WATERLOO
18TH JUNE 1815.
from 4.30 to 6.30 o’clock pm
“To have participated in a contest crowned with victory so decisive, and productive of consequences that have diffused peace, security, and happiness throughout Europe, may be to each of you a source of honourable pride, as well as of gratitude to the Omnipotent Arbiter of all human contests, who preserved you in such peril, and without whose protecting hand the battle belongs not to the strong, nor the race to the swift.
“I acknowledge to feel an honest, and, I trust, an excusable, exultation, in having had the honour to command you on that day; and in dispensing these medals, destined to record in your families the share you had in the ever-memorable battle of Waterloo, it is a peculiar satisfaction to me that I can present them to those by whom they have been fairly and honourably earned, and that I can here solemnly declare, that in the course of that eventful day I did not observe a soldier of this good regiment whose conduct was not only creditable to the English nation, but such as his dearest friends could desire. I trust that they will act as powerful talismans, to keep you, in your future lives, in the paths of honour, sobriety, and virtue.” A year later and Major-General Sir Denis Pack presented new colours to the regiment, and, alluding to its services, said:—“Never, indeed, did the character of the corps stand higher; never was the fame of the British arms or the glory of the British empire more pre-eminent than at this moment, an enthusiastic recollection of which the sight of these colours must always inspire.”
Returning to England in 1818, the Seventy-first remained on home service until 1824, when it was removed to Canada, and in 1831 was sent to Bermuda, thence restored to its native land in 1834. It returned to Canada in 1838, and in 1842 was included in a first and reserve battalion. Whilst the latter remained in Canada, the former was ordered to the West Indies, thence to Barbadoes, and in 1847 restored to England. In 1853 the first battalion proceeded to the Ionian Islands; and in November, 1854, the reserve battalion, which had recently arrived from Canada, embarked for the Crimea, followed by the first battalion from Corfu. Both battalions were subsequently united on arrival at the seat of war. “Sevastopol” commemorates its service before that place. The regiment was next stationed at Malta, and was sent thence by overland route, in January, 1858, to Bombay, and is now at Sealkote, in the Punjaub.
THE SEVENTY-SECOND FOOT;
OR,
DUKE OF ALBANY’S HIGHLANDERS.
CHAPTER XXXII.
“We would not die in that man’s company,
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
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