“Farewell! ye dear partners of peril, farewell!
Tho’ buried ye lie in one wide bloody grave,
Your deeds shall ennoble the place where ye fell,
And your names be enroll’d with the sons of the brave.”
1691–1862—THE NETHERLANDS—REBELLION,
1715—AMERICA—EGYPT—CORUNNA—WALCHEREN—INDIA—CHINA—CANADA.
In 1691 the regiment joined the British army then serving in Flanders
against the French, and, by its steady valour, fully maintained its
character at the battle of Steenkirk and the siege of Namur. So highly
did the King appreciate its worth, that, when peace induced the
Government to disband many regiments, he retained the Cameronians in his
own pay, on the establishment of the Dutch Estates.
The arrogant pretensions of the House of Bourbon to the vacant throne of
Spain, in opposition to the claims of the House of Hapsburg, re-kindled
the flames of war, and bade France and Austria, as the principals,
seconded by Bavaria and Britain, engage in mortal combat. Of the British
army sent to Holland in consequence, the Twenty-sixth formed a part. In
1703, brigaded with the Tenth, the Sixteenth, the Twenty-first, and the
second battalion of the First Royal Scots, it served with great
distinction in the army of Marlborough at Donawerth, and specially at
the battle of Blenheim, where, suffering severely, it had to lament the
loss of nineteen officers. At the battle of Ramilies, in 1706, the
regiment, after being much exposed throughout the fight, was engaged in
the pursuit of the beaten foe until midnight. It further shared the
sanguinary glories of Malplaquet ere the war was terminated by the peace
of Utrecht in 1713. Soon after its return home, the infatuation of the
Jacobites, whose licentious habits could not brook to be bridled by the
austere yet healthier _morale_ which presided in the Protestant Court of
the House of Hanover—longing for the restoration of that of Stuart as
likely to afford freer scope for the indulgence of their own evil
appetites—organised a conspiracy, which brought forth the rebellion of
1715. The Earl of Mar, an imbecile chief and ungrateful minion of the
Court, essayed to be its leader in Scotland, whilst Sir John Foster and
other cavaliers vainly strove simultaneously to arouse the malignant
Jacobitism which slumbered in the northern counties of England. To meet
the few who had dared to challenge the existing sovereignty, and under
Foster were advancing southward through Lancashire in hopes of being
reinforced by other malcontents, a body of royal troops was hastily
collected, chiefly cavalry—the Twenty-sixth being the only infantry
regiment. Without order, a distinct plan of action, or any definite
understanding as to a leader, the enemy, who had taken possession of,
and proposed to hold Preston against the assault of the Royalist army,
was easily broken, dispersed, and their cause utterly ruined. During
this unfortunate rebellion, which occasioned the effusion of much blood,
Colonel Blackader—who had accompanied the Twenty-sixth in its
continental campaigns, where he was ever distinguished among “the
bravest of the brave,” and whose ably-written records have bequeathed to
our day much that is valuable in the thread of Scottish military
history, and interesting in the annals of the Cameronian regiment—at
this period commanded the Glasgow Volunteers. The rebellion being
suppressed, the regiment was placed upon the Irish establishment,
garrisoning various posts in the emerald isle until the year 1727, when
it was removed to reinforce the troops which then defended the important
fortress of Gibraltar, baffling the most stupendous efforts of the
Spaniards to reduce it. Eleven years later it was sent to Minorca, and
thence returned home in 1754. This long absence on foreign service was
succeeded by an interval of quietude at home, so far at least as the
service of our Cameronians was concerned. In 1775, the unhappy conflict
began which bereft us of a valuable colony, and severed us from those
who ought to have been one with us as brethren. Like the Northern States
of America _now_, so we _then_, in the pride of our own self-righteous
will which had been challenged, supposed to enforce legislation by the
sword. Hence a British army, including the Twenty-sixth, was sent out to
America. Although at first the progress of our arms was graced with many
successes, still the end proved most disastrous. The Colonists, sorely
schooled in adversity, learned, through many defeats, how to conquer,
the more so when the shining abilities of Washington appearing, directed
their native valour and commanded their confidence as well as their
obedience. Shortly after the capture of St John’s, a detachment of the
regiment having been embarked in a vessel for secret service, the
expedition, discovered by the enemy, was pursued and captured. When
escape was seen to be impossible, and resistance hopeless, to prevent
the colours falling into the hands of the foe, they were wound round a
cannon shot and sunk in the river; and thus, however severe the
dispensation which befel themselves in being made prisoners of war, the
regiment was spared the aggravated pain of seeing the colours it had
followed to so many glorious successes—the epitome of a soldier’s
honour—becoming now, in the hands of the enemy, the record of its
present misfortune. Subsequently the regiment was engaged with the army,
under Lieut.-General Sir Henry Clinton, during the campaigns of 1777–78.
