All rights reserved
To the Memory
OF
MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES WOLFE
WHO FELL GLORIOUSLY IN THE MOMENT OF VICTORY
ON THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM BEFORE QUEBEC
13TH SEPTEMBER 1759
THIS HISTORY
OF THE REGIMENT RAISED IN HIS HONOUR
BY HIS COMRADE IN ARMS
JOHN HALE
IS PROUDLY AND REVERENTLY INSCRIBED
Preface
This history has been compiled at the request of the Colonel and Officers of the Seventeenth Lancers.
The materials in possession of the Regiment are unfortunately very scanty, being in fact little more than the manuscript of the short, and not very accurate summary drawn up nearly sixty years ago for Cannon’s Historical Records of the British Army. The loss of the regimental papers by shipwreck in 1797 accounts for the absence of all documents previous to that year, as also, I take it, for the neglect to preserve any sufficient records during many subsequent decades. I have therefore been forced to seek information almost exclusively from external sources.
The material for the first three chapters has been gathered in part from original documents preserved in the Record Office,—Minutes of the Board of General Officers, Muster-Rolls, Paysheets, Inspection Returns, Marching Orders, and the like; in part from a mass of old drill-books, printed Standing Orders, and military treatises, French and English, in the British Museum. The most important[· is a smudge?] of these latter are Dalrymple’s Military Essay, Bland’s Military Discipline, and, above all, Hinde’s Discipline of the Light Horse (1778).
For the American War I have relied principally on the original despatches and papers, numerous enough, in the Record Office, Tarleton’s Memoirs, and Stedman’s History of the American War,—the last named being especially valuable for the excellence of its maps and plans. I have also, setting aside minor works, derived much information from the two volumes of the Clinton-Cornwallis Controversy compiled by Mr. B. Stevenson; and from Clinton’s original pamphlets, with manuscript additions in his own hand, which are preserved in the library at Dropmore.
For the campaigns in the West Indies the original despatches in the Record Office have afforded most material, supplemented by a certain number of small pamphlets in the British Museum. The Maroon War is treated with great fulness by Dallas in his History of the Maroons; and there is matter also in Bridges’ Annals of Jamaica, and the works of Bryan Edwards. The original despatches are, however, indispensable to a right understanding of the war. Unfortunately the despatches that relate to St. Domingo are not to be found at the Record Office, so that I have been compelled to fall back on the few that are published in the London Gazette. Nor could I find any documents relating to the return of the Regiment from the West Indies, which has forced me unwillingly to accept the bald statement in Cannon’s records.
The raid on Ostend and the expedition to La Plata have been related mainly from the accounts in the original despatches, and from the reports of the courts-martial on General Whitelocke and Sir Home Popham. There is much interesting information as to South America,—original memoranda by Miranda, Popham, Sir Arthur Wellesley (the Duke of Wellington) and other documents—preserved among the manuscripts at Dropmore.