The Royal Regiment, and Other Novelettes

by James Grant

MILITARY "FOLK LORE."

CHAPTER I.
THE RED COAT; A FEW NOTES CONCERNING ITS
ORIGIN AND HISTORY.

"Red, of the colour of blood, one of the primitive colours," we are told by Walker; "red-coat, a name of contempt for a soldier," he adds unpleasantly below; but Colonel James in his Military Dictionary renders it more probably, as "the familiar term for a British soldier."

Colonel Mackinnon (in his "History of the Coldstream Guards") and other writers have attributed the introduction or adoption of the British uniform to William III.; but there are sufficient proofs of its having been common alike to England and to Scotland long before the revolution in 1688.

That red was originally deemed a warlike colour, though now worn only by the British and, till the Holstein war, by the Danish troops, there is abundant evidence.*

* The red of the Danish army was darker than ours. In 1702, their cavalry, line, and militia, wore iron-grey, with green stockings; but there were some exceptions. The first named force had buff coats, and in warm weather rode with hats, their helmets hanging at their saddle bows. Lobat's dragoons were clad in red, lined with white; the regiment of Jutland wore white, lined with red, red breeches and black cravats; and the Queen's own Guards wore fine scarlet.—Travels in the Retinue of the English Envoy, in 1702.

Bellona, the sister of Mars, is depicted by ancient painters and described by the poets as being clad in garments stained with blood, and the planet which bears the name of the warlike god is known by its ruddy appearance. This hue arises simply from the atmosphere, and hence the bards of classical antiquity named the planet after the god of battles. To show that in savage lands some of those old ideas still prevail, Colonel James Grant in his "Walk Across Africa," with the gallant and lamented Speke, mentions that his valet Uledi told him, "that in his native country of Uhiao, the people imagined that all foreigners eat human flesh, and that cloth was dyed scarlet with human blood."

In heraldry, gules is the vermilion colour in the arms of commoners; but without elaboration, our present object is to trace the origin and the gradual adoption of our national uniform, "the old red rag (as our soldiers call it) that tells of England's glory."

The colour was deemed eminently martial and war-like by the Romans, among whom the paludamentum, the military robe or cloak of a general, was scarlet, bordered with purple. Juvenal (vol. vi.) mentions officers clad in a scarlet dress, and according to Livy, such was also the attire of the lictors who attended the consul in war.

Scarlet is mentioned among the colours used by the Britons for dyeing their skins in the time of Julius Cæsar; but their favourite herb was glastum, or woad, called glas by the Celts, i.e., blue, that they might look dreadful in battle.

The red uniform of the British Army was adopted simply from the circumstance, that it was the royal colour of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, centuries before the union of the crowns or of the countries; red and blue being the royal livery of England, red and yellow the royal livery of Scotland. In the latter country, red has ever been the judicial colour, worn by the Lords of Council and Session, the magistrates of Edinburgh and other cities, as well as by the students of some of the universities.

The Royal Crowns of England and Scotland were always lined with scarlet, though James IV. for a time adopted imperial purple. The surcoat of the Knights of the Garter is crimson; and in the apparel of those of the Bath we find the surcoat, breeches and stockings all red, as directed at the revival of the Order by George I. in 1725.

Scarlet faced with blue was the uniform of the City Guard of Edinburgh, a corps which existed from the days of Flodden until those of Waterloo.

In England, scarlet and blue had long been the two chief colours of the cloth directed for the array of the king's troops; in the time of the Crusades the English wore white crosses; but Henry VIII. had troops in white with a red cross. From the commencement of the fourteenth century the Scots wore blue surcoats with white St. Andrew's crosses thereon. Scotch and English soldiers were wont in those days to taunt each other as Blue-coat and White-coat.

The Memoirs of Kirkaldy of Grange record an instance of this kind in a sham fight.

In the afternoon of the 2nd March, 1571, a party of Sir William Kirkaldy's soldiers were marched from Edinburgh Castle, which they approached again at 8 p.m., with white English surcoats over their armour. On drawing near they were challenged thus:

"Who are ye that trouble the Captain in the silence of night?"

"The army of the Queen of England," replied the mock assailants with a discharge of arquebusses. Blank volleys promptly responded from the walls, during which they freely bestowed upon each other the taunts and scurrility which the Scots and their Southern neighbours used in battle as liberally as hard blows.

"Begone, ye lubbards! Away, Blue-coats!

"I defy thee, White-coat! dyrt upon your teeth! Hence, knaves, to your mistress—her soldiers shall not come here," &c. The cannon were then discharged, upon which the mock Englishmen took to flight, after an hour's skirmish in the dark, which filled the peaceable portion of the citizens with dismay, and drew forth some prophetic remarks from John Knox, who heard the clamour from his house in the Netherbow.

The favourite colours of the House of Tudor were green and white. At the battle of St. Aubyn, Sir Edward Wydeville was slain, at the head of a vast body of Bretons, whom, to deceive the enemy, he had clad in white English doublets with red St. George's crosses thereon.

White and red were the colours worn by Richard II. as his livery, and during his reign they were favourites with his courtiers and the citizens of London, a large company of whom, headed by the mayor, all wearing these, the king's colours, met him and the queen on Blackheath, and conducted them in state to the Palace of Westminster. At the coronation of Henry IV. we find the English peers wearing a long scarlet tunic, called a houppelande, with a cape above it; the knights and esquires present wore the same kind of tunic, but without the cape.

In 1432, when Henry IV. returned from France, he was met at Eltham by the Lord Mayor of London, who was arrayed in crimson velvet with a baldrick of gold, attended by three henchmen dressed in suits of red spangled with silver, and by the aldermen wearing gowns of scarlet with purple hoods. Then in 1535 we find Henry VIII. donning a crimson velvet jerkin with purple satin sleeves, and among the items of his voluminous wardrobe are enumerated, "a cloke of skarlette with a brodegarde of right crymson velvette; a dublette of carnacion coloured sattin embrowdered with damaske gold; a jacquette of the same," and several other "dubieties" and "clokes" of similar sanguinary hues; and during his reign we find the first decided approach to the uniform of the future British Army.

"Henry VIII. passed to Bulloigne with an army divided into three battalions," says a curious work, printed at London in 1630.* "In the vantguard were 12,000 footmen and 500 light-horsemen, cloathed in blew jackets, with red guards. The middleward (where the King was), consisted of 20,000 footmen, clothed with red jackets and yellow guards. In the rereward was the Duke of Norfolk, and with him an army like in number and apparell to the first, saving that therein served 1000 Irishmen, all naked, save their mantles and their thicke-gathered skirts." This indicates a costume like that of the Highlanders.

* "Relations of the most famovs kingdoms, throwout the world."

On this occasion, in 1544, Henry was attended by his Body-Guard of Pensioners, each of whom "was accompanied by three mounted men-at-arms, dressed in suits of red and yellow damask, the plumes of themselves and steeds being of a like colour." ("Account of the Gentlemen-at-arms.") In battle they wore complete armour, their horses being "barded from counter to tail," i.e., with a spiked frontlet for the head, criniere to guard the mane, a poitrinal or breast-plate, and a croupiere or buttock-piece.

Contemporaneously we find his nephew, James V. of Scotland, having a body-guard established in 1532, consisting of 300 men of Edinburgh, clad in scarlet doublets faced with blue, with blue bonnets, gilt partizans and daggers.

Henry's "Bulleners," as they were named, were conspicuous in their scarlet dress at the battle of Pinkie, in 1547, where they were commanded by the Lord Gray, and where they were driven back in confusion, leaving the staff of the royal standard in the hands of the Scots. In Patten's quaint account of this battle, he mentions, incidentally, that "Sir Miles Patrick being nigh, espied one in a red doublet, whom he took thereby to be an Englishman."

In a letter of Sir John Harrington's, we find the pay and clothing of Queen Elizabeth's troops in Ireland detailed at some length, but the colours are not stated. For an officer in winter, "a cassock of broad cloth, with bays, and trimmed with silk lace, 27s. 6d. A doublet of canvas, with silk buttons, and lined with white linen, costing 14s. 5d. Two shirts, three pairs of kersey stockings, three pairs of shoes of neat's leather, at 2s. 4d. per pair, and one pair of Venetians, of broad Kentish cloth with silver lace, at 15s. 4d."

On the 23rd July, 1601, 1500 of her men arrived from England, clad in red cassocks, to share in the siege of Ostend.—(History of the Siege.) Of these, says Stowe, 1000 were Londoners, and they are now represented by Her Majesty's 3rd Foot, or Kentish Buffs.

We find no trace of the national colours at the coronation of Charles I. as King of Scotland, in 1633, at Edinburgh, where he was escorted by the Gentlemen Pensioners, under the Earl of Suffolk, and the Yeomen of the Guard, under the Earl of Holland. We are told by Spalding that he was accompanied by "his ordinary English Guards, clad in his livery, having brown velvet coats, side (i.e., close) to their hough, and beneath with boards of black velvet, and His Majesty's armes wrought in raised and embossed work of silver and gold upon the back and breast of ilk coat. This was the ordinary weed of His Majesty's Foot Guards." Those furnished by Edinburgh were clad in "white satin doublets, black velvet breeches, silk stockings, hats, feathers, and scarfs. These gallants had dainty muskets, pikes, and gilded partizans." On this auspicious occasion, all the Scottish peerage wore their usual robes of crimson velvet. In this King's reign, David Ramsay, who was an officer of Gustavus Adolphus, when appearing to fight a duel with Lord Reay, wore a coat of scarlet (according to Sanderson's "History of England"), so thickly laced with silver that the ground of the cloth was scarcely visible.

Singularly enough, scarlet was early adopted among the grim Scottish Covenanters. At the battle of Kilsythe, where Montrose routed their troops with great slaughter, we find that "the red-coat musketeers" were cut to pieces by Viscount Aboyne and his Gordons. It may be worth mentioning here that the chequer on the bonnets of our Highland regiments was first adopted by the clans under Montrose, as significant of the fess-cheque of the House of Stuart. The great Marquis wore scarlet at his barbarous execution in Edinburgh, in 1650; and in the course of that year we find Sir James Balfour recording, in his "Memorialls of Church and Staite," that an English ship was made a prize by the Scots, who found in her "eleven hundred elles of broad clothe, seven hundred suites of made clothes, and als many read cottes, 250 carabines, 500 muskets, with powder and matches," being supplies for the troops of Cromwell, several of whose regiments appear, however, to have been clad in blue.

