“O! to see his tartan trews,
Bonnet blue, and laigh-heel’d shoes,
Philabeg aboon his knee!
That’s the lad that I’ll gang wi’.”
THE HIGHLANDS—FRENCH REVOLUTION—FLANDERS—GERMANY—WEST INDIES—GIBRALTAR—MINORCA—EGYPT—EDINBURGH—1789–1803.
The honourable bearing of the Royal Highlanders throughout the war had been so conspicuous as to win for them the hearty esteem of their countrymen. Hence their return was welcomed by all classes, and their progress northward was little else than a triumphal march. At Glasgow, the joy of the people was unbounded.
Whilst stationed in Scotland, the regiment was called to fulfil a most painful duty, in the suppression of the riots which had arisen in the Highlands from the expulsion of the poorer peasantry from the haunts and homes of “auld langsyne.” From a long and quiet possession, they had come to consider such as their own, and therefore were disposed to resist the right of the legal proprietor, who desired to disencumber his estates of the unproductive poor, and render these lands remunerative, rather than, as hitherto, a barren burden.
To curb the furious passions which the evil genii of the French Revolution had let loose, wherewith to plague Christendom, the might of Britain was called to the rescue. The Forty-second, largely recruited, was accordingly embarked at Hull, and joined the British army fighting under the Duke of York in Flanders. Soon, however, the regiment was recalled, to form part of a meditated enterprise against the French West Indian Islands. This scheme being abandoned for the present, it was engaged in a vain attempt to aid, by a descent on the French coast, the Vendean royalists, who yet dared manfully, but, alas! ineffectually, to struggle against the sanguinary tyranny of the Revolution, for liberty and righteousness. Returning to Flanders, the regiment was doomed to share the retrograde movement which had been necessitated by the overwhelming superiority of the enemy, and the listless indifference, nay, even hate, of the Dutch, whose cause we had assumed to espouse. Retreating through Germany to Bremen, the sufferings of the army were severe, but endured with a fortitude which well commanded the admiration of friend and foe. Never were the capabilities of the Highland soldier more thoroughly tested, and more triumphantly apparent, than in the midst of the fatigues of an incessant warfare, the severities of a bitter winter, and the discouraging prospects of retreat. Under these cruel circumstances, whilst other regiments counted their losses by hundreds, the Forty-second only lost twenty-five men.
Returning to England, the regiment was once more included in the long-contemplated West Indian expedition. A vast armament had been assembled in 1795, and sailed at first prosperously, only to be dispersed and driven back with heavy loss by a furious tempest which almost immediately arose. A second attempt, promising as favourably, encountered a like catastrophe, but not so fatal. Although dispersed, some of the transports continued the voyage, others returned to port, and some few became the prey of the enemy’s privateers. Providence seemed to be adverse to the expedition, or in friendly warning indicated the coming struggle—when hearths and homes, menaced by a relentless, dangerous foe, needed that a large portion of this ill-omened expedition should be retained for the defence of our own shores, and play a more important part in the exciting events of the Revolutionary War. Five companies of the Royal Highlanders were thus detained at home, and soon afterwards removed for service to Gibraltar. The other five companies of the regiment, embarked in the “Middlesex,” East Indiaman, battling the tempest, completed the voyage, and rendezvoused at Barbadoes, whence they proceeded, with what remained of the vast armament, against the French island of St Lucia, which, after some sharp fighting, was wrested from the Republicans. In the subsequent attack upon the island of St Vincent, the Highlanders were praised for the “heroic ardour” they always displayed, but especially illustrated in the attack upon the post of New Vigie, on the 10th June, 1796, on which occasion Major-General David Stewart relates the following episode of the wife of a soldier of our Royal Highlanders:—“I directed her husband, who was in my company, to remain behind in charge of the men’s knapsacks, which they had thrown off to be light for the advance up the hill. He obeyed his orders; but his wife, believing, I suppose, that she was not included in these injunctions, pushed forward in the assault. When the enemy had been driven from the third redoubt, I was standing giving some directions to the men, and preparing to push on to the fourth and last redoubt, when I found myself tapped on the shoulder, and turning round, I saw my Amazonian friend standing with her clothes tucked up to the knees, and seizing my arm, ‘Well done, my Highland lads!’ she exclaimed, ‘see how the brigands scamper like so many deer!’ ‘Come,’ added she, ‘let us drive them from yonder hill.’ On inquiry, I found she had been in the hottest fire, cheering and animating the men, and when the action was over, she was as active as any of the surgeons in assisting the wounded.”
Allied with the Caribbee Indians, the Republicans, driven from the open plain and the regular strongholds of the island, found a refuge in the woods, where, screened by the luxuriant foliage of the forest, or perched in unassailable positions, they maintained a guerilla warfare, which to our troops proved of the most trying and harassing kind, similar in character to that sustained by our Highlanders in the backwoods during the American war. Mr Cannon, in his valuable official records of the regiment, gives the following description illustrative of the general character of the contest:—