The first battalion of the Scots Fusilier Guards, brigaded with a battalion of the Grenadiers, and another of the Coldstreams, were embarked for the scene of action, which ultimately proved to be the Crimea. They sailed from Portsmouth, in H.M.S. the “Simoom;” and passing successively from Malta, Gallipoli, and Varna, arrived at length in the Crimea. The brigade of Guards, and that of the Highlanders, consisting of the Forty-second, Seventy-ninth, and Ninety-third, under their favourite chieftain, Sir Colin Campbell, were closely allied in all the dangers and glories of the war in the First Infantry division, commanded by his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge. The long peace which had preceded the outbreak of hostilities, and the cry for “greater public economy,” which it had induced from a people long accustomed to look only at the arithmetic of pounds, shillings, and pence, in such vital questions, had in consequence brought all that magnificent machinery of war, possessed by our country, to a standstill. It followed, as a necessary result, when our Cabinet failed to achieve a peaceful solution of the matters at issue, as had been fondly anticipated, and we were unexpectedly called to a declaration of war, it was found impossible at once to set in motion the vast machinery of war, which had so long been “laid up in ordinary.” Hence our gallant troops were doomed to pay the penalty of our ill-judged economy, and endure many and sore privations—privations which were the more keenly felt, inasmuch as they were to be endured, amid the snows of a Crimean winter, by men, too, whose previous life had been comparatively one of comfort, in no way calculated to fit the soldier to encounter the pitiless horrors and fatigues of war. Disease and want, like armed men, entered the camp, closely followed by their master, the grim King of Terrors—Death; and thus we have been called to lament, with a truly bitter sorrow, the loss of our brave countrymen, who, alike in the hospital as in the battle-field, displayed all the grand and noble qualities of the soldier and the virtues of the true man. The conduct of the Guards in their first engagement at the battle of the Alma is described by Marshal St Arnaud as altogether “superb.” Lieutenants Lindsay and Thistlethwayte, were especially distinguished for their heroic defence of the colours of the Scots Fusilier Guards. At the battle of Inkermann, the Guards, having driven the Russians out of a battery, named the Sandbag Battery, of which they had early possessed themselves, sustained with desperate gallantry the impetuous assaults of the enemy, and, although forced for a moment to give way, were soon again enabled to retrieve themselves, and maintain possession of the battery, around which and for which they so bravely contended. Although stunned by these repeated disasters in the field, yet with that “dogged obstinacy,” which has characterised the Russians, conceiving themselves secure behind the battlements of Sebastopol, they still held out. Strengthened in the idea of impregnability, from the fact that this vast citadel of Southern Russia had already withstood six successive bombardments, defied the combined efforts of the Allies by sea and land, and yet no sensible impression had been made, or aught of decided success attained by the besiegers, they hoped that what their valour could not achieve in the battle-field, the snows of winter or the stroke of the pestilence would effect—the destruction of our armies, and their consequent deliverance. The successive fall of the Mamelon, the Malakoff, and the Redan, dispelled this illusion, and prudence, rightly esteemed the better part of valour, induced a timely evacuation ere our Highland Brigade returned to the assault. Sebastopol no longer defensible, the enemy sued for peace, which was granted, and this stronghold of tyranny, dismantled and abandoned, was assumed to be converted into a haven for fishermen and traders, rather than the mighty arsenal, whence had so long issued the formidable fleets which had inspired terror among weaker and neighbouring states—at least so the treaty required. Meanwhile our gallant Guards, returning to England, were welcomed by a grateful country.
MONUMENT TO THE GUARDS, LONDON.
It is only now, when the audacious impudence of “Brother Jonathan” had dared to insult our time-honoured flag—
“Which braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze,”
and thought to bully us out of the glorious charter which has conferred upon us the “dominion of the seas,” that our Scots Fusilier Guards were once more called to prepare for action; and, having gone across the Atlantic as the van of our army, anxiously waited the signal to avenge, if need be, such unprovoked insult and aggression. Happily our firm demeanour has effectually quelled the storm, and impressed wiser and more wholesome measures, whereby peace has hitherto been continued.
One sentence only shall express our feelings, as we look back upon the history of our Scots Fusilier Guards, which we have here attempted to sketch—Every man has nobly done his duty.