Fred Wilmot; and fatality it seemed indeed, that they should by
chance have chosen the same hour and the same pathway, amid the many
that diverged from the breathless cantonments. He sprang from his
horse, and grasping the bridle with one hand, presented the other to
her.
"Mrs. Thorne--Clare!" said he, in a broken voice, and as he uttered
her name there came into his face a light, an almost divine
tenderness, such as she had never seen in it, even in their sweet
past time--the light of love, the joy of a great passion.
"I _am_ Mrs. Thorne, and we must remember that now, Fred," said she;
but without drawing back her hand. None was near but Chuttur Sing,
who certainly thought he would not have liked to have seen _his_ wife
_tête-à-tête_ with the _sahib-logue_, in that solitary place, for to
the Bengalees the ease of European society is an enigma they fail to
understand.
"Till I saw you yesterday, I knew not in what part of India you
were," said Wilmot, with his gaze fixed eagerly upon her now pallid
face, "and now they tell me that you are the wife of that man--our
chaplain, a morose and gloomy fellow----"
"My husband, Mr. Wilmot," said Clare, now withdrawing her hand, and
shortening her gathered reins.
"_Mr._ Wilmot!" he exclaimed, almost reproachfully.
"My husband!" she repeated, with sorrowful emphasis.
"I beg your pardon, Clare. I am not likely to forget the fact," said
he, with deep dejection; "but changed though the relations--broken
the tie--between us, may I not be still your friend? I--I," he
continued, in a voice so pathetic that her soul was moved, "I who was
once so much dearer than any friend could be?"
"We must forget all that--friends? No, it is impossible! Better
not--better not--oh, what fatality sent you here!" she added,
restraining with difficulty her tears, and aware that the black-beady
eyes of Chuttur Sing were upon her--Chuttur Sing of the spindle legs
and huge red turban.
"You have not forgotten the past, then, Clare?"
"No--but I have sought to love my husband as a wife should."
"Sought?" he asked, inquiringly.
"Well--I have striven."
"But oh, Clare, we can neither love nor forget at will," said he.
"May I come to visit you?"
"No--decidedly no!"
"Why, Clare?"
"My husband!" she replied, firmly enough.
"He knows nothing of our past--he never heard of me. Think how dear
we were to each other, Clare--how much we have to remember."
"All the more reason to study the art of forgetting," replied Clare,
whose hot tears were falling fast now, "and to show the necessity for
your not coming near our bungalow."
"But if all our fellows, from the colonel down to the youngest sub,
leave their cards for you and Mr. Thorne, save me, what will he
think?"
"I cannot say," sighed Clare, wearily.
"I must come, then, to avoid remark. May I?"
"If you must, you may."
"Thanks, Clare--thanks; may I escort you home?"
"No--oh no--let us return separate," said she, nervously, and they
parted, she urging her horse at a hand-gallop back to the arid plain,
where the lines of Mirzapatam were now quivering, and to all
appearance vibrating, in the hot rays of the uprisen sun.
So when Fred Wilmot called that evening at the Rev. Mr. Thorne's
bungalow, he was cordially received by that gentleman, and by his
wife politely, as a--stranger! Clad in a thin dress, through which
her delicate arms and the contour of her bosom were apparent, she was
reclining in a long-armed Indian cane chair, with all her dark-brown
hair cast loose over her back and shoulders, just as her ayah had
left it for coolness; and very charming and girlish she looked,
especially when her colour heightened. The fragrant odour of the
recently wetted _tatties_, or window-screens, pervaded a large
uncarpeted drawing-room. An hour and more was passed in pleasant
conversation. No reference whatever _could_ be made to the past, so
from that hour each of those _two_ felt that the game of duplicity
was beginning. The piano--which had its feet immersed in saucers of
water to save it from creeping insects--was more than once resorted
to; and Mr. Thorne was surprised to find how many airs and duets his
wife and the new comer knew in common. He could little dream how
often they had practised them _together_, in that sweet Kentish
village so long ago, it seemed now. That night Fred Wilmot slept
little. He had more than the mosquitos to keep him awake, while in
the verandah without the _wallah_ pulled drowsily at the cord of the
punkah.
"Innocent, pure and artless as ever--poor Clare--poor darling!"
thought he; "oh, what avail my money and position now--now that she
is that sombre fellow's wife--yet all men speak well of him here.
What are her dark eyes, her rich hair, her sweet English beauty to me
now!"
CHAPTER III.
Clare Thorne's life had been so dull, that one can scarcely wonder if
she found the advent of Wilmot at the cantonment, and his visits,
most welcome, though they filled her with a vague alarm--an undefined
fear of violating trust and propriety. We have said that the Thornes
had few visitors; this arose from the distaste the chaplain had of
society and the general gravity of his demeanour; but Fred Wilmot
cared little for all that; it was not him he came to see.
No thought of evil was in the innocent heart of Clare; nor was there
in the heart of Wilmot, to do him justice, though he abandoned
himself to the perilous charm of seeking the society of the girl who
once loved him so well--from whom he had been separated, and who felt
with him in common "that _death_ in life, the days that are no more."
A little time the regiment would be moving further up country, and
all would then be at an end. Meanwhile both were playing with edged
tools!
Clare and her husband could not understand each other. His nature,
which with all his apparent gloom was a passionate one, had no outlet
save his great love for her, and his greater for religion. For him
the dull routine of his daily life was enough; but Clare longed, like
the girl she was, for amusement, excitement, display, society, and
yet in gay British India she was condemned by this good and amiable,
but fervid ascetic, to lead a life which, to one of her temperament,
was one of unspeakable martyrdom.
She might, perhaps, under better auspices, have forgotten her first
love in time, and learned to like, as much as she respected, her
husband, had he only made some allowance for her weakness and
foibles, and not judged her so hardly and set before her a standard
of excellence which she was unable to attain.
But the crisis of her life was coming fast to Clare Thorne.
Her husband began to dislike the frequent visits and the somewhat
brotherly familiarity of Wilmot with his wife; there was something in
it undefinable. It was the reverse of flirtation, for his demeanour
was grave, respectful and sympathetic, and in these elements the
danger seemed to lie. Clare's bearing and tone were irreproachable;
yet a suspicion, at which he blushed, was roused in the honest heart
of Cecil Thorne.
"If it should be!" he muttered, with his firm white teeth clenched.
Then he would watch and dissemble; but even that seemed a stain on
his own rectitude. Thus one day he said, abruptly:
"Clare, that officer--Mr. Wilmot, has been here again. I see his
music strewed all over the piano."
"Well, Cecil?"
"I forbid his visits--that is all!"
"Forbid his visits!" repeated Clare, startled, crushed, and blushing
crimson; "then you must tell him so yourself."
"Why, madam?"
"He is an old friend of my family, and--and----"
"You, and he too, never said a word of this before!"
"I thought you knew it," faltered Clare, who found that she had made
a sad mistake.
"Old friend--he is about five-and-twenty only. What brought him here
to-day?"
"To give us these tickets for the garrison ball."
"Ball--you know I never go to balls."
"But may I?"
"No--you may _not_!"
Poor Clare repined bitterly and wept profusely, but not for the first
time in her life, and her husband, who knew that all Mirzapatam was
on tip-toe about the forbidden ball, eyed her with a lowering
expression. But he knew that he must exert his authority, or
scandals might ensue, and he felt that Wilmot must cross his
threshold no more. Indeed, the ball-tickets were returned to him,
and when next he visited the abode of Mr. Thorne, that gentleman, who
never did things by halves, and who deemed he had a duty to perform
to religion, to himself, and society, gave the young officer a pretty
distinct hint that his visits could be dispensed with, and Fred
retired, his heart swollen with rage, mortification, and sorrow.
Shame and anger mingled with the sorrow of Clare. How tiresome of
him to go on this way to her in their present abode, of all places in
the world! Scandal--the thing he dreaded--would be sure to come of
it. A great gloom now fell upon Clare, and the ball--girl-like--the
forbidden ball rankled in her heart; Thorne supposed this gloom was
caused by the banishment of Wilmot only; but that had merely
something to do with it.
Was she, that he loved and trusted, wronging him cruelly in her
heart? Was he nursing a traitress in his bosom? Sooth to say, the
hitherto placid and plodding Cecil Thorne began to think, and
sometimes say, all manner of desperate things to his scared and
shrinking little wife, whose changed manner he attributed to Wilmot's
influence, and he cursed the hour that ever the new regiment marched
into Mirzapatam.
Loving his wife as he did, he would rather have seen her lying in her
grave and himself reading the burial service over her, than living as
a disgraced woman. Then, if there was great sorrow, there would be
no shame, and she would be gone where never more dishonour could
menace, or shame assail her.
"Clare, child," said he, "my little wife is my all to me. The soul
that sinneth shall pay the wages of sin."
"But I have not sinned!" she exclaimed, passionately.
"As yet," said he, pointedly and coldly; "thank Heaven, my eyes were
opened in time! Think of what would be my misery and our conjoint
dishonour--I, a priest of the Church! Think of how our once happy
home might have been desecrated and the bitterness of a love that is
slighted!"
"You make too much or too little of all this!"
"I do not!"
"Oh, Cecil--Cecil--my dear husband--I have no forgiveness to ask of
you; I only seek your pity."
"I _do_ pity you," he replied, grimly, and thought the while,
"She can speak to me thus--with that fellow's kisses fresh upon her
lips!" For he had undefined suspicions that Wilmot saw her yet, from
time to time.
"How tiresome--how absurd is this jealousy!" thought Clare; yet her
own conscience told her it was neither absurd nor mistaken _now_; and
all this passed on the night of the forbidden ball!
CHAPTER IV.
Mr. Thorne's suspicions were right; they _had_ been meeting, without
design at first; ample though the cantonment, how could it be
otherwise?
"Dear, good Fred," she said, one day, as they met among the baubool
trees near an old ruined tomb--the tomb of Abu Mirza--"I want you to
help me--you alone can do so."
"In what way?" he asked, looking at her in his old tender manner.
"To be good and proper--to keep in the straight path of propriety,
and avoid all chance of scandal."
"You are quoting some sermon of Thorne's now."
"I am not--I mean it; we must speak no more; _will_ you help me?"
"Yes," said he, in a choking voice; "yes--if I can," and his mode of
beginning was pressing her to his heart, and covering her face with
kisses.