Balfour, at this period, mentions on several occasions the "four-tailled" coats of the Scottish infantry and artillery, which must have been something like the old Highland doublet now worn by our Highland corps.

At the Restoration, when forces were established in England and Scotland, each country having its separate guards, line, and artillery, scarlet was the colour almost uniformly adopted, save in one instance, when the King clothed in blue, faced with red, the Royal Regiment of English Horse Guards, which was embodied on the 26th August, 1661, under Aubrey, Earl of Oxford. These colours it still retains; but a corps of marines raised about the same time, oddly enough, wore yellow coats—the old Dutch uniform.*

* William III. had a regiment of Dutch Horse in London, styled the Blue Horse Guards; they returned to Holland on the 20th March, 1689, after which the present Oxford Blues got that appellation permanently.

On the 2nd April in the same year, 1661, the Scottish Life Guards rode through the city of Edinburgh "in gallant order," says Nicol the Diarist, "their carbines upon their saddles, and swords drawn in their hands. It pleased His Majesty to clothe their trumpeters and the master of the kettle-drum in very rich apparel." Colours were presented, and soon after the King gave to each gentleman a buff coat.

In February, 1683, General Sir Thomas Dalzell obtained from the Privy Council at Edinburgh a licence permitting the manufacturers at Newmills "to import 2536 ells of stone-grey cloth from England," for his dragoon regiment, the Scots Greys, which had been raised two years before—hence their costume, as well as their grey horses, may have led to their present well-known appellation. This grey cloth cost five shillings an ell.

In May of the same year, Colonel John Grahame of Claverhouse imported from England 150 ells of red cloth, 40 ells of white, and 550 dozen of buttons, for the use of the Life Guards, and the Council ordained that the uniform of the Scottish infantry should be "of such a dye as shall be thought fit to distinguish sojours from other skulking and vagrant persons, who have hitherto imitated the uniform of the King," and red was the dye so universally adopted that in 1685 we find 300 ells of it ordered by Captain Patrick Grahame for the City Guard of Edinburgh.

The Cavalier trooper, Captain Crichton, writes of the Scottish cavalry in red in 1676; and in 1684 we find that the dress of the Coldstream Guards was a red coat lined with green, red stockings, red breeches, and white sashes.* "The colonel and other officers, when on duty, to wear their gorgets."

* Royal Orders, &c.

In Sir Patrick Hume's account of Argyle's descent upon Scotland (printed in Rose's Observations upon the historical works of Mr. Fox), among the Scottish forces led by the Earl of Dumbarton, he says, "wee saw in view a regiment of red-coat foot, too strong for us to attacque." This was the Scots Royals, or 1st Regiment of the Line. Before the victorious charge at Killiecrankie, Viscount Dundee is said to have substituted a green for a scarlet uniform over his buff coat; and the former colour is yet considered ominous to those of his name who wear it.*

* Browne's "History of the Highlands."

Some years before the Revolution, Grenadier companies had been added to the English and Scottish establishments.

Charles II. having resolved to introduce hand-grenades, on the 13th April, 1678, issued a warrant for a company of one hundred men to be added to the Holland regiment, under the command of Captain John Bristoe, to be armed with those explosives, and to be styled Grenadiers. A similar company was soon added to every other corps in both countries. These soldiers carried fusils with bayonets, hatchets, and swords. Their uniform was different from that of the musketeer and pikeman; the two latter had round hats with broad brims turned up on one side, the former a fur cap with a lofty crown; they also wore cravats "of fox tailes."

"In 1678," says Evelyn in his Diary, "were brought into the service a new sort of soldiers called Grenadiers, who were dextrous at flinging hand-grenades, every one having a pouch full; they wore furred caps with coped crowns like Janizaries, which made them look very fierce, and some had hoods hanging down behind. Their clothing being pybald, yellow, and red." Such was the origin of our "British Grenadiers" of immortal memory!

According to Fosbroke, after throwing the grenade, on receiving the words "Fall on," they rushed on the enemy with hatchets, which they wore in addition to muskets, slings, swords, and daggers.

The Scottish Government, in 1702, raised a corps of Horse Grenadier Guards, afterwards incorporated with the United forces, and now represented by the Life Guards.

Towards the close of the 17th century, the clothing of the British troops varied; hence, we find, that in the year 1685, when the North Lincolnshire (now 10th) Regiment of Foot was raised by John, Earl of Bath, it wore blue coats, which were lined with red, and the men had waistcoats, breeches, and stockings all of red, and round Cavalier hats with broad brims, which were turned up on one side, and ornamented with red ribbons. The companies of pikemen* alone wore red worsted sashes. Shortly after the Revolution in 1688, the 10th Foot were clothed in scarlet, like the rest of the British Infantry.

* The last pike perhaps used in the British Service we saw carried by a sergeant of Captain Wyatt's Company of the Royal Artillery in 1835, when marching for embarkation for Britain, out of Signal Hill Barracks in Newfoundland.

In 1687, the "old Tangier Regiment," or, Queen's Own Foot (now the 2nd Regiment), which was raised in 1661, for the defence of that portion of Africa which was ceded to Britain as the dowry of the Infanta of Portugal, wore a red frock coat with skirts turned back, loose green knickerbockers, white stockings, black broad-brimmed hats, looped up on one side, and shoes with rosettes. In the buff belts were long rapiers and fixing daggers, while a collar of bandoliers was worn across the chest.

William III. ordained in 1698, "that no person whatsoever should presume to wear scarlet or red cloth for livery, except such as are in His Majesty's service, or the Guards," yet, for all that, scarlet was, and is still, the livery of more than one noble family in Scotland.

The 3rd, or Kentish Buffs, were so called from the circumstance of their being the first corps whose accoutremeuts were made of leather prepared from the hide of the buffalo. Their waistcoats, breeches, and facings were, however, all of the same buff colour in 1665, according to Captain Grose. For nearly the same reason, the 31st, or Huntingdonshire Foot, raised in 1702, call themselves the "Young Buffs." In the Army List, the 78th Highlanders are styled the Ross-shire Buffs; and in some old lists, the 56th, or West Essex Regiment, raised in 1755, figured by their pet name of Pompadours, their facings being then, as now, purple, the favourite colour of Madame's gown and fontange. While on the subject of uniform and equipment, we may mention that in the Memoirs of Sergeant Donald Macleod, "who having returned wounded, with the corpse of General Wolfe, was admitted an out-pensioner of Chelsea in 1759, and is now* in his 103rd year," we have an absurd statement to the effect, that when he enlisted in the 1st Royal Scots, "as a boy in the Scottish service under King William III.," they were accoutred with steel caps, bows and arrows (?). He might as well have added scalp locks and war paint. Singular to say, this nonsense has been reproduced by Miss Strickland in her Life of Queen Anne. Long prior to the time given, the regiment wore its orthodox red coat, faced and lined with blue, and was armed with good match-lock muskets, the "cocked lunts" of which revealed their whereabouts, in the dark, to Monmouth's cavalry on the night before the battle of Sedgemoor.

* 1791. Published by Sewell, Cornhill.

Of old, the London militia, though all dressed in scarlet, were known by their facings, and not by numbers.

In the list of officers, commissioned for the City, on the 24th December, 1698, we have those of the orange, yellow, white, red, green, and blue regiments; and concerning these corps the following interesting proclamation was posted up throughout London, when the Highlanders under Prince Charles were advancing on Derby.

"Notice is hereby given, that every officer and soldier in the six regiments of militia, without waiting for beat of drum, or any other notice, do, immediately on hearing the said signals, repair with their arms and the usual quantity of powder and ball, to their respective rendezvous; the red regiment upon Tower-hill, the green regiment in Guildhall-yard, the yellow in St. Paul's Churchyard, the white at the Royal Exchange, the blue in Old Fish-street, and the orange in West Smithfield."*

* In 1759 this corps was ordered by its Colonel to adopt blue clothing.

It is hence that in Foote's humorous farce, "The Mayor of Garratt," Major Sturgeon is made to say that he had served under Jeffery Dunstable, knight, Lord Mayor of London, and Colonel of the yellow.

Prince Charles Edward was partial to the national uniform, and frequently wore it. He is represented in red, in the miniature which he gave to his secretary, Murray of Broughton, one of nine painted on copper, as gifts to his principal adherents. His Life Guards, under Lord Elcho, wore blue faced with red; but, in his small and gallant army, the Duke of Perth's regiment, wore scarlet uniforms. (Vide Spalding Club Miscell., vol. i.)

A scarlet uniform worn by Cardinal York, before he took holy orders, and probably when he commanded a body of French and Irish troops at Dunkirk, in 1745, is now preserved at Inzievar House, Fifeshire, having been preserved by Edgar of Keithwick, who was long attached to the last of the Stuarts, in the capacity of secretary.

Like the light cavalry, most of the militia corps would seem to have been originally dressed in blue. According to an old ballad, the Lothian regiment were so clad at the Battle of Bothwell-bridge in 1679.

The uniform of the first-named force has frequently varied. In 1784, the clothing of the 17th, and similar corps, was changed from scarlet to blue. They wore blue in the Peninsula, and in 1830 were clad in scarlet again, when the moustache, which they and other corps had adopted, was ordered to be shaved off. (Records of the 17th Lancers.)

The old Scottish Guard of the French kings wore hoquetons of white, "in token of their unspotted fidelity," but the other Scottish troops in the French service, the Gendarmes Écossais, who took precedence of all the household troops, and the Infanterie Écossais, which took rank after the 12th regiment of the old French line, wore blue, while scarlet was the dress of the Irish brigades of the Louis' in later years.

Our Chasseurs Brittaniques, a foreign corps, consisting in some instances, of deserters from every army in Europe, wore the national uniform, and thus, when on duty, frequently caused confusion and mistakes by their ignorance of the English language.

In 1742, the coats and breeches of the line were tightened, and the hats were looped up on three sides, and in that year, the 7th, or South British Fusiliers, and the 21st, or North British Fusiliers, figured in the high conical cap which came into vogue with the Prussian tactics. Their coats had no collars, the skirts were buttoned back and faced with blue. Numbers were first put on the coat buttons in 1767.

Red and yellow being, as we have stated, the royal livery of Scotland, the facings of Scottish regiments have generally been of the latter colour, and many that now wear blue, had yellow when first embodied.

