After commanding the regiment twenty years, General Powell died in the summer of 1814, and was succeeded in the colonelcy by Lieut.-General Moore Disney, from major in the first foot guards.
The victories of the British troops, in the Peninsula and the south of France, having accomplished the reduction of the power of Napoleon Buonaparte, and the restoration of the house of Bourbon to the throne of France, a general peace was proclaimed, the army was reduced, and the second battalion of the Fifteenth was disbanded in October, 1814, on the island of Jersey, whither it had proceeded in June, 1811: its services had been limited to Great Britain and Jersey.
1815
Early in 1815, the men of the late second battalion embarked to join the regiment at the island of St. Christopher; but the transports encountered much severe weather, and were forced into Falmouth harbour, and the soldiers landed. At this period, Buonaparte had violated the treaty of 1814, and regained the throne of France. War immediately followed; and His Royal Highness the Prince Regent directed the second battalion of the Fifteenth regiment to be re-formed; this took place accordingly, and the men who had landed at Falmouth proceeded to Guernsey, where they were joined by the depôt.
The French troops on the islands of Martinique and Guadaloupe evinced a disposition to renounce their allegiance to Louis XVIII., and proclaim Buonaparte, and the former island was taken possession of by British troops in June; at Guadaloupe, the Emperor Napoleon was proclaimed on the 18th of June, a day fatal to his power on the field of Waterloo; and the first battalion of the Fifteenth regiment proceeded from St. Christopher to Barbadoes, from whence it sailed with the expedition against Guadaloupe, under Lieut.-General Sir James Leith. A landing was effected on the island on the 8th of August, and the French troops were speedily forced to surrender prisoners of war.
The regiment proceeded to the Champ de Mars, where it was stationed until the end of September, when it embarked for Barbadoes.
1816
Peace having been restored, and Buonaparte sent in exile to St. Helena, the second battalion of the regiment was disbanded in the island of Guernsey, on the 25th of January, 1816; the men fit for service embarking to join the first battalion at Barbadoes.
On the 15th of April, the regiment marched from garrison at St. Anne's, to quell an insurrection among the negroes in the interior of the island of Barbadoes, where strong detachments remained until June, when the regiment was removed to Martinique.
In August, the French eighty-eighth regiment, or Martinique Legion, arrived to garrison the island, and the Fifteenth, being relieved, proceeded to Grenada, where they landed on the 5th of September, and marched into garrison at Richmond-hill.