From this it may be inferred that the threads of the old, old story
had become strong as cables again! She had been rent from Wilmot by
Fate, and revenge at Fate made him selfish to her and pitiless to
all, especially to her husband, who had, by forbidding his visits, at
once given their intimacy a colouring it did not then possess. Now
things were said that they had never said before, and wild schemes of
plainly running away together--where, it mattered not--were more than
openly hinted at by Wilmot. Be it sinful or not, she felt that she
loved him better than her own life; his was the only mind that could
hold dominion over hers; yet it was one infinitely inferior to that
of Cecil Thorne; and his was the only hand whose touch thrilled the
smallest fibres of her frame. She worshipped Wilmot, who, as he
gazed into her eyes, could read there the struggle that was passing
between conscience and passion, and how the latter was certain to
triumph.
"Trust me--trust me," he whispered in her ear.
"I will trust you--I will, Freddy!" she replied, choked in tears.
"My own darling--to be my own at last---and after _all_!"
Clare knew what scandal and gossip were in England; but "gup" in
India was fiercer, deeper, more trumpet-tongued, and already in fancy
she saw every public print teeming with the story of her elopement
and her husband's shame.
"He thinks too much of the other world to care much for this, or me!"
she thought; but in that she wronged Thorne, who loved her dearly and
devotedly, though in a cold and undemonstrative way, while Wilmot was
all passion and energy.
"Oh, the scandal--the scandal we shall give!" said she, wringing her
hands.
"Scandals die!" said he; "the world goes too fast now-a-days for
anything--even for a wonder---to live long; and we shall seek a land
where none shall know our names or the miserable story of our past."
"Oh, Fred!" wailed the girl, "I was brought up by my mother, in the
careful avoidance of all evil, all that was sinful and unholy; and
now I am sinking into an ocean of unholiness in loving you, better
than I love my own soul!"
"Do not thus upbraid yourself, my innocent darling," said he, in a
quiet but passionate tone.
"Innocent? Oh, my God! who will call me innocent, good, or pure
to-morrow? Yet, the life I bear maddens me."
"That life will soon be a thing of the past. I am wealthy now, my
darling; the bar that poverty put between us is removed. I can give
you a home like a palace, in any part of Europe, far, far away from
this breathless India; and once my wife----"
"Oh--Wilmot!"
"My darling---I will give you all the love a human heart can render
you--the dearest of love and a new life."
"But not with that which makes life alone worth having."
He regarded her passionately, anxiously, and entreatingly.
She felt that if she hesitated--deliberated--she would be lost, and
must become, in any land, even though unknown, a social outlaw, a
virtual outcast. All this rushed upon her mind, though she said it
not, and with all its minor details of mortification and bitterness,
as she lay with her face hidden on the breast of Wilmot.
He smiled fondly, yet sadly, down upon her bent head, and clasped her
trembling fingers in his stronger hands, and turning up her white and
desperate little face, he dared, in the excess and blindness of his
passion, to call on heaven to hear that she would never have cause to
regret the step she was about to take.
And so they separated with reluctance, though in haste, aware that
when they met again it would be to part no more!
CHAPTER V.
Fred Wilmot had obtained a year's leave from the general commanding
at Mirzapatam, and had taken all his measures for their mutual flight.
He was to meet her at evening gun-fire, near the old ruined tomb in
the baubool grove, when Aloodeen, his native valet, would bring his
buggy. In this they would proceed to the branch line that joined the
greater line at Allahabad, from whence they could take the great
Peninsular Railway to Calcutta, long before reaching which all traces
of them would be lost!
It was early morning when the scheme was planned; a whole day was to
elapse ere it could be put in operation; yet it seemed to pass with
frightful rapidity to Clare, who felt like one in a dream, or as if
it was some other person, and not herself, who was to meet Wilmot at
the tomb of Abu Mirza.
Her silence, her pre-occupation, her nervousness, more than all, the
whiteness of her little face, could not fail to attract the attention
of her husband who, with unwonted tenderness, bent over her, and,
taking her cheeks between his hands, said,--
"Look up, little woman--why, what is the matter with you?"
She closed her eyes, which dared not meet his earnest, honest, and
searching gaze.
He then took her little hands caressingly in his, and felt, with
alarm, that though the atmosphere without was stifling, they were icy
cold and trembling.
"Is there anything wrong, Clare? What is the matter with you, my
darling little wife?"
Still she was silent, for her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth,
and she could only sigh in her heart secretly.
"Oh, heaven--what am I to do? Avoid the temptation--flee the
sin--yea, even confess all--ere it be too late!"
Then she thought of her husband's frigidity of manner, his intense
sense of morality, religion, purity, and rectitude, and her timid
heart died within her.
"God help us, child," said Cecil Thorne, "I hope that no illness has
seized you."
He thought wildly over the several fever and cholera beds he had been
beside of late, and the strong man felt his soul die within him with
fear, as he saw alternately the wistfulness and wild excitement in
his wife's eyes.
"A doctor must be summoned," he exclaimed; "qui hi--hollo, there,
Chuttur Sing!"
"Oh, no, Cecil, dearest," said she, with something between a sob and
a hysterical laugh; "it is only the heat that affects me--and the
thunder," she added, as a peal went hustling through the sultry air
overhead.
A storm came on; the rain fell in torrents, and Clare, while in the
act of selecting the garments and necessaries she would have to take
with her, and while carefully selecting and putting aside, for some
_other_ and worthier wife, it might be, the few jewels her husband's
moderate means had enabled him to give her (Delhi bracelets of
champac-work, and so forth), actually began to hope that, if the
tempest of falling rain continued, the very flight for which she was
preparing might be arrested, ere it was too late, and thus that her
sore temptation might pass away!
The innocent words, the tender anxiety and trusting goodness of the
man she was about to abandon and deceive, and the knowledge, that in
time to come, there would be an amount of grief, shame, and sorrow
for her, that would be known in its degree but to God and himself,
wrung her heart, and filled her eyes with hot and blinding tears.
But the storm passed; the thunder died away beyond the hills that
look down on the Jumna; the rain cooled the atmosphere, and the arid
soil around the sun-baked cantonment soon absorbed it, to the last
huge, warm drop that had fallen; and Clare knew that her lover would
be truly, tenderly, and inexorably awaiting her at the old tomb, when
the time of their fatal tryst came.
The cantonment ghuries--little gongs that hung near the guard-house
doors--clanged the hours in succession, and in one more Clare knew
that the sun would set. She was alone, for her husband was away,
attending some sick beds; when he returned, she knew that her place
would be vacant, and that she could never look upon his grave,
earnest, and handsome face again. She sunk on her knees beside her
bed, buried her face in her cold hands, and while she shivered in the
agony of her conflicting thoughts, she prayed for strength to avoid
her temptation, or that she might die in her mingled remorse and
yearning love.
But her prayer was unheard: the hour came, and saw her, with a little
travelling bag in her hand, stealing like a culprit from her
husband's home, and taking the most unfrequented path to the tomb of
Abu Mirza, the tiny white marble dome of which was glistening in the
last rays of the sun above the golden bloom of the baubool trees.
The brain of Clare seemed to reel; her temples felt on fire; all
within her soul and around her seemed a mass of chaos, she could
arrange, disentangle nothing; and almost in despair gave up the
attempt to do so; but not the fatal design of meeting her former
lover; for the die was cast!
In the distance she could hear the soldiers' children and some of the
Christianised natives singing in the Mission School; their united
voices came through the open windows on the calm pure air of the
Indian night, and she could hear her husband accompanying them on an
indifferent harmonium, so earnestly and humbly in the service of his
Master, in the hymn he had translated from the _Tembavani_:--
"Whilst Thee, with tongues of splendour,
The orbs of heaven praise,
Whilst groves to Thee their voices,
With tongues of brilliance raise:
Whilst Thee, with tongues of joyance
All gay wood-warblers sing;
Whilst praise to Thee, wood-flowerets,
From tongues of fragrance fling:
And whilst with tongues of clearness,
The water-floods applaud Thee,
With the tongue that Thou hast given,
Shall I not daily laud Thee?"
"Poor Cecil--how unworthy I am of you!" thought she, and tears
started to her eyes afresh as she thought of him and the _morrow_!
Her heart gave a convulsive leap and she stood still for a moment as
the evening gun boomed over the cantonments when the sun set, and
then the darkness fell instantly, as it always does in India where
there is no twilight, and she saw Fred Wilmot instantly approach her,
but from what point she scarcely knew. He was attired in plain
clothes, for travelling evidently, but he was bareheaded, and she
could see that his face looked most startlingly pale, that also pain
and bewilderment were in it, and that he scarcely seemed to see her.
Something in his looks and manner rooted Clare to the spot.
"Fred--Fred--Wilmot!" she cried, in a low voice, but, without
stopping, he gave her one sad glance expressive of pity and love,
sorrow and pain, and passing on towards the tomb, left her
alone--alone and bewildered, while a new sense of great fear that she
could not analyse, caused her to rush towards the house she had so
lately quitted.
At the door she met her husband, full of excitement and agitation.
"You abroad, Clare," he exclaimed, with grave surprise; "have you
then heard what has happened--ah, your white face tells me that you
have?"
"What has happened, Cecil?" she asked, in a low, breathless voice.
"Poor Wilmot--God forgive me if I have wronged him!--has just been
murdered and robbed by his native servant, a Patan scoundrel named
Aloodeen."
"Murdered?"
"Yes---just as the sunset gun was fired."
In a swoon Clare fell at his feet like one who was dead.
He had been stabbed to the heart! Who, or what was it in his
likeness that Clare had seen at the place they were to meet? She was
saved from her great temptation--saved to remain a sorrowing and
innocent wife. She never again saw the face of Wilmot, even in a
dream, though often in the years to come she decked his lonely grave
with flowers.
THE GREAT SEA SERPENT.
From all we have read and heard of a singular sea-monster that has
been seen from time to time in various parts of the ocean, it is
difficult to doubt that some such creature, or creatures rather, may
exist; though the reiterated allegations of "old salts," that they
_do_ exist, may be but a relic of that dark superstition known as
serpent-worship, which once prevailed over a great part of the world,
and which still lingers in India, particularly among the Nagas, and
of which snake-charming is a remnant.
How long this singular worship lingered in Western Europe we may
gather from the "Atlas Geographus," published in 1711, which says,
"there are _still_ remains of this idolatory" in Lithuania, where the
Boors keep adders in their houses, and pay them profound respect
while professing Christianity; and also, that few families in
Samogitia, are without serpents as household gods.
