor very valuable in itself. A fac-simile of it appears at the commencement of this chapter. It is a simple piece of bronze, shaped like a cross, and its intrinsic value may be about threepence. Its intrinsic value! but who can tell the price a soldier puts upon it? He had rather have that piece of bronze on his breast than be made a Knight of the Garter, and have his banner hung up with those of the other K.G.’s in the Chapel of St. George at Windsor. To obtain that small piece of bronze of the value of threepence he will lead the forlorn hope, be the first to storm the breach, and ever ready to expose his life to any danger. The Victoria Cross is as much to a soldier as the gage d’amour the knight-errant in the days of chivalry received from his lady-love, and swore never to part with. The pledge of her affection might be a soiled and tattered glove, worth even less than the cross “For Valour,” but it was dearer to her lover than life itself. O that the day may never come in this country when we shall judge of things by the Hudibrastic principle—

“The price of anything

Is just as much as it will bring!”

for badly then will it fare with Old England. When our soldiers come to value their crosses at threepence each, the price they will fetch at a marine store, we shall not long survive as a nation. But there is little danger of such an eventuality. There are things—God be thanked—which we do love and value more than life itself—things which gold can not purchase. The Victoria Cross is one of them; and we are about to relate how three gallant officers of one of our most distinguished regiments came to be decorated with the priceless meed “For Valour.” One was a commissioned officer; the other two were sergeants. Though different in rank, they were equal in bravery; their bravery was equally rewarded. Most people—thanks to Mr. Kinglake’s history, and other sources of information—are now tolerably familiar with all the details of the Battle of the Alma. They know how the gallant Welsh Fusiliers, after forcing their way to the heights, and seizing the colours on the Russian battery, were so cut up by the enemy that they were forced to retire. They fell back in obedience to orders. It so happened, however, that as the word, “Fusiliers, retire!” was given, the Scots Fusilier Guards were charging up the heights, and the officer in command of them, hearing the order, thought that it was intended for his own men, and commanded them to fall back. This fact is not mentioned by Mr. Kinglake, but there are many witnesses still alive who heard this second order given, and acted upon it. Now, it is very difficult to retire before an enemy without falling into confusion; and it so happened that the Welsh Fusiliers came rushing down like a torrent. One gallant regiment opened their ranks, allowed them to pass through, and then closed again; but the Scots Fusiliers were not so fortunate. They did not open their ranks, because they received no order to do so, and were already falling back, when the crowd of Welsh Fusiliers came rushing upon them, broke through their ranks, and threw them into disorder; and, in the midst of this, the Russians made a dash at the colours of the regiment.

Captain Lloyd Lindsay, Scots Fusilier Guards, saving the regimental colours at the Alma.

Now, it is not needful to dwell on the fact that it would be as disgraceful for an English regiment to lose its colours as it would have been for an old Roman centurion to have lost his shield. The colours are usually intrusted to one or two subalterns and several sergeants, who form a sort of guard of honour over them, and are held responsible for their safety. When they are in danger the bravest men in the regiment rally round them, and it is held unworthy not to follow them wherever they are seen. They are the same to our soldiers as the white plume of Henry of Navarre was to his men, or the bronze eagles to Rome’s Tenth Legion. Knowing this, officers have sometimes thrown the colours into the very midst of the enemy, sure that their men would die rather than lose them. No sooner, therefore, was it known that the colours were in danger than the bravest men of the regiment tried to reach them, but only a few succeeded. They did not come too soon; the men intrusted with the colours fought like lions, but one officer was struck down, and only two sergeants survived the fearful contest. But the colours were safe, and the men might proudly say, with Francis I. after disastrous Pavia, “Tout est perdu, hors l’honneur.” The regiment wiped out the memory of the misfortune at the Alma (it was no disgrace to obey orders) on the bloody field of Inkermann, and a grateful country did not forget the men who loved their colours better than their lives. The officer who was struck down died of his wounds on the voyage home; Death was envious of the honours that awaited him. The other officer still survives, and wears on his breast the cross his sovereign bestowed upon him. He is, or will be, one of the wealthiest men in England, but we are sure that he values that small piece of bronze of the value of threepence more than all the money he has at his banker’s.

“Money is round, and rolls away,”

but the memory of a brave action has never perished.

But gallant deeds are the same whether they be done by officers or by men; and the two sergeants demand notice who were also, for the part they took in this affair, decorated with the Victoria Cross. We should not dwell upon their history if it were not that it points a moral, though it does not adorn our tale. Both of these sergeants were fine, handsome fellows; one of them is six feet two inches in height. When they returned to London, and walked forth in the streets, decorated with the memorials of their bravery, their appearance naturally attracted much attention. Foolish people stopped them in the street, and invited them to drink. Now, no man of sense or good-breeding will drink in this way with soldiers, and no man of good feeling will tempt soldiers to drink. Those who thus invited our sergeants, we believe, meant no harm, but only wished to give the sergeants a cheerful glass, and to make them light their battles o’er again. But soldiers who know how to resist the enemy in war are not always proof against temptation in times of peace. These two Victoria Cross men fell into irregular habits, such as could not be tolerated in the case of non-commissioned officers; every effort was made to save them, but in vain; their irregularities became so glaring that they were reduced to, and have ever since remained in, the ranks. They are steady enough now, but it is felt that they cannot be trusted, and they are not likely ever to regain their former rank. It seems very hard that brave men should lose their position through the mistaken kindness and thoughtlessness of their admirers, and we hope that those who feel sympathy with soldiers will find some better way of expressing it than by giving them drink. These two men, though serving in the ranks, have still much influence over their comrades, and that influence, we are glad to say, is generally exercised for good. The possession of the Victoria Cross carries with it a pension of 10l., which cannot be forfeited through misconduct; the pension for distinguished conduct in the field is 15l. per annum.

Many small pledges of affection were found on the persons of our soldiers who fell on the battle-fields of the Crimea. Sometimes a lock of hair, or a photograph, or a last letter from home, or a small Bible or Testament, was found concealed beneath the tunic of a dead soldier. Many of them carried their Bibles with them to the field as a sort of talisman to protect them from danger; and there is a well-authenticated case of one soldier having had his life saved from the bullet, which would otherwise have reached his heart, having lodged in his Bible. We should think that book would become a precious relic in his family, ever to be prized, never to be parted with, for it was literally the Word of Life to him. Another was found with his right hand so firmly clenched that it was difficult to open it. He had allowed the blood from his wound to flow upon his hand, so that, on closing it, his fingers became, as it were, cemented together. Inside the hand were found several sovereigns he had saved from his pay with the intention of remitting them to his wife at home. His last thought was, probably, of her, and her heart must have been touched when she received the money he had saved for her with his heart’s blood. Another man, who died of his wounds in hospital, had recourse to a singular expedient to save his watch, which he wished to be sent to his father in some remote country village. It was known that he was possessed of a watch, and there was no small uneasiness among the hospital orderlies when it could not be found after his death. Search was made for it in vain, and suspicion naturally fell upon the orderly who had been with him when he died. As this man, however, had always borne a good character, and there was no direct evidence against him, he was allowed to retain his situation, which must have been anything but a comfortable one. About ten days after the death of the soldier the mystery was cleared up. The effects of a dead soldier are usually sold by auction, and the proceeds, after paying all demands, remitted to his relations at home. It so happened that this man was possessed of a pair of good boots (a rare piece of good fortune in the Crimea), and these were purchased by a comrade for a few shillings. The purchaser, in trying on the right boot, found some obstacle in the toe which he imagined to be a pebble; on shaking it out he discovered the missing watch. The dying man, in the delirium of his last struggle, had contrived to secrete it in the place where it was found. It would be difficult to assign any reasonable motive for such an act; it was probably done in a moment of unconsciousness.

Commodore Wilmot has told us a good deal in his book about the King of Dahomey’s Amazons. These female warriors form his body-guard, and are three times as numerous as the men, whom they surpass in strength and bravery. They are very skilful in the use of firearms, and carry gigantic razors for shaving off heads—a very unladylike amusement, as all will allow. Now, in this country we have no regularly organized army of Amazons, though there is no saying what we may soon have in these days, when there are so many suggestions for the employment of female labour. It may be a prejudice on our part, but we confess we should not like to see nice young ladies firing off blunderbusses, or shaving off people’s heads. Still, women have been found serving in the ranks, both in France and in England, without their sex being discovered, and a good many soldiers’ wives accompanied our forces to the East. It is painful, but truthful, to add that most of these adventurous females had to be sent home, for reasons which we had rather not specify; four only were allowed to remain. These well-conducted Amazons weathered all the dangers of the campaign, watched over their husbands in the field and the hospital, did all the marketing, without knowing a word of “the foreign lingo” spoken by the natives, passed through many perils, and returned to relate their “accidents by flood and field” to their admiring friends.

Soldiers, as we have said, are very patient while enduring physical pain. A hospital presents a fearful scene on the day after a battle. It is surprising that no artist has selected such a subject to illustrate the horrors of war. Our army surgeons are brave men, or they would lose their presence of mind amid such scenes, for it requires less courage to kill than to heal. Every form of physical suffering is to be seen there; but a groan is rarely to be heard. It is only during the amputation of a limb, or the probing of a wound, that a sharp cry of pain is sometimes wrung from the sufferer, who generally turns aside his head, as if ashamed of such unsoldierly weakness. Wounded and dying soldiers like to be visited by their chaplains; they often say, “We have led a bad life; can there be any hope for us now?” They may have been bad men, but they are always truthful: they never try to make themselves out to be better than they really are. Their last thought is generally of home. Often in India and the Crimea a dying soldier has said to his chaplain, “You will write and tell them all about it. I hope I have done my duty, and nothing to disgrace my name.” If our chaplains did nothing but soothe the last hours of our soldiers, their mission would not be altogether in vain; and no class of men are more grateful for kindness, as our nurses in the East will testify. And here we detract not from the excellent intentions of those ladies in saying that, from want of previous training, they were, as a class, disqualified for the work they undertook; yet we have always heard them spoken of by the men with the deepest respect. We have baptized many a Florence Nightingale, and the feeling cherished towards this lady in the army is almost analogous to the Mariolatry of the Italian peasantry: it borders on idolatry. “Shure she is not a woman, but an angel of mercy,” said a poor Irishman whom she had nursed. “I could kiss the very earth she threads.” There are many others equally grateful, though less demonstrative and poetical in the expression of their gratitude. Florence Nightingale and the Queen are the two patron saints of the British Army. Our soldiers have not yet forgotten how her Majesty visited them in hospital on their return from the Crimea, and showed her sorrow and her sympathy as a woman best can show it—by her tears. And, after all, be we queen or soldier’s wife, drummer-boy or commander-in-chief, we are all members of the same family, with the same great heart beating within our breasts. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. Our Queen wept for her wounded soldiers, and there was many a soldier wept for our Queen when the great sorrow overtook her. Such tears are not lost; they bind us all together, and give us a deeper insight into that great law of love taught by Him who did not esteem it a weakness to weep at the grave of a friend.

CHAPTER II.
THE GUARDS, OR HOUSEHOLD TROOPS OF ENGLAND.

From the earliest times, when standing armies were needless, inasmuch as every human unit that made part of a nation’s total was more or less a soldier, and was ready and willing to buckle on his harness and fight at the beck of the ruler to whom he owed allegiance, to the present day when the army and navy estimates are the bêtes noirs of every would-be politician who prefers money-grubbing to national honour, the chosen head or chief magistrate of every nation—no matter what his style and title may have been, or may be—has always had a select body-guard at his command, partly as a mark of distinction and honour, and partly for the special defence of his person against malcontents at home and enemies abroad.

To this rule Victoria, by the Grace of God, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of Hindostan, is no exception, and could our eyes be gratified with a review in which the “household troops” of all nations took part, from the Cent Gardes of Napoleon III. to the Amazons of His Brutality of Dahomey, it would be seen that there are none superior to the British Guards.

The Guards, or Household Troops of England, consist of six regiments, three of cavalry and three of infantry. The three regiments of cavalry are styled respectively, the First Life Guards, the Second Life Guards, and the Horse Guards, or Oxford Blues; while the three regiments of Foot Guards are known as the First, or Grenadier Guards, the Second, or Coldstream Guards, and the Third, or Scots Fusilier Guards. These six magnificent regiments of cavalry and infantry are—and it is just and right to say so, though it be said with the pride of an Englishman—unequalled in the world, whether it be in appointments or soldierly bearing, in physical strength or majesty of stature, in dash or discipline, unflinching endurance of hardships or superb indifference to death—which last, by the way, are qualities common to all British soldiers and sailors at all times and under all circumstances.

The First and Second Life Guards owe their origin to a troop of eighty Cavalier gentlemen who were enrolled in Holland, on May 17, 1660, as a body of Life Guards for the protection of the person of Charles II. against the conspiracies that were said to be forming in England to assassinate him as soon as he set foot once more on English soil. The number of this body-guard was raised to six hundred before the king quitted Holland; but after the Restoration had been effected, several gentlemen retired from the service to return to their homes in the country, and it dwindled down to two troops—one of which remained with the king in London, while the other went into garrison under the Duke of York at Dunkirk. The attempt, however, of the “Fifth Monarchy Men” to overthrow the king’s authority in 1661 led to the recall of the Duke of York and his troopers, when the corps of Life Guards was raised to five hundred men, and divided into three troops—the first being called His Majesty’s Own; the second, the Duke of York’s, as before; and the third the Duke of Albemarle’s.

No change was made in the constitution of the Life Guards, with the exception of the addition of a fourth troop after the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion in 1685, until October, 1693, when the Horse Grenadiers, who had hitherto been attached to each troop of Life Guards—just as a company of grenadiers formed part of almost every infantry regiment in the British service until a few years ago—were embodied and formed into a separate troop, distinguished by the title of the Horse Grenadier Guards. It should also be stated that the Scots Life Guards and Horse Grenadier Guards, which had been raised after the Restoration to act as a guard of honour to the Lord High Commissioner and the Scottish Parliament, were marched to London, and incorporated with the English Life Guards shortly after the union of the two kingdoms.

In 1745, after the defeat of Prince Charles Edward—otherwise styled the Pretender—at Culloden, the four troops of Life Guards were reduced to two; but the establishment of the Horse Grenadier Guards, which now consisted of two troops, remained on the same footing. This continued until June 25, 1788, when the two troops of Life Guards and the two troops of Horse Grenadier Guards were embodied into two regiments, the former bearing the title of the First Regiment of Life Guards, and the latter that of the Second Regiment of Life Guards; and no further alteration has been made to the present day, except in the number of companies in each regiment, and the numerical strength of the companies.

The third cavalry regiment of the Household Troops—the Royal Regiment of Horse Guards, or Oxford Blues, as it is familiarly called—was originally a body of horse that had been raised by Cromwell as a body-guard, and had been retained after his death to act as a guard of honour to the Parliament and General Monk, who then bore the title of the Lord General. After the Restoration the whole of the troops that had been in the service of the Parliament were disembodied; but the officers and men of the Lord General’s troop of horse were immediately formed into a new regiment, which received the title it now bears, and was placed under the command of the Earl of Oxford. With the exception of alterations at various periods in its numerical strength, no change has taken place in the constitution of this regiment from the time of its enrolment for the service of Charles II. until the present time.

Of the three infantry regiments of the Household Troops, the First, or Grenadier Guards, although it takes precedence of the other two regiments in point of rank, yields to the Coldstream Guards in priority of enrolment. This regiment was incorporated at Brussels in 1657, having been raised at that time by the Duke of York for the service of the Spanish crown in the Netherlands. It consisted of about four hundred men of all ranks, the majority of whom were gallant, reckless, royalist gentlemen, who had fought and bled for Charles I. and his son Charles II. in the Civil War, and had followed the fortunes of the latter and his brother, the Duke of York, when they were driven from England, and obliged to take refuge in France, from which country they were also expelled when peace was made between Louis XIV. and Oliver Cromwell in 1655. The regiment was cut to pieces before Dunkirk in 1658, when that town was taken from the Spaniards by the French troops and the soldiers of the Commonwealth; but it was reorganised two years subsequently by Lord Wentworth, who then assumed the command. In 1662 it was ordered to repair to England, where it was incorporated with a regiment known as the “King’s Regiment,” commanded by Colonel Russell, under the title of the “First Regiment of Foot Guards.” It did not receive its present appellation of the “Grenadier Guards” until after the battle of Waterloo, when it was thus distinguished in commemoration of the glorious charge in which its officers and men broke and routed the veteran Grenadiers of the far-famed French Imperial Guard—the last charge of the British line on June 18, 1815, which decided the terrible struggle of that eventful day in favour of the English arms, and crushed for ever the power and prestige of Napoleon I.

The regiment known as the Coldstream Guards derives its origin from a regiment of the Commonwealth that served against the king in the Civil War under the command of General Monk. It takes its name from Coldstream, a small border town in the south of Berwickshire on the left bank of the Tweed. This town formed the head-quarters of General Monk for some time before he set out on his march for London with the view of effecting the restoration of Charles II., and it was here, indeed, that this movement was projected and matured. During his sojourn in this town in 1659, Monk may rather be said to have reorganised and recruited his old corps, originally called “Monk’s Regiment,” than to have raised a new one, as it is commonly stated, and, having surrounded himself with a body of troops on whose fidelity he could rely, he commenced his march towards London on January 1, 1660. On his arrival his soldiers were employed in repressing the tendency which was evinced by the citizens of London to dispute the authority of the Parliament then sitting. Immediately after the Restoration the forces of the Commonwealth were disbanded by Act of Parliament, but Charles had resolved to add “Monk’s Regiment” to the Household Troops that were then forming for the defence of his person against the attempts of the more desperate republicans who still cherished a bitter hatred to the monarchical form of government, and the soldiers, having laid down their arms on Tower Hill as a mark of obedience to the king’s authority, and in token of their dissolution as a regiment of the Commonwealth, immediately took the oath of allegiance, and sprung into existence anew as an English regiment, under the name of “The Duke of Albemarle’s, or Lord General’s Regiment,” which appellation was changed to that of the “Coldstream Guards” about 1670, after the death of Monk, in remembrance of the place where he had prepared for the enterprise which it was his good fortune to bring to such a happy issue.

The precedence of the Grenadier Guards over the Coldstream Guards was established by a general order, dated September 12, 1666, in which it was directed “that the regiment of Guards (composed of the two regiments of Foot Guards, commanded by Colonel Russell and Lord Wentworth) take place of all other regiments, and the colonell take place as the first foot colonell; the General’s Regiment (the Duke of Albemarle’s, or Coldstream Guards) to take place next.”

The Scots Fusilier Guards were placed on the roll of the English army, and first shared the duties and privileges of the Household Troops, shortly after the union had been effected between England and Scotland, in 1707, and it was found unnecessary to retain them any longer in Edinburgh, where, in conjunction with the Scots Life Guards, they had acted as a guard of honour to the Lord High Commissioner and the Scottish Parliament, besides rendering efficient service in the various continental wars in which England had been involved during the latter part of the seventeenth century.

The Scots Life Guards were established in Edinburgh in 1661, a single troop having been enrolled in that year, to which a second was added about two years after, to assist in the maintenance of order and the enforcement of the Episcopalian form of worship, which the covenanting Scotch, especially the Lowlanders, cordially hated. It is probable that the Scots Foot Guards were enrolled at the same time, as it appears that after the suppression of the risings in Scotland in 1667, and the peace that was concluded in that year with Holland, all the regular Scottish forces were disbanded, with the exception of the two troops of Scots Life Guards above mentioned and the regiment of Scots Foot Guards.

