Then shall our names,
Familiar in their mouths as household words,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d
From this day to the ending of the world;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me,
Shall be my brother.”
ORIGIN—CHANNEL ISLANDS—INDIA—CEYLON—1778–1799.
The history of the clans presents no more splendid illustration of that devotion which bound the clansman to his chief, and of the happy relationship implied therein, than is afforded in the circumstances attendant upon the origin of the Seventy-second Highlanders. The Earl of Seaforth, chief of the Mackenzie, had, as a leader in the rebellion of 1715, been banished from his country, his title attainted, and his estates forfeited, yet, withal, 400 of his late followers and tenants remitted to him in his exile a large portion of the rents they might have been liable for had he retained the estate. This most generous testimony of respect and practical expression of sympathy to the father was gratefully remembered by the son, and, notwithstanding the changes which, passing over the face of society, had swept away the old institution of clanship, induced the grandson, who, restored by purchase to the family property, and by his acknowledged loyalty, to the honours of the Earldom of Seaforth, in return for these favours, volunteered to raise a regiment for the Government. His appeal to his clansmen was amply successful. The Mackenzies and Macraes, rallying around him as their chief, gave thereby most hearty and flattering testimony to their own loyalty to the King, and unimpaired attachment to the family of Seaforth, which had so long and worthily presided over them. Accordingly, 1130 men were assembled and enrolled in the regiment—then known as the Seventy-eighth—at Elgin, in 1778. Marched to Edinburgh, it was thence removed to the Channel Islands, where its firm attitude, remarkable in such young soldiers, so won the confidence of the islanders, and encouraged the militia, as, together with our Highlanders, enabled them successfully to resist an attempted debarkation of French troops on the island of Jersey.
A sister regiment to the Seventy-first, the Seventy-second (Seventy-eighth) was ordered to follow it to India in 1781, in fulfilment of the original purpose for which both corps had been raised. The transport service of those times was miserably inefficient, especially when compared with the leviathan ships and floating palaces—the Scotias, Persias, and Great Easterns—which in our day are, by a patriotic public, ever at the command of our Government for any sudden emergency. A voyage in a troop-ship eighty years ago ofttimes consumed more of life than the battle-field; was more fatal than the dreaded pestilence which lurked in the swamps of the Indies; nay, in some cases was as cruel in its miseries as the horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta. The passage of the Seventy-second Highlanders to India proved to be such. Two hundred and forty-seven men perished on the voyage, which was protracted to nearly ten months; and when the regiment did arrive at Madras, only 369 men were mustered as fit for duty. One transport having parted from the fleet in a gale, was placed in imminent peril, being destitute of charts, and her commander utterly unfit for his position, having hitherto trusted to keep his vessel in the track of the fleet. By the wise precautions of Sir Eyre Coote, although the requirements of the service were urgent and entailed an immediate advance, the Seventy-second regiment was not immediately hurried into action, but time was allowed it to recruit its strength. In consequence of these measures, the regiment was soon able to appear in the field with upwards of 600 men.