Some years before this time, Sigismund, Baron of Herbestein, tells
us, in his commentaries on Muscovy, that at Troki, eight miles from
Wilna, his host acquainted him, that he had chanced to buy a hive of
bees from one of the serpent-worshippers, whom he persuaded, with
much reluctance, to worship the true God and kill his serpent. A
short time after, in passing that way, he found the poor fellow
miserably tortured and deformed, his face wrinkled and twisted away;
and inquiring the cause, he answered, "That this judgment had come
upon him for killing his god, and that he would have to endure
greater torments if he did not return to his former worship."
In the sacred writings, but more particularly in the 8th chapter of
Jeremiah and the 58th Psalm, are allusions to the taming or keeping
of serpents; and Dr. Thomas Shaw found the same superstition
prevailing in Barbary in 1757 (Travels).
Indian serpent-charming to this day, as we have said, is no doubt a
remnant of that form of worship which spread all over the world, it
may be from some dim tradition of the serpents of Eden and of Aaron's
rod, that we have the Scandinavian _jormagundr_, among the fictions
of the Edda, and to which Scott refers as--
"That sea-snake, tremendous curled,
Whose monstrous circle guards the world."
The serpent and the circle were alike the emblem of eternity, and
Odin was supposed to have at times the power of taking the aspect of
the former; and a remnant of the same superstition is still to be
found in Scotland in the knot-work upon Celtic crosses and Highland
dirk-hilts.
In June, 1721 (as we are told in the "Historical Register" for the
following year, sold by T. Norris, at the _Looking-Glass_ on London
Bridge), there appeared a terrible snake off the coast of Naples, not
far from the Ponte-della-Maddalena, under which the river Sebeto
flows into the sea, and it devoured a fisherman in presence of many
of his friends, who had barely time to effect their escape.
The latter, fearing that the presence of this monster might destroy
their fishery, and anxious to avenge their companion, made several
weapons (harpoons?) of iron, and large hooks, and, putting to sea on
the 6th of June in strong boats, discovered the great fish, and
baited their lines with large pieces of horse-flesh, and ran a strong
rope with a slip from the stem to the stern of a ship.
Rushing furiously at the boat, the snake was caught into the
slip-knot, and ultimately drawn on shore, when, on being measured, it
was found to be "twenty Neapolitan palms long. His mouth was
excessively wide, having three rows of teeth in the form of a saw in
the upper jaw, and but one row in the under. He weighed sixteen
_coutares_, or about four hundred-weight. In the stomach were found
the skull of a man, two legs, part of the backbone and ribs."
These were supposed to have been portions of the unfortunate
fisherman, whom he had devoured some days before. By order of the
Council of Health it was burned, lest it might infect the air.
The writer adds, that Johnson (to whom we shall refer presently)
mentions similar fish--one that weighed eight hundred-weight; another
that weighed four thousand pounds, and in the stomach of which was
found a man, in a complete suit of armour!
It is a curious fact that recent scientific research has revealed the
existence in the sea, at the greatest depths, of most minute and
wonderfully formed organisms, the beauty and rarity of which
necessarily secure our admiration; but instances of animals of
enormous size being met with beyond those already known, are few and
far between. This fact may be accounted for by the circumstance,
that while it is easy to construct instruments for capturing the
smaller creatures living in the deep, it is a very different matter
to entrap and secure an unseen monster, whose very size must endow
him with enormous strength. The whale, so far as we know, is the
largest denizen of the deep. Whether it is possible that it can be
equalled by giants of some other order or race, is the point which
public curiosity is very keen to have settled.
The appearance of great snakes at sea is recorded by more than one
old voyager; but it would seem to have been only of late years that
the idea of their existence has been generally confined to one,
familiar to us all as the "Great sea-serpent."
In _Opuscula Omnia Botanic Thomæ Johnsoni_, 1629, we have an account
of a great serpent captured off Sandwich by two men, who found it
stranded among the shoal water by the sea-shore. It is described as
being fifty feet long, and of a fiery colour. We are also told that
they conveyed the carcase home, and after _eating_ it, stuffed the
skin with hay, to preserve it "as a perpetual remembrance of the
fact."
In David Crantz's "History of Greenland," published in 1766, we have
an extract (illustrated by a drawing) concerning the _kraken_, from
the narrative of a Captain Paul Egede, supposed to be the brother of
a famous Danish missionary of the same name. The kraken, it is
however necessary to remark, is the northern name for a giant
cuttle-fish, the existence of such a monster being now a matter of
scientific fact.
"On the 6th of July, 1734," says this old seaman, "as I was
proceeding on my second voyage to Greenland, in the latitude of the
Cape of Good Hope, a hideous monster was seen to raise its body so
high above the water that its head overtopped our main-sail. It had
a pointed nose, and spouted out water like a whale; instead of fins
it had great broad flaps like wings; its body seemed to be grown over
with shell-work, and its skin was very rugged and uneven; when it
dived into the water again, it threw up its tail, which was like that
of a serpent, and was at least a whole ship's length above the water;
we judged the body to be equal in bulk to our ship, and to be three
or four times as long."
Eric Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, celebrated in his days as a
naturalist, though he never actually saw it or met any one who _had_
seen it, believed implicitly in the great sea-serpent existing
somewhere; and in his writings has a good deal to tell us about its
ways and habits; and it is upon record that Sir Lawrence de Ferry,
commander of the old castle of Bergen, not only saw the monster, but
shot at it on the high seas, wounded it, was pursued by it, in its
pain and fury, so closely that he narrowly escaped with his life.
In 1801 there was cast ashore on the coast of Dorsetshire a snake
twenty-eight feet in length and twenty feet in circumference; but
this has since been alleged to have been a Basking-shark; and the
same has been said of a great snake-like carcaso that was beaten to
pieces by a tempest, and cast ashore on one of the Orkney Isles in
the autumn of 1809, and some fragments of which, the _Scots Magazine_
for that year states, were lodged in the Museum of the Edinburgh
University.
A very distinct description of the sea-serpent occurs in Dr. Hooker's
_Testimony_ respecting it, and communicated to Dr. Brewster's
_Journal of Science_. About half-past six o'clock on a cloudless
evening at sea, the doctor heard suddenly a rushing noise ahead of
the ship, which at first he supposed to be a whale spouting, but soon
found to be a colossal serpent, of which he made a sketch as it
passed the vessel at fifty yards' distance, slowly, neither turning
to the right nor left. "As soon as his head had reached the stern,
he gradually laid it down in a horizontal position with his body, and
floated along like the mast of a vessel. That there was upwards of
sixty feet visible, is shown by the circumstance that the length of
the ship was a hundred and twenty feet, and that at the time his head
was off the stern, the other end had not passed the main-mast....
His motion in the water was meandering, like that of an eel; and the
wake he left behind him, was like that occasioned by a small craft
passing through the water.... The humps on his back resembled in
size and shape those of a dromedary."
Dr. Hooker states further, that the description precisely accorded
with that of a serpent seen five years before by Captain Bennett of
Boston. At a later period, three officers in Her Majesty's
service--namely, Captain Sullivan, Lieutenant Maclachlan, and Ensign
Malcolm of the Rifle Brigade--beheld a similar creature gambolling in
the sea near Halifax; but they asserted that it was at least one
hundred and eighty feet in length, and thicker than the trunk of a
moderately sized tree. Nor must we forget the official account which
was transmitted in 1848 to the Lords of the Admiralty, by Captain
Peter M'Quhae of Her Majesty's ship _Dædalus_, past which, he and his
crew saw the great sea-serpent swimming merrily--a document which
produced, or provoked, a learned paper in the _Westminster Review_;
while Professor Owen asserted that what was seen from the deck of the
_Dædalus_, would be nothing more than a large seal borne rapidly
southward on a floe or iceberg.
Recently, the appearances of the serpent have been amusingly frequent
and clearly detailed. He has been seen in the north seas and the
south seas, and in many places nearer home; in the Frith of Forth,
off Filey Bay and the North Foreland, off Hastings and the Isle of
Arran, the Menai Strait and Prawle Point; and in 1875, a battle
between it and a whale was viewed from the deck of the good ship
_Pauline_ of London, Captain Drevar, when proceeding with a cargo of
coals from Shields to Zanzibar, destined for Her Majesty's ship
_London_. When the _Pauline_ reached the region of the trade-winds
and equatorial currents, she was carried out of her course, and after
a severe storm, found herself off Cape Roque, where several
sperm-whales were seen playing about her. While the crew were
watching them, they suddenly beheld a sight that filled every man on
board with terror. Starting straight from the bosom of the deep, a
gigantic serpent rose and wound itself twice in two mighty coils
round the largest of the whales, which it proceeded to crush in
genuine boa-constrictor fashion. In vain did the hapless whale
struggle, lash the water into foam, and even bellow, for all its
efforts were as nothing against the supernatural powers of its
dreadful adversary, whose strength "may be further imagined," says a
leader in the _Daily Telegraph_, "from the fact that the ribs of the
ill-fated fish were distinctly heard cracking one after the other
with a report like that of a small cannon. Soon the struggles of the
wretched whale grew fainter and fainter; its bellowings ceased, and
the great serpent sank with its prey beneath the surface of the
ocean."
Its total length was estimated at fifty yards, and its aspect was
allowed to be simply "terrific." Twice again it reared its crest
sixty feet out of the water, as if meditating an attack upon the
_Pauline_, which bore away with all her canvas spread. Her crew told
their terrible story. But critics there were who averred that what
they had seen was no serpent at all, but only a bottle-nosed whale
attacked by grampuses!
In a letter to the London prints concerning this affair, we have
another description of our old friend the serpent, as he appeared off
St. David's Head, to John Abes, mate of a merchantman, in 1863. "I
was the first who saw the monster, and shouted out. A
terrible-looking thing it was! Seen at a little distance in the
moonlight, his two eyes appeared about the size of _plates_, and were
very bright and sparkling." All on board thought his length about
ninety feet; but as he curled and twirled rapidly, it was a difficult
matter to determine. Captain Taylor ordered him to be noosed
lasso-fashion with a rope, which John Abes tells us he got on the
bowsprit to throw, but in the attempt threw himself overboard. "The
horror of my feelings at the moment I must leave you to imagine,"
continues this remarkable epistle (which is dated from Totterdown,
Bristol, September 19, 1875). "The brute was then within a few yards
of me, with its monstrous head and wavy body, looking ten times more
terrible than it did on board the brig. I shiver even now when I
think of it. Whether the noise made by throwing the ropes over to
save me scared him, I cannot say; but he went down suddenly, though
not more so than I came up. After a few minutes he appeared some
distance from us, and then we lost him."
