History of the Scottish Regiments in the British Army

by Archibald K. Murray

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.”

This appalling catastrophe, combined with British successes in the Peninsula, had revived the spirit of the nations, allied them in a holy crusade, and marshalled the might of Europe in array to crush the tyrant. One by one, they wrested from his sway the kingdoms he had engulfed, and which groaned beneath a cruel bondage. Step by step, their hosts converged, as the tide of war rolled, towards France. All but alone, with his brave and devoted Guard driven to bay, he made a desperate but unavailing stand on the plains of France. In vain he addressed the patriotism of the people; already the fountain had been dried up by his incessant wars and the unremitting demands he had made upon the blood and treasure of the land. Surrendering, at length, the hopeless contest, abdicating the throne, he passed into honourable exile in Elba.

Ambition, still the tempter, assailing, soon prevailed. Eluding the vigilance of the British fleet, he succeeded in escaping into France, accompanied by a few of his old Guard, who had shared his exile. The mind of the people, which for more than twenty years had lived amid a wild delirium of excitement, still lingering upon the threshold of the mighty past, had not yet learned to submit to the more benignant rule of peace. The army, unwisely disbanded, or despoiled of those symbols of glory which their valour had so nobly won—trophies which, to a soldier, must ever be dear as life itself—were being consumed by the ennui of idleness, longed for new employment. Hence the return of Napoleon paralysed resistance as recalling the military glory of the Empire; awakening new hopes, promising revenge for the past, employment for the present, and glory for the future, it stirred within the bosom of the soldier and the lower classes of the people a reverence and adoration, almost amounting to idolatry. Rapidly advancing from stage to stage, as on a triumphal march, Napoleon found himself once more at Paris—hailed Emperor—it is true, doubted by the better classes of the people, but worshipped by the army. His desperate efforts soon enabled him to take the field, at the head of a powerful and well-appointed army, with which he proposed to meet in detail, and so destroy, his numerous and returning enemies. Unfortunately for him, he chose the Netherlands to be the scene, and Britain and Prussia the objects, of his first, and, as the result proved, his last attack. For a moment a gleam of sunshine shone upon his path, as he attained the victory of Ligny, over the Prussians under Marshal Blucher. Luring him to destruction, this flash of success was only the precursor to the dread thunder of Waterloo. Alarmed by the disastrous intelligence of the Prussian defeat and the rapid advance of the French, Wellington, who commanded the British and other auxiliaries, quickly concentrated his army near the village of Waterloo. But ere he could accomplish this, Marshal Ney, at the head of the second French division, had surprised and fallen upon, with great fury, the British, as they advanced upon Quatre Bras, on the same day that Ligny was won. The action was honourably sustained by a few British Regiments, especially the Twenty-eighth, and the Forty-second, Seventy-ninth and Ninety-second Highland Regiments. The heroic stand made by these gave time for the arrival of other corps, including the Guards—the Scots Fusilier Guards—who succeeded, after a desperate struggle, in effectually checking the progress of the French Marshal, and thus depriving him of a most favourable opportunity of cutting to pieces in detail our army. Two days later, on the 18th of June, the Duke had successfully accomplished the concentration of his forces, which, drawn up in battle array at Waterloo, waited the arrival of the Prussians, to begin the fight. But Napoleon, perceiving his advantage in the absence of such an important succour, rushed eagerly to battle, put forth every effort to achieve victory, ere Blucher, impeded by the disorders of recent defeat, could afford any assistance. The Scots Fusilier Guards, with the Grenadiers and Coldstreams, were stationed in the chateau and grounds of Hougomont, where they were soon fiercely assailed by the French, who repeatedly forcing the gateway, drove the British into the house. Again and again the enemy were repulsed, but still anew they returned to the assault. The combat was resolutely maintained, and it was not until the close of this eventful day, when the French, repulsed at every point, and gradually relaxing their efforts, were ultimately driven from the field, that our Guards found a release from the incessant toils of the fight. The victory achieved by the British was now completed by the Prussians, who continued the pursuit—a pursuit which may be said only to have ceased at the gates of Paris, when, Napoleon abdicating, the war was terminated by the restoration of the old Monarchy.

