[[83]] Henry Havelock, writing to his old Captain, then Major-General Smith, Oct. 3, 1840, refers perhaps to the events of this day. [Was it April 2, 1820? See Cope, p. 220.] “I feel that it is time I ought to be trying to ascend the ladder, if ever, for as the Battle of Glasgow Green was fought in 1820, I fear I must now be not very far from forty-six.” It is perhaps not the least of Harry Smith’s services to his country that he incited his subaltern, Henry Havelock, to make a serious study of the science of his profession. Havelock writes to him Sept. 5, 1840, as his “master,” and writes of him on Oct. 2, 1847 (after his appointment to the Governorship of the Cape): “When I was a boy, he was one of the few people that ever took the trouble to teach me anything; and while all the rest around me would have persuaded me that English soldiering consisted in blackening and whitening belts with patent varnish and pipe-clay, and getting every kind of mercenary manœuvre, he pointed my mind to the nobler part of our glorious profession. As a public man I shall ever acknowledge his merits. He is an excellent soldier—one of the few now extant among us who have set themselves to comprehend the higher portions of the art. He has a natural talent for war, and it has been improved by the constant reflection of years, and much experience. There is no species of business which Harry Smith’s mental tact will not enable him to grasp.”—Marshman’s Memoirs of Sir H. Havelock (1867), pp. 66, 165.
[[84]] “Peterloo,” 16 August, 1819. It is amusing to contrast the soldierly reference to an “affair of Yeomanry,” with Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy, called forth by the same occurrence.
[[85]] “In 1819 and onwards for a few years, when the country was supposed to be in danger from a rising of the “Radicals,” and there was certainly a good deal of disaffection, Glasgow was the centre of the agitation. In these circumstances it was resolved to re-embody the “Glasgow Volunteer Sharpshooters,” a Corps which in 1808 had made way for the “Local Militia.” This was accordingly done, the senior surviving officer of the old corps, the well known Samuel Hunter, of the “Glasgow Herald,” being appointed Lieut.-Colonel Commandant, and Robert Douglas Alston, the Major. Colonel Hunter retired in 1822, and Major Alston became Colonel.
Colonel Alston was a capital officer, and the regiment, in appearance, discipline and drill, a very fine one. Some of the older citizens of Glasgow must still remember the grand reviews on the green, in which the Sharpshooters and Regulars took part under the command of Colonel Smith, afterwards Sir H. Smith, the hero of Aliwal.”—The Old Country Houses of the Old Glasgow Gentry, 2nd edit., p. 6.
[[86]] “By an order dated ‘Horse Guards, Feb. 16, 1816,’ the 95th was removed from the regiments of the line, and styled The Rifle Brigade.”—Cope, p. 214.
[[87]] He was now admitted to the Freedom of the City of Glasgow.
[[88]] Then the seat of Archibald Speirs, Esq. His family consisted of five sons and nine daughters.—The Old Country Houses of the Old Glasgow Gentry, 2nd edit. pp. 95, 96.
[[89]] I supply this name from Cope, p. 226.
[[90]] “Colonel Norcott feels himself bound by every principle of public and private duty to express to Lieutenant-Colonel Smith and the officers and battalion at large his most sincere and deep regret for the loss of an officer who has served for twenty-two years with such indefatigable zeal, distinguished bravery, and merit, and now retires from its active duties on promotion and an appointment on the staff in Jamaica, but to resume in that situation the same persevering devotion to his profession, his king, and country.
“The Colonel knows how truly every officer in the Brigade participates his feelings and sentiments, and is assured of the lively and warm wishes of every non-commissioned officer and soldier for the welfare of one who, with every attribute of as good and as gallant an officer as ever lived, invariably united the most kind and peculiar interest for the comfort and happiness of the soldier.