Space would fail us entirely if we attempted to notice even a tithe of the thousand and one battles and exploits in which our Household Troops have signalized themselves. We can, indeed, only mention the few hard-fought fights, the names of which are blazoned in scrolls of glowing gold on the regimental colours of these regiments, in memory of the battle-fields in which they have won such a glorious meed of honour and renown at the priceless cost of life and limb and liberty; and we must abstain from making more than the briefest mention of the services rendered by detachments of the Life Guards and Coldstream Guards, who acted as Marines on board the English fleet in 1665 and 1666, under Prince Rupert and the Dukes of York and Albemarle (some fifty years prior to the addition of the splendid and distinguished corps that is now known as the “Royal Marines” to the British army), and at the battle of Solebay in 1672; the gallant deeds of the same regiments before Maestricht in 1673, under the Duke of Monmouth and John Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, the services of the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards in Flanders, in 1678, under the same generals; the share that these regiments had in the occupation of Tangiers in 1680, in conjunction with the Spanish troops, and the subsequent battles with the Moors; the battle of Bothwell Bridge, in Scotland, with the rebel covenanters, in which the Scots Life Guards and Foot Guards bore a conspicuous part under the Duke of Monmouth; the frustration of the attempt of the same nobleman to wrest the crown from James II., by the untoward battle of Sedgemoor, in which all the regiments of English Life and Foot Guards were engaged; the campaigns against France in the Netherlands, in 1689 and 1691, the last of which was followed by the loss of Namur; and the long list of battles and sieges in which these regiments took part during the latter part of the reign of William III. and Mary, those of Queen Anne, George I., and George II., and the early part of the reign of George III., including the battles of Steenkirk, Landen, Blenheim, Ramilies, Almanza, Oudenarde, Malplaquet, Dettingen, Fontenoy, Minden, Warburg, the American campaigns, and the battle of Valenciennes in 1793.

The First and Second Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards all bear the words “Peninsula” and “Waterloo” on their guidons. The Grenadier Guards bear the memorable names of “Lincelles,” “Corunna,” “Barossa,” “Peninsula,” “Waterloo,” “Alma,” “Inkerman,” and “Sevastopol” on their colours; and in addition to these, Corunna only being excepted, the Coldstream Guards and Scots Fusiliers have the words “Sphinx,” “Egypt,” and “Talavera.”

To speak further of the achievements of the Household Troops in Belgium, Egypt, Spain, and Portugal, would be to write a military history of the reign of George III., or to tell again the oft-told but never tiring tale of the Peninsular War, the disastrous retreat on Corunna, the battle fought there on the eve of embarkation, the death and burial of Sir John Moore, the triumphs of Talavera, Vittoria, Salamanca, and Barossa, and the “crowning mercy” of Waterloo, in which battle the Household Cavalry and the First Dragoon Guards broke and utterly routed Napoleon’s magnificent Cuirassiers, and won the right to bear the word “Waterloo” on their standards and appointments for ever.

From 1815 a long rest from war’s alarm fell to the lot of the Household Troops until the outbreak of the Crimean War, in the hardships and glories of which the three regiments of Foot Guards participated. As the honour of the battle of Balaclava belongs peculiarly to the “six hundred,” who were set face to face with sure and sudden death when they were launched against the Russian batteries, and rode, like heroes as they were, into the graves that yawned to receive them, so the glory of Inkerman adds especial lustre to the laurels of the British Foot Guards.

Amid the cold grey mists of that dark November morning they bore the brunt of an almost hopeless struggle, as line after line of Russian soldiers, maddened with drink, swarmed up the hill from the valley of the Tchernaya to recoil with broken ranks from the base of the little battery that the Guards held with desperate courage. It was the key of the position: to have been forced from it would have brought destruction on the entire British camp. They knew this, and officers and men would all have died there gladly, like Leonidas and his three hundred at the pass of Thermopylæ, rather than have quitted the earthwork alive, though not dishonoured. Tears trickled down the cheeks of their royal leader as he saw his men falling, like autumn leaves, before the fire of the infuriated foe. With bleeding heart he gasped, “My poor Guards! What will they say in England?” Ay! what, indeed? What, but honour to the men who esteemed life as nothing in comparison with England’s reputation? What, but honour to the Duke who dared to sigh for his maimed and slaughtered men as a father would sorrow for his dying son? Even when ammunition failed them they did not abandon the post they had held so long, and at so great a cost. No! if they could no longer pour a shower of lead into the advancing masses of the Russians, they could at least rain stones upon them, and many a Russian soldier fell to the rear that day with loosened teeth and shattered jaws, smarting under the blows of the rough missiles that the Guards tore from the banks and mould around them. But succour was at hand: the red-breeched Zouaves of France came leaping to the rescue at the pas de charge; and, as they advanced, the Guards sprang, with a cheer, over the parapet of the earthwork, and drove the blades of Bayonne to the very muzzles of their muskets into the backs of the running foe, who left behind them more killed and wounded than the British numbered at the commencement of the battle.

It may have been noticed that all officers in the Guards are entitled to hold that rank in the army which is immediately above the rank which they hold in their own regiments: an ensign in the Guards being styled “ensign and lieutenant” in his commission, and so on. The privilege of holding the rank of lieutenant-colonels and captains in the army was granted to captains and lieutenants in the Guards in 1691, when the allied armies, under the command of William III., were encamped on the plain of Gerpynes, in the Netherlands, near the French frontier, a few weeks before the battle fought between the Allies and the French on the banks of the little rivulet near Catoir; but the rank of lieutenant in the army was not held by ensigns in the Guards until after the battle of Waterloo, when this privilege was conceded to them by the Prince Regent, in an order from the War Office, dated July 29, 1815.

The illustration that accompanies this chapter gives the present costume of the three regiments of Foot Guards—a scarlet tunic, lately introduced, with blue facings, white cross-belt and waist-belt, and black trousers, with a scarlet cord down the seams in winter, and white in summer. When in full dress, the whole wear bearskin caps, but each regiment has distinctive ornaments on the collar of the tunic, etc.; and when in undress, the men belonging to each may be distinguished by the band round the cap—the Grenadier Guards wearing a red band, the Coldstream Guards a white band, and the Scots Fusiliers a band chequered with red and white.

The two regiments of Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards all wear corselets—consisting of a breast-plate and back-piece—and helmets of polished steel, with breeches, sword-belts, cross-belts, and gauntlets of white leather. They are, however, to be distinguished by the colour of their coats, and the plume that they wear in their helmets—the Life Guards being clad in scarlet coats, and having white plumes, while the Horse Guards wear blue coats, and scarlet plumes. They are all armed alike, with sword and rifled carbine, and carry pistols in the holsters of their saddles, which are covered with white sheep-skin for the Life Guards, and black sheep-skin for the Horse Guards Blue. In undress the former wear a scarlet shell-jacket with blue facings, while the latter wear a blue shell-jacket with scarlet facings. The cap—black, with a scarlet band—is the same for each regiment.

Apropos of this subject, it may not be generally known that the First Royals, or First (Royal) Regiment of Foot, are a corps of Foot Guards by regimental tradition, if not by authority from the Horse Guards.

The writer of this chapter once knew an old Devonshire pensioner, John Sculley by name, who belonged to the “Fust Ry-uls,” as he used to style his old regiment, who had fought in almost every one of the principal battles of the Peninsular war, and had escaped without a scratch.

“John,” I would sometimes say to the old fellow, as he stood leaning on his spade, “what regiment did you belong to?”

“Why, Sponshus Pilut’s Guards, to be sure,” he would curtly reply. “I’ve told ’ee so often enough, I reckon.”

“No, I think not. But Pontius Pilate’s Guards—what a queer title! Why in the world were you called so?”

“Why, you see, the ridg’ment was raised in Sponshus Pilut’s time, and that’s how us got the name.”

And this he implicitly believed.

CHAPTER III.
THE ENGINEERS.

Gibraltar is well named the Key of the Mediterranean. In peace it protects our commerce and our fleets, in war it affords equal facility for harassing our foes; by its position and its strength its possession is of the utmost importance to the English, and it has excited for the last century and a half the suspicion and the jealousy of other nations. The rock of Gibraltar projects into the sea about three miles. Its northern extremity, owing to its perpendicular altitude, is inaccessible; its southern extremity is known as Europa Point; and the southern and eastern sides are rugged and steep, affording natural defences of a very formidable character. It is only on the western side fronting the bay that the rock gradually declines to the sea; but the town of Gibraltar is so built that an attack upon it, however well planned, however strong or long continued, is almost certain of failure. The bay formed by the two points already named is more than four miles across. The depth of its waters, and the protection afforded by the headland, render the harbour remarkably secure, and it is well adapted for vessels of every description. The extreme depth of the water within the bay is a hundred and ten fathoms. The security of the harbour has been still further increased by two moles, one extending eleven hundred feet, and the other seven hundred feet into the bay. The bold outline of the rock is conspicuous and striking, as it lifts its colossal proportions into the sky, and against the intense blue of that sky every crag is sharply defined. From the water to the summit, from the land forts to Europa Point, the whole rock is lined with formidable batteries. Like a crouching lion it looks out to sea, and every foe is daunted by its aspect.

Gibraltar is essentially military. Sentinels, gateways, drawbridges, fortifications, guns pointing this way, that way, and the other, looking as if—supposing them to be fired—they would inevitably blow up one another; narrow streets of stairs which it is hard work in the hot sunshine to ascend; nothing to see when you reach the top but a line of ramparts, and another street of stairs in perspective. Excavated passages in the rock lead from point to point; every new position seems more impregnable than the last; awful heights rise above, terrific depths yawn below; guns peer—at the most unexpected points—from the sides of the rock, as if they were natural productions; tunnelled galleries open to the right and to the left, inviting or deterring the visitor. There is one huge chamber cut out of the solid rock, and serving as a battery or a banquet room as occasion may require; it is called St. George’s Hall, and is the most formidable and singular cutting of Gibraltar. There is another excavation of the same character christened by the name of Cornwallis, but it is neither so spacious nor so elegant as that of St. George.

The people one meets in Gibraltar are a mixed multitude—the familiar English uniform is of course conspicuous, but for the rest it is only what we have read of, or heard of, or dreamed of in connexion with Gil Blas and Don Quixote. There is so much that is Spanish that you might fancy yourself in Barcelona; so much that is Moorish that you might fancy yourself in Morocco; so much that is English, Italian, Greek, Polish, Jewish, African, and Portuguese, that you might conceive yourself to be in the midst of an animated Ethnological museum on a large scale, opened at Gibraltar, regardless of expense.

The rock of Gibraltar, forming with Abyla in ancient times the far-famed pillars of Hercules, was captured from the Spaniards by Sir George Rooke in 1704. During the nine following years the Spaniards in vain tried to recover it, and in 1713 its possession was secured to the English by the treaty of the peace of Utrecht. But treaties are liable to be broken. When the men of the pen have finished their work the men of the sword may undo it. To hold the rock of Gibraltar by treaty was one thing, to hold it by strength was another. The fortifications required for its defence were necessarily on a gigantic scale, and the men of the pick and the shovel were in request. When we glance at the subterranean passages cut in the rock, the huge caverns scooped out of it, the long lines of rampart making the place impregnable, even though attacked by an enemy having the command of the sea, we may readily understand how important was the service rendered by the engineer and labourer. So important indeed was their work, that it added a new division to the British army—a division, that wherever our flag waves has done good service—namely, that of the Engineers.

Previous to the year 1772 all our great engineering works in connexion with military operations were mainly executed by civilians. The works at Gibraltar were entrusted to ordinary mechanics obtained from England and the Continent. These operatives were not engaged for any term of years, neither were they amenable to military discipline; they worked when they pleased, they idled when they pleased; they were wholly regardless of authority; received good wages; and their dismissal was in all instances more injurious to the Government than it was to the men.

The hindrance and inconvenience of this system led to the formation of a corps of military artificers. The idea was suggested to Lieutenant-Colonel Green by the useful result of the occasional occupation of soldiers who had learned mechanical trades previous to enlistment. He thought it possible that a sufficient number of these men might be banded together for the carrying on of all necessary engineering works, and that their employment would lessen the cost while it secured the completion of any engineering operation, and at the same time, that the men so employed would at any period be ready to participate in the defence of the place.

Lieutenant-Colonel Green submitted his suggestion to the Governor of Gibraltar. The governor approving the plan, it was recommended to the attention of the Secretary of State, and royal consent was given to the measure in a warrant dated March 6th, 1772: thus originated the corps of Royal Sappers and Miners.

The warrant authorised the raising and forming of a company of artificers, to consist of a sergeant-major, as adjutant, who was to receive 3s. a day; three sergeants, each of whom was to receive 1s. 6d. a day; three corporals, whose pay was 1s. 2d. a day; and sixty privates, and one drummer, each of whom was to receive 10d. a day.

The rank of adjutant attached to that of sergeant-major was not adopted, but it appears to have been taken by Thomas Bridger, who so describes himself on his wife’s tombstone at Gibraltar, adding thereto a touching tribute to her charity, and a sneer at the end—like the sting in the tail of the serpent—at the parsimony of the Government.

“A more loving wife or friend sincere

Never will be buried here;

Charitable she was to all,

Altho’ her income it was small.”

Recruiting for this company was a service of but little difficulty, as permission was granted to fill it with men from the regiment then serving in the garrison. The whole of the civil mechanics were not discharged from the department on account of this measure; a few, on the score of their merit, were retained in the fortress; the foreign artificers were dismissed; most of the English “contracted artificers” sent home; permission, however, was given to any “good men” who chose to enlist; but not one availed himself of the privilege.

Before the close of the year 1772, the ranks of the company were almost full, and the system was found to work so well, that on the recommendation of the lieutenant-governor a fresh warrant was issued for the increase of the corps, and no sooner was it completed than the engineers proceeded with great spirit in the execution of the King’s Bastion. On laying the foundation of this work, General Boyd, in his speech, desired that the bastion might be as gallantly defended as he knew it would be ably executed, and that he might live to see it resist the united efforts of France and Spain. His desire was fully realised. He not only lived to see what he wished, but materially to assist in the operations of the siege.[1]

In October, 1775, the company of Soldier Artificers was still further augmented, and consisted of one hundred and sixteen non-commissioned officers and men.

Gibraltar, ever since its capture by the English in 1704, had been a source of jealousy and uneasiness to Spain; as soon as ever an opportunity offered for the commencement of hostilities, Spain assumed an aggressive attitude, and in 1779 sat down before the place at St. Roque with a powerful camp, and sent out a fleet to cut off supplies. The gallant old General Elliot, and the no less gallant veteran Boyd, defended the rock nobly, and found their best help in the Soldier Artificers. The sufferings of the undaunted garrison were great—the price of mutton or beef being 3s. 6d. a pound, eggs sixpence each, and mouldy biscuit crumbs 1s. a pound; but the indomitable energy of the men never slackened; they laboured night and day, piercing the rock with subterranean passages, and forming vast receptacles for stores and ammunition in the solid stone. Failing in their efforts to reduce the garrison by famine, the French and Spaniards, after three years’ beleaguering, began a terrific bombardment. Fire was opened with unexampled fury, and continued incessantly for days and weeks. The battering flotilla was warmly received by the “dwellers in the rock.” But for a long period the battering ships seemed invulnerable. At length red-hot shot was employed by the garrison, and sheets of resistless flame burst in all directions from the flotilla: the whole of the batteries were burnt; the magazines blew up, one after another; and it was a miracle that the loss of the enemy by drowning did not exceed the number saved by the merciful efforts of the garrison.

The contest was still prolonged: the enemy were bent on reducing their invincible opponents at all cost. The British were in no mood to yield; red-hot shot was their grand specific; the Artificers were instantly employed in erecting kilns in various parts of the fortress, each kiln capable of heating a hundred shot in an hour.

The struggle continued for some time; from one thousand to two thousand rounds were poured into the garrison in the twenty-four hours, and this was kept up for months. During the cannonade, the Artificers under the engineers were constantly engaged in the diversified works of the fortress, and they began to rebuild the fortification known as the Orange Bastion, on the sea line, and in the face of a galling fire completed their work in three months. The number of the Artificers had been augmented by the arrival of one hundred and forty-one mechanics, under Lord Howe; but, even taking this into account, the erection of such a work in solid masonry, and under such circumstances, is unprecedented in any siege.

Failing to obtain the submission of the garrison either by famine or bombardment, the enemy attempted to mine a cave in the rock, by which to blow up the north front, and thus make a breach for their easy entrance into the fortress. The secret was revealed by a deserter; but very little attention was paid to his statement, until the discovery of the enemy’s proceedings was made by Sergeant Thomas Jackson, who, making a perilous descent of the rock by the help of ropes and ladders, ascertained beyond all doubt the work in which the Spaniards were engaged. The ratification of peace put an end to all military operations, and terminated a siege which extended—with circumstances of unparalleled difficulty and danger—over a period of four years.

During the whole of this memorable defence, the Company of Artificers proved themselves to be good and brave soldiers, and no less conspicuous for their skill, usefulness, and zeal in the works—works, as the commander of the hostile forces [Duc de Crillon] remarked, “worthy of the Romans.”

At the close of the siege, there were twenty-nine rank and file wanting to complete the number of Soldier Artificers. The deficiency was speedily supplied, and the company was never allowed to sink beneath its established number. A force of more than two hundred and twenty non-commissioned officers and artificers were employed in restoring the work which had suffered during the bombardment; and to expedite the labour, the Soldier Artisans were excused from all garrison routine, as well as from their own regimental guard and routine, and freed from all interference likely to interrupt them in the performance of their working duties. Still, to impress them with the recollection that their civil employments and privileges did not make them any the less soldiers, they were paraded, generally under arms, on Sundays; and to heighten the effect of their military appearance, wore accoutrements which had belonged to a disbanded Newfoundland regiment, purchased for them at the economical outlay of seven shillings a set. Perhaps no body of men subject to the articles of war were ever permitted to live and work under a milder surveillance; and it may be added, that none could have rendered service more in keeping with the indulgences bestowed.

In the summer of 1786 the company was divided into two, the chief engineer still continuing in command of both companies. About the same time, those men who were disqualified in any way for service were removed from the corps, and the enlistment of labourers, in addition to skilled hands, was authorized by the Government. Five batches of recruits were sent to the Rock in rapid succession. The second party of recruits, comprising fifty-eight men, twenty-eight women, and twelve children, were destroyed in a storm off Dunkirk. Only three persons escaped.

The valuable services rendered by the corps, and the hearty good-will with which they invariably laboured, led to a still further extension of their privileges. They were allowed to pass in and out of garrison on Sundays and holidays without a written pass, and to wear at pleasure whatever dress suited their inclination. It was not uncommon, therefore, for the non-commissioned officers and the respectable portion of the privates to stroll about garrison or ramble into Spain, dressed in black silk and satin breeches, white silk stockings, and silver knee or shoe buckles, drab beaver hats and scarlet jackets, tastefully trimmed with white kerseymere.

In 1787 the king’s authority was granted “for establishing a corps of Royal Military Artificers.” It was to consist of six companies, of a hundred men each. Officers of the Royal Engineers were appointed to command the corps; and when required to parade with other regiments the corps was directed to take post next on the left of the Royal Artillery. The companies were ordered to serve at Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, Gosport, Plymouth, and one company was divided between Jersey and Guernsey. The companies at Gibraltar, although similarly constituted, remained a distinct and separate body until their incorporation with the corps in 1797. The recruiting was carried on by the captains of companies; there was no standard as to height fixed, but labourers were not enlisted over twenty-five years of age nor any artificer over thirty, unless he had been employed in the Ordnance Department and was known to be an expert workman of good character. The bounty given at first to each recruit was five guineas, but during time of peace it was reduced to three. Labourers promoted to the rank of artificers received a bonus of two guineas, an additional 3d. a day, and were privileged to wear a gold-laced hat.

By the operative classes some opposition was offered to the enrolment of the Royal Artificers, and on more than one occasion a serious outbreak took place between the civilians and the military; the jealousy, however, at last died out, and the old animosity was forgotten.

In 1791, a vessel bearing several recruits to Gibraltar encountered a terrific storm in the Bay of Biscay. The wreck and its circumstances gave rise to a song called “The Bay of Biscay O!”

The declaration of war with France, 1793, put an end to the comfortable and easy life which the Royal Artificers had been leading. They were, as soldiers, liable to be sent to any part of the world where the British Government might require their services. The idea of this liability ever being insisted upon seems to have been foreign to the minds of the corps. When it was known that their services would be required in the Low Countries and in the West Indies, many of them eluded service by providing substitutes, and some resorted to the very dishonourable alternative of desertion. Of the finest company sent out to the West Indies, not a man escaped the ravages of “yellow Jack.” Those who served in Holland distinguished themselves by their bravery, especially at the famous siege of Valenciennes. The continuance of the war rendering it essential that the artizan companies should be kept in foreign stations, while the necessity for increased vigilance at home was each day becoming more urgent, led to the extension of the corps, and four new companies were enrolled—two to serve in Flanders, one in the West Indies, and one in Upper Canada.