The whole infantry of the East India Company wore the national colour, and it is greatly to be regretted that, on the commencement of our Volunteer movement, the Government did not enforce the adoption of scarlet, instead of permitting the endless varieties of silly colours and costumes now worn by many corps throughout the United Kingdom.

The statistics of European wars show us that the French, who are clad in blue, suffered a greater loss in proportion than the British, who wear red, when under fire. An old Peninsula officer, whose letter is before us, mentions, "When our Light Company, and the company of the 60th Rifles (green), attached to our brigade, were skirmishing on the same ground (against the enemy), the latter lost more than we did, although composed chiefly of Germans, who are proverbially cautious skirmishers. This is an important subject. I saw, at the Battle of Vittoria, the wonderful effect of the imposing appearance of the British line on the enemy. After they had been driven from their position and completely scattered, many glorious attempts were made by their officers to rally them on some heights behind the ridge on which our line was advancing. It became an object with the officer commanding the Light Companies, which were scattered in pursuit, to get them arrayed for the attack of a column which formed on one of those heights at some distance in our front, and thus became a rallying point to the thousands who were flying from the ridge in helpless confusion.

"Before we had a sufficient number of the pursuers collected to attack this formidable column, it broke and bolted, its soldiers disappearing among the racing mobs who threw away their arms and fled towards the Pyrenees. While wondering what had caused so sudden a panic among men who, but a moment before, seemed ready to adhere until death to their officers, we—the skirmishers—looked back to the ridge, and saw a sight which I shall never forget. The whole British line crowned the mountains, from wing to wing, looking like a wall of fire, their bayonets glittering in the sun, as they moved steadily, silently, and presenting a glorious picture of power and order. This sight it was which struck the enemy to the heart, and made him fly from his new position in sudden panic. No army, although double the number, if clad in sombre uniform, could ever make such an appearance, or produce such an effect as this."*

* At the commencement of the Volunteer movement, this letter was addressed to the author of this paper, who was then actively engaged in the formation of a corps now wearing grey.

Our uniforms have frequently varied according to the climate in which corps have been stationed. The kilt has generally proved too warm for Indian service, and white trousers are substituted. In the Caffre war the 74th Highlanders wore short dark blouses, tartan tunics, and hummal bonnets, i.e., without feathers. In Canada the King's Dragoon Guards lately wore busbies of fur, blue pea-jackets, and long boots lined with sheepskin in winter. The Ashanti uniform is still remembered.

Save the Blues, all our cavalry wore scarlet, until the middle of George III.'s reign, when blue was adopted for the Light corps; but silver-grey, with red facings, was worn by all dragoons, while serving in India, until 1820. Eleven years after, scarlet was resumed for all corps except the Horse Guards and Hussars; but blue was ordered again for all Lancers and Light Dragoons in 1840.

Blue has always been worn by the Royal Regiment of Artillery, which was first embodied in England in the year 1750, by Colonel William Belford, who commanded that arm of the service at the battle of Culloden, four years before. The facings, vests, and breeches were all scarlet.

Hussars were first introduced in our service in 1793, and Lancers after the battle of Waterloo; but so early as 1794 we had a corps of Lancers, named the British Uhlans, formed out of the remains of the French Royalist army, and which, with the Hussars of Choiseul, Salm, and Rohan, perished in the fatal expedition to Quiberon in 1796.

Uniform has ever been considered a badge alike of honour and service; thus, in the Gazette for June, 1867, we find that Her Majesty was graciously pleased to permit a retired Captain of the Edinburgh, or Queen's Own Regiment of Militia, "to retain his rank and wear his uniform in consideration of his long service in that corps."

We have had the pleasure of knowing more than one brave veteran officer, who treasured affectionately "the old red rag," in which he had followed Picton, Grahame, or the Iron Duke, and in which he had been wounded on the glorious fields of Spain or in the crowning victory of Waterloo; and in every age there has been some eccentric enthusiast who stuck manfully to fashions that had departed.

In 1808, many an old officer would as soon have cut off his head as his pigtail when the Horse Guards ordered the army to be shorn of that remarkable appendage. Old Sir Thomas Dalyell, of Binns (first Colonel of the Scots Greys), who rode yearly to London to kiss the hand of King Charles II., adhered to the close-sleeved doublet of the days of James VI. This, with his portentous vow-beard (which he had sworn never to cut after the execution of Charles I), "when he was in London never failed to draw after him a great crowd of boys, who constantly attended him at his lodgings, and followed him with huzzas as he went to Court and returned from it. As he was a man of humour, he would always thank them for their civilities when he left them at the door to go to the King, and would let them know exactly at what hour he intended to come out again and return to his lodgings." (Memoirs of Captain Crichton, the Cavalier Trooper.)

General Preston, who commanded the same regiment in the Seven Years' War, and who died colonel of it, at Bath in 1785, was the last British officer who wore a buff coat. An officer who served with him records that at the capture of Zerenberg, Preston received more than a dozen of sword-cuts, which fell harmlessly on his "buff-jerkin."

Old Colonel Charles Donellan, who commanded the 48th, and was wounded at Talavera (mortally, we believe), was the last officer who adhered to the antique three-cornered Nivernois hat; and there was a General Cameron, in the same campaign, who adhered to the Highland bonnet, and never would adopt the cocked hat.

At Dettingen, George II. appeared in the same red coat which he had worn when serving under Marlborough. Thackeray says, "On public occasions he always displayed the hat and coat he wore on the famous day of Oudenarde, and the people laughed, but kindly, at the odd old garment, for bravery never goes out of fashion." At Minden, in 1759, we find the luckless Lord George Sackville leading the cavalry in the same red coat which he had worn as a youth at Fontenoy; and the same sentiment has prevailed in the humbler ranks of the service.

An aged soldier, named Robert Ferguson, who died at Paisley in 1811, in his ninety-seventh year, preserved to the last, as a precious relic, the old red coat of the 22nd Foot (Handysides, wherein Sterne's father was a captain), in which he had been wounded at the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy, just as future years may see some veteran preserving the faded and perhaps blood-stained tunic which he wore with Raglan at Sebastopol, or with Havelock at Lucknow.

We have thus attempted to trace the history of that scarlet uniform, which is so inseparably connected with the past, the present, and the future glory of the British Isles. It is the garb which first fires the enthusiasm and ambition of our youth, and is ever kindly and affectionately remembered by our white-haired veterans in old age, for there is something almost filial in the emotion with which an old soldier recalls the uniform, the facings, and badges of his regiment, whatever its number might have been, from the 1st Royal Scots to the Rifle Brigade. There is not a battle-field, honourable to Britain, or a portion of the globe where our drums have beaten, but where it has formed the shroud of many a noble and gallant heart—so all honour, say we, to "the old Red Coat, that tells the tale of England's glory!"

CHAPTER II.
FURTHER NOTES ON ITS HISTORY AND ON REGIMENTALS.

In the preceding chapter, the origin of the British uniform was plainly deduced from the fact of scarlet being the Royal livery alike of England and of Scotland, and hence its adoption as a general national colour. To these notes we purpose to add a few more on the gradual progress of badges and distinctions in the service.

The red cross of St. George was the general badge of England from the Crusades, till the time of Edward IV., and by an act of the Scottish Parliament passed in 1385, during the reign of Robert III., every soldier was ordained "to wear a white St. Andrew's Cross on his back and breast, which, if his surcoat was white, was to be broidered on a circle or square of black cloth."

In the time of Henry VIII., a red St. George's cross on a white surcoat was adopted as the distinguishing badge of English troops; and in an order to raise men for the service of Mary I., in the northern counties, she directs, that "they be clothed in whyt, with redde-crosses on ye arme, in ye olde maner."

These red crosses were destined to figure soon after, at the battle of Ancrum in 1544, when, as the ballad has it, the stream

"Ran red with English blood,
For the Douglas true and the bold Buccleugh,
'Gainst keen Lord Evers stood."

When the English were routed, 700 Scottish outlaws of broken border clans, who had joined them, threw aside their red crosses, and joining their countrymen, made a merciless slaughter of the fugitives with axe and spear, shouting to each other the while, "Remember Broomhouse!"

Love of the sanguinary colour seems to have spread rapidly, and so, as some one has it, "no true Englishman can either fight, or hunt, to his satisfaction, save in a red coat," but badges were speedily added thereto.

Stowe records in his Survey of London, that "Robert Neville, Earl of Warwick, with 600 men all in red jackets, embroidered with ragged staves before and behind, was lodged in Warwicke Lane; in whose house there was oftentimes six oxen eaten at a breakfast, and every tavern was full of his meat, for he that had any acquaintance in that house, might have as much of sodden or roasted meat as he could prick and carry away on a long dagger."

The proposal that the medical officers of all European armies should wear one great distinguishing badge, by which their profession might be known, is not a new one, for we find Ralph Smith, in the time of Elizabeth, after telling us that military "surgeons should be men of sobrietie, of good conscience, and skillfull in that science, able to heal all scars and wounds, especially to take out a pellet, &c., must wear their Baldricke, whereby they may be known in time of slaughter, as it is their charter in the field."

In this reign the Cavalry wore scarlet cloaks; but in the stirring times of Cromwell, with red and blue, a reddish-brown was much used by both horse and foot; hence he says in one of his letters, "I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain, that knoweth what he fights for, and loves what he knowes, than that which you call 'a gentleman,' and is nothing else."

Of all the colours for uniforms, the most absurd were some of those adopted by our Rifle Volunteers, in their too wary desire to be unseen. A battalion of the Italian Legion, raised during the Crimean war, was clad in silver grey; and it was admitted by all competent judges to be the colour best adapted for riflemen, and, moreover, when handsomely laced and trimmed, it was very becoming. This was the favourite colour of the Indian Light Cavalry.

When contrasted with the tight tunics, tiny shackos, and plain trousers of the present day, the equipment of a corps of the last, or the preceding century, in its amplitude and variety, must have presented a very different and very picturesque aspect. On the 8th, or King's Own Regiment, being raised for King James, by Richard, Lord Ferrars, the captains were armed with pikes, the lieutenants with partisans, the ensigns with half-pikes, the sergeants with halberds; thirty rank and file of each company were pikemen, seventy-three were musketeers, and all carried swords. The waistcoats and breeches were yellow; the uniform, scarlet lined with yellow; the stockings and cravats white; the hats were à la cavalier, turned up on one side, and ornamented with flowing yellow ribbands. (Records 8th Foot.)