From Mr Carter’s interesting work on “The Medals of the British Army,” we, by permission, quote the following refutation in regard to an alleged sum of £500 having been accorded to a Waterloo veteran:—“A statement has frequently appeared in the newspapers, which was repeated after the decease of General Sir James Macdonell, G.C.B., on the 15th of May, 1857, that five hundred pounds had been bequeathed to the bravest man in the British army, and that the two executors called upon the late Duke of Wellington, to give him a cheque for the money. As the story went, the Duke proposed that it should be given to Sir James for the defence of Hougomont, and that upon the money being tendered to him, he at first declined to receive it, but that ultimately he shared it with Sergeant-Major Fraser of the 3d Foot Guards, now the Scots Fusilier Guards.

“Having recently seen this statement again in print while these pages were in preparation, and Sir James Macdonell having about ten years ago mentioned to me that he had never received the money, I made further inquiries, from which I ascertained that Sergeant-Major Ralph Fraser is now a bedesman in Westminster Abbey. Considering that the above legacy might possibly have been since received, I called upon the sergeant-major, who lives at 18 West Street, Pimlico, and is now in his 79th year, in order to ascertain the fact, and found that it had not. This gallant and intelligent veteran is in the full possession of his faculties, and, in addition to his having aided in closing the gate at Hougomont, can look with becoming pride on his having shared in the following services:—He was enlisted in the 3d Foot Guards in 1799, and was embarked for Egypt in 1801. In the landing at Aboukir Bay, on the 8th of March of that year, the boat in which Corporal Fraser was contained sixty persons, officers included; all except fifteen were destroyed by the resistance of the enemy. He was present at the battles of the 13th and 21st March; and in the expedition to Hanover, 1805; bombardment of Copenhagen, 1807; and from 1809 to 1814 in the Peninsula, being present at the capture of Oporto, battles of Talavera, Busaco, Fuentes d’Onor (wounded in the leg and thigh), sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo, Burgos (again wounded in the leg), Badajoz, and St Sebastian; battles of Salamanca, Vittoria, passage of the Nivelle and Nive. He received, in addition to the Waterloo medal, that for the Peninsular war, with bars for Egypt, Talavera, Busaco, Fuentes d’Onor, Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca, Vittoria, Nivelle, and Nive. Sergeant-Major Fraser was discharged in December, 1818.”

This account, doubtless, may be traced to the following circumstance mentioned by Colonel Siborne in his valuable History of the Waterloo Campaign:—“Early in August of that year, and while the Anglo-allied army was at Paris, the Duke of Wellington received a letter from the Rev. Mr Norcross, rector of Framlingham, in Suffolk, expressing his wish to confer a pension of ten pounds a year, for life, on some Waterloo soldier, to be named by his Grace. The Duke requested Sir John Byng (the late Lord Stafford) to choose a man from the second brigade of Guards, which had so highly distinguished itself in the defence of Hougomont. Out of numerous instances of good conduct evinced by several individuals of each battalion, Sergeant James Graham, of the light company of the Coldstreams, was selected to receive the proffered annuity, as notified in brigade orders of the 9th of August, 1815. This was paid to him during two years, at the expiration of which period it ceased, in consequence of the bankruptcy of the benevolent donor.”

From the heroic character of the battle, our people have been prevailed on to credit many incidents, which, savouring of the romantic, suited their tastes, have been accepted as truisms, but which facts fail to corroborate. “One very prevailing idea that Wellington gave out the words, ‘Up, Guards, and at them!’ is not borne out by fact, for it was afterwards ascertained from the Duke himself that he did not; and another, the meeting of his Grace and Marshal Blucher at La Belle Alliance, after the battle, is equally apocryphal. This, however, is to be one of the designs of the House of Lords, and will therefore be handed down to posterity as a fact.” For nearly forty years the Scots Fusilier Guards had been retained at home, in or around London.

In 1853, the storm which had been long gathering in the north—presaging wrath to Liberty and to Man—at length burst forth, and descending with rapacious might upon the dominions of the Turkish Sultan, threatened to overwhelm in utter ruin the crumbling remnant of the empire of Constantine. The impatient covetousness of the Czar of Russia had put forth the hand of the spoiler, intending to appropriate the realms of the Sultan, and make Constantinople the southern gate of his colossal empire. Justly alarmed at the already gigantic power of Russia, which promised further to enlarge itself at the expense of the feebler Powers around, France and Britain took up arms, and threw the weight of their potent influence into the contest on behalf of the oppressed Turks, whose single arm had hitherto proved equal to the struggle. Accordingly, France, Turkey, and Britain, ultimately aided by Sardinia, entered the lists of war, to sustain the liberty of Europe against the despotism of the North, adopting as their watchword the memorable words of Lord John Russell, “May God defend the right.”

DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. COLONEL Of THE SCOTS FUSILIER GUARDS.