“Courage! Nothing e’er withstood
Freemen fighting for their good;
Armed with all their fathers’ fame,
They will win and wear a name
That shall go to endless glory,
Like the gods of old Greek story;
Raised to heaven and heavenly worth,
For the good they gave to earth.”
1787–1862—INDIA—CAPE OF GOOD HOPE—INDIAN MUTINY.
In General Stuart’s admirable and interesting annals of the Highland
Regiments, the brief record of the Seventy-fifth Highlanders is
introduced by a series of wholesome counsels as to military
administration, gathered from his own large experience and wide field of
diligent inquiry, from which we shall quote a few extracts, as being
useful and helpful to our history. It seems that this regiment, raised
by Colonel Robert Abercromby in 1787 from among his tenantry around
Stirling, and the veterans who, in earlier life, had served under him in
the army as a light brigade, had been subjected to an unusually strict
system of discipline, which had operated prejudicially upon the corps.
The system adopted “was formed on the old Prussian model; fear was the
great principle of action; consequently, it became the first object of
the soldiers to escape detection, more than to avoid crimes.” This
system, when enforced, “was carried into effect by one of the captains
who commanded in the absence of the field-officers. He was an able and
intelligent officer; but he had been educated in a school in which he
had imbibed ideas of correctness which required no small strength of
mind to enforce, and which, when enforced with severity, tended to break
the spirit of the soldiers to a degree which no perfection in movement
can ever compensate. When applied to the British soldier in particular,
this system has frequently frustrated its own purpose.”
Brotherly-kindness and charity—patience and forbearance—are virtues
which should not be banished, but rather be exercised, as thoroughly
consistent with the best military institutions. A considerate attention
to the wants, nay, the very weaknesses of the soldier, is likely to
accomplish more for good discipline than the stern frigidity of mere
military despotism. It was in the camp that the iron will of Napoleon,
unbending, achieved a charmed omnipotence over his soldiers, and by a
single simple, pithy sentence fired them with that ardour and devotion
which made Europe tremble beneath the tread of his invincible legions.
The charm was only broken when the vastness of his dominion had
scattered the old soldiers of the empire, and the feeble conscript
failed to sustain the veteran remnant of “The Guard,” the more
especially at a time when disasters, quickly crowding upon his arms, and
bereft of the invincibility which had hitherto been inseparable to his
presence, no power remained to animate the soul of the recruit, rudely
torn from his home and pressed into the fatal vortex of the dying army.
The marvellous sway of this great captain over the hearts as well as the
wills of his soldiers teaches many useful lessons, and illustrates what
General Stuart so well observes:—“When a soldier’s honour is in such
little consideration that disgraceful punishments are applied to
trifling faults, it will soon be thought not worth preserving.” We must
have a degree of faith equally in the honour as well as the loyalty of
our soldiers, to help them to a cheerful and not a Russian stolidness in
the discharge of duty. In the case of the Seventy-fifth “the necessity
of this severe discipline was not proved by the results, when the
regiment passed under the command of another officer. The system was
then softened and relaxed, and much of the necessity of punishment
ceased; the men became more quiet and regular, and in every respect
better soldiers. A soldier sees his rights respected, and while he
performs his duty, he is certain of being well treated, well fed, well
clothed, and regularly paid; he is, consequently, contented in his mind
and moral in his habits.”
At length released from the terrors under which, for eighteen months,
the corps had been trained, it embarked for India, where, with other
King’s regiments, chiefly Highland, and the British native troops, it
was present with great credit at the several attacks upon Seringapatam,
which, in 1799, terminated in the capture of that capital. Subsequently
the Seventy-fifth was engaged with the army under Lord Lake in the
campaigns of Upper India. It was one of the five British regiments
which, in 1805, were so disastrously repulsed in an attempt upon the
strong fortress of Bhurtpore. Returning to England in 1806, like the
Seventy-third, the regiment was shortly thereafter shorn of its dignity
as a Highland corps, not a hundred Highlanders remaining in its ranks.
We cannot but lament the circumstances which have bereaved us of an
interest in so many regiments once representatives of our Old Highland
Brigade. Believing our “Scottish Rights Association” to sympathise with
us in these regrets, and believing it to be composed of men truly in
earnest, we commend, to their most serious consideration—not merely as a
theme for eloquent disquisition, but as a field for action—the revival
and preservation, in their original integrity, of the old Scottish and
Highland regiments. By suggesting some better mode of recruiting and
stirring up our countrymen to rally round the national colours of those
regiments, which still in name belong to us, they may be prevented from
still farther degenerating, and sharing a similar fate as those who have
already been lopped from the parent stem—lost to our nationality, lost
because of our own apathy, lost in the great sea of British valour. A
very interesting cotemporary work, giving “An Account of the Scottish
Regiments,” published by Mr Nimmo of Edinburgh, and compiled by an
official well versant in these matters, is now before us, and shows how
the tide of professed improvement, encroaching in this utilitarian age,
is likely soon to obliterate the ancient landmarks. Wave after wave of
civilisation has broken upon the shore of privilege and custom, hallowed
by a venerable age, and, by assimilation, would sweep away the
time-honoured characteristics which distinguish our Scottish soldiers
and people.
[Illustration:
ASSAULT
of
DELHI.
14^{th}. September 1857.
]
The Seventy-fifth regiment served with distinction at the Cape of Good
Hope during the Kaffir War of 1835, which threatened to wrest that
valuable colony from us. It is also distinguished for its heroic efforts
before Delhi during the Indian Mutiny, where Lieutenant Wadeson and
Private Patrick Green won the Victoria Cross.[B] With the Royal Tiger
emblazoned upon its colours—a distinction gained on the same sultry
plains for previous service in India, conferred in July, 1807—it
increased its merited reputation by driving the enemy before it, at the
point of the bayonet, and effecting the capture of all his guns. The
conduct of the little army which achieved the fall of Delhi is thus
eulogised by the Governor-General:—“Before a single soldier, of the many
thousands who are hastening from England to uphold the supremacy of the
British power, has set foot on these shores, the rebel force, where it
was strongest and most united, and where it had the command of unbounded
military appliances, has been destroyed or scattered by an army
collected within the limits of the North-western Provinces and the
Punjab alone.
Footnote B:
For these and many other details, the Author is indebted to the
“_Medals of the British Army_,” by Mr Carter, who has therein
endeavoured to individualise the several regiments, and to show the
particular deeds, not only of the corps, but also of the officers and
men.
“The work has been done before the support of those battalions, which
have been collected in Bengal from the forces of the Queen in China, and
in Her Majesty’s eastern colonies, could reach Major-General Wilson’s
army; and it is by the courage and endurance of that gallant army alone;
by the skill, sound judgment, and steady resolution of its brave
commander; and by the aid of some native chiefs, true to their
allegiance, that, under the blessing of God, the head of rebellion has
been crushed, and the cause of loyalty, humanity, and rightful authority
vindicated.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
LORD LYNEDOCH.
THE NINETIETH, OR “PERTHSHIRE VOLUNTEERS.”
]
THE NINETIETH FOOT;
OR,
PERTHSHIRE VOLUNTEERS.
----------