Ten years before this time, each company consisted of thirty pikes, sixty muskets, and ten men armed with light fusils, and "the tallest men were always culled out as pikemen." (Bruce on Military Law, 1717.)

The following description of a deserter, from the 22nd Foot, in those days, is rather amusing, as to costume:—

"Run away, out of Captain Soames' Company, in his Grace the Duke of Norfolk's regiment of Infantry, quartered at Newport, in Shropshire; Roger Curtis, a barber surgeon, a little man with short black hair, a little curled; round visage, fresh-coloured, in a light coloured coat, with gold and silver buttons, red plush breeches and white hat; he lived formerly at Downham Market, in Norfolk. Whoever will give notice to Francis Baker, agent to the said regiment, in Hatton Garden, so that he may be secured, shall have two guineas reward."*

* "London Gazette," 1689.

A spectator of the Camp of the Household Brigade, on Putney Heath, in October, 1694, describes the three regiments of Guards as wearing scarlet, of course; the 1st, faced with blue; the 2nd, or "Cole-stream," with green; the 3rd Scots, with white; the officers being distinguished by white scarves worn over the left shoulder, and fringed with the colour of the regimental facings. The Holland Regiment (Buffs), are described as wearing red, faced with flesh-colour; the Queen's or Tangier Regiment, red, faced with sea-green; the Lord Admiral's Regiment of Marines, raised in 1664 (and afterwards incorporated by William III., with the 2nd Foot Guards), in doublets and breeches of yellow.

Until the reign of Her present Majesty, red was worn by all the drummers and buglers of the regiment of Artillery; but although, from the earliest period, it was deemed the great national colour of our forces, it is somewhat remarkable that it was not adopted by the English or Irish Militia, until the year 1759, and a song of that period begins:—

"Ye mounseers, give ear, we have nothing to fear,
For the Militia are now clothed in RED, Sirs!
They have hearts that are stout and will never give out,
With Rockingham bold at their head, sirs!
You may brag and may boast, upon your own coast,
And parade it from Dunkirk to Calais;
But have a care now, how you venture too far,
In your flat-bottomed boats to make sallies."

Long denied a militia force, in dread of Jacobite influences, Scotland had none from 1746 till the close of the last century, when, ten years after the death of her "Bonnie Prince Charlie," ten battalions were raised, and their colours and insignia (most of which are now deposited in the Castle of Edinburgh) were designed by the Court of the Lyon King of Arms, then Robert, Earl of Kinnoull, with whom the applications for such were lodged.

In our former chapter, the uniforms of the Irish and Scottish regiments which belonged to the French Line, during the last century, were referred to. These corps (according to the "Liste Historique des Troupes de France," 1758,) were numbered as the 92nd, 93rd, 94th, 98th (Gardes de Jacques II.), 99th, and 109th, all Irish; the 107th Royal Écossais under the Duke of Perth, and the 113th Écossais under Lieutenant-General Lord Ogilvie, who died in Scotland in 1803.

The two Scottish regiments wore coats and vests of blue, and their hats were bound with gold. All their Irish brother exiles wore scarlet, with white vests generally, and carried on their colours black or yellow crosses, with the "Couronne d'Angleterre," which had no braver or more bitter enemies, as the terrible day of Fontenoy attested; and where they seem to have acted true to the spirit of the Fenian song:

"Oh, if the colour we must wear.
Is England's cruel red,
Let it remind us of the blood
That Ireland has shed!"

And when our troops landed at Cancalle Bay in 1758, they were surprised to find themselves stoutly opposed by entire battalions in scarlet; and no wonder was it that they were so, for it was the Irish Brigade, whose ranks were manned and officered by the sons and grandsons of the adherents of King James, the same gallant Irish Brigade which was welcomed to the British Establishment in 1794, and, unfortunately, was soon after reduced.

In our service, the White Horse of Hanover is borne on the colours of the 3rd Dragoons, the 7th, 14th, 23rd, and 27th Foot, &c. This badge is as old in history as the Welsh Dragon of the 10th Hussars and 12th Lancers, having been the ancient cognisance of Saxony or Westphalia,—a White Horse, on a field gules—borne for centuries by the House of Brunswick. Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria, in consequence of his marriage in 1123, with Gertrude, the lineal descendant of Wittekind, last of the Saxon Kings, assumed the armorial bearing of that Sovereign, if a barbarian so weak and savage deserve the title. The banner of Wittekind originally bore a black horse, which, on his compulsory conversion to Christianity, under the sword of Charlemagne, was changed to white, as emblematic of his new and purer faith. Hence our White Horse of Hanover and its motto Nec Aspera Terrent, which appears on the colours of the regiments above mentioned. It made its appearance in our service about the same time as the hideous black leather cockade, so long retained in loyal opposition to the White Rose of the Stuarts, and which is seen now only on the hats of footmen.

But the badge borne for the longest period in succession by the same unbroken body of men, is undoubtedly the St. Andrew's Cross of the 1st Royals, who represent alike the Scottish Guard of St. Louis (the comrades of "Quentin Durward" under Louis XI.), and the Green Brigade of Scots, who served Gustavus Adolphus, a corps whose almost fabulous antiquity was long a jest in the French service, as well as our own, being twitted in both as the Guards of Pontius Pilate, who slept on their post.

A very remarkable instance of love of the "Old Red Coat" occurred when the Scots Greys marched from Carlisle in April, 1766. A troop-quartermaster named Robert Mackenzie, then in his eighty-eighth year, was left behind, totally prostrated by age and infirmity. He was born in Scotland in 1688, had joined the Greys in 1705, when Lord John Hay was colonel, and was proverbially known as "the oldest soldier in the service."

The sound of the trumpets had scarcely died away homeward on the north road, when the hand of death came on the old enthusiast, and feeling that the hour of his dissolution was come, he insisted on being clad in his full uniform, his boots were drawn on, his sword girt about him, and thus accoutred, he expired, of sheer "disappointment at his inability to proceed. He was carried to his grave by six invalids; the pall being supported by six sergeants of recruiting parties in the town, and the Cumberland Militia fired six platoons at his interment."

An old enthusiast of a similar kind, though of higher rank, was the amiable General Charles O'Hara, the comrade of Granby and Ligonier, Lieutenant-Colonel of the 22nd, somewhere before 1788, and who, in the first year of the present century, died Governor of Gibraltar. He was the last British officer who adhered to the uniform of the Minden days, and to that remarkable style of cocked hat introduced by the great Austrian Marshal, with its tall straight feather and large black rosette on the dexter side; hence O'Hara was known in the service as "the last of the Kevenhullers."

At Gibraltar "he was buried with all the honours due to his rank," wrote an officer of the 29th, who was present. "I had never before seen the funeral of a general officer. There was his horse—the well-known charger oh which we had so often seen him mounted—bearing the boots and spurs of his departed master; on the coffin lay other mournful insignia, the sword, the sash, and not the least prominent memorial, the Kevenhuller hat, with its tall, unbending feather, and I gazed on it for the last time."

He was succeeded in his command by the father of her present Majesty.

But in the quaint adherence to the costume of a past age, there are few cases like one recorded by O'Keefe, the player, whose recollections were published in 1826, and who mentions that in his day, there was an aged captain, John Desbrissay, who walked about the streets of Dublin, "unremarked," in the Cavalier dress of the reign of Charles II. This, however, was before the time of the notorious Wilkes. This eccentric veteran lived in Corkhill, Dublin, and his name appears in the Army Lists for 1747, as agent for the 5th Horse, 5th Royal Irish Dragoons, 12th Foot, and several other corps stationed in Dublin.

County designations were not given until 1786, but numbers had been introduced, and badges, pretty generally adopted for all corps of Horse and Foot, on their colours, buttons, or belt-plates, prior to the first year of George the Third's reign.

In 1759, when Colonel John Hale (who came to London with the news of Wolfe's fall, and the conquest of Canada) raised the 17th Light Dragoons (now Lancers), it was ordered that "on the front of the men's caps, and on the left breast of their uniform, there was to be a death's head and cross-bones over it, and under the motto, 'or glory;'" and this grim device (the badge of the famous Black Brunswickers in later times) they still retain, like the old Pomeranian Horse, who, since the days of Gustavus Adolphus, have worn skulls and cross-bones on their high fur caps, and in Sweden are now known as the King's Own Hussars.

It was not until 1764 that the swords of the Grenadiers were abolished, and the arms of the foot soldier were confined to the musket and bayonet; and it was in that year when the officers and men of our cavalry first wore the epaulette (in lieu of the old aiguilette) on the left shoulder; at the same time, the jack-boots were abolished, and the horses were ordered to have long tails. The 8th Light Dragoons, however, had long the peculiar favour of wearing cross-belts for the pouch and sword. Having annihilated a corps of Spanish Horse at Almenara in 1710, and equipped themselves with the Spanish belts as trophies, they wore them in memory of that event until January, 1776, when they were abolished, and, at the same time the helmets were substituted for the cocked hats.*—("Records, 4th and 8th Hussars.")

* It was in 1794 that the Blues resumed for a time the cuirasses, which the Corps had not worn since their march to Salisbury in 1688.

Singularly enough, the 90th Light Infantry (still affectionately remembered in Scotland as Sir Thomas Graham's Perthshire Greybreeks), when serving under Abercrombie, in Egypt, wore helmets of brass, and being taken for dismounted Dragoons, were vigorously charged by the French cavalry at the battle of Alexandria. In the mêlée, their Lieutenant-Colonel, old Lord Hill of gallant memory, received a ball on his helmet, which brought him to the ground, though it failed to penetrate the brass metal, of which it was composed.

In these brief memoranda on uniforms and equipment, to enter elaborately on the dress of our Highland regiments, or its antiquity and advantages, would take up too much space.

Apart from written history, song, or tradition, there are in Scotland many records of vast age carved in stone, such as the Cross at Dupplin and the tomb at Nigg—both works prior to the eighth century,—which represent the Caledonian Warriors kilted to the knee, exactly like our Highland regiments now; and on the last-named memorial, the figure has a purse or sporran.

The first regiments of Highlanders embodied were two battalions raised, among other Scottish levies, by the government of Mary Queen of Scots, in 1552, to aid Henry II. of France in his wars. Each man would seem to have provided his own kilt or tartans, as the Scottish Privy Council ordain that they shall be "substantiouslie accompturit, with jack and plait, steilbonett, sword and buckler, new hose and new doublett of canvouse, at the least, and sleeves of plait or splints, with one speir of sax ell long or thereby." These men were chiefly drawn from the same glens, and by the same noble family, which in later years enrolled the 92nd Gordon Highlanders of Egyptian and Peninsular fame.