The special company destined for service in the West Indies sailed from Spithead, November, 1793, and arrived at Barbadoes early in the following year. From thence they proceeded to Martinique, where their spirited conduct in the field commanded the admiration of the whole army. The companies which were sent both to Toulon and Flanders behaved also with much gallantry, proving that the Royal Artificers were not only skilled workmen but efficient soldiers.

In June, 1797, the Soldier Artificers Corps at Gibraltar were incorporated with the Royal Military Artificers; by this incorporation the latter corps were increased from 801 to 1075, of all ranks; but its numerical strength only reached 759 men. Detachments of the corps served with credit under Sir Ralph Abercrombie at Trinidad, and also in the unsuccessful attack on Porto Rico.

Among the measures suggested for reducing Porto Rico was one for taking the town by forcing the troops through the lagoon bounding the east side of the island. In order to ascertain whether the lagoon was fordable, David Sinclair, one of the Military Artificers, picked his way across at dead of night, reached the opposite shore in safety, and picked his way back again to report. He was rewarded for this daring act, but the fording of the lagoon presented so many difficulties as to be given up.

The memorable mutiny of the Fleet at Spithead was followed by the rising of some unprincipled men, who by every means endeavoured to shake the allegiance of the soldiery. The Plymouth Company of Artificers in an especial manner distinguished itself by its open and soldier-like activity against these disloyal exertions; in a printed document, bearing date May, 1797, they avowed at that momentous crisis their “firm loyalty, attachment, and fidelity to their most Gracious Sovereign and to their Country.” The declaration was well timed, and had the desired effect.

Throughout the war in the Low Countries the Corps of Artificers rendered eminent service. One of their most important achievements was that of the total destruction of the Bruges canal.

About the same time a company of Artificers was sent to Turkey to operate with the troops of the Sultan against Napoleon, in Egypt. There also they distinguished themselves alike by their active service and good conduct. A Turk having attempted to stab one of the men, was sentenced by the Turkish governor to death; this punishment, at the earnest entreaty of the commanding officer, was mitigated, the culprit being sentenced to receive fifty strokes of the bastinado, to be imprisoned twenty years, and to learn the Arabic language.

In the West Indies the Artificers were exposed to worse than human foe. There the yellow fever decimated their ranks, but the conduct of the men throughout was both intrepid and humane, and in the despatches reference is frequently made to their exemplary conduct. When the mortality was at its height, three privates voluntarily devoted themselves to the burial of the dead, and worked on with unflinching ardour; surrounded by the pest in its worst form, inhaling the worst effluvia, never for a moment forsaking their frightful service, they laboured on inspiriting those about them by their example, until the necessity for their exertions no longer existed.

In 1806 a company of Military Artificers was established at Malta, and remained a distinct and separate body.

The necessity for an efficient body of trained artizan soldiers became, indeed, every day more obvious; and no expedition of any consequence was undertaken without a body of these men being included in the forces sent out. In America, in the Indies, East and West, on Mediterranean service, in the Peninsula, in the Low Countries, they were alike needed, and rendered excellent service. At home, also, they were continually employed in erecting new and strengthening the old fortifications, for it was anticipated that Bonaparte would visit our shores, and that stone walls as well as wooden walls would be required for our defence.

Throughout the Peninsular war the services of the corps were invaluable; in sap, battery, and trench work, in the making of fascines and gabions, in repairing broken batteries and damaged embrasures, in constructing flying bridges over the Guadiana, the Artificer vied with the regular engineers. Major Pasley, R.E., on his appointment to the Plymouth station, began regularly to practise his men in sapping and mining. He was one of those officers who took pains to improve the military appearance and efficiency of his men, and to make them useful, either for home or foreign employments. He is believed to have been the first officer who represented the advantage of training the corps in the construction of military field-work. After the failure at Badajoz (1811) the necessity of this measure was strongly advocated by the war officers. Then it was recommended to form a corps under the title of Royal Sappers and Miners, to be composed of six companies, chosen from the Royal Military Artificers, which, after receiving some instruction in the art, was to be sent to the Peninsula to aid the troops in their future siege operations.

In April, 1812, a warrant was issued for the formation of an establishment for instructing the corps in military field-work. Chatham was selected as the most suitable place for carrying out the royal orders, and Major Pasley was appointed director of the establishment. Uniting great zeal and unwearied perseverance with good talents and judgment, Major Pasley succeeded in extending the course of instructions far beyond the limits originally assigned, and he not only filled the ranks of the corps with good scholars, good surveyors, and good draughtsmen, but enabled many, after quitting this service, to occupy, with ability and credit, situations of considerable importance in civil life.

At Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, and other places made famous in the Peninsular war, the Military Artificers won the praise of Wellington, conducting themselves with the greatest gallantry and coolness.

On the 5th of March, 1813, the title of the corps was changed from that of Royal Military Artificers to that of Royal Sappers and Miners. A change of equipment was also introduced. In this respect many irregularities had crept in, the members of the corps in various parts of the world being variously armed, rather to suit their own fancy than to meet the exigencies of the work. Uniformity in the matter was of great importance, and this was gradually and effectually introduced.

When Napoleon, escaping from captivity in Elba, re-appeared in France, and the armies of the allies were again summoned to the field, at the instance of the Duke of Wellington the whole corps of Sappers and Miners was sent to Brussels to join his Grace’s force, and were employed in constructing indispensable field-works, or improving the fortifications at Ostend, Ghent, Tournay, Oudenarde, Boom, Antwerp, Lille, Liepkenshock, and Hae. At the battle of Waterloo the Royal Sappers and Miners were not engaged, but three companies were brought conveniently near, to act in the event of their services being needed. After the battle, all the companies of the corps moved with the army towards Paris, and rendered valuable service in the construction of pontoon bridges. After the capitulation the men were encamped in the vicinity of Paris, until they could be removed to other stations or sent home. Two companies remained with the army of occupation; and in the naval victory of Algiers three of the companies worked at the guns with the seamen of the fleet, and gained equal credit with the navy and marines for their noble support.

In the Canadas the Sappers and Miners rendered themselves very useful, especially in the formation of a new citadel at Quebec; their efficiency also in pontoon work was universally acknowledged; of all the soldiers in the army no men more deserved well of their country—useful as they were alike in time of war and peace. “Indeed,” says Sir John Jones, “justice requires it to be said, that these men, whether employed on brilliant martial services or engaged in the more humble duties of their calling, either under the vertical sun of the tropics or in the frozen regions of the north, invariably conducted themselves as good soldiers; and by their bravery, their industry, or their acquirements, amply repay the trouble and expense of their formation and instruction.” In taking a bird’s-eye view of the formation and growth of some of our military institutions, the Rev. G. R. Gleig thus speaks of the corps: “Besides the infantry, cavalry, and artillery, of which the army was composed, and the Corps of Engineers, coeval with the latter there sprang up during the period of the French Revolution other descriptions of force which proved eminently useful, each in its own department, and of the composition of which a few words will suffice to give an account. First, the Artificers, as they were called, that is to say, the body of men trained to the exercises of mechanical arts, such as carpentry, bricklaying, bridge-making, and so forth, which in all ages seem to have attended on a British army in the field, became the Royal Sappers and Miners, whose services on many trying occasions proved eminently useful, and who still do their duty cheerfully and satisfactorily in every quarter of the globe. During the late war they were commanded, under the officers of engineers, by a body of officers who took no higher rank than that of lieutenant, and consisted entirely of good men, for whom their merits had earned commissions. Their education, carried on at Woolwich and Chatham, trained them to act in the field as guides and directors to all working parties, whether the business in hand might be the construction of a bridge, the throwing up of field works, or the conduct of a siege. Whatever the engineer officers required the troops to do was explained to a party of Sappers, who, taking each his separate charge, showed the soldiers of the Line both the sort of work that was required of them and the best and readiest method of performing it. The regiment of Sappers was the growth of the latter years of the contest, after the British army had fairly thrown itself into the great arena of Continental warfare, and proved so useful, that while men wondered how an army could ever have been accounted complete without this appendage, the idea of dispensing with it in any time to come, seems never to have arisen in the minds of the most economical.”

In the erection of the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851 the Sappers and Miners afforded very valuable assistance, and won for themselves a warm eulogium from the Prince Consort. In the formation of the Camp at Chobham they were also very useful, and they were especially complimented for their exertions by Colonel Vicars and Lord Seaton; but it was during the war with Russia that they again figured most prominently before the public.

On the outbreak with Russia a detachment of the Sappers and Miners was sent out with the Baltic fleet, and a second company was despatched to the Aland Islands. They played an important part in the destruction of the forts and the capture of Bomarsund. Other detachments were sent to Turkey, and did good service at Gallipoli, Boulair, and Ibridgi, winning the “entire approbation” of Sir George Brown. At Scutari, Varna, Derno, and Rustchuk they were still further distinguished. Before Sebastopol, when shot and shell swept furiously into the trenches, the conduct of the men was everything that could be desired. “The country,” wrote Lord Raglan, “was covered with water; the trenches extremely muddy, their condition adding greatly to the labours of the men employed in the batteries, chiefly sailors, artillerymen, and sappers. They conducted their duties admirably.” Everywhere in posts of danger were the Sappers; here piling up hides and fixing gabions; there fixing platforms, renewing sleepers, and fastening bolts; here crawling on the earth, more like a gnome than a man, but busy with pick and shovel, under a shower of rifle bullets; there black with gunpowder, blasting the rock to widen the trench; there the bright hammer of the Sapper plies on the newly-reared parapet, and affords a mark for the enemy; here the horn lantern of the Sapper gives feeble light to the busy workman, but a sure target to the foe; everywhere, in battery, trench, and mine, the Sapper is the centre of each party, toiling at his hazardous avocation through the long dark night.

While the French amused their leisure with private theatricals, getting up an impromptu theatre, the English Sappers built a church—built it entirely of siege apparatus, the materials so arranged that they were only in store, ready for use at a moment’s notice: scaling ladders, gabions, fascines, timbers ready cut and shaped for gun platforms, a few planks and pieces of rope. Two scaling ladders locked into each other at the top, formed at certain intervals the columns which separated the aisles from the body of the church and bore up the roof. The framework of the outer wall was made of long upright timbers which leant against the summits of each set of ladders respectively, and were secured by cords. Across these a few joist beams were lashed, and the outer wall of gabions in a great degree rested on these horizontal supports. The roof was made by the platform timbers laid between the tops of the ladders on each side, and at right angles to these, fascines were laid in regular rows until a complete covering—but one admitting of free ventilation—was formed. There solemn service was often held, and good words spoken by good and brave men—with the Union Jack for a pulpit cloth.

Through the freezing winter and the wasting summer, for 337 days the Sappers carried on their work before Sebastopol. The trenches they made were nine miles long; twenty-two batteries were on the right, and twenty batteries on the left; in the formation of the works there were no less than 20,000 gabions, 4000 fascines, 340,000 sand bags, 7413 bread bags, and a hundred different extemporaneous expedients to give shape and solidity to the works.

They witnessed the triumphant end of their work; and they received no small share of honour and reward, for the work they had done was unsurpassed in ancient or in modern history.

During the Indian mutiny the services of the Engineers were of great advantage, and the bravery and determination of the men both in defence and attack were worthy of the highest commendation. In India there are, we believe, still employed in the engineering arm of our service no less than twelve companies of native Sappers and Miners.

We are all justly proud of our army, proud of its station among the armies of Europe; its appearance, discipline, drill; proud of the history of its achievements

⸺“of most disastrous chances;

Of moving accidents by flood and field;

Of hair-breadth ’scapes i’ th’ imminent deadly breach;”—

but there is no division of our army of which we should be more justly proud than of the Sappers and Miners. It toils for us wherever our flag is unfurled to the winds; it explores unknown regions; surveys and maps new and old regions; it makes roads where no roads were, and iron roads in place of common roads; it blasts rocks; heaves up drowned treasures from the deep; it serves as the pioneer of civilization abroad, and extends and consolidates civilization at home; it labours as hard in peace as in war—labour often unseen and unsuspected, but none the less worthy of the respect, honour, and admiration due to the brave sons of a brave people.

The Engineer corps of officers now consists of about four hundred of all grades, partly employed in building and repairing our defences, while the rest are more immediately attached to the Sappers and Miners, a body of some three or four thousand men, which now forms a constituent part of the Royal Engineers; indeed, the Sappers and Miners are now to be regarded as the main body of this arm of our service.

CHAPTER IV.
THE ROYAL WELSH.

England possesses many regiments that have a traditional as well as an individual existence. The memory of deeds of valour wrought by their predecessors is transmitted from generation to generation, and inspires the young soldier with the desire of equalling, if not surpassing, the heroism of those who have gone before. His regiment is the warrior’s family, and each man feels, as the inheritor of a noble fame ought to feel, that he must do nothing unworthy of the past renown gained in older days. Thus it happens that there are certain regiments which may always be counted on in the hour of danger, and one of these is the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers. The Prince of Wales’s plume, with the motto “Ich Dien,” betokens their nationality; and their claim to the proud words, “Nec aspera terrent,” which they bear on their colours, has been justified by their gallant conduct in Egypt, and at Corunna, Martinique, Albuera, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, the Pyrenees, Nivelle, Orthès, Toulouse, Waterloo, Alma, Inkermann, and Sebastopol. All these names are emblazoned on their colours, and the successors of the heroes of the Peninsula and Waterloo proved in the Crimea that the regiment had not fallen from its high estate of honourable glory.

It will be interesting to our readers to glance briefly at the different engagements in which the Welsh Fusiliers distinguished themselves about the beginning of this century. They formed part of the expedition which sailed for Egypt in 1801, under the command of Sir Ralph Abercrombie, for the purpose of expelling the French from that country. The authorities at home knew as little about Egypt and the French forces there as the members of Lord Aberdeen’s cabinet did about the Crimea and the strength of the Russian army. Our men had no other guide than an old map, which proved to be very incorrect, and Sir Sidney Smith, a gallant sailor but an indifferent geographer, who knew nothing of the interior of the country. Moreover, it was supposed that the enemy amounted to only 15,000 men, whereas they really numbered 35,000 veteran troops. The idea of sending 12,000 men, chiefly young soldiers, to expel such a body of veterans from a country where they were strongly intrenched, may excite some surprise, but British soldiers may do anything when properly led. On the 8th of March our men landed with such regularity and order that every brigade, every regiment, and even every company, drew up on the exact spot they were intended to occupy. The sea was as smooth as glass, and the bullets of the enemy fell as thick as hailstones around the boats, but the landing force advanced and fell into their places with as much coolness as if they had been dressing for a review. The Welsh Fusiliers and three other regiments, including the gallant 42nd, landed in boats on the right, and were exposed to showers of grape and shell from the enemy’s batteries; but, nothing daunted, they quietly disembarked, formed in line, and, without even stopping to load, rushed up the hill to charge the enemy with the bayonet. Half way up they were met with a volley from the enemy, but, pushing on, they reached the summit before they could reload, rushed furiously upon them, and drove them from their position. The general was proud of this first success, and thanked his men for having displayed “an intrepidity scarcely to be paralleled.” On the 13th of March he was about to attack the right flank of the enemy, who anticipated his design, and descended from the heights to meet him; after considerable loss our men had to retire to their former position, where they remained till the 20th. On the evening of this day Sir Sidney Smith (the heroic defender of Acre) received a letter from an Arab chief, apprising him of the enemy’s intention to fall upon the English with all their forces the following morning, but unfortunately the commander-in-chief paid no attention to this warning. Next morning he discovered his mistake; the French commenced the action by a feigned attack on the British left, but concentrated their most vigorous efforts against the right, where the Welsh Fusiliers were stationed. Their superiority in numbers procured them a temporary success. Our right flank was turned, and the 28th Regiment, who were most exposed to their impetuous attack, could with difficulty retain their position, though supported by the 58th and the Welsh Fusiliers, when the 42nd advanced to their aid, and proved that France’s Invincibles were unworthy of their name by wrenching

⸺“the banner from her bravest host,

Baptised Invincible in Austria’s gore.”

Notwithstanding their superiority in numbers, the French were repulsed at every point; the English remained masters of the field; and this was the first of a series of successes which led to the evacuation of Egypt and the overthrow of all Napoleon’s hopes of Eastern conquest.

In 1809 we find the Welsh Fusiliers at Corunna, in Spain. It would be foreign to our purpose to relate the events which preceded that battle; suffice it to say, that Sir John Moore, after a series of brilliant encounters with the enemy, was obliged to retreat. The Spaniards afforded no assistance to the retreating army, which was reduced to the greatest privations; officers and men suffered alike from hunger and fatigue; it was not unusual for the soldiers to point to some young aristocrat marching at the head of his company without shoes or stockings, and to say, with grim humour, “There goes ten thousand a year.” On this, as almost every occasion, the officers bore up better than the men, so great is the influence which the mind has over the body. On reaching Corunna, where they were about to embark for England, our men were attacked by the French. Sir John Moore was prepared to receive them; the sick, the cavalry, and part of the artillery were already embarked; the remaining part of his forces were drawn up to meet the attack of the enemy. The Welsh Fusiliers formed part of General Fraser’s division, which was stationed in the rear at a short distance from Corunna. The enemy charged again and again, but our men not only kept their ground and remained unbroken, but actually forced them to retire at the point of the bayonet. The battle began at mid-day, and at five o’clock in the afternoon the enemy were foiled at every point, and our army occupied a more advanced position than at first. The loss of the British was 800 killed and wounded, including their gallant leader, who was struck to the ground by a cannon-ball, and died in the hour of victory. His death has been commemorated in lines familiar to all our readers, and it is satisfactory to know that Soult, instead of insulting his ashes, caused a monument to be erected to his memory. It is by such generous acts that nations prove their manhood amid the fierce passions evoked by war.

The Welsh Fusiliers also took part in the reduction of Martinique, one of the French West Indian islands, which was compelled to surrender after a gallant resistance. In those stirring times a regiment seldom remained long in one place, and in 1812 we find them in Spain, where they were present at the battle of Albuera and the siege of Badajoz, which was defended by the French with obstinate valour. Many of our men perished in the breaches, and every species of missile was hurled upon them as they attempted to scale the walls. “Never, probably, since the invention of gunpowder,” says Colonel Jones, “were men more exposed to its action than those assembled to assault the breaches.” For two hours, shells, hand-grenades, and bags of gunpowder were hurled upon our men as they crowded into the ditch; when they rushed up the breach their passage was arrested by ponderous beams bristling with sword-blades, and loose planks studded with sharp iron points, which tilted up the moment they were trodden on, and precipitated the assailants into the ditch below. Again and again our men rushed against the glittering sword-blades and were shot down by the enemy from the walls above; the rear pressed on, and tried to make a bridge of the writhing bodies of their slaughtered comrades. About midnight 2000 men had fallen, and Wellington was about to give orders to retire, when he received notice that Picton had taken the castle by escalade. “Then the place is ours,” he exultingly exclaimed, and sent word to Picton to retain the castle at all hazards. The attack was continued, and next morning Philippon, the French general, surrendered to Lord Fitzroy Somerset, better known to this generation as Lord Raglan. We must draw the veil of sorrow over the fearful scenes which were enacted by an infuriated soldiery when the devoted city fell into their hands; for three days all discipline was at an end, and the tumult only subsided when the rioters were exhausted with their excesses. We cannot give the exact loss of the Welsh Fusiliers, but, in common with all the other British regiments engaged in this siege, they suffered severely.

The next memorable event in the Peninsular War was the battle of Salamanca, which was fought on the 22nd of July, 1812. On the 16th of June, Wellington overtook the French near the right bank of the Tormes, the enemy retreating across the river. For several days both armies remained encamped on the opposite banks without molesting one another, and the most friendly intercourse sprang up between them. They were in the habit of conversing together and exchanging provisions, as if they had been on the best of terms. When the warfare was resumed, the French officers said, on parting, “We have met and been for some time friends; we are about to separate and may meet as enemies; as friends we have received each other warmly; as enemies we shall do the same.” Warm indeed was the reception which they gave to one another on the blood-stained field of Salamanca. At first the French had the advantage, but an unguarded movement on the part of Marmont, their general, having caught the eagle eye of Wellington, he joyfully exclaimed, “At last I have them,” and gave orders for a general charge. The French, remembering their former promise, presented a bold front to their assailants, who, pouring a destructive volley into the opposing columns, rushed upon them with the bayonet. Such was the impetus of the English attack that the close phalanx bent before it, swayed backward and forward like a ship struck upon a heavy sea, then broke and scattered over the plain. The French were completely routed, with the loss of 14,000 men. The victors behaved with great humanity to the vanquished; many of the fugitives, pursued by the cavalry, fled to the British lines for protection, which was readily granted. The infantry covered their retreat, and protected them from the sabres of the horsemen; once within their lines, they were safe from injury and insult; not a single man was bayoneted, plundered, or molested. It is pleasing to record such instances of humanity; it shows that the exchange of hospitalities on the banks of the Tonnes was not forgotten in the hour of battle. The Royal Welsh and the other British regiments engaged in this battle were permitted to inscribe Salamanca on their colours in memory of their victory.

