"Ran red with English blood,
For the Douglas true and the bold Buccleugh,
'Gainst keen Lord Evers stood."
When the English were routed, 700 Scottish outlaws of broken border clans, who had joined them, threw aside their red crosses, and joining their countrymen, made a merciless slaughter of the fugitives with axe and spear, shouting to each other the while, "Remember Broomhouse!"
Love of the sanguinary colour seems to have spread rapidly, and so, as some one has it, "no true Englishman can either fight, or hunt, to his satisfaction, save in a red coat," but badges were speedily added thereto.
Stowe records in his Survey of London, that "Robert Neville, Earl of Warwick, with 600 men all in red jackets, embroidered with ragged staves before and behind, was lodged in Warwicke Lane; in whose house there was oftentimes six oxen eaten at a breakfast, and every tavern was full of his meat, for he that had any acquaintance in that house, might have as much of sodden or roasted meat as he could prick and carry away on a long dagger."
The proposal that the medical officers of all European armies should wear one great distinguishing badge, by which their profession might be known, is not a new one, for we find Ralph Smith, in the time of Elizabeth, after telling us that military "surgeons should be men of sobrietie, of good conscience, and skillfull in that science, able to heal all scars and wounds, especially to take out a pellet, &c., must wear their Baldricke, whereby they may be known in time of slaughter, as it is their charter in the field."
In this reign the Cavalry wore scarlet cloaks; but in the stirring times of Cromwell, with red and blue, a reddish-brown was much used by both horse and foot; hence he says in one of his letters, "I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain, that knoweth what he fights for, and loves what he knowes, than that which you call 'a gentleman,' and is nothing else."
Of all the colours for uniforms, the most absurd were some of those adopted by our Rifle Volunteers, in their too wary desire to be unseen. A battalion of the Italian Legion, raised during the Crimean war, was clad in silver grey; and it was admitted by all competent judges to be the colour best adapted for riflemen, and, moreover, when handsomely laced and trimmed, it was very becoming. This was the favourite colour of the Indian Light Cavalry.
When contrasted with the tight tunics, tiny shackos, and plain trousers of the present day, the equipment of a corps of the last, or the preceding century, in its amplitude and variety, must have presented a very different and very picturesque aspect. On the 8th, or King's Own Regiment, being raised for King James, by Richard, Lord Ferrars, the captains were armed with pikes, the lieutenants with partisans, the ensigns with half-pikes, the sergeants with halberds; thirty rank and file of each company were pikemen, seventy-three were musketeers, and all carried swords. The waistcoats and breeches were yellow; the uniform, scarlet lined with yellow; the stockings and cravats white; the hats were à la cavalier, turned up on one side, and ornamented with flowing yellow ribbands. (Records 8th Foot.)
Ten years before this time, each company consisted of thirty pikes, sixty muskets, and ten men armed with light fusils, and "the tallest men were always culled out as pikemen." (Bruce on Military Law, 1717.)
The following description of a deserter, from the 22nd Foot, in those days, is rather amusing, as to costume:—