The early Highland corps were remarkably jealous of any alteration or innovation in their costume, real or fancied, and hence a dangerous mutiny broke out among the West Fencibles, in Edinburgh Castle, in 1778, in consequence of some changes that were proposed, particularly in the adoption of a cartridge-box, which they oddly alleged "no Highland regiment had ever worn before." A portion of the battalion was ultimately surrounded on Leith Links (where they had flung their pouches mutinously at the feet of the General), and compelled, by the 10th Light Dragoons, to adopt them at the point of the sword; but the remainder in the Castle broke out into open revolt, raised the drawbridge, and threatened to turn the guns on the city; nor did the matter end, until one Fencible was sentenced to be shot, and another to receive a thousand lashes, punishments which were, however, commuted.

In the following year occurred the dangerous mutiny at Leith, when seventy recruits for the 42nd and 71st, on a rumour being mischievously spread that they had been betrayed into a Lowland corps, which wore trousers, fought with the South Fencibles, till forty-five of them were shot down and bayonetted.

In 1811 we had two Greek regiments raised in the Ionian Isles, the 1st and 2nd Light Infantry, which were kilted, and wore the full Albanian costume.

All these various distinctions in uniform, badges, and insignia which we have briefly noted, and others, such as the Sphinx of Egypt, the Tiger of India, the Lion of Nassau, the Dragon of China, the Eagle of France, the Elephant of Assaye,* the Castle and Key of Gibraltar (Montis insignia Calpe), and all the other noble emblems borne on the colours of our various regiments, are the historical HERALDRY of the service, and are worthy of the highest consideration.

* The 74th and 78th Highland Regiments are entitled to carry a third colour for Assaye. The antelope was bestowed on the 6th Foot, in the war of the Spanish Succession, with the motto vi et armis, which they seem to have relinquished till 1878, though it used to be painted on the knapsacks, as on an old one possessed by the Corps in 1825, remained to testify. The Scots Greys, who forgot their old motto "SECOND TO NONE," resumed it in 1871. The origin of it seems scarcely known; but Colonel Darby Griffith, who so gallantly led the Greys at the battles of Balaclava, Inkermann, and the Tchernaya, in a letter to the author on the subject, says, "It is well authenticated that the Greys were raised in Scotland before the 1st Dragoons were raised in England, as also were the Coldstream before the Grenadier Guards. The English Regiments were accorded the No. 1, as taking precedence; but as a kind of atonement, both the Coldstream and the Scots Grey have the motto 'SECOND TO NONE.' Aldershot, 15th May, 1865."

They are eminently calculated to produce the esprit de corps, a just pride and honourable rivalry; and, by the past glories they represent, to inspire in our army that heroic virtue of which the elder Pitt spoke so eloquently in Parliament, when he said of our troops, in the debate upon pay:—

"To the virtue of the British Army we have hitherto trusted; to that virtue, small as the army is, we must still trust; and without that virtue, the Lords, the Commons, and the people of England may intrench themselves behind parchment up to the teeth; but the sword will find a passage to the vitals of the constitution!"

Hence it is, that even the lace, the buttons, and other insignia of a corps are so carefully shorn from the uniform of the unhappy soldier who is disgraced, and rendered incapable of bearing arms again; and when writing of those things, perhaps we cannot do better than close this article by an anecdote which records one of the most startling instances of wholesale disgrace that ever occurred in a European army.

THE DEGRADATION OF THE REGIMENT OF ABO.

In all armies corps have frequently been punished en masse, by being sent on foreign service or hazardous duty out of their turn, for the crimes of individuals, for general discontent, or for mutiny. Some have been exterminated, like the Janizzaries and the Mamelukes; decimated, like the Chapelgorris, or Red Caps, a battalion, of 800 Guipuzcoan Volunteers, famous in the army of the Queen of Spain; or, like that Carlist Regiment, which, for sundry acts of sacrilege, was formed in line, and had every tenth file, with his coverer, taken out and shot.

In the "Art of War, 1720," we are told that during the campaign in Holland, a captain, and his entire company, belonging to an Italian regiment, were hanged in line for desertion at Emerich, in the Duchy of Cleves; and in later times, in our own service, the 6th Royal Irish Dragoons, a fine old corps, consisting originally of nine troops, embodied under Colonel James Wynne, in the winter of 1688, with the Harp and Garter on their colours,—a corps that was brigaded with the Greys on the extreme right in the campaigns of Marlborough, and which, after serving with characteristic bravery in all our wars till those of the French Revolution, was disbanded in 1798 (for alleged sympathy with the Irish Insurgents), when General Lord Rossmore was their colonel; and since when, as a mark of the royal displeasure, their place and number remained vacant in the Army List for sixty years, until the present 5th Royal Irish Lancers were embodied in 1858; but in no instance was there ever a wholesale disgrace inflicted on a corps such as that to which the King of Sweden, Gustavus III., subjected the unfortunate Regiment of Abo.

When in the year 1788 he suddenly attacked Russia, victory remained undecided in a naval engagement between his fleet under the Duke of Sudermania and that of the Empress under the Scoto-Russian Admiral Greig, and his nobles who served in the Marine refused to act further in a war, which seemed to have no cause but the will of the King. Gustavus was inflamed by this opposition; he wished an object on which to vent his wrath and pride, and soon found one in the Regiment of Abo.

A brief armistice had ensued, during which he summoned a diet at Stockholm, where, on the 22nd February, 1789, by a preponderance of three inferior states, a declaration placed in his hands unlimited power, and he still resolved to prosecute the hopeless war against Russia.

In the army, at the head of which he placed himself, was this Regiment of Finlanders from Abo, a province which comprehends a part of Eastern Bothnia and the Aland Isles, whose inhabitants are a hardy and industrious race. The regiment fought with all the hereditary bravery of the old Finns, and served at the capture of several small towns; but the arms of Gustavus were unsuccessful by land, where his measures were disconcerted by an event which he could not have foreseen.

After making all his preparations to storm the strong fort and town of Fredericksham, which had been ceded to the Empress Elizabeth in 1743, and the repossession of which would have opened to him the gates of the Russian capital, his officers, and chiefly those of the Finnish Regiment of Abo, flatly refused to pass the frontier, alleging as a reason, "that the constitution of the Swedish kingdom would not permit them to be accessory to foreign war which the nation had not sanctioned."

This put an end to what was named the Finland Expedition; it gave the enemy time to put themselves in a perfect state of defence, and filled Gustavus with fresh fury; but despite the attempts of the Russians to intercept him, he reached Borgo, an old seaport in the district of Nyeland, where he established his headquarters, and where his first act was to assemble the whole Swedish Army, under arms, on the 8th of June, 1789, in front of the town, and along the margin of the river, which there flows into the Gulf of Finland.

A hollow square of contiguous close columns of Horse, Dragoons and Infantry was then formed; the whole were ordered to prime and load with ball-cartridge. The Artillery were unlimbered and loaded with round and cannister shot, in case of resistance, though none, save a very few, knew precisely what was about to ensue.

Then the fated Regiment of Abo, which had taken so marked a part in the defection before Fredericksham, was marched in a solid close column of companies into the centre of this vast hollow square, with its colours flying; and a hum of expectation and surprise, not unmixed with dismay, pervaded the whole assembled masses.

By Gustavus, a king whose ruling passions were heroism and selfishness, vanity and ambition, they were ordered to "ground their arms," which were at once taken away, with all their swords, bayonets, and accoutrements.

They were then ordered to strip off their regimental coats, and appear in their shirts and breeches. The officers were deprived of their epaulettes and commissions, and were cashiered on the spot.

Their colours were then rent from the poles and torn to pieces, the poles being broken under foot, while the drums were defaced by persons appointed to do so.

The whole battalion then passed from the right of companies out of the hollow square by single files, while a general hiss was maintained by the whole army until the last man had quitted it; and the united sound of this unpleasant expression of contempt rising into the still air, by the sea-shore, is said to have had a very singular and remarkable effect on those who heard it.

Though thus broken up and disbanded, the Corps was not set adrift; for the whole of the privates were drafted into the different battalions of the Artillery, and long after the fiery Gustavus had perished by the hand of the regicide Ankerström, it was a bitter taunt in the Swedish army to have belonged to "the degraded Regiment of Abo."

CHAPTER III.
FAMOUS AND ANCIENT BANNERS.

In all ages and in all armies, the greatest veneration has ever been manifested by soldiers for their ensigns and standards, as being the veritable representation and embodiment of the national glory and honour, or it might be of a righteous cause. In the ages of classical antiquity, the religious care taken of these emblems was extraordinary. The soldiers worshipped them, and swore by them, as some European troops still do. The Roman Legionaries incurred certain death if they lost them in battle; and Livy tells us, that to animate them, the standards were sometimes thrown among the enemy, that they might be recaptured at all hazards.

In all armies at the present day, regimental standards are consecrated by a religious ceremony, have the highest military honours paid to them, and when too old for use, are solemnly deposited in a church, or sometimes burned, or buried with all the honours of war; and by the Queen's Regulations (Section VII.) are finally marched from their last parade, to the air of "Auld lang Syne."

Among the most famous banners of antiquity, may be enumerated the Labaram of Constantine, the Oriflamme of France, those of Otho IV., of Philip Augustus, of Bayard, Joan of Arc, and Mahomet.

Like most ancient banners, the origin of the Labaram was alleged to be miraculous, and surrounded by fables, though the reign of Constantine was so glorious, that it required not the meretricious aid of prodigy. When on his march against Maxentius, he is said to have seen in the heavens a cross of flame like the Greek letter X inverted in the form of a square cross, and in Greek around it, the words Conquer by this. Eusebius further relates, that next night, the Saviour appeared to him, and ordered him to make a military standard, in the form of the cross he had seen, which he did, and was always successful in war. Its name has not unfrequently been written Laborum, to signify that the cross should put an end to the labours and persecutions of the Christians; and it was supposed the guards to whom this miraculous banner was intrusted, were always invulnerable in battle.

At the battle of Bouvines, the imperial standard of Otho IV., like that of the English—the banner of St. John of Beverley on the field of Northallerton—was hoisted from a frame, raised on four wheels. Upon it was painted a dragon, above which was a gilded eagle. On that day the royal standard of France was a gilded staff, with a white silk colour, powdered with fleurs-de-lis, which had become the national arms. "The old crowns of the kings of Lombardy," says Voltaire, "of which there are very exact prints in Muratori, are mounted with this ornament, which is nothing more than the head of a spear, tied with two other pieces of crooked iron."

