perfect swordsman, terrible with his rifle, and deadly with his pistol.
His strength is renowned in history. There have been men among them who
have claimed no great superiority over their fellows from the fact of
being able to twist a horseshoe, or drive a skeandhu up to the hilt in
a pine log. Fatigue, hunger, thirst, the extremes of heat and cold--all
these are with those men the mere commonplace foes of a Spartan
existence--foes which have always found and left them silent, patiently
contemptuous, where foes of flesh and blood would at once arouse them
to anger of the grimmest kind.
Perhaps no part of the world has seen the Black Watch in as true a
light as the Peninsula. From all quarters of it their honours are
drawn. They were with Moore at Corunna on that memorable occasion, when
on a sudden he cried out to them: "Highlanders, remember Egypt!"
With reference to this speech, and the moment it was delivered,
tradition has clothed it with romance. At many a Highland fireside,
when the eerie spirit sits in the glen and whispers round the lonely
sheilings, it has been said by aged warriors, who had lived on in peace
perhaps into the sixties, that, at those words, the men around him, who
loved him best, saw, with the uncanny second sight of their race, a
misty shimmering shroud enclosing their commander's form, portentous of
his coming death.
The words "Highlanders, remember Egypt!" referred to the occasion when,
at Alexandria, Sir Ralph Abercromby being taken prisoner, and his
captor being shot by a Royal Highlander, the regiment, though broken,
continued to fight individually. It is no wonder that Sir John Moore,
who had marvelled at their prowess, should exhort them, eight years
later, at Corunna, to remember Egypt.
At Toulouse, Pack, as he galloped swiftly up with General Clinton's
orders, drew rein in silence before the Black Watch. Then he spoke
calmly, but with elation: "General Clinton has been pleased to grant my
request that the 42nd shall have the honour of leading the attack. The
42nd will advance!" There were 500 who went in, and there were about
ninety who came out alive. One can imagine then their terrible passage
up to the fatal redoubt, and all the more clearly may be pictured the
determination of it from the fact that, when they reached it, the enemy
had fled.
When they were before the heights of Alma, Sir Colin Campbell turned to
them, and cried: "Men, the army is watching us. Make me proud of my
Highland brigade!" From the future, near and far, the whole wide world
watches them, and a great Empire has been made proud of them. Kinglake
tells this part of the story with a fine touch. "Smoothly, easily, and
swiftly," he says, "the Black Watch seemed to glide up the hill. A few
instants before, and their tartans ranged dark in the valley; now their
plumes waved on the crest." The enemy did not stay for the coming
onslaught, for, as many said afterwards, they "did not like those men
in the petticoats, with their red vulture plumes and their coloured
tartans."
At Ticonderoga, in 1758, they suffered heavily, in blood, though not in
honour. Of that encounter an officer of the 55th, who was in the
engagement, says: "It is with a mixture of esteem, grief, and envy,
that I considered the great loss and immortal glory won by the Scots
Highlanders in the late bloody affair." From all historical accounts it
seems that the enemy was very strongly entrenched, in front by ditches,
and on the battle side by barricades of felled trees. From this cover
they sent volley upon volley into the ranks of the advancing
Highlanders. "Yet," says one chronicler:
"The Scots hewed their way through the obstacles with their
broadswords, and--no ladders having been provided--made strenuous
efforts to carry the breastwork, partly by mounting on each other's
shoulders, and partly by placing their feet in holes which they dug
with their swords and bayonets in the face of the works. After a
desperate struggle, which lasted nearly four hours, General
Abercromby, seeing no possible chance of success, ordered a
retreat--an order which had to be _thrice repeated_ before the
Highlanders would withdraw from the unequal contest!"
What the Black Watch would have done at Balaclava and Inkerman, had
they been there, can be conjectured, but, sufficient to say that
Sevastopol bears witness to their many deeds of outright bravery.