When next we hear of the sea-serpent after his adventure off Cape
Roque, he was beheld by the crew of no less a ship than Her Majesty's
yacht the _Osborne_, the captain and officers of which, in June,
1877, forwarded an official report to the Admiralty, containing an
account of the monster's appearance off the coast of Sicily on the
2nd of that month. "The time was five o'clock in the afternoon. The
sea was exceptionally smooth, and the officers were provided with
good telescopes. The monster had a smooth skin, devoid of scales, a
bullet-shaped head, and a face like an alligator. It was of immense
length, and along the back was a ridge of fins about _fifteen_ feet
in length and _six_ feet apart. It moved slowly, and was seen by all
the ship's officers."
This account was further supplemented by a sketch in a well-known
illustrated paper, from the pencil of Lieutenant W. P. Hynes of the
_Osborne_, who, to the above description, adds, that the fins were of
irregular height, and about forty feet in extent, and "as we were
passing through the water at ten and a-half knots, I could only get a
view of it 'end on.'" "It was about fifteen or twenty feet broad at
the shoulders, with flappers or fins that seemed to have a
semi-revolving motion. From the top of the head to the part of the
back where it became immersed, I should consider about fifty feet,
and that seemed about a third of the whole length. All this part was
smooth, resembling a seal."
In the following month, the Scottish prints reported, that when the
Earl of Glasgow's steam-yacht _Valetta_ was cruising off Garroch
Head, on the coast of Bute, with a party of ladies and gentlemen on
board, an enormous fish or serpent, forty feet in length and about
fifteen in diameter, suddenly rose from the sea. Under sail and
steam the _Valetta_ gave chase. A gentleman on board speared it with
a salmon "leister;" on which the serpent dived, and after a time
reappeared with the iron part of the weapon sticking in its back.
The monster scudded along for some minutes, again dived, and was not
seen afterwards. There is little doubt, however, that the animal
which figured in this instance was a very large basking-shark
(_Selache maxima_).
An animal of exactly similar shape and dimensions was reported as
being seen in the subsequent August by twelve persons in
Massachusetts Bay; and soon after on three different occasions in the
same quarter by the crew of a coasting vessel.
In May, 1877, the "sea-serpent" would seem to have shifted his
quarters to the Indian Ocean, which it must be remarked is the
habitat of the true sea-snakes. On the 21st of that month, in
latitude 2° north and longitude 90° 53' east, the monster was alleged
to have been seen by the crew of the barque _Georgina_, bound from
Rangoon to Falmouth. It seemed to be about fifty feet long, "grey
and yellow in colour, and ten or eleven inches thick. It was on view
for about twenty minutes, during which time it crossed the bow, and
ultimately disappeared under the port quarter." A second account of
this affair stated, that "for some days previously the crew had seen
several smaller serpents, of from six to ten feet in length, playing
about the vessel."
Strange as all these stories seem, it is difficult to suppose they
are all quite untrue, for, nautical superstition apart, we have the
ready testimony of various men of education and veracity. That there
is only one serpentine monster in the ocean, is an idea which the
great disparity in the various descriptions would seem to contradict;
and certainly the most astounding aspect presented by this supposed
and most ubiquitous animal, was his form and size when seen by the
officers of the Queen's yacht off the coast of Sicily; though it is
somewhat singular that these gentlemen made no attempt to kill or
capture the mighty fish, or whatever it was they saw.
By way of conclusion to these remarks we may briefly summarise the
chief facts presented by "sea-serpent tales" as they appear under the
light of scientific criticism. There is, it must firstly be
remarked, nothing in the slightest degree improbable in the idea that
an ordinary species of sea-snake, belonging to a well-known group of
reptiles, may undergo a gigantic development and appear as a monster
serpent of the deep. The experience of comparative anatomists is
decidedly in agreement with such an opinion. Largely developed
individuals of almost every species of animals and plants
occasionally occur. Within the past few years new species of
cuttle-fishes--of dimensions compared with which the largest of
hitherto known forms are mere pigmies--have been brought to light.
And if huge cuttle-fishes may thus be developed, why, it may be
asked, may not sea-snakes of ordinary size be elevated, through
extraordinary development, to become veritable "leviathans" of the
deep? That there is a strong reason for belief in the veracity of
sea-serpent tales, is supported by the consideration of the utter
want of any motive for prevarication, and by the very different and
varied accounts given of the monsters seen. That the appearances
cannot always be explained on the supposition that lifeless objects,
such as trees, sea-weed, &c., have been seen, is equally evident from
the detailed nature of many of the accounts of the animals, which
have been inspected from a near distance. And it may also be
remarked that in some cases, in which largely developed sea-snakes
themselves may not have appeared, certain fishes may have represented
the reptilian inhabitants of the ocean. As Dr. Andrew Wilson has
insisted, a giant tape-fish viewed from a distance would personate a
"sea-serpent" in a very successful manner; and there can be no doubt
that tape-fishes have occasionally been described as "sea-serpents."
On the whole, if we admit the probability of giant-developments of
ordinary species of sea-snakes, or the existence (and why not?) of
enormous species of sea-snakes and certain fishes _as yet unknown to
science_, the solution of the sea-serpent problem is not likely to be
any longer a matter of difficulty.*
* Since writing the above, the _Daily News_, of September, 1878,
reported the appearance of the serpent, "twenty metres long and
two-thirds of a metre in diameter," off Aalesund, on the coast of
Norway.
MILITARY "FOLK LORE."
CHAPTER I.
THE RED COAT; A FEW NOTES CONCERNING ITS
ORIGIN AND HISTORY.
"_Red_, of the colour of blood, one of the primitive colours," we are
told by Walker; "red-coat, a name of contempt for a soldier," he adds
unpleasantly below; but Colonel James in his Military Dictionary
renders it more probably, as "the familiar term for a British
soldier."
Colonel Mackinnon (in his "History of the Coldstream Guards") and
other writers have attributed the introduction or adoption of the
British uniform to William III.; but there are sufficient proofs of
its having been common alike to England and to Scotland long before
the revolution in 1688.
That red was originally deemed a warlike colour, though now worn only
by the British and, till the Holstein war, by the Danish troops,
there is abundant evidence.*
* The red of the Danish army was darker than ours. In 1702, their
cavalry, line, and militia, wore iron-grey, with green stockings; but
there were some exceptions. The first named force had buff coats,
and in warm weather rode with hats, their helmets hanging at their
saddle bows. Lobat's dragoons were clad in red, lined with white;
the regiment of Jutland wore white, lined with red, red breeches and
black cravats; and the Queen's own Guards wore fine
scarlet.--_Travels in the Retinue of the English Envoy, in_ 1702.
Bellona, the sister of Mars, is depicted by ancient painters and
described by the poets as being clad in garments stained with blood,
and the planet which bears the name of the warlike god is known by
its ruddy appearance. This hue arises simply from the atmosphere,
and hence the bards of classical antiquity named the planet after the
god of battles. To show that in savage lands some of those old ideas
still prevail, Colonel James Grant in his "Walk Across Africa," with
the gallant and lamented Speke, mentions that his valet Uledi told
him, "that in his native country of Uhiao, the people imagined that
all foreigners eat human flesh, and that cloth was dyed _scarlet_
with human blood."
In heraldry, _gules_ is the vermilion colour in the arms of
commoners; but without elaboration, our present object is to trace
the origin and the gradual adoption of our national uniform, "the old
red rag (as our soldiers call it) that tells of England's glory."
The colour was deemed eminently martial and war-like by the Romans,
among whom the _paludamentum_, the military robe or cloak of a
general, was scarlet, bordered with purple. Juvenal (vol. vi.)
mentions officers clad in a scarlet dress, and according to Livy,
such was also the attire of the lictors who attended the consul in
war.
Scarlet is mentioned among the colours used by the Britons for dyeing
their skins in the time of Julius Cæsar; but their favourite herb was
glastum, or woad, called _glas_ by the Celts, _i.e._, blue, that they
might look dreadful in battle.
The _red_ uniform of the British Army was adopted simply from the
circumstance, that it was the royal colour of the kingdoms of England
and Scotland, centuries before the union of the crowns or of the
countries; red and blue being the royal livery of England, red and
yellow the royal livery of Scotland. In the latter country, red has
ever been the judicial colour, worn by the Lords of Council and
Session, the magistrates of Edinburgh and other cities, as well as by
the students of some of the universities.
The Royal Crowns of England and Scotland were always lined with
scarlet, though James IV. for a time adopted imperial purple. The
surcoat of the Knights of the Garter is crimson; and in the apparel
of those of the Bath we find the surcoat, breeches and stockings all
red, as directed at the revival of the Order by George I. in 1725.
Scarlet faced with blue was the uniform of the City Guard of
Edinburgh, a corps which existed from the days of Flodden until those
of Waterloo.
In England, scarlet and blue had long been the two chief colours of
the cloth directed for the array of the king's troops; in the time of
the Crusades the English wore white crosses; but Henry VIII. had
troops in white with a red cross. From the commencement of the
fourteenth century the Scots wore blue surcoats with white St.
Andrew's crosses thereon. Scotch and English soldiers were wont in
those days to taunt each other as _Blue-coat_ and _White-coat_.
The Memoirs of Kirkaldy of Grange record an instance of this kind in
a sham fight.
In the afternoon of the 2nd March, 1571, a party of Sir William
Kirkaldy's soldiers were marched from Edinburgh Castle, which they
approached again at 8 p.m., with white English surcoats over their
armour. On drawing near they were challenged thus:
"Who are ye that trouble the Captain in the silence of night?"
"The army of the Queen of England," replied the mock assailants with
a discharge of arquebusses. Blank volleys promptly responded from
the walls, during which they freely bestowed upon each other the
taunts and scurrility which the Scots and their Southern neighbours
used in battle as liberally as hard blows.
"Begone, ye lubbards! Away, _Blue-coats_!
"I defy thee, _White-coat!_ dyrt upon your teeth! Hence, knaves, to
your mistress--her soldiers shall not come here," &c. The cannon
were then discharged, upon which the mock Englishmen took to flight,
after an hour's skirmish in the dark, which filled the peaceable
portion of the citizens with dismay, and drew forth some prophetic
remarks from John Knox, who heard the clamour from his house in the
Netherbow.
The favourite colours of the House of Tudor were green and white. At
the battle of St. Aubyn, Sir Edward Wydeville was slain, at the head
of a vast body of Bretons, whom, to deceive the enemy, he had clad in
_white_ English doublets with red St. George's crosses thereon.