The banner used by the Chevalier Bayard, when he gallantly took command of Mézieres, and defended it against 40,000 Spaniards under Charles V., is still preserved in the Hôtel de Ville of that place.

Joan of Arc, bore with her in all her battles and sieges a consecrated banner, which was believed to be miraculous, and was revered as holy. It was white silk, and bore a figure representing the Supreme Being, grasping the world, and surrounded by fleurs-de-lis. Clad in white armour, with this standard in her hands, she entered Orleans on the 29th of April, 1429, in the face of a vastly superior English force, and lodged it with herself, in the house of Jacques Bouchier. She had previously declared, at the moment when Dunois, repulsed, was sounding the retreat, that when her standard touched the city wall, the assailants should enter. "It was touched. The assailants burst in. On the next day the siege was abandoned and the force which had conducted it withdrew in good order to the north." Joan bore this standard, also, at the capture of Jargeau, when Suffolk was taken prisoner and his garrison put to the sword, and it was in her hand, at her crowning glory, the coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims. She stood with it before the high altar, says Lord Mahon. "It had shared the danger," she observed, "and it had a right to share the honour."—(Monstrelet, &c.)

When tried as a witch and heretic by the Bishop of Beauvais and other tools of the English, they asked her "why she put trust in her standard, which had been consecrated by magical incantation?" But she replied that she put trust alone in the Supreme Being, whose image was impressed upon it. Then they demanded why she carried in her hand that standard at the anointment and coronation of Charles at Rheims; and again she answered, that the person who shared the danger was entitled to share the glory.

But the most famous banner in Europe or Asia at one time was undoubtedly that of the Knights of the Temple. It was formed of cloth, striped black and white, called in old French Bauseant, a word which became the battle cry of the Templars. It bore on it the red cross of the order, with the humble and pious inscription, Non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo, da gloriam (Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to Thy name give the glory!)

Bauseant was in old French the name for a piebald horse, or a horse marked black and white (Roquefort-Ducange, &c.); and the word is still preserved and used in its original sense in Scotland as bawsent, as any reader of Burns's poems may remember. At the commencement of a battle the Marshal took the standard of the order from the sub-marshal, and unfurled it in the name of God. He then named from five to ten of the brotherhood to surround and guard it; one of these he made a knight-preceptor, who was to keep close by him with another banner furled on a spear, to be instantly displayed if any mishap befell the Bauseant. In the event of the Christians being defeated, the Templar, under penalty of expulsion from the order, was not to quit the field so long as the banner of the order was flying; should no other red-cross flag be seen, he was at liberty to join that of the Hospitallers, and was only to retire, as well as he could, when the Bauseant and every other Christian banner should have disappeared.

In "Ivanhoe" Scott spells the name of the banner Beauseant.

In referring to the banner of the Templars, it is impossible to forget that one so often displayed against the Christians, the standard of the Prophet Mahomet, the unfurling of which was so frequently threatened at the commencement of the Russo-Turkish war, a ceremony which only takes place on gravest emergencies or occasions of state.

The origin of this standard is remarkable. When the Prophet lay on his death-bed at Medina, while his mind was full of his projected conquest of Syria, he summoned the chiefs of his host around him to hear his last orders and wishes. While listening to his dying utterances in silence and awe, Ayesha, the most beautiful and best beloved of his wives, rushed into the room, and, tearing down a green curtain which screened one end thereof, threw it before the chiefs, and desired them to display it as the holy banner of Islam, and this was actually done in many subsequent wars against the Christians and others. By some it was said to have been the curtain that hung before the apartments of Ayesha; and it has been permanently lodged in the Seraglio at Constantinople, and is generally brought forth on the occasion of a new sultan being girt with the sword of Osman, or Othman; but it may shrewdly be doubted whether this banner—the present Tanjak-Sherif—is the same that was unfurled at Bedr, and which was upheld by nine hundred and fifty of Mahomet's disciples against the whole power of Mecca, at Ohod, a mountain northward of Medina, when Hamza, the uncle of the Prophet, fell.

Though unvarying faith and tradition carry it back to the days of Mahomet, there can be little doubt that it is the identical banner which, in 1683, Kara Mustapha, nephew of the great Cuprogli, hoisted on the walls of Vienna, though that city was not completely conquered. Its display is always attended with much pomp and ceremony. When unfurled it is always handed to the Scheik-ul-Islam, or Grand Mufti, who combines in his own person the supreme power of the law with the highest office of religion, who mounted on a caparisoned steed, and, attended by the Sultan, bearing a drawn scimitar, rides in procession through the streets of Constantinople, escorted by the Ulemas, whose duty it is to proclaim that war has been declared against the unbelievers. The scheik then assigns it to the Commander-in-chief, whose duty it is to see that it is always borne in front in battle.

It is a veritable banner of blood, denying mercy to man, woman, and child, on the display of which, as the Koran has it, "the earth will shake, the mountains sink into dust, the seas blaze with fire, and the hair of children grow white with anguish;" but for more than three generations it has never been brought forth in hostility—at least, not since the Empress Catharine sought to reinstate the Christian Empire at Constantinople. Upon it is the dubious motto, "All who draw the sword in the cause of Faith shall be rewarded with temporal advantages."

The Turks and Tartars were wont to make use of horses' tails for their ensigns, and the number of these denoted the rank of their commanders—the Sultan having seven, and the grand vizier only three, &c.

The alleged origin of the holy banner of Persia is curious. It is said that during a battle which lasted three days between Saade and Rustam, the usurper—the same who assassinated the reforming Sophi in 1499—the standard of the monarchy was captured, a circumstance that caused excess of grief on one side and of joy on the other—one party feeling that their prestige had departed, and the other—that of the usurper—deeming it a sure presage of future victory. This war-like relic was simply the leathern apron of a blacksmith, who in some remote time had been the William Wallace of Persia, for the mastery of which the Saracens so long contended with the Turks; but the badge of heroic poverty was disguised, and almost concealed, by the profusion of gems which covered it.

Undoubtedly, the banner which had the most distinct and glorious history was the Oriflamme of France, first adopted in person by Louis VI. in 1110, and which continued to be borne by the French sovereigns, in addition to the Royal Standard, down to the time of Charles VII., and the accounts of which have been entirely overlooked by British historians and antiquaries. Before the time of Louis VI., the Comtes de Vexin were bound by the charter of their lands, which they held of the Abbey of St. Denis, to protect the domains of the latter, and accordingly, on the approach of any danger or invasion, they assembled their vassals and appeared before the Abbey, where they received its banner, or gonfanon, which was borne before them in battle in defence of the lands of the church. At a later period the county of Vexin having been annexed to the crown, the kings of France followed the pious example of the ancient counts, to whom they had succeeded, and thus, in time, the oriflamme, as a royal standard of France, supplanted that which had been hitherto borne, the alleged cloak of St. Martin, of Tours—or rather the half thereof, as, according to the Bollandists, he gave the other portion to a shivering beggar at the gate of Amiens.

He to whom the care of the banner was confided at the head of the army, had the title of Porte-Oriflamme, and had the command of its chosen guard, noble chevaliers and men-at-arms. He was ever a man of prudence and approved valour, and his post led to higher honours. We find in history, under Charles V. of France, a gentleman styled Marshal of France, who was its bearer. It was an office for life, and for death too, as his oath obliged him to perish, rather than abandon the Oriflamme.

Louis IX. lost it on his expedition to Egypt, as it fell, for a time, into the hands of the infidels; and "the Oriflamme has not been in use in our armies," says the Dictionnaire Militaire, 1758, "since the English were absolute masters of Paris, after the death of Charles VI."

The Oriflamme was of flame-coloured silk—hence its name—uncharged, and divided at the lower extremity into three portions ending in green tassels. It was hung from a cross-yard, with two cords of silk and gold to keep it from swinging in the wind, on the march, or when in battle.

The first named in history as its bearer is Anscieu Seigneur de Chevreuse, in 1294, under Philip le Bel. He had predecessors in the time of Louis le Gros; but René Moreau is the last who, in 1450, was commissioned with the real dignity of Porte-Oriflamme. Though usually, till the first Revolution, lodged at St. Denis, it was occasionally left for a time in the custody of its bearers; hence the families of D'Harcourt and Beavron long affirmed that they were in possession of the real Oriflamme, as successors of Pierre de Villiers de Lisle Adam, who had been its bearer, and whose daughter married the brave Jean Garencière.

Louis VII. took it with him in his voyage to the Bosphorus and his march through Hungary and Thrace. Philip Augustus had it displayed in 1183, in the war against Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders; Galois, Seigneur de Montigne, bore it at the battle of Bouvines, and Louis VIII. unfurled it in the war against the Albigeois in 1226.

Louis IX. had it with him in the war against Henry III. of England in 1262, and, as stated, in his crusade against the infidels in Egypt; De Chevreuse bore it under Philip in 1304; and the bearers were successively, Raoul, surnamed Herpin, Seigneur d'Erquery in 1315; Miles de Noyers de Vilbertin in 1328; Geoffry Lord of Charny in 1355; Arnoul d'Andrehon in 1388; the Seigneur de L'Isle Adam in 1372; Sire de la Trimoille and Guillaume de Bordes in 1383; Pierre d'Aumont, surnamed Hutin, in 1397; and Guillaume Martel de Bocqueville in 1414.

Louis XI. received the banner from the hands of Cardinal d'Alby in 1465, in the ancient church of St. Catharine du Val des Écoliers at Paris, prior to the war against the Burgundians, and after that, we hear no more of the famous Oriflamme, which must have perished at the sack of St. Denis in 1793; but a modern red-flag supplies its place behind the altar there, at the present day.

The so-called Raven-banner of Hubba the Dane, which was captured near Northam in Devonshire, when he was slain in battle by the Saxons, in 869, and where his tomb is still shown, was simply a stuffed black bird, probably of the raven species, which remained quiet when defeat was at hand, but clapped its wings vigorously before a victory.

The royal ensign of the West Saxons was a golden dragon; and thus we hear often of the Dragon of Wessex in the fierce old fights during the time of the Heptarchy.