The next year, on the 20th of June, the 23rd saw the Peninsular campaign brought to a close by the battle of Vittoria. The French were commanded by Jourdan, and the English by Wellington. Our troops were completely victorious, and the expulsion of the French from Spain was one of the fruits of their victory. The French fought resolutely till Picton gave the word to charge, when our men bore down all opposition before them, and spread death and consternation through the ranks of the enemy, who fled with such precipitancy that they left all their artillery and baggage behind. Joseph Bonaparte, placed by his brother Napoleon on the throne of Spain, was present at the battle; he only escaped by leaving his carriage and mounting a swift horse. The royal calash fell into the hands of the 10th Hussars, who found in it all the portable valuables of his regalia. The whole of his equipage and treasures fell into the hands of the British. The booty was enormous; it comprised all that could minister to the appetites or pleasures of a sensual monarch. The most delicate wines and the rarest luxuries fell into the hands of our soldiers, who exchanged many a joke at the expense of the luxurious monarch as they regaled themselves with them; poodles, parrots, and monkeys were among the captives of war. Grim old Peninsulars amused themselves after the battle in getting up a sort of masquerade, in which they appeared in the uniforms of French generals, or displayed the most recent inventions of the Parisian mode on their somewhat ungainly persons, and Wellington allowed them to indulge their grotesque humour. And when it was reported to him that some of them had seized the French military chest and were loading themselves with money, “Let them have it,” he said; “they deserve it, though it were ten times more.” Among the other spoil was the bâton of Marshal Jourdan, which Wellington sent with his despatches to the Prince Regent: soon after this he received the bâton of an English field-marshal along with a very handsome letter. “The British army,” said the prince, “will hail it with enthusiasm, while the whole universe will acknowledge those valorous efforts which have so imperiously called for it.” While this victory made Wellington a field-marshal, it procured for the Welsh Fusiliers the honour of adding Vittoria to the other glorious names inscribed on their colours.

The battle of Vittoria was attended with the most important results. The scattered remains of the French army were driven through the rugged passes of the Pyrenees, and the British army advanced rapidly in the direction of France. The enemy sometimes endeavoured to rally in their retreat, but were successfully driven from the positions they occupied by the impetuosity of the Welshmen and Highlanders, whose early training specially fitted them to excel in this mountain warfare. The constant success of the British army led many to expect that France would yield, and allow Wellington to cross the frontier without further resistance; but Napoleon, elated with his recent successes in Germany, appointed Soult to the command of the army of the Pyrenees, and that able general displayed such vigour and skill that there was some danger at first of the British losing all the fruits of the great victory of the 20th of June. On the 25th of July, 15,000 French troops attacked the British, about 3000 in number, at the pass of Maya, and for ten hours our men maintained the conflict, notwithstanding their inferiority in numbers. When their ammunition was exhausted they hurled stones at their assailants, who were arrested by the mass of dead and dying by which the pass was blocked, and were at length repulsed by the aid of some reinforcements. The pass of Maya will long be remembered in the annals of the British army; our soldiers fought as bravely there as the Greeks did at Thermopylæ.

We must omit the other stirring events of the Pyrenees, in all of which the Royal Welsh acted a distinguished part, and enjoyed many advantages over others unaccustomed to a mountainous country. They had many extraordinary adventures, being sometimes enveloped in the mists that shrouded the summits of the mountains, and brought into fierce collision with the enemy, who were ignorant of their approach. After the two battles of Lauroren, the tide of success turned against Soult, who was almost taken prisoner at St. Estenau. Such were the skilful arrangements of the English general here, that the French army would have had to surrender had not three marauding British soldiers crossed the ridge which concealed their comrades, and thus warned the enemy of their danger. On such small causes do great events hinge! The cupidity of three Englishmen saved the whole French army. On the 1st of August Soult abandoned the Spanish territory, with the loss of 15,000 men; and on the 7th of September Wellington planted the victorious standard of Britain on the soil of France. Seven thousand of the allies were buried among the mountain passes of the Pyrenees, and the different regiments engaged were allowed to preserve the remembrance of this campaign on their colours.

The Royal Welsh next appear at the battle of the Nivelle, where the French, after obstinate resistance, were driven back, and the allies, profiting by this success, crossed the river, and established themselves between it and the sea. A succession of heavy rains rendered all movements impracticable for a time, and Soult did all he could to strengthen his position. Frost having set in, Wellington moved his forces on the 14th of February, 1814, and, in the course of sixteen days, constructed a bridge across the Adour, passed five large and several small rivers, traversed eighty miles of ground, drove the enemy from their strongest positions, was successful in one great battle and two combats, took many prisoners, and forced Soult to evacuate Bayonne. We can only enumerate his successes, and refer our readers to the history of those times for minuter details. The great battle was fought at Orthès on the 27th of February. At first, victory seemed to declare in favour of the French, but the English general bided his time with imperturbable calmness till a movement of the enemy placed them in his power. Every point was carried; the French retired at first in an orderly manner, till their left wing was attacked, when they were thrown into confusion, and ran off at full speed. The English pursued them for three miles till they reached Sault de Navailles, where scarcely any remains of Soult’s army were to be seen. The loss of the enemy was estimated at 8000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners, while that of the allies did not exceed 1600. Here, as usual, the Welsh Fusiliers were foremost in the fray, and their bravery was rewarded by the addition of Nivelle and Orthès to the other historic names on their colours.

Then followed the bloody and needless battle of Toulouse. We need not here stop to inquire who was the cause of that fearful carnage, or to refute the foolish assertion that the French gained a victory. Such a statement is inconsistent with the fact that Soult had to abandon Toulouse and all his lines of defence, while Wellington attained the object he had in view. It is said that Soult knew before the battle that Napoleon had abdicated, and that his only motive for fighting was a desire to retrieve his fame as a general; but we think no brave man—and Soult was brave—would sacrifice the lives of thousands for so unworthy a motive. After a furious contest the enemy were driven from the heights; again and again they returned to the attack with a gallantry which nothing but British valour could resist. At length they desisted from the attempt, and the field of battle remained in possession of the allies. That same evening Soult evacuated the city, and the following morning the allies took possession of it. In the course of the day they received official notice that Napoleon had abdicated. Then our soldiers began to think of home and all its endearments; they had done enough for fame, and a grateful country was waiting to welcome them to their native shores. The soft peace march, “Home, brothers, home,” must have sounded sweetly in the ears of the Royal Welsh and the other veterans, who, under the command of their able leader, had liberated two kingdoms, fought eight pitched battles against the bravest soldiers and most skilful generals of France, reduced many fortresses by assault, and at length established themselves in the two principal cities in the South of France. Britain had issued from all her trials the most triumphant nation in the world, and had welcomed back with acclamation the wearied soldiers who had done so much to sustain her honour. Such men had a right to rest on their laurels. Their rest was brief. The caged eagle escaped from Elba. The veterans of the Peninsula had to buckle on their armour again. The Royal Welsh took part in that brief but glorious campaign which was brought to a close at Waterloo. Then for a period of forty years they had no opportunity of displaying their courage. Now followed the Crimean war, and deeds equalling “Greek and Roman fame,” which earned for some of them the proud distinction of the Victoria Cross.

The gallant Welshmen gained their first Victoria Cross at the battle of the Alma. Russell’s picturesque letters and Kinglake’s bewitching pages have rendered many readers familiar with the chief incidents of that engagement; and it is here unnecessary for us to dwell upon them, for in future pages we shall relate the circumstances under which Colonel (then Captain) Bell gained at that first Crimean fight the honourable distinction of the reward “For Valour.”

But the roll of brave men in the Royal Welsh is not exhausted by the mention of a single name. We are about to narrate the incident which forms the subject of the accompanying engraving, copied with no mean fidelity from that admirable collection of Mr. Desanges lately, in the Crystal Palace, known as the Victoria Cross Gallery. The incident here depicted occurred at the storming of the Redan on the 8th of September, 1855. Two hundred men of the Royal Welsh took part in that attack, and their loss in killed and wounded was very great. After the men of the 23rd had retired, it was found that Lieutenant and Adjutant Dyneley, an excellent young officer and a general favourite, was missing. It was reported that he had been struck down in the heat of the engagement, and some of the men described the spot where they had seen him fall. They would gladly have assisted him if they could have done so, but soldiers, while engaged, are expressly forbidden to leave their ranks for the purpose of carrying the wounded off the field.

The Highlanders, when first raised, were constantly in the habit of doing this; they could not stand by and see the sons of their chiefs dying on the field of battle without attempting to assist them. No man knew their character or habits better than the late Lord Clyde, and it was in allusion to this practice that he spoke these simple words while his men were still in column at the Alma with the enemy in front:—“Now, men, you are going into action. Remember this: whoever is wounded—I don’t care what his rank is—whoever is wounded must lie where he falls till the bandsmen come to attend to him. No soldiers must go carrying off wounded men. If any soldier does such a thing, his name shall be stuck up in his parish church.”[2] The perfection of discipline is to make every unit in a regiment or an army act in unison with the whole like a piece of machinery, and it is evident that if every soldier were to follow out his own will the result would be inextricable confusion. It is hard for a man to see officer or comrade struck down by his side on the field of battle without being allowed to assist him; but on such an occasion he has no choice—the pleadings of humanity must yield to the voice of duty; he may turn aside his head in sorrow, but he must still advance. It was so with the Royal Welsh as they advanced against the Redan; they saw their gallant young adjutant fall, but there was the dark parapet in front, and their first duty was to gain that. And when our men were hurled from the ramparts into the ditch, where they were slaughtered without being able to offer any resistance, it was only natural that all their thoughts should be concentrated on themselves, and that the fate of young Dyneley should be forgotten. But it was different when the attack was over: there was a general feeling of regret for one whom all had loved. While they were lamenting his fate, it occurred to some of the officers that he might not yet be dead, and, while they were deliberating what should be done, Corporal Robert Shields volunteered to go out to the front from the fifth parallel and bring the body in. It was a daring act of courage, all the more deserving of admiration that it was dictated solely by a feeling of humanity without any expectation of reward. The difference of rank does not always prevent friendships from springing up between officers and men, and young Dyneley had found the way to the hearts of all who knew him. Corporal Shields was not blind to the danger he incurred; he knew that he carried his life, as it were, in his hand, but he was prepared to risk everything to save his officer. In the Homeric age it would have been said that some invisible goddess watched over him and turned aside every hostile blow. He groped his way over the field, covered with the slain, till he reached the spot where poor Dyneley lay. Our engraving represents the discovery of the body. The poor lieutenant is lying on his back, still alive, but with the tide of life ebbing fast away; the corporal, with sorrow and sympathy depicted in every feature of his manly, bearded face, is bending over him, with one hand outstretched and the other grasping his rifle. He would willingly have raised the boyish figure in his arms and borne him back to his comrades, but it was too late; all that he could do was to hurry back in search of medical assistance. He passed through a heavy fire of musketry unhurt, and reached the trenches, where he found Dr. Sylvester, the assistant-surgeon of the regiment, who at once consented to return to the spot where Dyneley lay. He was still alive, but human skill could avail him nothing; all that the tenderest friendship could do was done by Sylvester, who dressed his wounds and supported him with stimulants. Shields returned to the trenches and persuaded some of his comrades to accompany him and to assist in carrying off the body of the dying adjutant. The Emperor of the French, on hearing of this heroic action, conferred on Corporal Shields the Cross of the Legion of Honour, and our Queen bestowed on him the Cross which bears her own name. No one will grudge it to him or to Dr. Sylvester. Mere bravery may often border on bloodthirstiness; but valour combined with humanity is the most godlike of all virtues. Such a man as Corporal Shields is an honour to the British army, and he deserves to receive honourable mention amongst the most fearless of England’s soldiery.

An officer who is just, kind, and considerate will never find his men ungrateful. Instances are on record where soldiers have laid down their own lives to save those of officers they loved, and have thus sealed their affection with their blood. On one occasion, when Lord Cornwallis was giving orders to charge the French in Canada, a Highland soldier rushed forward and placed himself in front of his officer, who asked him what he meant. “You know,” said the Highlander, “that when I enlisted to be a soldier, I promised to be faithful to the king and to you. The French are coming, and while I stand here neither bullet nor bayonet shall touch you, except through my body.” It was with difficulty that he could be persuaded to resume his place in the ranks. An equally striking proof of faithful attachment was exhibited at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom by the servant of an officer of the name of Fraser. The latter had directed his servant to remain in the garrison while he conducted his men to attack a battery belonging to the enemy. The night was pitch dark, and the party had such difficulty in proceeding that they were obliged to halt for a time. As they moved forward, Captain Fraser felt his path impeded, and putting down his hand, seized hold of a plaid, the wearer of which was grovelling at his feet. Imagining that it was one of his own men trying to escape, he drew his dirk and tightened his grasp, when he heard the voice of his servant imploring for mercy. “Why, what brought you here?” “It was just my love for you,” said poor Donald. “But why encumber yourself with a plaid?” “Alas! how could I ever show my face to my mother,” she was Fraser’s foster-mother, “had you been killed or wounded, and I not there to carry you to the surgeon or to Christian burial? And how could I do either without a plaid to wrap you in?”

Our soldiers have not degenerated, and there are still in the ranks of the British army men who want only an opportunity to show the same courage which has already entitled their comrades to wear Victoria’s Cross.

CHAPTER V.
OUR HIGHLAND REGIMENTS.

About a century ago the Highlanders were regarded as little better than a race of savages. Their dress, their language, and their manners were the subject of ridicule among their Southern neighbours, and their well-known attachment to the house of Stuart excited the suspicion and the distrust of the government of the day. “When the English thought of the Highlander at all,” says Macaulay—“and it was seldom that they did so—they considered him as a filthy, abject savage, a slave, a papist, a cut-throat, and a thief.” The great historian then proceeds to show that this estimate bordered very closely on the truth, and that the Highlanders were little better than they were represented to be. He seems to feel a cruel pleasure in exposing the weaknesses of those whose blood flowed in his own veins, and he, doubtless, meant to display in his picture of Highland manners a proof of his own impartiality. He gives implicit credence to all that he finds in “Burt’s Letters,” without reflecting that the author, from his very position, must have felt and written like a partisan. Burt was an officer of Engineers employed under General Wade in constructing those roads which opened up the Highlands to the advance of the English forces. He remained in the North from 1726 to 1737, and amused his friends in the South with those letters, in which he professed to describe the manners of the alien race among whom he was placed. There is no reason to believe that he was wilfully untruthful, but the work in which he was engaged rendered him hateful to the Highlanders, and he hated them cordially in return. He was probably unconscious of this feeling himself, but it is perceptible in almost every line he wrote. Johnson carried with him to the Highlands all the prejudices of his countrymen, and a good many others peculiar to himself; but his rugged nature was softened by the hospitality he everywhere met with, and he occasionally gives forth a grunt of approval. The reaction produced by the publication of his “Tour to the Hebrides” was increased by the appearance of the poems and novels of Scott, which created a sort of furore in favour of everything Highland, and rendered the land of the mountain and the flood almost classical. Royalty itself condescended to listen to the songs which it would once have been treason to sing aloud; the garb of old Gaul was assumed by many who had no right to wear it; the tartan became a favourite article of dress with both sexes; every nook and corner of the North was explored; the land of Ossian became the land of romance, and its inhabitants were invested with every possible virtue.

The gallant deeds of the Highland regiments in every quarter of the globe added to the general enthusiasm for Caledonians. It was long, indeed, before the English government would believe that they could be trusted. To have armed the Highlanders about the beginning of the last century, would have been deemed as much an act of insanity as to arm at the present hour the New Zealand Maoris. Scottish men were known to be under the control of their chiefs, and their chiefs, almost to a man, were devoted to the Pretender. No wonder, then, that the government hesitated before accepting their services; it was not till 1730—only one hundred and thirty years ago—that the first experiment was made. Six companies of Highlanders were then raised, each company being independent of the other. They were known as the Il Reicudan Dhu, or Black Watch, to distinguish them from the Seideran Dearag, or Red Soldiers. They derived their names from the colour of their clothes; the regular soldiers wore scarlet, as they do now, while the Highland companies retained their sombre tartan. There was no lack of men: gentlemen of good family were proud to serve as privates under their native officers; for the whole country had been disarmed, and this indignity was deeply felt by a race who, even in times of peace, never went forth without dirk or claymore. The cadets of good families were proud to serve, if only in the ranks, because they were thus entitled to bear arms; and to carry a weapon was regarded as a proof that the bearer was a gentleman. The pay privates received was small to a degree, yet poverty was so universal that the pittance they took from government was not to be despised. They were stationed in small parties over the country, and seem to have discharged the same duties as are intrusted to the rural police at the present day. In 1739 four additional companies were raised, and the whole were formed into a regiment of the line. Such was the origin of the first Highland regiment in the service—the gallant 42nd, still known as the Black Watch.

It would be foreign to our purpose to trace the origin and history of all the Highland regiments. That task has already been ably performed by General Stewart, of Garth, who served for many years in the 78th Highlanders, and was appointed governor of the island of Tobago, in the West Indies, where he died. It is somewhat singular that Macaulay appears to have been ignorant of this work, which contains far more valuable information regarding the Highlands than is to be found in “Burt’s Letters.” General Stewart’s book is now almost forgotten; it is rarely to be met with, save in the libraries of country gentlemen in the North, whose forefathers figure in its pages. But it deserves a better fate. No writer has ever possessed a keener insight into the manners and customs of the warlike race whom he was proud to hail as his countrymen, or has described them in peace and in war with a more graphic pen. By birth a Highlander, by profession a soldier, he mingled freely with his clansmen, spoke their language, and had ample opportunities of witnessing their courage in every quarter of the globe. His “Military Annals” read like a romance; they have all the charm of novelty, because they present us with a picture of manners and feelings that have now died out.

“The simple system of primeval life—

Simple but stately—hath been broken down;

The clans are scattered, and the chieftain power

Is dead.”

It may be said with equal truth that our Highland regiments are dead; they live only in name. We have regiments composed chiefly of Scotchmen, but there are few Highland soldiers of pure Celtic origin. The Highlands must have been far more populous than they now are, or they never could have raised eighty-six regiments, including local corps, in the course of the four wars in which this country was engaged after 1740. Most of these regiments were formed between 1778 and 1809, and altogether they must have included in their ranks, from first to last, as many as 70,000 or 80,000 men. Some of them were raised before the American rebellion, and Lord Chatham takes credit to himself for having been the first to recognise their invaluable qualities in war.—“I sought for merit wherever it was to be found. It is my boast that I was the first minister who looked for it and found it in the mountains of the North. I called it forth, and drew into your service a hardy and intrepid race of men, who, when left by your jealousy, became a prey to the artifice of your enemies, and had gone nigh to have overturned the state in the war before the last. These men in the last war were brought to combat on your side; they served with fidelity, and they fought with valour, and conquered for you in every part of the world.”

There is no exaggeration in this, and the minister is entitled to all the credit he claims. He knew that a race so warlike and restless would prove a source of constant danger, unless those qualities were turned to some profitable account, and it was a wise and liberal policy to employ them in defence of that throne which they had recently almost overturned. The old feeling of clanship was retained; the chiefs and their kinsmen received commissions, and their clansmen were proud to rally around them. Every gentleman of good birth who could raise a hundred men was appointed captain; those who could bring only twenty or thirty ranked as subalterns. Sometimes a little pressure was used by the chiefs, but generally the men were ready to serve. The regiments thus raised were composed almost exclusively of Highlanders. Gaelic was spoken alike by officers and men, and chaplains familiar with the mountain tongue were appointed to every regiment. Gentlemen who could not obtain commissions at once were content to serve in the ranks till vacancies occurred. Two men of gentle birth, privates in the Black Watch, were presented to George II. in 1743. “They performed,” says the Westminster Journal, “the broadsword exercise, and that of the Lochaber axe or lance, before his Majesty, the Duke of Cumberland, Marshal Wade, and a number of general officers assembled for the purpose in the great gallery of St. James’s. They displayed so much dexterity and skill in the management of their weapons as to give perfect satisfaction to his Majesty. Each got a gratuity of one guinea, which they gave to the porter at the palace gate as they went out,” and this, not that they were dissatisfied with the gift, or that their purses were over-well plenished, but they could not have accepted money without forfeiting their own respect and their position as gentlemen.