White and red were the colours worn by Richard II. as his livery, and
during his reign they were favourites with his courtiers and the
citizens of London, a large company of whom, headed by the mayor, all
wearing these, the king's colours, met him and the queen on
Blackheath, and conducted them in state to the Palace of Westminster.
At the coronation of Henry IV. we find the English peers wearing a
long scarlet tunic, called a _houppelande_, with a cape above it; the
knights and esquires present wore the same kind of tunic, but without
the cape.
In 1432, when Henry IV. returned from France, he was met at Eltham by
the Lord Mayor of London, who was arrayed in crimson velvet with a
baldrick of gold, attended by three henchmen dressed in suits of red
spangled with silver, and by the aldermen wearing gowns of scarlet
with purple hoods. Then in 1535 we find Henry VIII. donning a
crimson velvet jerkin with purple satin sleeves, and among the items
of his voluminous wardrobe are enumerated, "a cloke of skarlette with
a brodegarde of right crymson velvette; a dublette of carnacion
coloured sattin embrowdered with damaske gold; a jacquette of the
same," and several other "dubieties" and "clokes" of similar
sanguinary hues; and during his reign we find the first decided
approach to the uniform of the future British Army.
"Henry VIII. passed to Bulloigne with an army divided into three
battalions," says a curious work, printed at London in 1630.* "In
the vantguard were 12,000 footmen and 500 light-horsemen, cloathed in
blew jackets, with red guards. The middleward (where the King was),
consisted of 20,000 footmen, clothed with red jackets and yellow
guards. In the rereward was the Duke of Norfolk, and with him an
army like in number and apparell to the first, saving that therein
served 1000 Irishmen, _all naked_, save their mantles and their
thicke-gathered skirts." This indicates a costume like that of the
Highlanders.
* "Relations of the most famovs kingdoms, throwout the world."
On this occasion, in 1544, Henry was attended by his Body-Guard of
Pensioners, each of whom "was accompanied by three mounted
men-at-arms, dressed in suits of _red and yellow damask_, the plumes
of themselves and steeds being of a like colour." ("Account of the
Gentlemen-at-arms.") In battle they wore complete armour, their
horses being "barded from counter to tail," _i.e._, with a spiked
frontlet for the head, criniere to guard the mane, a poitrinal or
breast-plate, and a croupiere or buttock-piece.
Contemporaneously we find his nephew, James V. of Scotland, having a
body-guard established in 1532, consisting of 300 men of Edinburgh,
clad in scarlet doublets faced with blue, with blue bonnets, gilt
partizans and daggers.
Henry's "Bulleners," as they were named, were conspicuous in their
scarlet dress at the battle of Pinkie, in 1547, where they were
commanded by the Lord Gray, and where they were driven back in
confusion, leaving the staff of the royal standard in the hands of
the Scots. In Patten's quaint account of this battle, he mentions,
incidentally, that "Sir Miles Patrick being nigh, espied one in a
_red doublet_, whom he took thereby to be an Englishman."
In a letter of Sir John Harrington's, we find the pay and clothing of
Queen Elizabeth's troops in Ireland detailed at some length, but the
colours are not stated. For an officer in winter, "a cassock of
broad cloth, with bays, and trimmed with silk lace, 27_s._ 6_d_. A
doublet of canvas, with silk buttons, and lined with white linen,
costing 14_s._ 5_d_. Two shirts, three pairs of kersey stockings,
three pairs of shoes of neat's leather, at 2_s._ 4_d._ per pair, and
one pair of Venetians, of broad Kentish cloth with silver lace, at
15_s._ 4_d._"
On the 23rd July, 1601, 1500 of her men arrived from England, clad in
_red cassocks_, to share in the siege of Ostend.--(History of the
Siege.) Of these, says Stowe, 1000 were Londoners, and they are now
represented by Her Majesty's 3rd Foot, or Kentish Buffs.
We find no trace of the national colours at the coronation of Charles
I. as King of Scotland, in 1633, at Edinburgh, where he was escorted
by the Gentlemen Pensioners, under the Earl of Suffolk, and the
Yeomen of the Guard, under the Earl of Holland. We are told by
Spalding that he was accompanied by "his ordinary English Guards,
clad in his livery, having _brown velvet_ coats, side (_i.e._, close)
to their hough, and beneath with boards of black velvet, and His
Majesty's armes wrought in raised and embossed work of silver and
gold upon the back and breast of ilk coat. This was the ordinary
weed of His Majesty's Foot Guards." Those furnished by Edinburgh
were clad in "white satin doublets, black velvet breeches, silk
stockings, hats, feathers, and scarfs. These gallants had dainty
muskets, pikes, and gilded partizans." On this auspicious occasion,
all the Scottish peerage wore their usual robes of crimson velvet.
In this King's reign, David Ramsay, who was an officer of Gustavus
Adolphus, when appearing to fight a duel with Lord Reay, wore a coat
of scarlet (according to Sanderson's "History of England"), so
thickly laced with silver that the ground of the cloth was scarcely
visible.
Singularly enough, scarlet was early adopted among the grim Scottish
Covenanters. At the battle of Kilsythe, where Montrose routed their
troops with great slaughter, we find that "the red-coat musketeers"
were cut to pieces by Viscount Aboyne and his Gordons. It may be
worth mentioning here that the chequer on the bonnets of our Highland
regiments was first adopted by the clans under Montrose, as
significant of the _fess-cheque_ of the House of Stuart. The great
Marquis wore scarlet at his barbarous execution in Edinburgh, in
1650; and in the course of that year we find Sir James Balfour
recording, in his "Memorialls of Church and Staite," that an English
ship was made a prize by the Scots, who found in her "eleven hundred
elles of broad clothe, seven hundred suites of made clothes, and als
many _read cottes_, 250 carabines, 500 muskets, with powder and
matches," being supplies for the troops of Cromwell, several of whose
regiments appear, however, to have been clad in blue.
Balfour, at this period, mentions on several occasions the
"four-tailled" coats of the Scottish infantry and artillery, which
must have been something like the old Highland doublet now worn by
our Highland corps.
At the Restoration, when forces were established in England and
Scotland, each country having its separate guards, line, and
artillery, scarlet was the colour almost uniformly adopted, save in
one instance, when the King clothed in blue, faced with red, the
Royal Regiment of English Horse Guards, which was embodied on the
26th August, 1661, under Aubrey, Earl of Oxford. These colours it
still retains; but a corps of marines raised about the same time,
oddly enough, wore yellow coats--the old Dutch uniform.*
* William III. had a regiment of Dutch Horse in London, styled the
Blue Horse Guards; they returned to Holland on the 20th March, 1689,
after which the present Oxford Blues got that appellation permanently.
On the 2nd April in the same year, 1661, the Scottish Life Guards
rode through the city of Edinburgh "in gallant order," says Nicol the
Diarist, "their carbines upon their saddles, and swords drawn in
their hands. It pleased His Majesty to clothe their trumpeters and
the master of the kettle-drum in very rich apparel." Colours were
presented, and soon after the King gave to each gentleman a buff coat.
In February, 1683, General Sir Thomas Dalzell obtained from the Privy
Council at Edinburgh a licence permitting the manufacturers at
Newmills "to import 2536 ells of _stone-grey_ cloth from England,"
for his dragoon regiment, the _Scots Greys_, which had been raised
two years before--hence their costume, as well as their grey horses,
may have led to their present well-known appellation. This grey
cloth cost five shillings an ell.
In May of the same year, Colonel John Grahame of Claverhouse imported
from England 150 ells of red cloth, 40 ells of white, and 550 dozen
of buttons, for the use of the Life Guards, and the Council ordained
that the uniform of the Scottish infantry should be "of such a dye as
shall be thought fit to distinguish sojours from other skulking and
vagrant persons, who have hitherto imitated the uniform of the King,"
and red was the dye so universally adopted that in 1685 we find 300
ells of it ordered by Captain Patrick Grahame for the City Guard of
Edinburgh.
The Cavalier trooper, Captain Crichton, writes of the Scottish
cavalry in _red_ in 1676; and in 1684 we find that the dress of the
Coldstream Guards was a red coat lined with green, red stockings, red
breeches, and white sashes.* "The colonel and other officers, when
on duty, to wear their gorgets."
* Royal Orders, &c.
In Sir Patrick Hume's account of Argyle's descent upon Scotland
(printed in Rose's Observations upon the historical works of Mr.
Fox), among the Scottish forces led by the Earl of Dumbarton, he
says, "wee saw in view a regiment of red-coat foot, too strong for us
to attacque." This was the Scots Royals, or 1st Regiment of the
Line. Before the victorious charge at Killiecrankie, Viscount Dundee
is said to have substituted a green for a scarlet uniform over his
buff coat; and the former colour is yet considered ominous to those
of his name who wear it.*
* Browne's "History of the Highlands."
Some years before the Revolution, Grenadier companies had been added
to the English and Scottish establishments.
Charles II. having resolved to introduce hand-grenades, on the 13th
April, 1678, issued a warrant for a company of one hundred men to be
added to the Holland regiment, under the command of Captain John
Bristoe, to be armed with those explosives, and to be styled
Grenadiers. A similar company was soon added to every other corps in
both countries. These soldiers carried fusils with bayonets,
hatchets, and swords. Their uniform was different from that of the
musketeer and pikeman; the two latter had round hats with broad brims
turned up on one side, the former a fur cap with a lofty crown; they
also wore cravats "of fox tailes."
"In 1678," says Evelyn in his Diary, "were brought into the service a
new sort of soldiers called Grenadiers, who were dextrous at flinging
hand-grenades, every one having a pouch full; they wore furred caps
with coped crowns like Janizaries, which made them look very fierce,
and some had hoods hanging down behind. Their clothing being pybald,
yellow, and red." Such was the origin of our "British Grenadiers" of
immortal memory!
According to Fosbroke, after throwing the grenade, on receiving the
words "Fall on," they rushed on the enemy with hatchets, which they
wore in addition to muskets, slings, swords, and daggers.
The Scottish Government, in 1702, raised a corps of Horse Grenadier
Guards, afterwards incorporated with the United forces, and now
represented by the Life Guards.
Towards the close of the 17th century, the clothing of the British
troops varied; hence, we find, that in the year 1685, when the North
Lincolnshire (now 10th) Regiment of Foot was raised by John, Earl of
Bath, it wore blue coats, which were lined with red, and the men had
waistcoats, breeches, and stockings all of red, and round Cavalier
hats with broad brims, which were turned up on one side, and
ornamented with red ribbons. The companies of pikemen* alone wore
red worsted sashes. Shortly after the Revolution in 1688, the 10th
Foot were clothed in scarlet, like the rest of the British Infantry.
