The regiment left Port Louis on the 1st of March, for Flacq, and in July to Mahebourg, where it received the colours of the late second battalion. It was employed in patrolling and other duties for the suppression of the slave trade.
1818
After commanding the regiment twenty-one years, General the Honorable Chapple Norton died; and was succeeded in the colonelcy by Lieut.-General Sir John Murray, Baronet, from the third West India Regiment, by commission dated the 31st of March, 1818.
1819
In July, 1819, the regiment returned to Port Louis, where it was inspected by Major-General Darling, who stated in orders dated the 16th of August,—“The inspection has afforded the Major-General much real satisfaction. A finer body of men than compose this regiment is perhaps nowhere to be seen; they are clean and soldier-like in appearance, well appointed, and in no respect deficient: in short, the care and attention of Lieut.-Colonel Barclay, and of the officers, and the good disposition of the men, are evident, and could alone have led to the state in which the Fifty-sixth Regiment now is.”
1820
1826
The regiment was stationed successively at Port Louis and Mahebourg until 1826, when, after upwards of twenty years’ service abroad, it embarked at Port Louis for England, on which occasion the governor stated in general orders, dated the 27th March,—“If circumstances should again call for his Excellency’s services in the field, he will feel happy in having the Fifty-sixth Regiment placed under his orders, as experience has fully proved to him, that a corps distinguished for good conduct in quarters, is always to be the most depended upon in the presence of the enemy.”
After landing at Portsmouth in June, the regiment marched to Cumberland Fort; in September it embarked at Portsmouth for Hull, where it joined the depôt companies.
1827
In January, 1827, the regiment quitted Hull for Manchester, and in October it marched to Liverpool, where it embarked for Dublin.