Now it did sometimes happen that men not of the Highland race were smuggled into these Highland regiments. For example, two gentlemen, anxious to obtain commissions in the Black Watch, and unable to find the requisite number of men among their own countrymen, enlisted eighteen Irishmen at Glasgow. Some of them were O’Donnels, O’Lachlans, and O’Briens, and as such would have been at once rejected by Lord John Murray, the colonel, who would accept none but Highland recruits. The two ingenious gentlemen got over the difficulty by changing Patrick O’Donnel, O’Lachlan, and O’Brien into Donald Macdonnel, Maclachlan, and Macbriar, under which names they were enrolled in the regiment without any suspicion of their nationality. The Lowland Scotch seldom thought of entering these regiments. When the battle of Fontenoy was fought, there was not a soldier in the Black Watch born south of the Grampians, and only two of the Milesian Highlanders were alive. So high was the reputation of the regiment that it could always obtain more Highland recruits than were required. The bounty was a guinea and a crown; but not gold attracted the young mountaineers: they were led to enlist by the thirst of glory and the honour of belonging to a regiment which had already covered itself with fame on many a hard-fought field. So late as 1776, when the Black Watch embarked for service in America, it still retained its strictly national character: all the officers but two were Highlanders, while among the privates we find 931 Highlanders, 74 Lowland Scotch, 5 Englishmen (in the band), 1 Welshman, and 2 Irishmen. This distinctive formation held till 1779, when an attempt was made to destroy the exclusively Highland character of the regiment by drafting into it a body of 150 recruits, the sweepings of the gaols of London and Dublin. The 42nd had hitherto borne a high reputation; the conduct of the men had been exemplary; corporal punishment almost unknown. The commanding officer remonstrated against the admission of these recruits, of whom 16 died during the voyage to America, and 75 others found their way to hospital on landing. The government yielded to his remonstrances: the recruits were drafted into the 26th Regiment in exchange for the same number of Scotchmen. The introduction of the representatives of Richard Cameron into the Black Watch was attended with the worst consequences: flogging and like punishments became more frequent; and the men, accustomed to these degrading spectacles, lost that fine sense of honour which had hitherto distinguished them.

When, in 1793, the 78th Regiment was raised, we find that the strength of the corps was 1113 men, of whom 970 were Highlanders, 129 Lowland Scotch, and 14 English and Irish. Several of the officers belonged to Lowland families, and brought a certain number of their retainers with them: the Englishmen probably belonged to the band, as in the case of the 42nd. In 1805 the proportion of men in the regiment, which was now stationed in India, was pretty much the same: it contained 835 Highlanders, 184 Lowlanders, 8 English, and 9 Irish. The Highlanders must have been taller then than they are now. After the tallest men were selected for the Grenadier company, there still remained a hundred considerably above the standard of height in light infantry regiments.

The Celtic element predominated equally in the 93rd, or Sutherland Highlanders, which was raised in 1800, and consisted of 631 Highlanders, 460 of whom belonged to the county of Sutherland. Eleven years later the numerical strength of the regiment was 1049: with the exception of 17 Irish and 18 English, all of these men belonged to Scotland.

The 92nd, or Gordon Highlanders, was raised in 1794 by the last Duke of Gordon, then Marquis of Huntly, and by his mother, the beautiful and witty Duchess Jane. The duchess used to frequent the country fairs, and when she saw a likely youth she would try every persuasion to induce him to enlist. When all other arguments failed, she would place a guinea between her lips, and no young Highlander, however pacific, could refuse the bounty thus proffered. One kiss of that beautiful mouth was worth dying for.

Three-fourths of Duchess Jane’s regiment were Highlanders; all the rest were Lowlanders, except 35 Irishmen, whom one of the officers was obliged to accept, faute de mieux, to make up his complement. In 1825 the numbers were 716 Scots, 51 English, and 111 Irish; in 1857, 1043 Scots, 7 English, and 40 Irish.

The only other regiment which retains the garb of old Gaul is the 79th, or Cameron Highlanders, raised in 1793 by Allan Cameron, of Errach, in the northern counties. About four-fifths of the men were Highlanders; the rest were English or Irish. In 1857 the regiment consisted of 895 Scots, 37 English, and 39 Irish.

The 71st, 72nd, and the 74th are also ranked as Highland regiments, and recruit chiefly in the North; but for many years they have substituted the trews for the kilt, and are composed chiefly of Lowland Scotch. The same may be said of the regiments that retain the kilt; most of the men are Lowland Scotch, natives chiefly of the large manufacturing towns. The Highlands at present scarcely supply sufficient recruits to keep up the strength of two regiments; whereas we find that during the first forty years of this century the Isle of Skye, only 45 miles long and 15 broad, gave us 21 lieutenant and major-generals, 45 lieutenant-colonels, 600 majors, captains, and subalterns, 10,000 privates, and 120 pipers. The recruiting parties stationed in that island meet now with indifferent success; but it is the same everywhere in the Highlands.

Bounty offered to the Highlanders by Jane, Duchess of Gordon.

Many of the men in these old Highland regiments bore the same name. We find, for example, in one regiment of 800 men no less than 700 who have the word Mac prefixed to their names. In another we find no less than nine John Roses; and as for Donald Macdonalds, their name was legion. The drill-sergeant showed his ingenuity in distinguishing the bearers of the same cognomen by jocular allusions to their personal appearance, which must occasionally have been not altogether gratifying to the nick-named. In the same company there would be Donald Macdonald with the red hair, Donald with the big feet, Donald with the long legs, Donald of Skye, Donald of Harris, and so forth. When all other means of distinguishing his recruits failed him, the drill-sergeant had recourse to figures, and ranked them as Donald Macdonald No. 1, No. 2, No. 3. No wonder he occasionally got confused amongst so many Donalds, and lost his temper.

About the close of the last century the citizens of Edinburgh found much amusement in listening to the calling of the muster-rolls of one of the newly-raised Highland regiments stationed there, and studying the ingenuity of the sergeants in distinguishing the countless Macs and Donalds in their different companies. The ludicrous effect of such scenes was enhanced by the guttural accent and imperfect English of the speakers, who, if we may judge by the following specimen, seem occasionally to have had peculiar ideas of military duty:—

“Tonald Mactonald No. 5,” cried the sergeant, going over the muster-roll of his company.

“Here!” cried a voice so shrill and abrupt that it excited a general titter in the ranks, and the unbounded indignation of the sergeant.

“Here, ye tamm’d rogue! Is that the way she speaks to a shentleman? But we a’ ken Tonald’s a liar, sae pit her down absent, and tak’ her to the guard-room.”

“Tonald Mactonald No. 6,” continued the sergeant.

There was no answer. The sergeant broke forth into a sort of soliloquy—

“Tonald Mactonald No. 6; that’s my sister’s son frae Achallatus. Ay, ay, Tonald; she was aye a modest lad, that never spak’ till she was spoken to, so we’ll put her down present.”

And thus the sergeant went over the whole roll, accompanying each name with some remark which showed the estimation in which he held the bearer.

The soldiers of all these regiments wore the scarlet jacket and waistcoat, with a tartan plaid, the lower part of which was wrapped round the body, and the upper thrown loosely over the left shoulder. The plaid served a double purpose: it guarded the soldier’s shoulders and firelock from rain by day, and was used as a blanket by night. It was attached to his middle by a belt, from which his pistol and dirk, or small dagger, were suspended. On his head was worn the blue bonnet with a border of tartan as at the present day, and a small tuft of feathers or a piece of bearskin; the kilt was of different colours to distinguish the regiments. The arms were supplied by government, and consisted of a musket, a bayonet, and a large basket-hilted broadsword. In 1769 some alteration was made in the dress of the 42nd; the men were provided with white cloth waistcoats, and goatskin and buff leather purses; the officers began to wear light hangers instead of the heavy broadsword, which was used only in full dress; and the sergeants were provided with carbines, and laid aside the ponderous Lochaber axes they had hitherto carried. In 1776 the broadswords and pistols were laid aside. The regiment was then serving in America, and it was objected that the broadswords impeded their movements by getting entangled in the brushwood. An attempt was subsequently made to induce them to dispense with the kilt, and to adopt the garb of the Saxon. It was objected to it then, as now, that it was too hot in summer and too cold in winter; but the Highlanders stood out stoutly against the proposed innovation, and the notion of changing the kilt was abandoned. “We were allowed,” writes a veteran son of the Gael, “to wear the garb of our fathers, and, in the course of six winters, showed the doctors that they did not understand our constitution; for in the coldest winters our men were more healthy than those regiments who wore breeches and warm clothing.” But now that the kilt is no longer worn in the Highlands, and few Highlanders enlist in the kilted regiments, it seems an anomaly to retain an article of dress which, we venture to say, was never worn by nineteen-twentieths of our present soldiers till they entered the army. A large proportion of the officers are English, and it is rather hard that they should have to adopt a dress which must strike them at first as barbarous, if not indecent. It is singular, however, that Englishmen serving in Highland regiments are usually as fond of the kilt as the Highlanders themselves, and would be quite as ready to protest against the adoption of a less peculiar costume.

As to the Highlander’s mode of fighting, it was the simplest thing in the world. He discharged his musket, threw it aside, drew his bonnet over his brow, and rushed upon the foe, leaving all the rest to God and his own good broadsword. It was so that he conquered at Prestonpans and elsewhere, but it would be difficult to assert that his undisciplined valour rendered him superior to troops thoroughly drilled, or that the broadsword is more formidable than the bayonet. General Stewart, nevertheless, is of a different opinion:—“From the battle of Culloden, where a body of undisciplined Highlanders, shepherds and herdsmen, with their broadswords cut their way through some of the best disciplined and most approved regiments in the British army (drawn up, too, on a field extremely favourable for regular troops), down to the time when the swords were taken from the Highlanders, the bayonet was in every instance overcome by the sword.”

In one of the skirmishes with the French in Egypt, a young sergeant of the 78th killed six of the enemy with the broadsword; the weapon was the same as that still used by sergeants in Highland regiments. The half-dozen Frenchmen were not cut down while retreating, but in fighting with the bayonet, hand to hand, against the broadsword. The gallant sergeant met his death-blow from a sabre-stroke from behind as he was returning to his company, after cutting down the last of his six foes. Many other proofs of the efficacy of the basket-hilted weapon might be given, but we question whether its warmest admirers would prefer it to the bayonet in a close attack.

CHAPTER VI.
OUR HIGHLAND REGIMENTS—continued.

The Highlanders possessed naturally a great aptitude for war. It has been said that hunting is the nearest approach to war in times of peace; and the Highlander, when not engaged in war, devoted himself to hunting, fishing, and the practice of athletic sports and manly exercises. He was a deer-stalker before deer-parks were invented, when deer-stalking was something different from the easy slaughter now known by that name; he was accustomed to bear hunger, thirst, and fatigue without complaint; to sleep in the snow with no other covering than his plaid; to encounter the members of a hostile clan with no other weapon than his broadsword. He possessed the virtues and physical qualities that fit men for war. He was impetuous in attack and cool under fire. In the hour of danger he exhibited such courage and presence of mind as nothing could daunt. At Fontenoy and elsewhere he has thrown himself on the ground as the enemy began their fire; when their bullets had whistled harmlessly over his head, he would rush forward till his musket almost touched their breasts, and pour in the deadly discharge; he would then retreat, receive their fire as before, and advance in the same manner. If he had not been possessed of the greatest coolness and self-possession, such a mode of fighting could only have led to inextricable confusion.

From an old pamphlet, published in 1745, we learn that a Highlander of the 42nd Regiment killed nine Frenchmen with his broadsword at Fontenoy, and would probably have added to the number of the slain if he had not lost his arm. In a skirmish with the Americans in 1776, Major Murray, of the same regiment, being separated from his men, was attacked by three of the enemy. His dirk had slipped behind his back, and, being very corpulent, he could not reach it: he defended himself as well as he could with his fusil, and, watching his opportunity, seized the sword of one of his assailants, and put the three to flight. It was natural that he should ever retain that sword as a trophy of victory. In another skirmish during the same war, a young recruit belonging to Fraser’s Highlanders slew seven of the enemy with his own hand. At the close of the engagement his bayonet, once perfectly straight, was twisted like a corkscrew. At the affair of Castlebar, in Ireland, when men of other regiments retreated, a Highland sentinel refused to leave his post without orders. It was in vain that they tried to persuade him to retire—he stood there alone against a host. Five times he loaded and fired; a Frenchman fell at every shot. Before he could put his musket to his shoulder a sixth time the enemy were upon him, and many a bayonet passed through his body. The power of discipline could scarcely carry a man farther than this. The soldier who could meet a host without flinching must have had the soul of a hero. Highlanders have been equally patient and enduring in meeting the onsets of hunger and famine. The 1st Battalion of the 78th Regiment was wrecked during the passage from Java to Calcutta in 1816. The days and nights from the 9th of November to the 6th of December were spent on the rocky isle of Preparis, without shelter and almost without food. One ounce of bread and half a glassful of rice was the daily allowance of each person for nearly a month. At length even this miserable supply failed, and the shell-fish picked up at low water became their only means of support. At such a juncture the most generous of men might have become selfish; but such was the effect of discipline among these half-famished Highlanders, that with death staring them in the face they could resist the cravings of hunger, and bring all their gatherings to one common stock, which was equally divided among them all. Their fortitude was rewarded by the arrival of a ship which carried them in safely to Calcutta.

Numerous proofs of their cunning and address in war might be cited. On the day before the battle of Fontenoy the Earl of Craufurd advanced with the Highlanders to examine the enemy’s outposts. A Highland soldier, stationed in dangerous proximity to the enemy, was annoyed by one of their sharpshooters firing at his post, and had recourse to an ingenious expedient to rid himself of this annoyance. He crept stealthily forward and placed his bonnet on the top of a stick near the verge of a hollow road. While the Frenchman’s attention was fixed on his supposed antagonist, Donald advanced unperceived to a spot where he could take sure aim, and brought down the unfortunate marksman. In a skirmish with the American rebels in 1777, Sergeant Macgregor, of the 42nd, was severely wounded, and remained insensible on the ground. Unlike Captain Crawley, who put on his old uniform before Waterloo, the sergeant, who seems to have been something of a dandy, had attired himself in his best, as if he had been going to a ball, and not to a battle. He wore a new jacket with silver lace, large silver buckles in his shoes, and a watch of some value. This display of wealth attracted the notice of an American soldier, who, actuated by no feeling of humanity, but by the sordid desire of stripping the sergeant at leisure, took him on his back and began to carry him off the field. It is probable that the American did not handle him very tenderly, and the motion soon restored him to consciousness. He saw at once the state of matters, and proved himself master of the occasion. With one hand he drew his dirk, and, grasping the American’s throat with the other, he swore that he would stab him to the heart if he did not retrace his steps, and bear him back in safety to the British camp. The argumentum ad hominem in the shape of a glittering dagger before his eyes was too much for the American. On the way to the camp he met Lord Cornwallis, who thanked him for his humanity, but he had the candour to admit the truth. His lordship, who was much amused at the incident, gave the American his liberty, and, on Macgregor retiring from the service, procured for him a situation in the Customs at Leith. He probably thought that the man who could entrap a Yankee would be more than a match for any smuggler. In a war with the Cherokees in 1760, Allen Macpherson, a private in Montgomery’s Highlanders, fell into the hands of the enemy. Anxious to escape from the cruel torture that awaited him, he signified that he had something of importance to communicate. An interpreter was introduced, and the Indians stood by in solemn silence. He informed them that he was a medicine-man, and knew of certain herbs, which, if applied to the skin, would enable it to resist the sword or the tomahawk, though wielded by the strongest arm; if they would conduct him to the woods, and allow him to collect these herbs, he would use them so as that their bravest warrior might strike at his neck without injuring him. Such an assertion found ready credence with superstitious Indians, and they complied with his request. Macpherson was as cool and confident in his bearing as if he had nothing to dread: he rubbed his neck with the juice of the first herbs he had picked up, laid his head calmly on a block of wood, and invited the ordeal. An Indian raised his tomahawk and struck at his neck with such force that his head flew several yards from his body. The Cherokees, far from resenting the trick which had been played upon their credulity, expressed their admiration of his address and courage by refraining from torturing the other captives. We could give many proofs of the Highlander’s ingenuity in attacking others or defending himself, but we confine ourselves to a single incident which tends to prove his dexterity in imposing on the enemy. During the siege of Quebec, the French had planted sentries along the river to challenge all who approached. During the night attack which ended in the capture of the town, the first boat with English troops was observed and challenged. “Qui vive?” A moment’s hesitation, and all would have been lost. An officer of Fraser’s Highlanders who had served in Holland, and knew the watchword, at once replied, “La France.” The second part of the challenge was given and satisfactorily answered. The sentinel became troublesomely inquisitive. “A quel régiment appartenez-vous?” “Au régiment de la Reine.” It was fortunate that the captain knew that a regiment of that name was serving in Quebec. The soldier, satisfied with these replies, allowed all the boats to pass without further challenge: he thought it was an expected convoy with provisions, and no time was lost when the magic word “passe” was heard. The other sentries took it for granted that all was right; there was only one who had some suspicion. Struck with the silence on board the boats, he rushed down to the water’s edge, and called, “Pourquoi est-ce que vous ne parlez pas haut?” The suspicion implied in this question was at once disarmed by the officer replying in a subdued tone, “Tais-tois, ou nous serons entendus.” That cunning Highlander had not studied French for nothing—it gained for the British: Quebec.