* The _last_ pike perhaps used in the British Service we saw carried
by a sergeant of Captain Wyatt's Company of the Royal Artillery in
1835, when marching for embarkation for Britain, out of Signal Hill
Barracks in Newfoundland.
In 1687, the "old Tangier Regiment," or, Queen's Own Foot (now the
2nd Regiment), which was raised in 1661, for the defence of that
portion of Africa which was ceded to Britain as the dowry of the
Infanta of Portugal, wore a red frock coat with skirts turned back,
loose green knickerbockers, white stockings, black broad-brimmed
hats, looped up on one side, and shoes with rosettes. In the buff
belts were long rapiers and fixing daggers, while a collar of
bandoliers was worn across the chest.
William III. ordained in 1698, "that no person whatsoever should
presume to wear scarlet or red cloth for livery, except such as are
in His Majesty's service, or the Guards," yet, for all that, scarlet
was, and is still, the livery of more than one noble family in
Scotland.
The 3rd, or Kentish Buffs, were so called from the circumstance of
their being the first corps whose accoutremeuts were made of leather
prepared from the hide of the buffalo. Their waistcoats, breeches,
and facings were, however, all of the same buff colour in 1665,
according to Captain Grose. For nearly the same reason, the 31st, or
Huntingdonshire Foot, raised in 1702, call themselves the "Young
Buffs." In the Army List, the 78th Highlanders are styled the
Ross-shire Buffs; and in some old lists, the 56th, or West Essex
Regiment, raised in 1755, figured by their pet name of _Pompadours_,
their facings being then, as now, purple, the favourite colour of
Madame's gown and fontange. While on the subject of uniform and
equipment, we may mention that in the Memoirs of Sergeant Donald
Macleod, "who having returned wounded, with the corpse of General
Wolfe, was admitted an out-pensioner of Chelsea in 1759, and is now*
in his 103rd year," we have an absurd statement to the effect, that
when he enlisted in the 1st Royal Scots, "as a boy in the Scottish
service under King William III.," they were accoutred with steel
caps, bows and arrows (?). He might as well have added scalp locks
and war paint. Singular to say, this nonsense has been reproduced by
Miss Strickland in her Life of Queen Anne. Long prior to the time
given, the regiment wore its orthodox red coat, faced and lined with
blue, and was armed with good match-lock muskets, the "cocked lunts"
of which revealed their whereabouts, in the dark, to Monmouth's
cavalry on the night before the battle of Sedgemoor.
* 1791. Published by Sewell, Cornhill.
Of old, the London militia, though all dressed in scarlet, were known
by their facings, and not by numbers.
In the list of officers, commissioned for the City, on the 24th
December, 1698, we have those of the orange, yellow, white, red,
green, and blue regiments; and concerning these corps the following
interesting proclamation was posted up throughout London, when the
Highlanders under Prince Charles were advancing on Derby.
"Notice is hereby given, that every officer and soldier in the six
regiments of militia, without waiting for beat of drum, or any other
notice, do, immediately on hearing the said signals, repair with
their arms and the usual quantity of powder and ball, to their
respective rendezvous; the red regiment upon Tower-hill, the _green_
regiment in Guildhall-yard, the _yellow_ in St. Paul's Churchyard,
the _white_ at the Royal Exchange, the _blue_ in Old Fish-street, and
the _orange_ in West Smithfield."*
* In 1759 this corps was ordered by its Colonel to adopt blue
clothing.
It is hence that in Foote's humorous farce, "The Mayor of Garratt,"
Major Sturgeon is made to say that he had served under Jeffery
Dunstable, knight, Lord Mayor of London, and Colonel of the _yellow_.
Prince Charles Edward was partial to the national uniform, and
frequently wore it. He is represented in red, in the miniature which
he gave to his secretary, Murray of Broughton, one of nine painted on
copper, as gifts to his principal adherents. His Life Guards, under
Lord Elcho, wore blue faced with red; but, in his small and gallant
army, the Duke of Perth's regiment, wore scarlet uniforms. (Vide
Spalding Club Miscell., vol. i.)
A scarlet uniform worn by Cardinal York, before he took holy orders,
and probably when he commanded a body of French and Irish troops at
Dunkirk, in 1745, is now preserved at Inzievar House, Fifeshire,
having been preserved by Edgar of Keithwick, who was long attached to
the last of the Stuarts, in the capacity of secretary.
Like the light cavalry, most of the militia corps would seem to have
been originally dressed in blue. According to an old ballad, the
Lothian regiment were so clad at the Battle of Bothwell-bridge in
1679.
The uniform of the first-named force has frequently varied. In 1784,
the clothing of the 17th, and similar corps, was changed from scarlet
to blue. They wore blue in the Peninsula, and in 1830 were clad in
scarlet again, when the moustache, which they and other corps had
adopted, was ordered to be shaved off. (Records of the 17th Lancers.)
The old Scottish Guard of the French kings wore hoquetons of white,
"in token of their unspotted fidelity," but the other Scottish troops
in the French service, the Gendarmes Écossais, who took precedence of
all the household troops, and the Infanterie Écossais, which took
rank after the 12th regiment of the old French line, wore blue, while
scarlet was the dress of the Irish brigades of the Louis' in later
years.
Our Chasseurs Brittaniques, a foreign corps, consisting in some
instances, of deserters from every army in Europe, wore the national
uniform, and thus, when on duty, frequently caused confusion and
mistakes by their ignorance of the English language.
In 1742, the coats and breeches of the line were tightened, and the
hats were looped up on three sides, and in that year, the 7th, or
South British Fusiliers, and the 21st, or North British Fusiliers,
figured in the high conical cap which came into vogue with the
Prussian tactics. Their coats had no collars, the skirts were
buttoned back and faced with blue. Numbers were first put on the
coat buttons in 1767.
Red and yellow being, as we have stated, the royal livery of
Scotland, the facings of Scottish regiments have generally been of
the latter colour, and many that now wear blue, had yellow when first
embodied.
The whole infantry of the East India Company wore the national
colour, and it is greatly to be regretted that, on the commencement
of our Volunteer movement, the Government did not enforce the
adoption of scarlet, instead of permitting the endless varieties of
silly colours and costumes now worn by many corps throughout the
United Kingdom.
The statistics of European wars show us that the French, who are clad
in _blue_, suffered a greater loss in proportion than the British,
who wear _red_, when under fire. An old Peninsula officer, whose
letter is before us, mentions, "When our Light Company, and the
company of the 60th Rifles (green), attached to our brigade, were
skirmishing on the same ground (against the enemy), the latter lost
more than we did, although composed chiefly of Germans, who are
proverbially cautious skirmishers. This is an important subject. I
saw, at the Battle of Vittoria, the wonderful effect of the imposing
appearance of the British line on the enemy. After they had been
driven from their position and completely scattered, many glorious
attempts were made by their officers to rally them on some heights
behind the ridge on which our line was advancing. It became an
object with the officer commanding the Light Companies, which were
scattered in pursuit, to get them arrayed for the attack of a column
which formed on one of those heights at some distance in our front,
and thus became a rallying point to the thousands who were flying
from the ridge in helpless confusion.
"Before we had a sufficient number of the pursuers collected to
attack this formidable column, it broke and bolted, its soldiers
disappearing among the racing mobs who threw away their arms and fled
towards the Pyrenees. While wondering what had caused so sudden a
panic among men who, but a moment before, seemed ready to adhere
until death to their officers, we--the skirmishers--looked back to
the ridge, and saw a sight which I shall never forget. The whole
British line crowned the mountains, from wing to wing, looking like a
wall of fire, their bayonets glittering in the sun, as they moved
steadily, silently, and presenting a glorious picture of power and
order. This sight it was which struck the enemy to the heart, and
made him fly from his new position in sudden panic. No army,
although double the number, if clad in sombre uniform, could ever
make such an appearance, or produce such an effect as this."*
* At the commencement of the Volunteer movement, this letter was
addressed to the author of this paper, who was then actively engaged
in the formation of a corps now wearing grey.
Our uniforms have frequently varied according to the climate in which
corps have been stationed. The kilt has generally proved too warm
for Indian service, and white trousers are substituted. In the
Caffre war the 74th Highlanders wore short dark blouses, tartan
tunics, and hummal bonnets, _i.e._, without feathers. In Canada the
King's Dragoon Guards lately wore busbies of fur, blue pea-jackets,
and long boots lined with sheepskin in winter. The Ashanti uniform
is still remembered.
Save the Blues, all our cavalry wore scarlet, until the middle of
George III.'s reign, when blue was adopted for the Light corps; but
silver-grey, with red facings, was worn by all dragoons, while
serving in India, until 1820. Eleven years after, scarlet was
resumed for all corps except the Horse Guards and Hussars; but blue
was ordered again for all Lancers and Light Dragoons in 1840.
Blue has always been worn by the Royal Regiment of Artillery, which
was first embodied in England in the year 1750, by Colonel William
Belford, who commanded that arm of the service at the battle of
Culloden, four years before. The facings, vests, and breeches were
all scarlet.
Hussars were first introduced in our service in 1793, and Lancers
after the battle of Waterloo; but so early as 1794 we had a corps of
Lancers, named the British Uhlans, formed out of the remains of the
French Royalist army, and which, with the Hussars of Choiseul, Salm,
and Rohan, perished in the fatal expedition to Quiberon in 1796.
Uniform has ever been considered a badge alike of honour and service;
thus, in the _Gazette_ for June, 1867, we find that Her Majesty was
graciously pleased to permit a retired Captain of the Edinburgh, or
Queen's Own Regiment of Militia, "to retain his rank and _wear his
uniform_ in consideration of his long service in that corps."
We have had the pleasure of knowing more than one brave veteran
officer, who treasured affectionately "the old red rag," in which he
had followed Picton, Grahame, or the Iron Duke, and in which he had
been wounded on the glorious fields of Spain or in the crowning
victory of Waterloo; and in every age there has been some eccentric
enthusiast who stuck manfully to fashions that had departed.