It was not until after the Synod of Oxford, in 1220, that the Red Cross of St. George supplanted the martlets of St. Edward, up to that date the patron of England. The Scottish Cross of St. Andrew has a fabulous history exactly similar to that of the Labaram of Constantine, and dating back to the ninth century; but in neither England nor Scotland has a banner of any antiquity been preserved, unless we may enumerate as such the banner given to the citizens of Edinburgh by Margaret of Oldenburg, Queen of James III., in 1482, and still preserved there, under the local name of the Blue Blanket, or Banner of the Holy Ghost, on the displaying of which, not only the craftsmen of Edinburgh, but those of all Scotland, were bound to appear in arms, under the Convener of the Trades. The fragment of it that remains, shows that its colour was blue, crossed by the white saltire of St. Andrew.

CHAPTER IV.
FAMOUS AND ANCIENT CANNON.

History shows us that in past ages there has ever and anon been in most countries a fancy for forging or casting ponderous cannon, even as there has been often in a spirit of rivalry, a fancy for building great ships; and the result has very generally been that, in both instances, there has been a mistake; for the great ships have been almost invariably cast away, and the great guns have proved useless, even for battery purpose; and it is not improbable that such may be the result eventually with our "Woolwich Infants" and our eighty-one ton guns.

Though cannon are mentioned as having been used in a sea fight between a Moorish King of Seville and a King of Tunis in the 13th century, they first marked the inauguration of a new era in war when Edward III. of England brought with him to the field of Cressi in 1346, five small pieces, made by whom is quite unknown; but there can be little doubt that they were constructed in the mode of all early cannon, of iron bars fitted together, hooped with rings and charged with stone shot—not iron balls.

Prior to Cressi, however, cannon had undoubtedly been used in sieges. In 1338 there was one used at Cambrai from which cross-bows were discharged, and several small guns of the same kind were used in the following year at the investment of Quesnoy; again at the siege of the then Moorish town of Algesiras, near Gibraltar, in 1342; and old annals tell us of the overwhelming terror their explosion excited among the enemy.

Iron balls were first cast in the reign of Louis XI. in 1461; but stone were in common use for a hundred years later.

As time went on, cannon, though primitively formed as described, increased in size that prodigious balls might be expelled from them against walled places, in imitation of the ancient machine which they had superseded; thus they soon became of enormous bore, until they attained the dignity of bombardes, like Mons Meg in Edinburgh Castle; but the difficulty of managing these pieces, and the growing knowledge that iron shot of much less weight could be impelled further by the use of better powder, gradually introduced the cast metal cannon used at the present day.

The five little cannon used at Cressi, to the wonder of the French who had none, were doubtless the same that Edward used at the siege of Calais in the following year.

In 1366 the Venetians, when besieging a town now named Chioggia in Lombardy, had with them two small pieces of artillery having leaden balls, worked by Germans, according to Le Blond's "Elements of War," dedicated to Louis of Lorraine; and battering guns were used by the Turks against the Christians at Constantinople in 1394; but the great bombardes were at their zenith when, in 1451, Mahomet II. began his march against the same city, with fourteen gigantic guns, which threw stone shot seventy-eight inches in circumference, weighing 800 lbs. In the siege, traces of which remain to this day, the Christians are supposed to have been without cannon, as they omitted to demolish the great bridge of boats which was constructed by the Turks and conduced so much to the reduction of the city.

For more than four centuries the guns of Mahomet II. protected the Dardanelles—the gate of the Eastern Empire; and, as an old traveller relates, that as they were shotted when fired on holidays, land was usually to be had very cheap on the opposite side of the straits.

Though practically these great pieces of artillery have given place to Krupp and other guns, they still remain on their old sites; but cannon of this description can only be discharged with effect when the object passes their line of fire, as they are not mounted on carriages but built into a wall. Some of those at the Dardanelles carry balls 26½ inches in diameter, and lie flat on a paved terrace near the level of the water, where they opened on our fleet in 1808, when Admiral Sir John Duckworth forced the passage of the Straits.

By a granite shot from one of these, when the fleet returned, H.M.S. Royal George had her whole cutwater carried away; by another, the mainmast of the Windsor Castle was cut in two like a fishing-rod; another carried away the wheel of the Repulse, at the same moment killing and wounding twenty-four men, and rendering the ship so unmanageable, that but for the noble seamanship of her crew, she must have gone on shore.

A granite ball burst through the bows of the Active, and rolling aft destroyed all in its career, till it was brought up abreast of the main hatchway; a second tore away the whole barricade of her forecastle and fell into the sea to starboard; a third lodged in the bends abreast of the main-chains, and then tumbled overboard. ("Duckworth's Dispatches," &c.)

Baron de Tott tells us that he had seen one of these guns, which had been cast in the reign of Amurath, fired. Its ball weighed eleven hundredweight, and required a charge of powder amounting to 330 pounds. At the distance of 800 fathoms he saw this enormous globe divide into three pieces, which crossed the strait and rebounded from the rocks opposite.

One of these guns was sent to Woolwich, in exchange for an Armstrong breech-loader, and bears the inscription—

"Help o Allah! Mahomet Khan, the son of Murad!"

Louis XII. of France had a bombarde cast which is said to have thrown a ball of 500 lbs. from the Bastile to Charenton; but the guns of these times were destitute of trunnions, dolphin-rings, or breech-buttons.

Another enormous cannon of Mahomet II. is still to be seen, at Negroponte, used at its capture by him from the Venetians in 1470. It defends the south side of Kastro, and is the most remarkable monument there.

There is now preserved in the Castle of San Juliao da Barra, ten miles from Lisbon, a gun that was captured at the siege of Diu, on the southern coast of Gujirat, in 1546, by a gallant Portugese cavalier, Dom John de Castro, which is destitute of the appliances named, and is of some remarkable metal. It bears upon it a Hindoo inscription, to the effect that it was cast in 1400. It is 20 feet 7 inches long; its external diameter at the centre is 6 feet 3 inches, and it discharges a ball one hundredweight.

In ancient times there was a fondness for bestowing upon these great guns some peculiar and dignified name. Twelve brass cannon cast in 1503 for Louis XII., being all of remarkable size, he named after the greatest peers of France. The Spaniards and Portuguese named them after certain saints; thus, when the Emperor Charles V. departed to attack Tunis, his bombardes were named after the Twelve Apostles.

In the Malaga there is still an 80-pounder of great antiquity named the "Terrible." Two very curious 60-pounders in the arsenal at Bremen are each named "The Messenger of Bad News;" an 80-pounder at Berlin, now in the Royal Arsenal, is named "The Thunderer;" at Milan there is a 70-pounder called the "Pimontelle" (or the little spicer); and another at Bois le Duc is styled Le Diable. A third in the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome, made of the nails which fastened the copper-plates composing the roof of the ancient Pantheon, bears upon it this inscription—

"Ex clavis trabalibus porticus Agrippæ."

Many of the cannon of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were remarkable for their beautiful and ornate character. A decorated Spanish cannon now preserved in the Paris Museum, is a fine example of these florid pieces, which were always cast of brass or mixed metal.

Diego Ufano, in his treatise on Artillery, published in 1614, shows us the metallic mixtures of copper, tin, and brass, and the proportions of these, then used for cast pieces of cannon.

The Russian arsenals are very rich in great and ancient cannon and others of historical interest.

In front of the first arsenal at the Kremlin, are ranged a wonderful memorial of Napoleon's terrible retreat from Moscow, in the shape of no less than 875 pieces of captured ordnance; of these 365 are French, 189 are Austrian, 123 are Prussian, and the remainder bear the royal insignia of Italy, Naples, Bavaria, Saxony, Westphalia, Hanover, Spain, Würtemberg, Holland, and Poland. Many of these (says Sutherland Edwards) are inscribed with pretentious names that contrast strongly with their present humble position, such as the "Invincible," the "Conqueror," the "Eagle," and so forth. In front of the second arsenal is a wonderful collection of colossal cannon, ranged in a long line, with the shortest in the centre; thus their muzzles present a complete arc. The largest of these is a 4800-pounder, weighing, however, only forty tons! It has never been fired, and is only remarkable as a piece of casting.

An inscription on it tells that it was cast by the Russian master-founder named Chokoff, in 1586, by order of the Czar Feodor, who in that year conquered Siberia (the way to which was discovered by the Cossack warrior Jermack), and of whom a clever representation, on horseback, with crown and sceptre, appears close to the muzzle. Beside it are six other large pieces, the smallest of which weighs nearly four tons.—("The Russians at Home.")

About the end of the fifteenth century the following guns were in universal use:—

The Cannon-Royal . . . . . 48 pounder.
" Bastard-Cannon . . . . 36 "
" Half-Carthoun . . . . 24 "
" Culverin . . . . . . . 18 "
" Demi-Culverin . . . . 9 "
" Falcon . . . . . . . . 6 "
" Saker . . . . . . 6, 5, 8 "
" Basilisk (also). . . . 48 "
" Serpentine . . . . . . 4 "
" Aspik . . . . . . . . 2 "
" Dragon . . . . . . . . 6 "
" Syren . . . . . . . . 60 "
" Falconet . . . . . 3, 2, 1 "
" Moyenne . . . . . . . 12 ounces

By the middle of the seventeenth century, the largest cannon generally used in the field were 24-pounders, or others like the culverins of Nancy (18-pounders), so called from being first cast in that city; while the smallest were 6 and 3-pounders.

Mortars were first used to expel red-hot balls and large stones, long ere shells were known. They are believed to have been of German origin, and were used at the siege of Naples by Charles VIII. in 1435; but shells were first thrown out of them at the siege of Wachtendonk in Gueldres, by the Count of Mansfield. Shells were first invented by a citizen of Venloo, who, at a festival in honour of the Duke of Cleves, contrived, unfortunately, by the explosion of them, to reduce nearly the whole city to ashes. Maltus, an English engineer, first taught the French how to use them at the siege of La Motte in 1634. (Le Blond.)

The howitzer differs from the mortar, being mounted on a field carriage, like a gun; the chief difference being that the trunnions of the first are at the end, and of the other in the middle. The invention of the howitzer is subsequent to that of the mortar, as from the latter it originated.

The first man who invented the spiking of artillery was Gaspar Vimercalus of Bremen, who thus nailed up the artillery of Sigismund Malatesta.

Rifled cannon are by no means a modern invention, and can be traced far back into antiquity, as the arquebuse-rayée of the French.