A striking trait in the character of the Highlanders was their devoted attachment to their own regiments and officers. When clanship had all but died out in the North, it was found lingering among the Highland soldiers. The Highlander’s regiment was his clan, and his colonel his chief; and to his corps and commander he did the same fealty as in the days of yore to clansmen and their head. This feeling was peculiarly prominent in those regiments which were under the command of cadets of ancient Northern families, who felt in themselves and tried to revive in their men the old ties of clanship. Cameron, of the 92nd, who fought and fell at Quatre Bras, was less the colonel than the chief of that gallant regiment, which was raised partly in Lochaber, his native district. He knew every man in his regiment, and watched over their interests as if they had been his brothers or his sons. An angry look or a stern word from him was dreaded more than the lash. He was their father, and when he fell there rose from his mountain children that wild wail of sorrow which once heard can never be forgotten. Brave, impetuous, and headstrong, jealous of his own honour and that of his regiment, Cameron has always struck us as the beau idéal of a Highland officer of the better class; while Captain MacTurk, that admirable creation of Scott, may be safely accepted as the faithful representative of a once numerous class, the all but countless subalterns who had risen from the ranks, and who puzzled the post-office and confused the directory by the similarity of their names. The old clannish feeling is perceptible in the language used by Highland veterans in alluding to their past services. They do not say that they served in the 42nd, the 78th, the 79th, the 92nd, or the 93rd regiment; but, when inspired by usquebaugh or ancient reminiscences, they begin to fight their battles o’er, they preface their narrative with, “When I was in the Black Watch, the Ross, the Cameron, the Gordon, or the Sutherland regiment.” The name to them is everything: the number by which the regiment is known at the Horse Guards is a number, and nothing more. This attachment of the Highlanders to their own regiments was so well-known during the last century that it was sometimes taken advantage of by the recruiting sergeants, who assumed the Highland dress, and persuaded the recruits they were about to join a Highland regiment. When such was not the case, the rage of the Highlanders on discovering the imposture was unbounded; they appealed to the military authorities, and on their obtaining their discharge re-enlisted at once in one of their own regiments. These regiments, when first raised, could always command a larger number of men than they actually required. When the Fraser Highlanders embarked for foreign service in 1776, it was found that more men had joined than the strength of the different companies admitted, and several were dismissed. Such, however, was their anxiety to serve, that they concealed themselves in the ship, and were not discovered till the fleet was at sea. An incident occurred on this occasion which proves that the esprit de clan, if we may so speak, was even stronger than the esprit de corps. A hundred and twenty men had been raised on the forfeited estate of Cameron of Lochiel, so as to entitle him to a company: detained by sickness in London, he was unable to join his regiment in Glasgow. The Camerons, unwilling to serve any one but their chief, hesitated to embark, till young Fassiefern, one of their clansmen, and a near relative of Lochiel, was appointed to the command of the company, when all their scruples were removed. Lochiel, on hearing of the conduct of his men, hurried down from London; but the fatigue of the journey brought on a fresh attack of disease, to which he fell a victim in a few weeks. The regiment was under the command of General Fraser, a son of Lord Lovat. He addressed the Camerons in Gaelic, and his eloquence had much effect in winning them back to obedience. While he was speaking, a venerable Highlander was seen leaning on his staff and listening with rapt attention. When he had finished, the old man stepped up to him, and seizing his hand with an easy familiarity which marked the intercourse of all classes in the North, said, “Simon, you are a good soldier, and speak like a man; as long as you live, Simon of Lovat will never die.” The general, doubtless, appreciated this double compliment; his father was a favourite among the Highlanders, and it was implied that the son was worthy of the sire. The young recruits always wished to serve under officers of their own clan, and felt it a hardship to be separated from them. It was not enough that they served in the same regiment; they wished to belong to the same company. Young Fassiefern brought a hundred Lochaber men to join the 92nd at Aberdeen. When it was proposed to draft them into different companies, they refused to be separated, or to serve under any officer save their young chief. It was only by pledging his honour that he would watch equally over the interests of all that he could persuade them to submit; his letters to his father prove that he never forgot his promise. They were true to one another to the end; when a Lochaber man died, Cameron followed him to the grave, reminded his sorrowing comrades of his soldierly virtues, and told them to “give him the smoothest bed, and to cover him with the greenest sod.” To understand the delicacy of this order, one must have witnessed a Highland funeral, or seen the smooth, level, turf-covered graves in a Highland churchyard. There was no sacrifice which they were not prepared to make for officers who thus studied their interests and feelings. They were as jealous of their honour as of their own; cowardice in the chief brought disgrace on his clan. There was a singular display of this feeling in one of the Crimean battles: a young Highland officer left his place in front of his company and began to retreat, when a sergeant seized him by the throat, and swore he would run him through the body if he did not turn. He chose rather to meet the fire of the Russians than the glare of the sergeant’s angry eye. This jealousy of their officers’ honour gave rise to an amusing incident during the attack on Fort Washington in 1777. The hill on which the fort stood was almost perpendicular, but the Highlanders rushed up the steep ascent like mountain cats. When half-way up the heights they heard a melancholy voice exclaim, “Oh, soldiers, will you leave me?” On looking down, they saw Major Murray, their commanding officer, at the foot of the precipice; his extreme obesity prevented him from following them. They were not deaf to this appeal: it would never do to leave their corpulent commander behind. A party leaped down at once, seized him in their arms, and bore him from ledge to ledge of the rock till they reached the summit, where they drove the enemy before them and made two hundred prisoners. Major Murray was not the only corpulent warrior among those Highland soldiers. Sir Robert Munroe of Fowlis, who commanded them at Fontenoy, was so fat that his own men had to haul him from the trenches by the legs and arms; he advised them to fall flat on the ground when the enemy fired, but remained erect himself, remarking that it was easy for a man of his weight to lie down, but not so easy to rise. Some of the men seem to have been as remarkable for height as their officers were for breadth. Thus we read of Samuel Macdonald, or “Big Sam,” of the Sutherland Fencibles, who was seven feet four inches in height, and stout in proportion. As the other men would have looked like pigmies beside such a giant, he stood on the right of the regiment when in line, and marched at its head when in column, followed by an immense mountain deer, between which and him there were certain physical, if not spiritual, affinities. He was an excellent drill, and, like most giants, extremely good-natured. Ordinary rations would not have sufficed to sustain such a corpus; he was therefore allowed half-a-crown a day of extra pay. Attracting the attention of the Prince of Wales, he made him one of the porters at Carlton House. But Macdonald soon tired of this inactive life, and longed to be with his old comrades of the 93rd. He rejoined the regiment, and died at Guernsey in 1802. Sam’s regiment seems to have been remarkable for the size and muscular strength of the men. It had no light company, and as more than 200 men were upwards of five feet eleven inches in height, they were formed into two grenadier companies, one on each flank of the battalion.

The retirement or the removal of one of their favourite officers to another regiment called forth the strongest feelings of sorrow, and sometimes almost led to open resistance. It occasionally happened that these officers were Englishmen, who with the garb of the mountains had adopted all the feelings of the mountaineers. Cadogan, who commanded the 71st in the Peninsula, was a Saxon, and yet no Celt was ever dearer to his men. The Pretender would never have been so popular in the North if he had not worn the tartan; the same may be said of Montrose and Dundee, neither of whom was a Highlander by birth. If English officers failed to gain the affections and respect of their men, it was because they failed to make themselves acquainted with their character, and inadvertently wounded their feelings. Such cases, however, were rare. English officers serving in Highland regiments possessed the esprit de corps as much as the Highlanders themselves. At first, as we have shown, all the officers belonged to the North, and it was a point of honour with the men either to protect them in battle or to avenge them if slain. We might cite many cases where Highland soldiers sacrificed their own lives to save those of their officers, stepping before them and receiving in their own bodies the bullet or the bayonet-thrust aimed at their officers’ breasts. When a favourite fell, woe betide the enemy at the next charge: every Highlander fought as if his arm alone were the instrument of vengeance. When Cameron fell at Quatre Bras, by a shot fired from the upper storey of the farm-house, his men rushed with a wild shout on the building, burst their way in, and avenged by the slaughter of all its occupants, the death of their leader.

Major Murray and the Highlanders at Fort Washington.

While the duty of avenging the death of a beloved officer was incumbent upon all, it devolved with peculiar stringency on his foster-brother, who always kept near his person in battle. This duty is frequently alluded to in the proverbial expressions of the North. “Kindred to twenty (degrees), fosterage to a hundred,” was a received maxim in the code of Celtic ethics. “Woe to the father of the foster-son who is unfaithful to his trust,” is another old saying which proves that this tie was regarded as sacred. Scott has described this singular relationship among the Highlanders in “Waverley,” and many illustrations might be given of the deeds of unselfish devotion to which it gave rise. Often the foster-brother thrust himself before his officer, and shielded him from danger by the sacrifice of his own life. If he had failed to do so, his own mother would have been the first to reproach him for his cowardice—ay, and to disown him as her son. There was much of the old Spartan feeling among these Celtic mothers. The wives of those Northern chiefs seem to have had no great liking for the primary duties of domestic life; instead of rearing their own children, they distributed them among their tenantry, who considered themselves honoured by the confidence thus reposed in them. This singular custom tended to render the tie between the chief and his clan closely intimate: they felt themselves to be members of one great family. Cameron of Fassiefern, with whose portrait our readers are familiar, was followed wherever he went by his faithful henchman and foster-brother, Ewen M’Millan. His devotion to his chief was unbounded; it absorbed every other feeling, and became the master-passion of his life. At the battle of St. Pierre, Ewen gave an amusing proof of his regard, not only for his master, but also for his master’s property. Cameron’s horse, being wounded, fell, and nearly crushed him. A Frenchman rushed forward to bayonet him while thus disabled; but, before the blow had reached, Ewen came up and pierced the Frenchman to the heart. Ewen then raised his master from his dangerous position and conducted him to a place of safety, after which he returned and carried off the saddle on which Cameron had sat. All this was done with the greatest coolness, though the battle was at its height, and the bullets of the enemy were flying on every side. When Ewen rejoined his company, he displayed his trophy to his comrades, and exultingly exclaimed, “We must leave them the carcass, but they sha’n’t get the saddle where Fassiefern sat.” It was evidently a seat of honour, and too sacred an object in Ewen’s eyes to be left in possession of the French; and to save the saddle the disgrace of receiving part of another’s person, he was ready to risk his life. When Cameron fell at Quatre Bras, his devoted foster-brother was in a moment at his side, and, raising him in his arms, he bore him from the field of battle till he found a cart, on which he laid him. Seating himself by his side, he propped the head of his dying chief on his own faithful breast, and tried in vain to stanch the life-blood fast ebbing away. It was all in vain: the bullet had done its deadly work, and Ewen could only weep over the grave of one for whom he would have gladly died. Such faithful attachment deserved to be rewarded, and Cameron’s father provided Ewen with a farm on his own estate when he obtained his discharge after the battle of Waterloo.

It may amuse our readers to learn the opinion of the Highlanders formed by those who have encountered them in the field of battle. Their strange dress, their lofty stature, their unknown tongue, and their singular mode of fighting, all naturally produced a deep impression on the minds of their enemies, who regarded them almost with a feeling of superstition. A French writer, alluding to the battle of Fontenoy, says, “The British behaved well, and could be exceeded in ardour by none but our officers, who animated the troops by their example, when the Highland furies rushed in upon us with more violence than ever did a sea driven by a tempest.” The Highlanders took part in the capture of Guadaloupe; and it appears from letters written from that island that the French had formed the wildest notions regarding the sauvages d’Ecosse (Scotch savages), as they were pleased to term them. They believed that they would neither take nor give quarter, and that they were so nimble that, as no one could catch them, nobody could escape them; that no man had a chance against their broadswords; and that, with a ferocity natural to savages, they made no prisoners, and spared neither man, woman, nor child. As the Highlanders were always in the front during the attack on the island, we need not be surprised that the good people of Guadaloupe quailed at the sight of such a redoubtable foe, and offered but little resistance. Such was the activity of the Highlanders in attacking them at different points, that they believed that they amounted to several thousands, whereas their real strength was only 800. A French general, in reference to the gallantry of the Highlanders at Toulouse, said, “Ah, these are brave soldiers. If they had good officers, I should not like to meet them unless I were well supported.” As their officers had never received much training for war, their bravery was often more conspicuous than their knowledge of the military art.

Keith’s Highlanders particularly distinguished themselves in the German wars which were carried on about the middle of the eighteenth century. Macaulay has shown that the English at one time did not hold their Northern neighbours in high estimation; but it appears that the Germans entertained still more erroneous ideas regarding them. “The Scotch Highlanders,” says a writer in the Vienna Gazette of 1762, “are a people totally different in their dress, manners, and temper from the other inhabitants of Britain. They are caught in the mountains when young, and still run with a surprising degree of swiftness. As they are strangers to fear, they make very good soldiers when disciplined.” The writer proceeds to admit that they are not without some amiable qualities, and charitably concludes his article by expressing a hope “that their king’s laudable, though late, endeavours to civilize and instruct them in the principles of Christianity will meet with success.” The French and Germans, along with Englishmen, have during the last hundred years learned to know the Highlanders better.

We happened the other day to find ourselves in the society of a number of officers, some of whom had seen service in every quarter of the globe. Allusion was made to Highland soldiers, when an English colonel exclaimed, “They are the most troublesome fellows in the service. I have seven of them in my regiment, and they have given me more annoyance about their rights and grievances than all my other men.”

“The reason is very simple,” rejoined an officer, who hailed from the land of the Gael; “you don’t know how to manage them.”

In these simple words may be found the secret cause of the mutinies which so frequently broke out among the Highland regiments when first organized. The government of the day did not know how to manage them: hence insubordination, discontent, and frequent mutiny. The 42nd, or Old Black Watch, was, as we have shown, the first body of Highlanders formed into a regular regiment. Many of the privates were men of good family and liberal education, who were drawn into the service by their natural love of arms. It was distinctly understood that the sphere of their services was not to extend beyond their native country, to which they were warmly attached; and when in March, 1743, they were ordered to proceed to England, many of the leading men of the North, including Lord President Forbes, ventured to remonstrate. Their remonstrances were vain; the government persisted in their resolution, but the suspicions of the Highlanders were disarmed by appealing to their vanity. They were assured that the king was anxious to see so gallant a regiment, and that after being reviewed by royalty they would be allowed to return to their native land. The men were treated with the greatest kindness in the different English towns through which they passed; their warlike bearing and correctness of conduct secured for them the admiration and esteem of all with whom they were brought into contact. On the 14th of May they were reviewed on Finchley Common by Marshal Wade, in the presence of vast crowds who had hurried from London to see les sauvages Ecossais. It was unfortunate the king was not present at this review; his absence induced the Highlanders to lend a ready ear to the insidious report circulated among them by the adherents of the Stuarts that they were about to be transported to the American plantations. The Highlanders were stung to madness by the supposed treachery; but, with characteristic caution, they concealed their intentions till their plans were matured. They whispered to one another that, “after being used as rods to scourge their own countrymen, they were now to be thrown into the fire.” They resolved to die rather than submit to such a fate.

On the night between Tuesday and Wednesday after the review they assembled on a common near Highgate, and commenced their march to the land of their birth. They had friends and sympathisers in the city who supplied them with provisions. Their march was conducted with such secrecy that for a week nothing was known of their route. They had reached Lady Wood, between Brigstock and Deanthorp, about four miles from Oundle, when Captain Ball, an officer of Wade’s regiment of horse, was sent to treat with them. He requested them to lay down their arms and surrender at discretion, but they declared with one voice that they would be cut to pieces rather than submit, unless they were allowed to retain their arms and received a free pardon. All that Captain Ball could promise was to recommend them to mercy; but the pride of the Highlanders revolted at such a proposal.

“Hitherto,” then exclaimed the captain, “I have been your friend; but if you continue obstinate an hour longer not a man of you shall be left alive; and for my part, I assure you, I shall give quarter to none.”

The Highlanders, who had too much generosity to resent this bold language, sent two of their number to escort him out of the wood. The guides were won over by his eloquence: one of them remained with him, while the other returned and tried to persuade his comrades to submit. Surrounded as they were by superior numbers, they were, after some negotiation, induced to surrender. They received a free pardon, and soon after embarked for Flanders, where their deeds of bravery atoned for their temporary disaffection.

A similar incident occurred in the case of a Highland regiment in the service of William III. It was the ardent love of country that led them to refuse to embark for Holland, and their devotion to King James that led them to drink his health while there in preference to that of their own prince. Some one reported this to William.

“Do they fight well, these Highlanders?” asked the king.

“None better,” was the reply.

“Then,” said the king, “if they fight so well for me, let them drink my father’s health as often as they choose.”

There was much magnanimity in these words. The Highlanders soon learned to drink William’s health as heartily as they had done his father-in-law’s.

In the year 1779 a circumstance occurred which proves in the most striking manner the attachment which the Highlanders have ever cherished for their own regiments. In the month of April two strong detachments belonging to the 42nd and 71st regiments arrived at Leith from Stirling Castle, en route to North America to join their respective regiments. On learning that they were about to be drafted into the 80th and 82nd, both Lowland regiments, the men firmly refused to obey this order, or to serve in any regiments save those for which they had been enlisted. A little friendly remonstrance might have won them over, but the authorities unfortunately adopted the idea of reducing them by force, and troops were sent to Leith for the purpose of subduing the mutineers and conveying them to Edinburgh Castle. This was no easy task, as the event proved. The Highlanders offered an obstinate resistance, and in the conflict which ensued, Captain Mansfield, of the South Fencible regiment, and nine men were killed, and thirty-one soldiers wounded. At length, overpowered by numbers, the Highlanders were compelled to surrender, and were shut up in Edinburgh Castle. In the month of May three of the prisoners, Charles Williamson and Archibald Mac Ivor, of the 42nd, and Robert Budge, of the 71st, were tried by court-martial for having been guilty of mutiny and inciting others to the same crime. The line of defence they adopted gives us considerable insight into the state of the Highlanders at this period. Mac Ivor and Williamson stated that they enlisted in the 42nd, a regiment composed exclusively of Highlanders, and wearing the Highland dress. Their native tongue was Gaelic, and they knew no other, having been born in counties where English was almost unknown. They had never worn breeches in their lives, and the only garb they could wear with comfort was the garb of old Gael. This dress had indeed been prohibited by Act of Parliament; but the government had connived at the use of it, provided that it was made of plain cloth and not of tartan. For these reasons they could neither understand the language nor use the arms, or march in the dress of any other than a Highland regiment. Budge’s defence was substantially the same. They submitted to the court that, on reaching Leith, the officer who had conducted them there informed them that they were now to consider themselves soldiers of the 82nd, a regiment wearing the Lowland dress and speaking the English tongue. No order from the commander-in-chief was shown to them, nor had they any opportunity of submitting their grievances to him. They had no intention to resist lawful authority; they only wished to remonstrate against an act of flagrant injustice. They would have gone willingly to the castle if the order had been explained to them; but the officer sent for that purpose told them that they were to join the Hamilton regiment immediately, and they considered themselves justified in repelling force by force. Every reader will feel his blood boil with indignation on learning that these three poor Highlanders were all found guilty and sentenced to be shot. The spirit of clanship, however, was too strong in the Highland regiments to admit of this sentence being carried into effect, and the king was pleased to grant them a free pardon, “in full confidence that they would endeavour, by a prompt obedience and orderly behaviour, to atone for their atrocious offence.” Without passing an opinion on the atrocity of the offence, we have much pleasure in adding that all the prisoners proved themselves worthy of the royal clemency. They were drafted into the second battalion of the 42nd, and were uniformly distinguished for their steadiness and good conduct.

The Mutiny of the Black Watch.

It may be safely affirmed that the Highland regiments never displayed a spirit of insubordination, except on those occasions when the government of the day attempted to treat them with injustice by transferring them to Lowland regiments, or ordering them to embark for foreign service when they had enlisted to serve for a limited period at home. The 77th regiment, or Athole Highlanders, was raised in 1778 by the young Duke of Athole. The Murrays have always been a warlike race, and their young chief, the present Duke of Athole, the possessor of princely estates, is serving in Canada with the 2nd battalion of the Scots Fusilier Guards. The Athole Highlanders embarked for Ireland in June, 1778, and did garrison duty there till the war was over. The part they had to play was somewhat difficult; the Irish were disaffected, and hated the troops sent to control them; but the conduct of the Highlanders was so exemplary as to secure for them the respect of their enemies. Mr. Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland, Secretary for Ireland, bears honourable testimony to this fact. After alluding to the gentlemanly bearing of the officers, and the excellent conduct of the men, he says—“Once, upon the sudden alarm of invasion, I sent an order for the immediate march of this regiment to Cork, when they showed their alacrity by marching at an hour’s notice, and completed their march with a despatch beyond any instance in modern times, and this, too, without leaving a single soldier behind.”

There are few regiments at the present day that could undertake the same march at an hour’s notice, and complete it without leaving a single man behind; such a fact says much for the discipline, strength, and pluck of the Athole Highlanders. The government showed their appreciation of these services by attempting to break faith with them. The Highlanders had enlisted for three years. Their period of service had now expired, and they naturally expected to be disbanded. Instead of this, they were sent to Portsmouth to embark for foreign service. At first they offered no resistance; when they caught the first view of the fleet at Spithead as they crossed Portsdown Hill, they pulled off their bonnets and gave three cheers at the prospect of a brush with Hyder Ali. If the government had been wise enough to tempt them to re-enlist by the offer of a fresh bounty, a gallant regiment might have been preserved to the British army; but, unfortunately, they had no sooner reached Portsmouth than emissaries from London began to poison their minds by pointing out to them the injustice of the authorities in sending them abroad when they ought to have been disbanded. It was even insinuated that they had been sold to the East India Company at so much a head, and that their officers had shared in the purchase-money. These representations had the desired effect. The Highlanders, suspicious of their officers, and brooding over their wrongs, refused to embark. For several days they remained in a state of mutiny, during which they attempted to gain possession of the main guard and garrison parade, when one of the invalids who opposed them was accidentally killed. No sooner was it known that the poor man had left a widow than the Highlanders expressed the deepest regret, and raised a considerable sum for her relief.