In 1808, many an old officer would as soon have cut off his head as
his pigtail when the Horse Guards ordered the army to be shorn of
that remarkable appendage. Old Sir Thomas Dalyell, of Binns (first
Colonel of the Scots Greys), who rode yearly to London to kiss the
hand of King Charles II., adhered to the close-sleeved doublet of the
days of James VI. This, with his portentous vow-beard (which he had
sworn never to cut after the execution of Charles I), "when he was in
London never failed to draw after him a great crowd of boys, who
constantly attended him at his lodgings, and followed him with huzzas
as he went to Court and returned from it. As he was a man of humour,
he would always thank them for their civilities when he left them at
the door to go to the King, and would let them know exactly at what
hour he intended to come out again and return to his lodgings."
(Memoirs of Captain Crichton, the Cavalier Trooper.)
General Preston, who commanded the same regiment in the Seven Years'
War, and who died colonel of it, at Bath in 1785, was the last
British officer who wore a buff coat. An officer who served with him
records that at the capture of Zerenberg, Preston received more than
a dozen of sword-cuts, which fell harmlessly on his "buff-jerkin."
Old Colonel Charles Donellan, who commanded the 48th, and was wounded
at Talavera (mortally, we believe), was the last officer who adhered
to the antique three-cornered Nivernois hat; and there was a General
Cameron, in the same campaign, who adhered to the Highland bonnet,
and never would adopt the cocked hat.
At Dettingen, George II. appeared in the same red coat which he had
worn when serving under Marlborough. Thackeray says, "On public
occasions he always displayed the hat and coat he wore on the famous
day of Oudenarde, and the people laughed, but kindly, at the odd old
garment, for bravery never goes out of fashion." At Minden, in 1759,
we find the luckless Lord George Sackville leading the cavalry in the
same red coat which he had worn as a youth at Fontenoy; and the same
sentiment has prevailed in the humbler ranks of the service.
An aged soldier, named Robert Ferguson, who died at Paisley in 1811,
in his ninety-seventh year, preserved to the last, as a precious
relic, the old red coat of the 22nd Foot (Handysides, wherein
Sterne's father was a captain), in which he had been wounded at the
battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy, just as future years may see some
veteran preserving the faded and perhaps blood-stained tunic which he
wore with Raglan at Sebastopol, or with Havelock at Lucknow.
We have thus attempted to trace the history of that scarlet uniform,
which is so inseparably connected with the past, the present, and the
future glory of the British Isles. It is the garb which first fires
the enthusiasm and ambition of our youth, and is ever kindly and
affectionately remembered by our white-haired veterans in old age,
for there is something almost filial in the emotion with which an old
soldier recalls the uniform, the facings, and badges of his regiment,
whatever its number might have been, from the 1st Royal Scots to the
Rifle Brigade. There is not a battle-field, honourable to Britain,
or a portion of the globe where our drums have beaten, but where it
has formed the shroud of many a noble and gallant heart--so all
honour, say we, to "the old Red Coat, that tells the tale of
England's glory!"
CHAPTER II.
FURTHER NOTES ON ITS HISTORY AND ON REGIMENTALS.
In the preceding chapter, the origin of the British uniform was
plainly deduced from the fact of scarlet being the Royal livery alike
of England and of Scotland, and hence its adoption as a general
national colour. To these notes we purpose to add a few more on the
gradual progress of badges and distinctions in the service.
The red cross of St. George was the general badge of England from the
Crusades, till the time of Edward IV., and by an act of the Scottish
Parliament passed in 1385, during the reign of Robert III., every
soldier was ordained "to wear a white St. Andrew's Cross on his back
and breast, which, if his surcoat was white, was to be broidered on a
circle or square of black cloth."
In the time of Henry VIII., a red St. George's cross on a white
surcoat was adopted as the distinguishing badge of English troops;
and in an order to raise men for the service of Mary I., in the
northern counties, she directs, that "they be clothed in whyt, with
redde-crosses on ye arme, in ye olde maner."
These red crosses were destined to figure soon after, at the battle
of Ancrum in 1544, when, as the ballad has it, the stream
"Ran red with English blood,
For the Douglas true and the bold Buccleugh,
'Gainst keen Lord Evers stood."
When the English were routed, 700 Scottish outlaws of broken border
clans, who had joined them, threw aside their red crosses, and
joining their countrymen, made a merciless slaughter of the fugitives
with axe and spear, shouting to each other the while, "Remember
Broomhouse!"
Love of the sanguinary colour seems to have spread rapidly, and so,
as some one has it, "no true Englishman can either fight, or hunt, to
his satisfaction, save in a red coat," but badges were speedily added
thereto.
Stowe records in his Survey of London, that "Robert Neville, Earl of
Warwick, with 600 men all in red jackets, embroidered with _ragged
staves_ before and behind, was lodged in Warwicke Lane; in whose
house there was oftentimes six oxen eaten at a breakfast, and every
tavern was full of his meat, for he that had any acquaintance in that
house, might have as much of sodden or roasted meat as he could prick
and carry away on a long dagger."
The proposal that the medical officers of all European armies should
wear one great distinguishing badge, by which their profession might
be known, is not a new one, for we find Ralph Smith, in the time of
Elizabeth, after telling us that military "surgeons should be men of
sobrietie, of good conscience, and skillfull in that science, able to
heal all scars and wounds, especially to take out a pellet, &c., must
wear their Baldricke, whereby they may be known in time of slaughter,
as it is their charter in the field."
In this reign the Cavalry wore scarlet cloaks; but in the stirring
times of Cromwell, with red and blue, a reddish-brown was much used
by both horse and foot; hence he says in one of his letters, "I had
rather have a plain russet-coated captain, that knoweth what he
fights for, and loves what he knowes, than that which you call 'a
gentleman,' and is nothing else."
Of all the colours for uniforms, the most absurd were some of those
adopted by our Rifle Volunteers, in their too wary desire to be
unseen. A battalion of the Italian Legion, raised during the Crimean
war, was clad in silver grey; and it was admitted by all competent
judges to be the colour best adapted for riflemen, and, moreover,
when handsomely laced and trimmed, it was very becoming. This was
the favourite colour of the Indian Light Cavalry.
When contrasted with the tight tunics, tiny shackos, and plain
trousers of the present day, the equipment of a corps of the last, or
the preceding century, in its amplitude and variety, must have
presented a very different and very picturesque aspect. On the 8th,
or King's Own Regiment, being raised for King James, by Richard, Lord
Ferrars, the captains were armed with pikes, the lieutenants with
partisans, the ensigns with half-pikes, the sergeants with halberds;
thirty rank and file of each company were pikemen, seventy-three were
musketeers, and all carried swords. The waistcoats and breeches were
yellow; the uniform, scarlet lined with yellow; the stockings and
cravats white; the hats were _à la_ cavalier, turned up on one side,
and ornamented with flowing yellow ribbands. (Records 8th Foot.)
Ten years before this time, each company consisted of thirty pikes,
sixty muskets, and ten men armed with light fusils, and "the tallest
men were always culled out as pikemen." (_Bruce on Military Law_,
1717.)
The following description of a deserter, from the 22nd Foot, in those
days, is rather amusing, as to costume:--
"Run away, out of Captain Soames' Company, in his Grace the Duke of
Norfolk's regiment of Infantry, quartered at Newport, in Shropshire;
Roger Curtis, a barber surgeon, a little man with short black hair, a
little curled; round visage, fresh-coloured, in a light coloured
coat, with gold and silver buttons, red plush breeches and white hat;
he lived formerly at Downham Market, in Norfolk. Whoever will give
notice to Francis Baker, agent to the said regiment, in Hatton
Garden, so that he may be secured, shall have two guineas reward."*
* "London Gazette," 1689.
A spectator of the Camp of the Household Brigade, on Putney Heath, in
October, 1694, describes the three regiments of Guards as wearing
scarlet, of course; the 1st, faced with blue; the 2nd, or
"Cole-stream," with green; the 3rd Scots, with white; the officers
being distinguished by white scarves worn over the left shoulder, and
fringed with the colour of the regimental facings. The Holland
Regiment (Buffs), are described as wearing red, faced with
flesh-colour; the Queen's or Tangier Regiment, red, faced with
sea-green; the Lord Admiral's Regiment of Marines, raised in 1664
(and afterwards incorporated by William III., with the 2nd Foot
Guards), in doublets and breeches of yellow.
Until the reign of Her present Majesty, red was worn by all the
drummers and buglers of the regiment of Artillery; but although, from
the earliest period, it was deemed the great national colour of our
forces, it is somewhat remarkable that it was not adopted by the
English or Irish Militia, until the year 1759, and a song of that
period begins:--
"Ye mounseers, give ear, we have nothing to fear,
For the Militia are now clothed in RED, Sirs!
They have hearts that are stout and will never give out,
With Rockingham bold at their head, sirs!
You may brag and may boast, upon your own coast,
And parade it from Dunkirk to Calais;
But have a care now, how you venture too far,
In your flat-bottomed boats to make sallies."
Long denied a militia force, in dread of Jacobite influences,
Scotland had none from 1746 till the close of the last century, when,
ten years after the death of her "Bonnie Prince Charlie," ten
battalions were raised, and their colours and insignia (most of which
are now deposited in the Castle of Edinburgh) were designed by the
Court of the Lyon King of Arms, then Robert, Earl of Kinnoull, with
whom the applications for such were lodged.
In our former chapter, the uniforms of the Irish and Scottish
regiments which belonged to the French Line, during the last century,
were referred to. These corps (according to the "Liste Historique
des Troupes de France," 1758,) were numbered as the 92nd, 93rd, 94th,
98th (Gardes de Jacques II.), 99th, and 109th, all Irish; the 107th
Royal Écossais under the Duke of Perth, and the 113th Écossais under
Lieutenant-General Lord Ogilvie, who died in Scotland in 1803.
The two Scottish regiments wore coats and vests of blue, and their
hats were bound with gold. All their Irish brother exiles wore
scarlet, with white vests generally, and carried on their colours
black or yellow crosses, with the "Couronne d'Angleterre," which had
no braver or more bitter enemies, as the terrible day of Fontenoy
attested; and where they seem to have acted true to the spirit of the
Fenian song:
"Oh, if the colour we must wear.
Is England's cruel red,
Let it remind us of the blood
That Ireland has shed!"
And when our troops landed at Cancalle Bay in 1758, they were
surprised to find themselves stoutly opposed by entire battalions in
scarlet; and no wonder was it that they were so, for it was the Irish
Brigade, whose ranks were manned and officered by the sons and
grandsons of the adherents of King James, the same gallant Irish
Brigade which was welcomed to the British Establishment in 1794, and,
unfortunately, was soon after reduced.