No kind of gun has been more universally known and used all over Europe and America than the carronade, or "smasher," as it was called. Cast at the Carron Works in Scotland (hence their name), they were the invention of General Robert Melville, an officer who served under Lord Rollo of Duncrub, at the capture of Dominica in the West Indies. Peculiarly constructed, and having a chamber for powder like a mortar, they were shorter and lighter than ordinary cannon.

Cast in mighty numbers for more than seventy years at Carron, they were employed by the fighting and mercantile marine of all Europe and America, till the time of the Crimean War. The first of them was presented by the Carron Company to the family of General Melville, with an inscription on the carriage, which records that the guns were cast "for solid, ship, shell or carcase shot, and were first used against the French fleet in 1799."

Mr. Smiles, in his "Industrial Biography," tells us that when cannon came to be employed in war, the vicinity of Sussex to the Cinque Ports gave it an advantage over the iron districts of the north and west of England, and for a long time the iron works of that county had a monopoly in the manufacture of guns. The stone balls were hewn from quarries at Maidstone Heath. An old mortar, which lay on Bridge Green, near Frant, is said to have been the first used in England. The chamber was cast, but the tube consisted of hooped bars.

In the Tower are some old hooped guns of the date of Henry VI. The first cast-iron cannon of English make were made at Buxtead in Sussex, in 1543, by Ralph Hogge, master founder, whose principal assistant was Pierre Baude, a Frenchman. About the same time, Hogge employed Peter Van Collet, a Flemish gunsmith, who, according to Stowe, "caused to be made certain mortar pieces, being at the mouth from eleven to nine inches wide, for the use whereof the said Peter caused to be made certain hollow shot of cast iron, stuffed with fyrwork, whereof the bigger sort has screws of iron to receive a match to carry fire, to break in small pieces the said hollow shot, whereof the smallest piece hitting a man would kill or spoil him."

This is undoubtedly the parent of the explosive shell which has been brought to such terrible perfection in the present day. Many of Baude's brass and iron guns are still preserved in the Tower; and perhaps from his foundry came that very beautiful gun which bears the name of Henry VIII., 1541, and is preserved now at Southampton.

Two old English guns are at present in the ducal castle of Blair, whither they had been brought by the Athole family when Lords of the Isle of Man.

One is inscribed thus:—

"Henricus Octavus; Thomas Scymoure Knighte, Receyvour of the Peel, was Master of the King's Ordynans, when John and Robert Owyn made this pese. Anno dni., 1544."

The other has the legend:—

"Henry, Earle of Derbye, Lord of this Isle of Man, being here in May, 1577; named Dorothe. Henry Halsall, Receyvour of the Peele, bought this pese, 1574."

This was the fourth Earl of Derby, a K.G., and he had named the gun from his mother Dorothy, who was daughter of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.

The old brass gun, popularly known as Queen Anne's Pocket Pistol, was once called Queen Elizabeth's, according to Colonel James. It was cast at Utrecht in 1544, and is a 12-pounder, twenty feet long, finely ornamented with figures in bas-relief.

Scotland, which is rich in military and historical antiquities of all kinds, can also boast of several ancient cannon, extant or in her annals.

In 1430, James I. had cast for him in Flanders a cannon of brass, called the Lion of Scotland, bearing this inscription:—

"Illustri Jacobo Scottorum principe digno,
Regni magnified, dum fulmine castra reduco
Factus sum sub eo, nuncupar ego Leo."

"This," says Balfour in his Annales, "was the first canon or bombard of any strength or bignes, that ever was in Scotland." Among several ancient guns in the armory of the Grants of Grant in Strathspey, is one of singular beauty, covered with figures of men on horseback, and animals of the chase. It is four feet two inches long, and seems to have been a Moyenne or wall piece, and is inscribed:—

"Dominus . Johannes . Grant . Miles . Vicecomes de Invernes . Me fecit . in Germania, 1434."

The most ancient gun made in Britain is undoubtedly that bombarde known as Mons Meg in Edinburgh Castle. An inscription on the new stock, cast at Woolwich in 1835, states that the gun "is believed to have been forged at Mons, in 1486." But this is proved now to have been a gross mistake, an assertion which is utterly without warrant, as an elaborate "History of Galloway" shows from proofs indisputable that it was made by a smith of that county, in 1455, for the service of James II. (then besieging the Castle of Threave), at a place still named Knockcannon. It weighs six tons and a half, is composed of malleable iron bars hooped together, and its balls, which are all of Galloway granite, are twenty-one inches in diameter.

Two of these shots fired from it compelled the castle to surrender in the summer of 1455, and both were found in 1841 amid the ruins—one in the wall, the other in the draw-well; and both lay in a direct line from Knockcannon to the breach in the huge donjon tower. For his work, M'Kim received the forfeited lands of Mollance, pronounced in Scottish parlance, Mowance, and hence the tradition of "Meg" being forged at Mons. In 1497, it accompanied the Scottish army into England in the cause of Perkin Warbeck; to the siege of Dumbarton in 1489, and many other scenes of strife. In 1681, the gun burst, when firing a royal salute for James Duke of Albany, as two of the fractured hoops still show. On these occasions, like the old bombardes of the Dardanelles, it was generally shotted, as the Royal Treasurer's Accounts contain many entries of payments, for "finding and carrying her bullet from Wardie Mure to the Castell."

In 1509—thirty-four years before Ralph Hogge began to cast guns in Sussex—James IV. employed Robert Borthwick, his master gunner, to cast a set of brass ordnance for Edinburgh Castle. Seven of these were named by the king the sisters of Borthwick—being all alike in size and beauty. They were inscribed—-

"Machina sum, Stoto Borthweick Fabricata Roberto."

With ten other brass field-pieces, these guns were all taken by the English at the battle of Flodden, where Borthwick was killed, and the Earl of Surrey, who saw them, asserted that there were none finer in the arsenals of King Henry. Several of these guns were retaken by the Scots from the Earl of Hereford's army in 1544, and were long preserved in the Castle of Edinburgh, on the walls of which, in the siege of 1573, were a number of guns that bore the crowned salamander, the badge of Francis I., and had perhaps been brought from France by the Regent Duke of Chatelherault.

An old cannon named Dundee, which had been used in war by the Viscount of that name, was long preserved in the Castle of Kilchurn; but has now disappeared.

In the heart of British India there was, singular to say, found an antique Scottish cannon, which is now shown in Edinburgh, and the story of which is remarkable. At the siege of Bhurtpore in 1826, among the guns on the ramparts was one of great calibre and destructive power, popularly known among our soldiers by the absurd name of "Sweet-lips," which was taken at the point of the bayonet by H.M. 14th Foot.

Beside it was found a Scottish brass cannon, an 18-pounder, inscribed:—

"Jacobus Menteith me fecit, Edinburgh, Anno Dom., 1642."

It at once attracted the attention of Captain (afterwards Colonel) Lewis Carmichael, an old Peninsular officer, then aide-de-camp to Sir Jasper Nicolls. On the day before the storm, with six grenadiers of the 59th and four Ghoorkas, he had made a gallant dash into one of the breaches, to reconnoitre it for the desperate work that was to come, and he asked for the old Scottish cannon as a reward. It was at once given, by order of the Governor-General, and he brought it with him to Edinburgh, where it is preserved in the Museum of Antiquities, with several other ancient guns, some of which belonged to Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, Admiral of James III., and captain of the Yellow Frigate; but how it came to be so far up country in India, among the Jauts, it is difficult to conjecture, unless it had belonged to one of the ships of the old and ill-fated Scottish East India Company, which was ruined by the enmity and treachery of William of Orange.

British India has produced many pieces of ordnance, great in calibre and remarkable in history; among them may be enumerated the great gun of Hyder and Tippo, and the enormous cannon found at Agra, when that place was captured by Lord Lake in 1803. It had trunnions, and was furnished with four rings, two at the breech and two at the muzzle. It was of brass, says Thorne, "and for magnitude and beauty stands unrivalled. Its length was 14 feet 2 inches; its calibre 23 inches; the weight of its ball, when of cast iron, 1500 lbs.; and its whole weight 86,600 lbs., or a little above 38 tons."

Though called brass, it was, according to common report, composed of a mixture of precious metals. The Shroffs, or native bankers, were of that opinion, as they offered £12,000 for it, merely to melt down. Lord Lake preferred to send it as a trophy to Britain, and proceeded to have it transported to Calcutta on a raft. It proved too heavy for the latter, and capsizing sunk in the waters of the Ganges.

Another curious piece of ordnance, locally known as Jubbar Jung, fell into our hands at Ghuzuee in 1842. It was of brass and beautifully ornamented; it carried 64-pound shot, and these being of hammered iron whizzed as they passed through the air. It made some havoc among the tents of our 40th Regiment, and the Huzarehs, followers of Ali, who joined General Nott at the siege, implored him to destroy "Jubbar Jung," for which they appeared to entertain a deep religious horror.

There are at this hour cannon at Bejapore, beside which our "Woolwich Infants" and Armstrong 100-ton guns sink into insignificance. One of these, called the Mulk-e-Meidan, or "Sovereign of the Plains," cast by Roomi Khan, "the Turk of Roumelia," or first Monarch of Bejapore, an Ottoman of Constantinople, weighs forty tons; and, to crown all, Major Rennell mentions an old iron cannon at Dacca, which threw a shot 465 pounds in weight!

The last great gun actually used was King Theodore's huge bombarde at Magdala in 1868, for which he had an enormous number of stone balls made, and which he believed to be the Palladium of Abyssinia. It was shattered to pieces among his troops, on their first attempt to use it.

The last and most remarkable invention in artillery is a much needed fire-arm, which may supersede our boasted steel mountain ordnance, "the jointed gun" of Sir William Armstrong, which can be unscrewed into three separate pieces, each of which is light enough for conveyance on the back of a horse, and when put together form a powerful and long-range cannon, similar to the present field-piece.

Such a gun would have been invaluable in Ashantee, or among the mountains of Abyssinia; and the want of some such fire-arm was sorely felt at times during the Indian mutiny, especially about its close, when our moveable columns pursued the rebels in the deserts of Bekaneer, where the gun carriages of even the flying artillery at times sunk axle deep in the dry heavy sand, rendering them almost useless for service.

In Europe, this is peculiarly the age of enormous cannon. "Armour of two feet in thickness," says a recent writer, "and guns of one hundred tons in weight being now accomplished facts, and ships already bigger than the Inflexible being already in hand, we may well ask ourselves, What will be the next step?"