The regiment was raised in 1824, along with the present Ninety-fourth, Ninety-fifth, Ninety-sixth, Ninety-seventh, and Ninety-eighth regiments, at a time when our vast colonial empire demanded an augmentation of our army to ensure its adequate defence. Notwithstanding the anxiety of the Ninety-ninth to be released from the monotony of a passive service, and engage in the more stirring scenes of battle peculiar to the soldier, its brief history displays few events specially calling for notice, having been doomed to quietude, and denied by circumstances an opportunity of distinguishing itself during the Indian or Crimean wars. The following remarkable letter from one of its soldiers, extracted from Mr Carter’s interesting volume, the “Curiosities of War,” is truly a curiosity:—
“My Lord Duke,—I mean to take the liberty of writing these few lines before your Grace, flying under the protection of your wings, and trusting in your most charitable heart for to grant my request.
“May it please your Grace to reject me not, for the love of the Almighty God, to whom I pray to reward your soul in heaven.
“My Lord Duke, I shall convince you that I am a pte. soldier in the 99th depôt, at Chatham, a servant to Her Majesty since the 29th of September, 1846; likewise that I was born of poor parents, who were unable to provide any means of education for me but what I scraped by over-hours and industry, till I grew thus eighteen years of age, and was compelled to quit their sight and seek my own fortune.
“I think I am possessed of honesty, docility, faithfulness, high hopes, bold spirit, and obedience towards my superiors. I partly know the Irish language, to which I was brought up, and am deficient of the English language, that is, of not being able of peaking [qy. speaking] it correctly. One of my past days, as I was guiding a horse in a solitary place, unexpectedly I burst into a flow of poetry, which successfully came from my lips by no trouble. From thence I wrote during the following year a lot of poems, some of which, it was given up, being the best composed in the same locality for the last forty years past. However, I did no treason, but all for the amusement of the country.
“My Lord, I mean to shoe a little proof of it in the following lines:—
Once from at home, as I did roam my fortune for to try,
All alone along the road, my courage forcing high;
I said sweet home, both friends and foes, I bid you all good-bye.
From thence I started into Cork and joined the 99th.