In our service, the White Horse of Hanover is borne on the colours of
the 3rd Dragoons, the 7th, 14th, 23rd, and 27th Foot, &c. This badge
is as old in history as the Welsh Dragon of the 10th Hussars and 12th
Lancers, having been the ancient cognisance of Saxony or
Westphalia,--a White Horse, on a field _gules_--borne for centuries
by the House of Brunswick. Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria, in
consequence of his marriage in 1123, with Gertrude, the lineal
descendant of Wittekind, last of the Saxon Kings, assumed the
armorial bearing of that Sovereign, if a barbarian so weak and savage
deserve the title. The banner of Wittekind originally bore a black
horse, which, on his compulsory conversion to Christianity, under the
sword of Charlemagne, was changed to white, as emblematic of his new
and purer faith. Hence our White Horse of Hanover and its motto _Nec
Aspera Terrent_, which appears on the colours of the regiments above
mentioned. It made its appearance in our service about the same time
as the hideous black leather cockade, so long retained in loyal
opposition to the White Rose of the Stuarts, and which is seen now
only on the hats of footmen.
But the badge borne for the longest period in succession by the same
unbroken body of men, is undoubtedly the St. Andrew's Cross of the
1st Royals, who represent alike the Scottish Guard of St. Louis (the
comrades of "Quentin Durward" under Louis XI.), and the Green Brigade
of Scots, who served Gustavus Adolphus, a corps whose almost fabulous
antiquity was long a jest in the French service, as well as our own,
being twitted in both as the Guards of Pontius Pilate, who slept on
their post.
A very remarkable instance of love of the "Old Red Coat" occurred
when the Scots Greys marched from Carlisle in April, 1766. A
troop-quartermaster named Robert Mackenzie, then in his eighty-eighth
year, was left behind, totally prostrated by age and infirmity. He
was born in Scotland in 1688, had joined the Greys in 1705, when Lord
John Hay was colonel, and was proverbially known as "the oldest
soldier in the service."
The sound of the trumpets had scarcely died away homeward on the
north road, when the hand of death came on the old enthusiast, and
feeling that the hour of his dissolution was come, he insisted on
being clad in his full uniform, his boots were drawn on, his sword
girt about him, and thus accoutred, he expired, of sheer
"disappointment at his inability to proceed. He was carried to his
grave by six invalids; the pall being supported by six sergeants of
recruiting parties in the town, and the Cumberland Militia fired six
platoons at his interment."
An old enthusiast of a similar kind, though of higher rank, was the
amiable General Charles O'Hara, the comrade of Granby and Ligonier,
Lieutenant-Colonel of the 22nd, somewhere before 1788, and who, in
the first year of the present century, died Governor of Gibraltar.
He was the last British officer who adhered to the uniform of the
Minden days, and to that remarkable style of cocked hat introduced by
the great Austrian Marshal, with its tall straight feather and large
black rosette on the dexter side; hence O'Hara was known in the
service as "the last of the Kevenhullers."
At Gibraltar "he was buried with all the honours due to his rank,"
wrote an officer of the 29th, who was present. "I had never before
seen the funeral of a general officer. There was his horse--the
well-known charger oh which we had so often seen him mounted--bearing
the boots and spurs of his departed master; on the coffin lay other
mournful insignia, the sword, the sash, and not the least prominent
memorial, the Kevenhuller hat, with its tall, unbending feather, and
I gazed on it for the last time."
He was succeeded in his command by the father of her present Majesty.
But in the quaint adherence to the costume of a past age, there are
few cases like one recorded by O'Keefe, the player, whose
recollections were published in 1826, and who mentions that in his
day, there was an aged captain, John Desbrissay, who walked about the
streets of Dublin, "unremarked," in the Cavalier dress of the reign
of Charles II. This, however, was before the time of the notorious
Wilkes. This eccentric veteran lived in Corkhill, Dublin, and his
name appears in the Army Lists for 1747, as agent for the 5th Horse,
5th Royal Irish Dragoons, 12th Foot, and several other corps
stationed in Dublin.
County designations were not given until 1786, but numbers had been
introduced, and badges, pretty generally adopted for all corps of
Horse and Foot, on their colours, buttons, or belt-plates, prior to
the first year of George the Third's reign.
In 1759, when Colonel John Hale (who came to London with the news of
Wolfe's fall, and the conquest of Canada) raised the 17th Light
Dragoons (now Lancers), it was ordered that "on the front of the
men's caps, and on the left breast of their uniform, there was to be
a death's head and cross-bones over it, and under the motto, 'or
glory;'" and this grim device (the badge of the famous Black
Brunswickers in later times) they still retain, like the old
Pomeranian Horse, who, since the days of Gustavus Adolphus, have worn
skulls and cross-bones on their high fur caps, and in Sweden are now
known as the King's Own Hussars.
It was not until 1764 that the swords of the Grenadiers were
abolished, and the arms of the foot soldier were confined to the
musket and bayonet; and it was in that year when the officers and men
of our cavalry first wore the epaulette (in lieu of the old
aiguilette) on the left shoulder; at the same time, the jack-boots
were abolished, and the horses were ordered to have long tails. The
8th Light Dragoons, however, had long the peculiar favour of wearing
cross-belts for the pouch and sword. Having annihilated a corps of
Spanish Horse at Almenara in 1710, and equipped themselves with the
Spanish belts as trophies, they wore them in memory of that event
until January, 1776, when they were abolished, and, at the same time
the helmets were substituted for the cocked hats.*--("Records, 4th
and 8th Hussars.")
* It was in 1794 that the Blues resumed for a time the cuirasses,
which the Corps had not worn since their march to Salisbury in 1688.
Singularly enough, the 90th Light Infantry (still affectionately
remembered in Scotland as Sir Thomas Graham's Perthshire Greybreeks),
when serving under Abercrombie, in Egypt, wore helmets of brass, and
being taken for dismounted Dragoons, were vigorously charged by the
French cavalry at the battle of Alexandria. In the _mêlée_, their
Lieutenant-Colonel, old Lord Hill of gallant memory, received a ball
on his helmet, which brought him to the ground, though it failed to
penetrate the brass metal, of which it was composed.
In these brief memoranda on uniforms and equipment, to enter
elaborately on the dress of our Highland regiments, or its antiquity
and advantages, would take up too much space.
Apart from written history, song, or tradition, there are in Scotland
many records of vast age carved in stone, such as the Cross at
Dupplin and the tomb at Nigg--both works prior to the eighth
century,--which represent the Caledonian Warriors kilted to the knee,
exactly like our Highland regiments now; and on the last-named
memorial, the figure has a purse or sporran.
The first regiments of Highlanders embodied were two battalions
raised, among other Scottish levies, by the government of Mary Queen
of Scots, in 1552, to aid Henry II. of France in his wars. Each man
would seem to have provided his own kilt or tartans, as the Scottish
Privy Council ordain that they shall be "substantiouslie accompturit,
with jack and plait, steilbonett, sword and buckler, new hose and new
doublett of canvouse, at the least, and sleeves of plait or splints,
with one speir of sax ell long or thereby." These men were chiefly
drawn from the same glens, and by the same noble family, which in
later years enrolled the 92nd Gordon Highlanders of Egyptian and
Peninsular fame.
The early Highland corps were remarkably jealous of any alteration or
innovation in their costume, real or fancied, and hence a dangerous
mutiny broke out among the West Fencibles, in Edinburgh Castle, in
1778, in consequence of some changes that were proposed, particularly
in the adoption of a cartridge-box, which they oddly alleged "no
Highland regiment had ever worn before." A portion of the battalion
was ultimately surrounded on Leith Links (where they had flung their
pouches mutinously at the feet of the General), and compelled, by the
10th Light Dragoons, to adopt them at the point of the sword; but the
remainder in the Castle broke out into open revolt, raised the
drawbridge, and threatened to turn the guns on the city; nor did the
matter end, until one Fencible was sentenced to be shot, and another
to receive a thousand lashes, punishments which were, however,
commuted.
In the following year occurred the dangerous mutiny at Leith, when
seventy recruits for the 42nd and 71st, on a rumour being
mischievously spread that they had been betrayed into a Lowland
corps, which wore trousers, fought with the South Fencibles, till
forty-five of them were shot down and bayonetted.
In 1811 we had two Greek regiments raised in the Ionian Isles, the
1st and 2nd Light Infantry, which were kilted, and wore the full
Albanian costume.
All these various distinctions in uniform, badges, and insignia which
we have briefly noted, and others, such as the Sphinx of Egypt, the
Tiger of India, the Lion of Nassau, the Dragon of China, the Eagle of
France, the Elephant of Assaye,* the Castle and Key of Gibraltar
(_Montis insignia Calpe_), and all the other noble emblems borne on
the colours of our various regiments, are the historical HERALDRY of
the service, and are worthy of the highest consideration.
* The 74th and 78th Highland Regiments are entitled to carry a third
colour for Assaye. The antelope was bestowed on the 6th Foot, in the
war of the Spanish Succession, with the motto _vi et armis_, which
they seem to have relinquished till 1878, though it used to be
painted on the knapsacks, as on an old one possessed by the Corps in
1825, remained to testify. The Scots Greys, who forgot their old
motto "SECOND TO NONE," resumed it in 1871. The origin of it seems
scarcely known; but Colonel Darby Griffith, who so gallantly led the
Greys at the battles of Balaclava, Inkermann, and the Tchernaya, in a
letter to the author on the subject, says, "It is well authenticated
that the Greys were raised in Scotland before the 1st Dragoons were
raised in England, as also were the Coldstream before the Grenadier
Guards. The English Regiments were accorded the No. 1, as taking
precedence; but as a kind of atonement, both the Coldstream and the
Scots Grey have the motto 'SECOND TO NONE.' Aldershot, 15th May,
1865."
They are eminently calculated to produce the _esprit de corps_, a
just pride and honourable rivalry; and, by the past glories they
represent, to inspire in our army that heroic virtue of which the
elder Pitt spoke so eloquently in Parliament, when he said of our
troops, in the debate upon pay:--
"To the virtue of the British Army we have hitherto trusted; to that
virtue, small as the army is, we must still trust; and without that
virtue, the Lords, the Commons, and the people of England may
intrench themselves behind parchment up to the teeth; but the sword
will find a passage to the vitals of the constitution!"
Hence it is, that even the lace, the buttons, and other insignia of a
corps are so carefully shorn from the uniform of the unhappy soldier
who is disgraced, and rendered incapable of bearing arms again; and
when writing of those things, perhaps we cannot do better than close
this article by an anecdote which records one of the most startling
instances of wholesale disgrace that ever occurred in a European army.