“The boys watched their fathers ‘drill’; and ‘as the old cock crows the young one learns,’ so we children followed in the steps of our papas, and we were ready for inspection quite as soon as our elders, and could march in good order, to have our ‘Field-day,’ from Bloomsbury Church to the fields, where Russell and Tavistock Squares now stand. This account of my ‘playing at soldiers’ may appear to be rather trifling and nonsensical, but just see what it has done for me. Why, by my learning the manual exercise with this mop-stick gun, when a boy, and at the same time learning how to ‘march,’ ‘countermarch,’ and to ‘mark time,’ to ‘wheel’ and to ‘face,’ etc., IT HAS MADE ME—AYE, ME, G. C., FIT AND ABLE TO HANDLE A MUSKET OR A RIFLE, AND FALL INTO THE RANKS OF AN INFANTRY REGIMENT AT A MOMENT’S notice. I make this assertion with confidence; for when as a young man I joined a rifle company, I found that I required no drilling; the only additional knowledge necessary was to understand the ‘calls’ of the bugle and whistle, which, with the rifles, are used instead of the ‘word of command’ when skirmishing; and I can say, having previously learned to prime, and load, and fire, and hit a mark, that I was a tolerable rifleman one week after I had entered. The fact is, that learning the military exercise when young is like learning to dance, or to ride, or to row, or to swim, or to fence, or to box, at an early age; and when these very important parts of male education or training are acquired in boyhood, they are never forgotten.... We all know that early pleasurable impressions, as well as very disagreeable ones, are never effaced; and as ‘playing at soldiers’ does strongly engage the youthful mind, it is quite clear, as in my case, that if every boy in these realms was taught the military exercise as I was, they would, as they grew up to manhood, require little or no training to make them sufficiently effective for defence; and if the whole male population of this country capable of bearing arms were to be in such a condition, in such ‘fighting order,’ there never would be any fighting at all, for no nation, or all the nations combined together, would ever even so much as dream of invading a country where they would have a difficulty of landing hundreds of thousands of their men, who would have to meet millions and millions of well-trained and well-organized men to oppose them, to say nothing of the tossing, and bumping, and scraping they would be likely to get in getting over ‘the wooden walls of Old England.’”
Cruikshank describes in his own quaint way how his early military experiences were brought to a close.
“Our regiment, the Loyal North Britons, being commanded by a Royal Duke (H. R. H. the late Duke of Sussex), had the post of honour, next to the Royal troops; and as I had the honour of being present upon that occasion (the Grand Review in Hyde Park, given in honour of the Emperor Alexander and Blucher, after the Allies had entered Paris), I can assure my friends that we made a very respectable military appearance, and that the pop, pop, pop of our ‘feu de joie’ was as regular as the pop, pop, pop of the regulars. But when we marched in review past the Prince Regent, his imperial visitor, and the crowd of general officers, I remember feeling, a considerable degree of chagrin at the paltry appearance we made in point of numbers, and wished most heartily that these foreigners could have seen the ‘mobs’ of volunteers as they had mustered in that park in 1803 and 1804.
“After this review, our men retired from the service, or rather, went about their business, little imagining they would ever have been called out again; but they did rally round their colours once more when Napoleon I., or ‘Corporal Violet,’ as he was then designated, returned from Elba. But after the battle of Waterloo, and the apparent re-establishment of the Bourbons, the British people and the Government seemed to think that there never could be any more risk of invasion; that fighting was quite done with everywhere, and that, at any rate, we were safe to the end of time; that they had been assisting in the completion of some great work, which, being now finished, the volunteers gave back their tools—firearms—to the Government, conceiving that the swords were to be turned into ploughshares, and the spears into pruning-hooks. I was not exempt from this national belief; and, as the war was over, I exchanged my rifle for a fowling-piece, and this I unfortunately lent, with the powder-flask and shot-belt, to a friend of mine who was going into the country a-shooting.
[Original Size] -- [Medium-Size]
“One day, in his early volunteer days, when passing down Ludgate Hill in his striking uniform, of which a tall feather and tight green trousers were the conspicuous features, he was laughed at, and followed by some men and boys. He turned upon them and singled out the chief aggressor. A ring was formed in the street, and Private Cruikshank gave his assailant a sound thrashing, treating his second to a pot of beer afterwards by way of acknowledgment. * Robert Cruikshank was even more smitten with soldiering than George, and the weakness remained with him to the end of his life. George jocularly dubbed Robert “the majar!” Among the “majar’s” military exploits was that of exchanging his frock-coat with a Grenadier, in the course of a tipsy frolic, and finding himself ultimately before the magistrates at Bow Street, charged with being in possession of His Majesty’s property, and under the necessity of paying a fine of £5.”
* Robert Cruikshank, who was sergeant in the same corps with
his brother, could not withstand the gratification of paying
a visit in uniform to the ladies’ boarding school at
Bromley, where he gave lessons, and on the following day his
further services were dispensed with.