The greatest anxiety was caused at Portsmouth by the presence of a thousand men free from all restraint; but the lives and property of the citizens were respected, and no complaints were ever made against the Highlanders. Though they had reason to suspect their officers of treachery, they almost invariably continued to treat them with deference and respect. On hearing, however, that two or three regiments were approaching to force them on board, they flew to arms and marched out to offer them battle. On finding that it was a false report, they quietly returned to their quarters. The Duke of Athole, his uncle, Major-General Murray, and Lord George Lennox, hurried down to Portsmouth in the hope that their presence and influence would induce the men to embark; but the minds of the latter were too much embittered by a sense of injustice to be swayed by the counsels of their hereditary chiefs. The discipline of the regiment was as strict as if they had been still under the command of their officers. Their arms and ammunition were placed in one of the magazines, and a strong guard placed over them while the rest of the regiment slept or partook of their meals. Twice a day they appeared at the grand parade, along with the adjutant and other officers. They were as careful of their dress and personal appearance as before. The government were at a loss what to do with the dreaded Highlanders. One day it was proposed to turn the great guns on the ramparts against them; but, fortunately, this proposal was overruled; the bloodshed would have been great, the result doubtful. At other times it was suggested to send some regiments stationed in the neighbourhood against them. On hearing this the Highlanders flew to arms, drew up the drawbridges, placed sentinels on them, and prepared to offer an obstinate resistance.

At length the question of the mutiny was brought under the consideration of Parliament, and the just claims of the Highlanders were admitted. The regiment was disbanded, and the men spread through the Highlands the report of the injustice with which they had been treated, and thus prevented many of their countrymen from entering the army. When treating of this affair, General Stewart observed that “If government had offered a small bounty when the Athole Highlanders were required to embark, there can be little doubt they would have obeyed their orders, and embarked as cheerfully as they marched into Portsmouth.” This untoward event will remind our readers of what occurred in India when the attempt was recently made to transfer the European troops from the service of the East India Company to that of the imperial government. Through the niggardly policy then adopted, thousands of men inured to service in that trying climate were roused into a state of mutiny, and compelled the authorities to grant them their discharge. In this case, as in that of the Athole Highlanders, a small bounty would have settled the difficulty and satisfied every claim.

There are old people still alive in Scotland who remember the sensation created in the days of their boyhood among all classes by “the affair of the wild Macraes.” The Macraes never rose to the dignity of a clan; they were a small sept that lived under the protection of the Mackenzies of Seaforth. The Earl of Seaforth had forfeited his title and estates in consequence of the part he took in the rebellion of 1715, when many of the Northern gentry rose in favour of the Pretender. Kenneth Mackenzie, the grandson of this earl, bought the family property from the crown, and was created Viscount Portrose in the Irish peerage. In 1771 the family title was restored to him, and the Earl of Seaforth, anxious to prove his gratitude to the government of the day for the favours he had received, offered in 1778 to raise a regiment among his own clan for general service. The Highlanders had already acquired a distinguished name on many a battle-field, and his offer was at once accepted. All the gentlemen of the clan Mackenzie came to the aid of their chief, and a corps of 1130 men was soon raised: 500 Highlanders belonged to Seaforth’s estates; 400 to the Mackenzies of Scatwell, Kilcoy, Applecross, and Redcastle; about 200 were Lowland Scotch; 43 were English and Irish. It is interesting to mark the constitutional elements of this and other Highland regiments. The fact is undeniable that the Highlands of Scotland were far more populous a century ago than they are now. The poorer inhabitants have been driven to Canada and other colonies; their small farms have been changed into deer-parks or sheep-walks; the landlords have increased their rentals, but the country has lost an important class and reaped no adequate advantage in return. The regiment thus embodied was known as the 78th, or Seaforth Highlanders. It is not to be confounded, however, with the present 78th, or Ross-shire Buffs; it is now represented by the 72nd, or Duke of Albany’s Own Highlanders. Almost all the officers were Mackenzies, and the sons and brothers of the different lairds vied with one another in selecting the best men that could be found on their estates. The results of this care on their part were apparent when the regiment was inspected at Elgin in May, 1778: of those 1130 men not one was rejected—an astounding fact when we consider that nearly one-fourth of our recruits are now pronounced unfit for service in consequence of some physical defect. In the month of August they embarked for Leith, where “the affair of the wild Macraes” occurred.

CHAPTER VII.
OUR HIGHLAND REGIMENTS—continued.

The Macraes, as we have already said, had never attained to the dignity of a clan; they were a sort of caterans or pilfering tinkers, who had found it convenient to place themselves under the protection of the chief of the Mackenzies. It appears that Seaforth had no particular liking for his pilfering protégés, and deemed this a favourable opportunity for getting quit of them. It is a fact not generally known that our Highland regiments have often obtained their best recruits from the fraternity of cairds or caterans. About half a century ago the whole of the North of Scotland was infested with these marauders, who, under the guise of mendicancy, levied contributions on the inhabitants of the rural districts, and lived a jovial, careless life. They were present at every marriage feast and merry-making, where the broken meat became their perquisite; sometimes they devoured the feast itself, and left the guests to shift for themselves. There was no rural constabulary in those days to keep them in check, and these Ishmaelites did very much whatever they chose. They were unrivalled in wrestling, single-stick, and every athletic sport; they were the best dancers on the village green; they could do everything but work or settle down to any fixed employment. They were essentially a nomadic race, ever on the move, sleeping by night in country barns, starting with the earliest dawn, and levying their contributions from door to door. We remember a gang of caterans or cairds who frequented the county of Aberdeen more years ago than we should like to tell. They all bore the family name of Young, and belonged to the same sept. One of them—Peter Young—was a great thief, and made himself almost as notorious as Jack Sheppard by breaking out of every gaol in Scotland. These caterans came to a singular end, and disappeared from the country. This is how it happened.

The 92nd or Gordon Highlanders had suffered much in the Peninsular War, so that constant drafts had to be sent out from home to recruit their strength. When all other resources failed, the country gentlemen bethought themselves of an ingenious plan by which they could at once fill up the vacant ranks in the 92nd, and get quit of some unpleasant neighbours. They caused all the able-bodied cairds to be seized and conveyed to the neighbouring seaport, where they were shipped off to join the 92nd. Such a thing, of course, could not be done at the present day, but strange things were done half a century ago in Scotland as elsewhere. Many a man who had no desire to be a sailor or a soldier was impressed or forced to serve in the army or navy against his will. This impressment of the Youngs proved the death-blow of the race. Not one of them ever returned from the Peninsula, but we have heard old pensioners of the 92nd declare that they were at once the greatest thieves and the smartest soldiers in the regiment.

The wild Macraes seem to have been men of much the same stamp as the Youngs, and Seaforth doubtless had his own reasons for wishing to get quit of them. These caterans were as much attached to their native land as if they had been the possessors of countless acres; they were their own masters, and had tasted the sweets of liberty. Seaforth knew that he could never persuade such men to enlist for foreign service, but he had sufficient influence to induce them to serve for a limited period at home, or rather to join the 78th on that understanding. It was only on reaching Leith that they discovered that they were intended for service in the East Indies, when symptoms of disaffection appeared among them. The report spread that Seaforth had sold them to the government. Loud complaints were heard that they had been cheated of their pay and bounty money. The wild Macraes were not the men tamely to submit to such injuries, and the stinging sense of wrong was intensified by the representations of certain parties hostile to the government of the day. Their slumbering discontent broke forth into open mutiny on receiving orders to embark; they absolutely refused to do so, and marched out of Leith with pipes playing, and two plaids fixed on poles instead of colours. On reaching Arthur’s Seat—the beautiful hill which overlooks Edinburgh, and is familiar to every tourist who has visited the North—they encamped on its summit, and remained there for several days. Though in a state of open mutiny, they respected the property of the citizens, and conducted themselves with so much propriety that public sympathy was excited in their favour, especially among the lower classes, who supplied them abundantly with provisions. The authorities deemed it more prudent to inquire into their grievances than to attempt to reduce them by force. After much negotiation they professed themselves satisfied, and marched back to their quarters at Leith with pipes playing and Seaforth at their head.

After serving for some time in the Channel Islands, they embarked in March, 1781, for the East Indies. Seaforth died during the voyage, before he reached St. Helena, and his death had such a depressing effect upon the men, that no less than 230 of them died before they reached India. They took part in all the different battles which were fought till the conclusion of peace in 1783, when, in terms of their agreement with government, they had a right to return home. Few of the Macraes lived to revisit their native land; most of them had died during the voyage, or succumbed to the fatal effects of the enervating climate. Only 300 of the men remained in India; but these, reinforced by volunteers from other regiments returning home, and by a detachment of 200 recruits from the North, were formed into a new regiment, which has ever since been known as the 72nd, or Duke of Albany’s Own Highlanders.

The March of the Wild Macraes to Arthur’s Seat.

A similar mutiny, proceeding from the same causes, broke out in the 81st, or Aberdeenshire Highland Regiment, in 1783. This regiment was raised in 1778 by the Hon. Colonel William Gordon, of Fyvie, a son of the Earl of Aberdeen by his third wife, a daughter of the Duke of Gordon. She was a sister of that Lord Lewis Gordon who took part in the rebellion of 1745, and whose absence from home is lamented in a charming Jacobite song which is still popular in the North. It is related of her that she took her stand close to the road by which the Duke of Cumberland and his army were marching south after the victory of Culloden, holding her infant son in her arms. Judging by her portrait, which we have seen, she must have been a very beautiful woman; and the duke, struck by her appearance, said, with his usual coarse bluntness, “Who are you?” The countess drew herself up to her full height, and looking him steadily in the face, boldly answered, “I am the sister of Lord Lewis Gordon.” Cumberland turned aside his head and passed on. The Earl of Aberdeen was well advanced in years when he married her, and it was agreed that the property of Fyvie should be settled on her or her offspring after his death. The Hon. William Gordon, who was the eldest son by this marriage, succeeded to the property, and rose to the rank of colonel in the service. In March, 1777, he received letters of service to raise a Highland regiment in his native county, and it was embodied in 1778 under the name of the 81st, or Aberdeenshire Highland Regiment. Its strength when first raised was 980 men, 650 of whom belonged to the Highlands of Aberdeenshire; a very large proportion were members of the clan Ross, the chief of which is James Ross Farquharson of Invercauld, a lieutenant-colonel in the Scots Fusilier Guards. The regiment marched to Stirling, and soon after embarked for Ireland, where it spent three years. In 1782 it was removed to Portsmouth, and received orders to embark for the East Indies. These orders were in direct violation of their terms of enlistment, which were the same as those of the Athole Highlanders, and the men, having agreed to serve till the conclusion of peace, the preliminaries of which were now settled, refused to embark, and claimed their discharge. They were, doubtless, encouraged to take this step by the example of the Athole Highlanders, and the success which had attended their assertion of their rights. The government, deeming it useless to attempt to reduce them by force, yielded to their demands, and sent them to Edinburgh, where they were disbanded in 1783. There is a tradition in the county that this mutiny was owing more to the cruelty of their colonel than the injustice of government. Few of them belonged to his own clan, and he treated them with a harshness to which the proud spirit of the Highlanders would not tamely submit. We have met with old veterans who could tell many stories of “Whipping Willie Gordon,” the sobriquet he obtained in the regiment through his fondness for the lash. He left the service with the rank of general, and spent his latter days at Fyvie Castle, where he professed himself a misogynist, and ended by marrying his cook.

An insurrection, attended with still more disastrous results, occurred in the Grant or Strathspey Fencibles in 1795. This regiment was raised by Sir James Grant of Grant in 1793, and about two months after the declaration of war by France, and, with the exception of three Englishmen and two Irishmen, was composed entirely of natives of the North. After being embodied at Forres, and inspected by General Leslie, the Grant Fencibles were stationed in most of the towns in the South of Scotland till 1795, when we find them at Dumfries. As a general rule, the best understanding has always subsisted between the Highlanders and their officers, and there is no sacrifice they are not prepared to make for those who have secured their confidence; but their proud, unbending spirit rebels at once against treachery or injustice. Enough has been already written to justify this assertion, and what we are about to relate tends only to confirm it. In 1794, when the regiment was stationed at Linlithgow, an attempt was made by the officers to persuade the men to extend their service, which, in terms of their enlistment, was confined to Scotland. It is probable that this attempt on the part of the officers originated merely from a desire to secure their own position in the army for a longer period, and it would probably have succeeded if they had won the confidence of the men by a frank avowal of their motives. As it was, they disclosed only enough to excite their suspicions, and the report spread that they had been sold to government. Nothing further was done in the matter at the time, but the officers were eyed with distrust, and a bad spirit sprang up in the regiment. An incident occurred at Dumfries the following year which brought matters to a crisis, and caused an open mutiny. The greatest freedom of intercourse was permitted between officers and men when both belonged to the same clan. This familiarity did not interfere with the strictness of discipline any more than it does in the French army, in which it has survived till the present day. An amusing illustration of this familiarity occurred in the 93rd Highlanders when they were stationed in Canada. There belonged to the regiment a young lieutenant—who, in virtue of his being the inheritor of an illustrious Scottish name and twenty thousand a year, deemed it the correct thing to remain ignorant of even the simplest military duty—and a private named Jock Muir, an excellent soldier, but an inveterate drunkard. There was a mutual understanding between the lieutenant and Jock that they should stand by one another in every emergency, or, in other words, that Jock should stand by the lieutenant when on duty, and whisper into his ear the word of command, and that the lieutenant should screen Jock when he got drunk. This system of reciprocity answered admirably for a time, but at length the lieutenant, from inadvertency or some other cause, allowed Jock to be punished, and Jock determined to have his revenge. An opportunity soon offered. The regiment was on parade, and the lieutenant, as the officer of the day, had to give the word of command. Turning to Jock, he said, “What is it? What must I say?” But Jock remained stiff and erect—no answer proceeded from his lips. “What am I to do, you fool?” said the poor lieutenant, losing his temper. “Run hame, mon! run hame!” roared Jock, in a stentorian voice which was heard over all the lines, and caused a general titter in the ranks. The lieutenant, acting on Jock’s advice, sold out and returned home, where he was much respected as a kind-hearted country gentleman.

Now it was a somewhat similar incident that rekindled the flame of discontent and caused an open mutiny among the Strathspey Fencibles at Dumfries in 1795. Militia officers are doubtless a highly-respectable class of men, and deserve well of their country in every respect, but they cannot be expected to possess the efficiency and skill of those who have devoted themselves to the profession of arms. The officers of the Strathspey Fencibles were men of good family, but as they had never seen any service they knew little about the management of troops, and sometimes exposed their ignorance in the presence of their own soldiers. On one occasion a contradictory order given by an officer called forth a jocular remark from one of the men, which was evidently much relished by his comrades. The officer lost his temper, put the offending parties in the guard-room, and threatened them with punishment—an indignity to which the proud spirit of the Highlanders refused to submit. They considered themselves disgraced by the threat, rushed to arms, and released their comrades by force. Soon after this the regiment was marched to Musselburgh, where Corporal James Macdonald and Privates Charles and Alexander Macintosh, Alexander Fraser, and Duncan Macdougall were tried for mutiny, found guilty, and condemned to be shot. In the case of Macdonald the sentence was commuted to corporal punishment—one of the first instances of a Highland soldier having been flogged. They were marched out to Gullane Links, East Lothian, on the 16th of July, and on reaching the ground were informed that only two would have to suffer the penalty of death. The two Macintoshes were called upon to draw lots, and the fatal one fell upon Charles. He and Fraser were immediately shot in the presence of the Scotch Brigade and other regiments assembled to witness this melancholy spectacle. The other men who had taken part in the mutiny were drafted into regiments serving abroad, and nothing further is known of their fate. No subsequent act of insubordination is recorded against this regiment, which was disbanded in 1798. It is singular to learn that less than seventy years ago in this civilised country the life or death of a human being depended on his drawing a lucky or unlucky number.

About the same period a mutiny broke out in the Breadalbane regiment, which gave rise to an incident that will remind our readers of the classical story of Damon and Pythias, and serve to illustrate the high spirit of honour which then prevailed among the Highlanders. This regiment was raised by the Earl of Breadalbane in 1793, and consisted of three battalions, whose united strength amounted to 2300 men. Some idea may be formed of the population of the Highlands at this period from the fact that 1600 men were obtained from the Breadalbane estates alone. We question whether one-fourth of that number could be raised there at the present day. Soon after the regiment had embodied it removed to Glasgow, and remained there till 1795, when a mutiny, similar in character and results to the one mentioned above, broke out among the men, who accused their officers of having sold them to the government for foreign service. The mutiny was soon suppressed, but when orders were given to apprehend the ringleaders it was found that so many of the men were equally implicated in the affair as to render it difficult to make a distinction. This difficulty was obviated by some of the men coming forward, taking all the blame upon themselves, and offering to suffer in the place of their less guilty comrades. Such an instance of generous self-sacrifice is unparalleled in the history of the British army, if not of the whole human race. The prisoners were sent to Edinburgh Castle to await their trial, and a singular incident occurred soon after they left Glasgow. The party was under command of Major Colin Campbell, one of their own officers, and one of the prisoners expressed a wish to speak to him in private. This man, Macmartin, belonged to the same part of the country as Major Campbell, and had always borne an excellent character, so that he had no difficulty in obtaining the desired interview. He stated frankly that he had given up all hope of escape, and was prepared to meet death. There was only one matter which weighed on his conscience and caused him much trouble: he had had some dealings with a friend in Glasgow which could only be settled by a personal interview; if this were denied, his friend would suffer much loss and inconvenience. If he were permitted to return to Glasgow he gave his solemn promise to rejoin the party before they reached Edinburgh.

“Major Campbell,” he added, “you have known me since I was a child; you know my country and kindred, and you believe I shall never bring you to any blame by a breach of the promise I now make to be with you in full time to be delivered up in the castle.”

At the present day a soldier would no more think of making such a proposal than an officer would dream of entertaining it. But Major Campbell was a kind-hearted man. He had known the prisoner from childhood, and had the fullest confidence in his honesty and good faith. Though aware that the non-appearance of the prisoner would entail the most serious consequences to himself, he unhesitatingly complied with his request, and Macmartin returned to Glasgow, had an interview with his friend, transacted his business, and started before daylight for Edinburgh to redeem his pledge. Being dressed in the uniform of his regiment, he was afraid to travel by the main road lest he should be apprehended as a deserter, and took a circuitous route through the woods; the result was that, though he escaped detection, he failed to reach Edinburgh at the appointed hour.

As Major Campbell approached the city his anxiety increased. He caused the party to march slowly, in the hope that he might still appear; but, finding no pretext for further delay, he was at length obliged to march the remaining prisoners to the Castle. Just as he was in the act of handing them over to the governor of the prison, and before the latter had time to examine whether the number of prisoners tallied with the report, poor Macmartin rushed up, pale with anxiety and fatigue, and trembling with apprehension lest his generous benefactor should suffer through his absence. A few moments later, and all would have been discovered; as it was, he was able to join his fellow-prisoners without attracting the notice of the governor, and to explain the cause of his temporary absence to Major Campbell, who used often to allude to the incident in after-life as a proof of the high spirit of honour which prevailed among his men.

It is satisfactory to add that Macmartin’s life was spared. All the prisoners were tried, and four of their number condemned to be shot; but only one of them underwent this punishment. From the narrative of these mutinies the inference is undeniable that they were caused not so much by the insubordinate spirit of the Highlanders as by the injustice with which they were treated by the military authorities. During the present century our Highland regiments have served in every quarter of the globe, and have been as distinguished for their subjection to discipline as for their valour in the field.

CHAPTER VIII.
OUR HIGHLAND REGIMENTS—continued.

The Highland regiments have always been distinguished for their attachment to their native land. This feeling prevails more or less among the inhabitants of all mountainous countries, where the grand and the sublime in nature is so deeply imprinted on the mind in childhood as, in all after years, to exercise a powerful influence upon the imagination. It was for this reason that the national air of the Swiss, the “Ranz des vaches,” was prohibited in armies composed partly of natives of Switzerland, its familiar notes bringing back their snow-clad mountains and deep glens so vividly to their remembrance that they could no longer resist the temptation to desert in order to revisit the scenes of their infancy. The same deeply-rooted feeling, as we have seen, led the Highlanders at first to confine their services to the land of their birth, and to break forth into mutiny when an unscrupulous government attempted to break faith with them. Once embarked, however, for foreign service, much as they longed for “the land of the mountain and the flood,” a high principle of honour prevented them from deserting their colours. Patiently they waited till permitted to return, when the love of country sometimes displayed itself in a way that reminds the classical reader of Ulysses’ return to his beloved Ithaca. Thus, when the 42nd Highlanders landed at Port Patrick in 1775, after an absence from Scotland of thirty-two years, many of the old soldiers leaped on shore with enthusiasm and kissed the earth, which they grasped in handfuls. This occurrence would be appreciated by the writers of Punch, who, among other quips at the expense of the Scotch and their erratic tendencies, inform us that the North British railway is the only one which yields no returns. As a matter of fact, the exodus from the North is only temporary, and side by side with the love of adventure and gain, an ardent feeling of patriotism is to be found in the heart of every Scotchman. This feeling it is that induces him to toil beneath the burning sun of the tropics, and to visit the most distant parts of the globe in search of that wealth which, once acquired, enables him to “go back” to his native land and enjoy the fruits of his industry.