Returning home from Halifax, in 1800, the transport, containing one
company of the regiment, under command of Captain Campbell, was captured
by the French privateer “Grande Decidèe.” With the British army under
Sir Ralph Abercromby—which achieved the deliverance of Egypt—the
Cameronians won a title by distinguished service, to include “Egypt”
among the records of its bravery. Meanwhile, the necessities of the
state were such that, the Government resolving to strengthen the army, a
second battalion was raised and grafted upon the good old stock of the
Twenty-sixth. In these times of war little rest could be expected. To
the brave, the patriot, it was peculiarly a time of action, not mere
idle alarm. Our country rejoiced in the security which was ensured by an
army, of which our Cameronians were so honoured a representative. Our
sovereigns benignantly smiled upon and proudly felt themselves happy
when they regarded the ranks of these our gallant defenders, nor feared
invasion so long as they possessed the allegiance of such soldiers.
Grieving that so large a kingdom as that of Spain should have fallen a
prey to the rapacious perfidy of Napoleon, and sympathising with the
patriotic efforts which a spirited people were then putting forth to be
free, our Government had recognised in that peninsula, with its
extensive sea-board, a fair theatre for action, and as the result
proved, a vulnerable point where Europe might strike a fatal blow at the
absorbing dominion of France. Following up these ideas, and in answer to
the earnest petitions for help from the people themselves, who gathered
together into patriotic bands, yet dared to struggle against the tyranny
which enslaved and ruined all who owned its supremacy, our Government,
in 1808, sent out a British army under Sir John Moore, which,
co-operating with the natives and the British army of Portugal, it was
vainly hoped should expel the enemy. The Twenty-sixth regiment, included
in this expedition, was doomed to share its cruel disappointments, yet
earn a title to the glory which must ever rest upon the memory of the
soldiers of Corunna. With the native daring of his race, Sir John Moore
advanced with 25,000 men into the very heart of Spain, and only
retreated when the expected aid from the Spaniards had been dissipated
by their defeat and ruin, and when Napoleon in person, at the head of an
army of 300,000 men, threatened to overwhelm his little phalanx of
British. Then, but not till then, he undertook that masterly retreat
which achieved the salvation of his brave troops, and in the end loaded
himself with honour, as closing a life of worth, he won the laurel
crown, and
“Like a soldier fell”
in the arms of victory. Lieut.-General Hope thus fitly records the
irreparable loss sustained in the death of Sir John Moore:—
“I need not expatiate on the loss which the army and his country have
sustained by the death of Sir John Moore. His fall has deprived me of a
valuable friend, to whom long experience of his worth had sincerely
attached me. But it is chiefly on public grounds that I must lament the
blow. It will be the conversation of every one who loved or respected
his manly character, that after conducting the army through an arduous
retreat with consummate firmness, he has terminated a career of
distinguished honour, by a death that has given the enemy additional
reason to respect the name of a British soldier. Like the immortal
Wolfe, he is snatched from his country at an early period of a life
spent in her service; like Wolfe, his last moments were gilded by the
prospect of success, and cheered by the acclamation of victory; like
Wolfe, also, his memory will for ever remain sacred in that country
which he sincerely loved, and which he had so faithfully served.”
