The Royal Regiment, and Other Novelettes

by James Grant

Prince Charles Edward was partial to the national uniform, and frequently wore it. He is represented in red, in the miniature which he gave to his secretary, Murray of Broughton, one of nine painted on copper, as gifts to his principal adherents. His Life Guards, under Lord Elcho, wore blue faced with red; but, in his small and gallant army, the Duke of Perth's regiment, wore scarlet uniforms. (Vide Spalding Club Miscell., vol. i.)

A scarlet uniform worn by Cardinal York, before he took holy orders, and probably when he commanded a body of French and Irish troops at Dunkirk, in 1745, is now preserved at Inzievar House, Fifeshire, having been preserved by Edgar of Keithwick, who was long attached to the last of the Stuarts, in the capacity of secretary.

Like the light cavalry, most of the militia corps would seem to have been originally dressed in blue. According to an old ballad, the Lothian regiment were so clad at the Battle of Bothwell-bridge in 1679.

The uniform of the first-named force has frequently varied. In 1784, the clothing of the 17th, and similar corps, was changed from scarlet to blue. They wore blue in the Peninsula, and in 1830 were clad in scarlet again, when the moustache, which they and other corps had adopted, was ordered to be shaved off. (Records of the 17th Lancers.)

The old Scottish Guard of the French kings wore hoquetons of white, "in token of their unspotted fidelity," but the other Scottish troops in the French service, the Gendarmes Écossais, who took precedence of all the household troops, and the Infanterie Écossais, which took rank after the 12th regiment of the old French line, wore blue, while scarlet was the dress of the Irish brigades of the Louis' in later years.

Our Chasseurs Brittaniques, a foreign corps, consisting in some instances, of deserters from every army in Europe, wore the national uniform, and thus, when on duty, frequently caused confusion and mistakes by their ignorance of the English language.

In 1742, the coats and breeches of the line were tightened, and the hats were looped up on three sides, and in that year, the 7th, or South British Fusiliers, and the 21st, or North British Fusiliers, figured in the high conical cap which came into vogue with the Prussian tactics. Their coats had no collars, the skirts were buttoned back and faced with blue. Numbers were first put on the coat buttons in 1767.

Red and yellow being, as we have stated, the royal livery of Scotland, the facings of Scottish regiments have generally been of the latter colour, and many that now wear blue, had yellow when first embodied.

The whole infantry of the East India Company wore the national colour, and it is greatly to be regretted that, on the commencement of our Volunteer movement, the Government did not enforce the adoption of scarlet, instead of permitting the endless varieties of silly colours and costumes now worn by many corps throughout the United Kingdom.

The statistics of European wars show us that the French, who are clad in blue, suffered a greater loss in proportion than the British, who wear red, when under fire. An old Peninsula officer, whose letter is before us, mentions, "When our Light Company, and the company of the 60th Rifles (green), attached to our brigade, were skirmishing on the same ground (against the enemy), the latter lost more than we did, although composed chiefly of Germans, who are proverbially cautious skirmishers. This is an important subject. I saw, at the Battle of Vittoria, the wonderful effect of the imposing appearance of the British line on the enemy. After they had been driven from their position and completely scattered, many glorious attempts were made by their officers to rally them on some heights behind the ridge on which our line was advancing. It became an object with the officer commanding the Light Companies, which were scattered in pursuit, to get them arrayed for the attack of a column which formed on one of those heights at some distance in our front, and thus became a rallying point to the thousands who were flying from the ridge in helpless confusion.