The warm desire to revisit the land of his birth enables the Highlander to submit to the most trying privations without a murmur, and to resist the strongest temptations to desert to the enemy. During the war carried on by the English against Hyder Ali in India, more than a hundred men of Macleod’s Highlanders fell into the hands of that bloodthirsty despot, who tried in every way to induce them to enter his service. Finding that his most liberal offers had no effect, he tried to break their spirit by acts of cruelty. They were treated with every indignity; their only food was unwholesome rice, doled out to them in quantities barely sufficient to sustain life. They were exposed to the burning heat of the sun by day, and to the unhealthy dews that descend by night. Daily their numbers were reduced by disease; death stared them in the face. They had but to renounce their religion and their country to obtain the amplest rewards from the tyrant into whose hands they had fallen, but they preferred death to dishonour. Such a fact is creditable to the Highlanders; more—it is honourable to humanity itself. There is no spectacle so noble, says an ancient writer, as that of a good man struggling against adversity; these Highland prisoners had to engage in that struggle with little or no hope of deliverance in their time of trouble.

This same regiment took part in the unfortunate expedition under General Whitelock, which, in 1806, attempted to seize Buenos Ayres. It was owing to no lack of bravery on the part of our soldiers that their efforts were not crowned with success, but no amount of courage could compensate for the incapacity or treachery of the officer in command. Our army had to capitulate to the Spaniards, and remained in their power till peace was concluded. During this interval the Spaniards began to tamper with the Highlanders, and to hold out inducements to them to desert. These allurements were not without their effect upon those of them who happened to belong to the same religion. No less than thirty-five were induced to go over to the enemy. An incident occurred on this occasion which proves in the most striking manner the influence that home associations still continue to exercise over the minds of the Highlanders. A soldier named Donald Macdonald had almost yielded to the solicitations of the Spaniards to remain at Buenos Ayres, and while he was still wavering a comrade attempted to dissuade him from his purpose. Using no argument, he appealed to his heart by singing that touching Highland melody, “Lochaber no more.” The song awoke a thousand memories of home and country. The tears started into poor Donald’s eyes, and as he wiped them away he exclaimed, “Na, na! I canna stay! I’d maybe return to Lochaber nae mair.”

We know that a considerable mind has given forth his decision that if he had the making of a people’s songs, he cared not who made their laws; and the case of this Highlander, brought back to a sense of duty by one of the songs of his infancy, proves that in certain natures an appeal to the feelings is far more powerful than any appeal to the intellect. Nor has “Lochaber no more” lost its magic power over the Highland heart. We have seen many proofs of the contrary, one of which may be given. There is—or at least there was recently—in the Scots Fusilier Guards a soldier of the name of Roderick Ross, a native of Inverness-shire. Roderick had the build of a giant, but the heart of a child; he stood six feet four inches in his stockings, but was as soft and tender-hearted as a young maiden. He was respected as a brave soldier who had done his duty well all through the Crimea, but his friends the pipers of the regiment could not always resist the temptation to amuse themselves by reviving, or rather eliciting, his ardent love of country. The bagpipes begin to utter the wailing notes of “Lochaber no more,” Roderick’s huge frame is agitated like a mountain ash in a storm; tears spring to his eyes, and, unable to control his emotion, he rushes from the room exclaiming, “I canna stand ‘Lochaber no more;’ it aye gars (makes) me think o’ deserting.”

To get back to Macleod’s Highlanders at Buenos Ayres. While a few went over to the Spaniards, the regiment as a whole remained faithful to their colours, and their fidelity called forth the warm approval of the authorities. On their return home they were stationed at Cork, where General Floyd, a veteran officer who had often witnessed their gallantry in India, presented them with new colours, and referred in his address to the temptations they had overcome. “You now stand on this parade,” he said, “in defiance of the allurements held out to base desertion. You are endeared to the army and to your country. You insure the esteem of all true soldiers and good men.” The 42nd Highlanders were still more distinguished for their attachment to their colours. Many of the privates were gentlemen of birth and education, who preferred the profession of arms to every other, and were possessed of as fine a sense of honour as the officers under whom they served. In the war of American Independence they were brought frequently into contact with the insurgents, and exposed to those temptations to desert which many of our soldiers formerly belonging to regiments now stationed in Canada have not been able to resist. The 42nd passed through five campaigns with their honour pure and unsullied; they had to endure many privations; their ranks were thinned by the bullets of the enemy; they had no prospect of promotion in the British service; they might have risen to the highest rank in that of the insurgents. And yet not one of their number deserted; the regiment remained free from this stain till it received a draft of an inferior class of men from the 26th Regiment, a few of whom went over to the enemy. These men, however, did not strictly belong to the 42nd, and never possessed that esprit de corps by which the Highlanders were animated. We question whether it can be said of any other regiment at the present day that it has passed through five campaigns without losing a single man by desertion. Macdonald’s Highlanders, then known as the 76th Regiment, could lay claim to the same honourable distinction; they passed through the whole of the American campaign, and, though often tempted by the insurgents to renounce their allegiance, they all remained true to their colours. The same might be said of the Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment, which was raised among the sons of the Gael in Canada in 1778, and took an active part in the defence of Quebec against General Arnold. Even in cases where a Highlander was tempted to desert his colours there seems often to have remained a feeling of remorse which we should look for in vain at the present day among those bounty-lifters who live by defrauding their country, and esteem perjury to be the most venial of offences. This feeling of remorse manifested its presence and its power in an effort to atone for the past offence such as can leave no doubt regarding its sincerity, for their worst enemies will admit that when a Highlander consents to part with his money, it may be taken for granted that he is thoroughly in earnest. A soldier of the 91st or Argyleshire Highlanders was tempted to desert. He embarked for America, and became a settler there. Fortune smiled upon him in the land of his adoption, but there was a weight upon his conscience he could not shake off. In the midst of all his prosperity he never ceased to remember that he was a perjured man, a deserter from the British army. He had not the moral courage to return to his duty, and to submit to the punishment which his offence merited, but some years after his desertion he sent home a letter with a considerable sum of money to procure one or two men to enlist in his former regiment, “as the only recompense he could make for breaking his oath to his God and his allegiance to his king, which preyed on his conscience in such a way that he had no rest night nor day.”

This anecdote leads us to notice another trait in the character of our Highland soldiers; they were emphatically religious men, and they were prepared to make any sacrifice for their faith. They were little versed in theology, but, like Cromwell’s Ironsides at Dunbar, they put their trust in God and kept their powder dry. The great mass of them were Presbyterians, and in foreign and far-distant lands they continued to worship as their fathers had worshipped. Soldiers at that period were the most irreligious of men; they “swore terribly in Flanders” and elsewhere. We may form some idea of their morals from Hogarth’s well-known “March to Finchley.” Any display of religious feeling on the part of a soldier excited such surprise as to prove its extreme rarity, especially in the case of the Highlanders, who were esteemed at first to be little better than savages. When the 42nd Regiment first visited the metropolis, the Londoners were surprised to observe that officers and men never sat down to table without first saying grace—a religious observance which should be honoured, but which has become obsolete in our mess-rooms at the present day. An English historian shows how surprised his countrymen were “to see these savages, from the officer to the commonest man, first stand up and pull off their bonnets, and then lift up their eyes in the most solemn and devout manner, and mutter something in their own gibberish, by way, I suppose, of saying grace, as if they had been so many Christians.” Of course, in the eyes of this wiseacre, they could not have been Christians, because they expressed their devotion in a gibberish which, as he charitably implies, was as unintelligible to the Deity as it was to himself; but we know how to judge these things by a different standard, and we condemn the man who could write so narrowly. At first a chaplain was attached to every regiment, and Dr. Carlisle, of Inveresk, mentions in his memoirs, that one of these chaplains, during an engagement in America, freely exposed himself to the fire of the enemy, in order to encourage the young soldiers by his example. We question whether such a display of clerical courage would meet with the approval of the authorities at the War Office at the present day; certain facts have come under our notice that would tend rather to an opposite conclusion. These regimental chaplains had to mess with the officers, and it was imagined that the presence of a clergyman would have an elevating influence upon the latter; experience, however, soon proved that the chaplains, instead of elevating the officers, were, through daily contact, brought down to the same moral level, and it is a significant fact that Burns, although his national spirit was great, considered them fair game for his satire. About the commencement of the present century chaplains were attached to brigades and not to regiments, and this continued to be the case during the Peninsular war. It thus occasionally happened that certain of our Highland regiments, when serving at remote stations, had no provision made for their religious wants, and were left entirely to their own resources. Some idea of their attachment to their faith may be formed from the efforts they made to secure the services of ministers of their own creed. “The Sutherland men, or 93rd Highlanders,” says General Stewart, “were so well grounded in moral duties and religious principles, that, when stationed at the Cape of Good Hope, and anxious to enjoy the advantages of religious instruction agreeably to the tenets of their national Church, and there being no religious service in the garrison, except the customary one of reading prayers to the soldiers on parade, the men of the 93rd formed themselves into a congregation, engaged and paid a stipend (collected from the soldiers) to a clergyman of the Church of Scotland (who had gone out with the intention of teaching and preaching to the Caffres), and had divine service performed conformably to the ritual of the Established Church. Their expenses were so well regulated that, while contributing to the support of their clergyman from the savings of their pay, they were enabled to promote that social cheerfulness which is the true attribute of pure religion and of a well-spent life.” There are few regiments in the service now that would be prepared to make the same sacrifice, and if our chaplains were dependent entirely on voluntary contributions they would soon be reduced to a state of starvation, as church parade is usually the most distasteful of all duties to a soldier. It deserves to be mentioned to the honour of the 93rd Highlanders that they have always displayed the same religious fervour and readiness to contribute to the support of a clergyman of their own church. About twenty years ago the regiment was stationed in a remote part of Canada, where they had no opportunity of enjoying the instruction of one of their own ministers. To meet this want they formed themselves into a congregation, and contributed a sum sufficient for the support of a minister, who continued to labour among them till they were ordered home. Many of our Highland regiments are at present stationed in India, and it is satisfactory to add that acting-chaplains, who are liberally paid by the Indian government, are attached to each of them.

The advantages of religious instruction were manifest in the absence of crime and of most of those vices which have now become deeply rooted in the British army. These gallant veterans devoted to religious purposes the money which is now too often spent in dissipation, and the advantages of the course were evident in the high moral tone which existed among them. They knew the value of money, but they would not retain a sixpence they did not consider to be their own. We find, for example, in the case of a Highland regiment, that on landing in Ireland they marched to Waterford the same day, where they received billet-money on their entrance into the town. The same evening they received orders to proceed at once to New Ross. Any other soldiers would have retained their billet-money as their perquisite, but the Highlanders, with a simple honesty which most men would be more disposed to admire than to imitate, returned it to the billet-master. So correct was the conduct of the men that in some regiments corporal punishment was almost unknown. In the Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment only one man was brought to the halberts during the time they were embodied. For the lengthened period of forty years there were few courts-martial and no cases of flogging in the 42nd Regiment. The value of this fact will be appreciated by all who are familiar with the statistics of punishment in the British army during the prevalence of war. It was only when a foreign element was introduced in the shape of a draft from another regiment that crime and its consequences became more frequent. The old soldiers refused to associate with those who had been brought to the halberts; they looked upon the latter as disgraced, whereas at the present day a soldier suffers nothing in the estimation of his comrades though he may have been guilty of almost every crime. Would that one could revive that high moral tone among our soldiers which led the 42nd Highlanders to raise money sufficient to purchase the discharge of those ruffians whom they esteemed to be a disgrace to the regiment. The presence of such men carried contamination with it, and soldiers who were proud of their regiment and jealous of its honour were ready to make any sacrifice to get quit of them. The remedy, as might have been expected, proved insufficient. The infusion of the criminal element was too powerful to be eliminated by any such means. The offering of a premium for vice tended only to increase the evil which it was intended to remove, but such a fact places in the most favourable light the high sense of honour by which the men of the 42nd were influenced.

When punishment was inflicted upon the Highlanders themselves, it was usually for insubordination. While devotedly attached to those officers who treated them with justice and kindness, they were ever ready, as we have shown, to resist any attempt to deprive them of their rights. It unfortunately happened that they were sometimes placed under the command of officers ignorant of their character and feelings, who tried to carry matters with a high hand and to rule them by terror more than by affection. In such cases the most lamentable consequences followed: a spirit of insubordination sprang up, which the severest punishment failed to repress. We find, for example, that the 75th Regiment, on landing in India in 1780, was placed under the command of an officer whose great ambition it was to introduce the Prussian system of discipline, the nature of which may be learned from Carlyle’s “Life of Frederick the Great.” Such a system may have been well adapted to the gigantic foot-soldiers whom Frederick William delighted to see around him, but it was subversive of all discipline when applied to a Highland regiment. The proud spirit of the mountaineers refused to be smothered with pipeclay or be shackled with red tape, and a mutiny would probably have ensued if the martinet had not been removed to make place for another officer, who, uniting firmness with due regard to the feelings of the men, soon regained for the regiment its former high character. A striking contrast to the temporary demoralisation produced in the 75th by the folly of the commanding officer was presented by the 78th or Ross-shire Highlanders, who were stationed in India about the same time under the command of Colonel Mackenzie of Suddie, one of their clansmen. During six years spent in different parts of the Bengal Presidency their conduct was so exemplary as to call forth the warm approval of the authorities and to produce a desire to imitate in other regiments the system which had produced such excellent results.

What more striking proof can there be of the hallowing influence of home associations on the mind of the Highlander? When serving in foreign lands he never forgets his native village, his father’s home, and the good name bequeathed to him as his only inheritance. His great ambition is to do nothing to disgrace that name or to forfeit the good opinion of the little community to which he expects some day to return. “What will they say at home?” is the first thought that occurs to him after a hard-fought field; and a feeling of honest pride springs up in his heart as he thinks that the deeds of himself and his comrades will be talked of in the circle he lived in before he became a soldier. Lord Clyde and other generals knew how to turn this feeling to the best account, and no man will ever make a good soldier who has no social ties and no regard for public opinion. It is pleasing to add that the same honourable feeling still subsists in the 78th, and that such men as Havelock and Outram have borne testimony to the good effects produced by it. It deterred the regiment, when first raised, from the commission of crime, and thus saved them from the disgrace of corporal punishment. For many years flogging was unknown; it was not till 1799 that an offence meriting this punishment occurred. The miserable offender was at once tabooed by his comrades, who felt themselves disgraced by his conduct, and avoided him as if he had the plague-spot; so that, driven to despair, he might have been tempted to lay violent hands on himself if the colonel had not interposed in his behalf. Knowing that no change could be effected in the feelings of the men, he deemed it best to send him home to England, where his crime would be unknown, and he might thus have an opportunity of retrieving his character. It happened as he expected: the man justified the colonel’s decision and turned out an excellent soldier, whereas if he had been allowed to remain in the regiment he would have been lost. Thus justice tempered with mercy was the saving of this soldier, as it had been of many others. Would that all commanding officers displayed the same humane and considerate spirit in the treatment of those under their command! The entries in the defaulters’ book would be fewer in number, and the morale of the British army higher than it is at the present day.

We have already alluded to the excellent character of the 93rd Highlanders, who enjoyed the same immunity from punishment as the 78th. While other regiments became partially demoralised through the admixture of improper characters, the Sutherland Highlanders remained uncontaminated, and preserved a uniform line of good conduct. Punishment is usually more frequent in the light infantry companies, because the men are selected on account of their physical appearance without reference to moral character. For a period of nineteen years no case of punishment occurred in this or any other company of the 93rd, and this regiment still retains that esprit de corps which has been handed down in the ranks, and is as powerful for good as the inheritance of a noble name or the pride of ancestry. The Sutherland men, instead of spending their leisure hours in drunkenness and debauchery, have devoted them to those athletic sports which muscular Christianity has revived among other classes. Every one will admit that it is better to brace the physical frame by running, leaping, dancing, and tossing the kaber (manly exercises in which the 93rd are still proficient), than to weaken it by vicious indulgence. Wherever they have been stationed, at home or abroad, their exemplary conduct has earned for them the confidence of those among whom they lived, and procured for them admission into circles from which the majority of soldiers are excluded. Colonel Cameron of Fassiefern bears honourable testimony to the good conduct of the 92nd Highlanders. In writing to his father during the Peninsular war he thus alludes to his own clansmen who had followed him to the field:—“Not one of the poor fellows who came with me has ever behaved ill; none of them is even a questionable character.”

The exemplary conduct of the Highlanders is to be attributed partly to the admirable arrangements connected with the internal economy of the different regiments. Their messes were managed by the non-commissioned officers, or old soldiers who had charge of the barrack-room; it was so arranged that those who belonged to the same glen or district, or were connected by the ties of friendship or blood, should occupy the same room and be seated at the same table. Such distinctions are ignored at the present day, so that the man of education and refinement who has been forced into the army by poverty or misconduct is obliged to associate by day and by night with the vilest of his species, and to have his sense of propriety outraged by their conduct and conversation. Need we wonder that he should soon be brought down to the moral level of those around him? In the Highland regiments this evil was avoided; every barrack-room was like a large family establishment, the occupants of which spoke the same language, wore the same dress, belonged to the same clan, and cherished the hope of returning to the same glen. Public opinion was as powerful for good in such a community as in civil life; all had an equal interest in sustaining the good fame of the mess to which they belonged. After defraying all the necessary expenses for breakfast, dinner, and other necessaries during the week, the surplus pay was placed in a stock purse and carefully guarded. When it reached a certain amount it was lent out at interest; the system of savings-banks had not yet been introduced into the army. When a soldier left the regiment he had usually sufficient money to establish himself in some kind of business, the profits of which, added to his pension, enabled him to spend the remainder of his days in comfort. So long as he remained in the regiment he had always enough to procure the usual necessaries, and to remit something to his friends in the old country, when they stood in need of such assistance. Large sums of money thus reached the North, and must have been acceptable in every way to those who received them. We have already shown how the Sutherland men, while stationed at the Cape of Good Hope, supported a minister of their own religion from their limited pay. While attentive to the duties of religion, they were not deaf to the voice of nature. They remembered those who had first taught them to respect religion, and acknowledged the obligation by ministering to their wants. All remitted something to the old folks at home—in several cases individual soldiers sent as much as £20 each. When the regiment landed at Plymouth in 1814, after eight years’ service at the Cape, upwards of £500 were deposited in one bank to be remitted to Sutherlandshire; this was exclusive of sums forwarded through the post-office and through officers proceeding to the North. Before the Poor Law was introduced into Scotland, it was the great ambition of the poorest of the peasantry to accept no public relief; this feeling was common to all, and the greatest sacrifices were made by sons and daughters to prevent parents from coming on the board—i.e., from accepting assistance from the offertories made at the different churches for the benefit of the indigent. This feeling accompanied the Highland soldier to distant lands, and led him to submit to many privations in order to save money for the support of his parents, who were thus enabled to retain their self-esteem and to enjoy the respect of the community in which they lived.

On examining the papers of the late Sir Ewen Cameron of Fassiefern, the father of Colonel Cameron of the 92nd Highlanders, it was found that large sums of money had been remitted from different parts of the world by soldiers for the support of their parents. Writing from Alexandria, 24th August, 1801, to his father, Colonel Cameron thus alludes to this trait in the character of his men:—“I wrote you before leaving Newport, inclosing a bill on Charles Erskine for money belonging to Ewen dubh Taillear (black Hugh the Tailor), and from Marmorice Bay, a letter with money for Ewen dubh Coul (black Hugh of Coul); also money for the two Macphies.” Writing on the 14th December, 1809, after his return from the disastrous expedition to Walcheren, Colonel Cameron says—“The Bo-man’s (cattle-herd’s) son has begged of me to forward you (inclosed) one half of ten-pound note to assist his father’s family. The other half he will forward to his brother by next post. He is a very siccer (steady) lad.”