The brunt of the action fell upon the Fourth, the Forty-second, the
Fiftieth, the Eighty-first regiments, a portion of the brigade of the
Guards, and the Twenty-sixth regiment. We are left to regret that the
Twenty-sixth had not afterwards an opportunity to avenge the death of
its commander upon the French—not again being seriously engaged in the
desolating wars of the time, which deluged the Continent with blood ere
a lasting peace had been attained by the triumph of Waterloo. This blank
in the active history of the regiment may be accounted for from the fact
that, after its return to England, serving with the army in the
Walcheren expedition, it suffered so severely in that unfortunate
campaign, that only ninety effective men returned to represent it.
Nevertheless, in 1811, recruited, it was embarked for Portugal, and in
the following year removed to Gibraltar, where the fatigues of military
duty pressed so severely upon the raw lads who then constituted the
regiment, that sickness appearing, fated many of those brave youth, who
feared not man, to faint and fail in the presence of this unseen and
unrelenting foe.
On the return of peace the second battalion was reduced. In 1826 the
regiment was sent to India, where it served successively in the
presidencies of Madras and Bengal.
[Illustration: MARQUIS OF DALHOUSIE, LATE COLONEL OF THE 26th
CAMERONIANS.]
If the sword, the pestilence, or the famine should slay each their
thousands, the vice of intemperance, the crying iniquity of our land,
has slain its tens of thousands. The throne, the senate, the pulpit, and
the press, alike deplore its ravages; and although differing as to the
remedy to be applied, professedly all declare a crusade against this
social hydra. Exalted, not alone by our own might, or our own goodness,
but by the blessing of God resting upon these, Britain may well be
regarded as the lighthouse, divinely lighted, shedding abroad upon the
tumultuous waste of sin and ignorance around the saving light of truth
and righteousness. Strange inconsistency! notwithstanding[*N?] all this,
our merchants sacrifice honour at the shrine of gold, and amass wealth
by becoming the moral degenerators of others who have the sublime
virtue—which we lack—to expel by enactment the drug which would ruin, by
the passion it excites, an intellectual nation. In defiance of these
enactments, and despite our fair professions, we regret to think Britain
should afford countenance to the opium traffic, and lend the might of
her arms to maintain it, although involving a breach of the law of
China, and inflicting upon the Chinese a moral wrong. Happy are we to
know that there were not a few amongst us who had the courage to
repudiate the action of Government in this matter, and at length
awakening our people to the iniquity, so impressed our rulers as to
induce a better policy. But for the supreme vanity and duplicity of the
Chinese, war might have been averted. Their obnoxious impudence, and the
insults they strove to heap upon us, necessitated the vindication of our
honour, and occasioned the landing of a British force to chastise their
folly and protect British property. Accordingly, in 1840, the
Twenty-sixth, with the Eighteenth and Forty-ninth regiments, and other
Indian troops, embarked from Madras, and, arriving in China,
accomplished a landing on the island of Chusan. Excepting in some few
cases where the Chinese did behave themselves like men in the defence of
their country, our soldiers victoriously marched upon the cities of
Shanghae and Chin-Keang-foo, which fell an easy triumph to their daring.
The campaigns afford little to interest us in their record: we are,
therefore, content to say the arduous services of our troops were
rewarded, and, with the Eighteenth, Forty-ninth, Fifty-fifth, and
Ninety-eighth regiments, our Cameronians won the distinction of the
“Dragon.” Returning to Calcutta in 1843, the Twenty-sixth proceeded
thence to England, and in 1850 garrisoned Gibraltar. In 1853 the
regiment embarked for Canada, and was stationed at Montreal, afterwards,
re-embarking, removed to Bermuda, whence, in 1859, it once more returned
to the beloved shores of our native land. Restored to Scotland in 1861,
garrisoning Edinburgh Castle, the regiment was welcomed amongst us with
every expression of the highest veneration and heartfelt interest as the
representative of the Cameronians, whose prompt loyalty and patriotism,
more than a hundred and seventy years ago, wrested that same castle from
the dominion of the Stuart, and helped to give that liberty of faith
which we now so abundantly enjoy.
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