"Before we had a sufficient number of the pursuers collected to attack this formidable column, it broke and bolted, its soldiers disappearing among the racing mobs who threw away their arms and fled towards the Pyrenees. While wondering what had caused so sudden a panic among men who, but a moment before, seemed ready to adhere until death to their officers, we—the skirmishers—looked back to the ridge, and saw a sight which I shall never forget. The whole British line crowned the mountains, from wing to wing, looking like a wall of fire, their bayonets glittering in the sun, as they moved steadily, silently, and presenting a glorious picture of power and order. This sight it was which struck the enemy to the heart, and made him fly from his new position in sudden panic. No army, although double the number, if clad in sombre uniform, could ever make such an appearance, or produce such an effect as this."*
* At the commencement of the Volunteer movement, this letter was addressed to the author of this paper, who was then actively engaged in the formation of a corps now wearing grey.
Our uniforms have frequently varied according to the climate in which corps have been stationed. The kilt has generally proved too warm for Indian service, and white trousers are substituted. In the Caffre war the 74th Highlanders wore short dark blouses, tartan tunics, and hummal bonnets, i.e., without feathers. In Canada the King's Dragoon Guards lately wore busbies of fur, blue pea-jackets, and long boots lined with sheepskin in winter. The Ashanti uniform is still remembered.
Save the Blues, all our cavalry wore scarlet, until the middle of George III.'s reign, when blue was adopted for the Light corps; but silver-grey, with red facings, was worn by all dragoons, while serving in India, until 1820. Eleven years after, scarlet was resumed for all corps except the Horse Guards and Hussars; but blue was ordered again for all Lancers and Light Dragoons in 1840.
Blue has always been worn by the Royal Regiment of Artillery, which was first embodied in England in the year 1750, by Colonel William Belford, who commanded that arm of the service at the battle of Culloden, four years before. The facings, vests, and breeches were all scarlet.
Hussars were first introduced in our service in 1793, and Lancers after the battle of Waterloo; but so early as 1794 we had a corps of Lancers, named the British Uhlans, formed out of the remains of the French Royalist army, and which, with the Hussars of Choiseul, Salm, and Rohan, perished in the fatal expedition to Quiberon in 1796.
Uniform has ever been considered a badge alike of honour and service; thus, in the Gazette for June, 1867, we find that Her Majesty was graciously pleased to permit a retired Captain of the Edinburgh, or Queen's Own Regiment of Militia, "to retain his rank and wear his uniform in consideration of his long service in that corps."
We have had the pleasure of knowing more than one brave veteran officer, who treasured affectionately "the old red rag," in which he had followed Picton, Grahame, or the Iron Duke, and in which he had been wounded on the glorious fields of Spain or in the crowning victory of Waterloo; and in every age there has been some eccentric enthusiast who stuck manfully to fashions that had departed.
In 1808, many an old officer would as soon have cut off his head as his pigtail when the Horse Guards ordered the army to be shorn of that remarkable appendage. Old Sir Thomas Dalyell, of Binns (first Colonel of the Scots Greys), who rode yearly to London to kiss the hand of King Charles II., adhered to the close-sleeved doublet of the days of James VI. This, with his portentous vow-beard (which he had sworn never to cut after the execution of Charles I), "when he was in London never failed to draw after him a great crowd of boys, who constantly attended him at his lodgings, and followed him with huzzas as he went to Court and returned from it. As he was a man of humour, he would always thank them for their civilities when he left them at the door to go to the King, and would let them know exactly at what hour he intended to come out again and return to his lodgings." (Memoirs of Captain Crichton, the Cavalier Trooper.)
General Preston, who commanded the same regiment in the Seven Years' War, and who died colonel of it, at Bath in 1785, was the last British officer who wore a buff coat. An officer who served with him records that at the capture of Zerenberg, Preston received more than a dozen of sword-cuts, which fell harmlessly on his "buff-jerkin."