The officers of the Black Watch have always been, needless to say, the
soul of honour of the body of their men. In the following letter--a
letter which might form part of a great poem--Colonel Macleod writes to
the Sultan Tippoo:
"You, or your interpreter have said in your letter to me that I
have lied, or made a _mensonge_. Permit me to inform you, Prince,
that this thing is not good for you to give, or for me to receive,
and if I were alone with you in the desert, you would not dare to
say these words to me. An Englishman scorns to lie; this is an
irreparable affront to an English warrior. If you have courage
enough to meet me, take 100 of your _bravest_ men on foot; meet me
on the sea shore; I will fight you, and 100 men of mine will fight
yours."
This has the true epic ring of all time, even back to the state and
condition of the heroic savage who, instinct with honour, said:
"Friend, if I had an axe, and thou hadst an axe, then we should see
where the truth stands." But, alas! in some parts of the world where
savagery is no longer heroic, the days of the true epic have gone by,
its local death warrant being writ upon a "scrap of paper" crumpled in
an Emperor's hand.
But the Black Watch, though it has fed, as it were, upon the hearts of
lions in its immortal traditions of the far past, can live more
intimately in the atmosphere of recent glories. Evan McGregor, Robert
Dick, Stewart of Garth, Gordon Drummond, Hope Grant--these are immortal
names appended to half its story only. Its later history is lit by the
fame of the Eighth Earl of Airlie, who was killed at Diamond Hill in
1900. When he sailed from our shores for South Africa, almost his last
words were: "Remember, if I am killed in action, whatever memorial you
put for me, that you say on it I had died as I wished." And, in
confirmation of this, after Magersfontein: "I like the Boers, and am
very proud to be fighting against them.... I am very happy." A
sentiment which we, in later years, can parallel with the fact that
Botha's son (aged seventeen years) has enlisted to fight for Britain--a
step approved by his heroic father.
It was the old 73rd (now the 2nd Battalion Black Watch) which, under
General Wauchope, their former colonel, fought so heroically in the
Boer War, losing their brave commander at Magersfontein. The 73rd was,
from 1809 to 1881, an ordinary line regiment, the Scottish dress and
kilt having been abandoned. As such it fought at Waterloo, which, among
others, it gives as an "honour" to the Black Watch. In 1881 it was made
the 2nd Battalion Black Watch, and resumed the doublet, kilt and
feather bonnet.
The spirit of the Earl of Airlie is alive to-day--as much alive as it
was in Scotland, when the "Heroes of Perthshire" laid their lives at
the feet of him they believed to be their rightful king. Then, as
since, they lived and died fighting; and, out of their brave deeds from
that to this, there has arisen the peculiar significance of those three
words--thrilling and dear to British hearts, chilling and terrible to
Britain's foes--THE BLACK WATCH.
* * * * *
THEIR BADGES AND BATTLE HONOURS, ETC.
BADGES.--The Royal Cypher within the Garter. The badge and motto of
the Order of the Thistle. In each of the four corners the Royal
Cypher, ensigned with the Royal Crown.
BATTLE HONOURS.--The Sphinx, superscribed Egypt. Mysore, Mangalore,
Seringapatam, Corunna, Fuentes d'Onoro, Pyrenees, Nivelle, Nive,
Orthes, Toulouse, Peninsula, Waterloo, S. Africa 1846-47, 1851-53,
Alma, Sevastopol, Lucknow, Ashantee, Egypt 1882-84, Tel-el-Kebir,
Nile 1884-85, Kirbekan, S. Africa 1899-1902, Paardeberg.
UNIFORM.--Regular and Reserve Batts., scarlet and blue facings.
[The 1st Battn. was first formed from the independent companies
raised in 1729 from the Highland clans, and received the name of
Black Watch from the hue of its tartan. The newly-formed regiment
greatly distinguished itself at Fontenoy and against the French in
N. America. At Ticonderoga it lost 25 officers, 19 sergeants, and
603 rank and file in killed and wounded, and received the title of
Royal Highlanders in recognition of its bravery. The 2nd Battn.,
raised in 1780, became a separate regiment in 1786, and it was this
Battn. a detachment of which was in the wreck of the _Birkenhead_.
The Black Watch gained the red hackle during the campaign in
Flanders (1794-95). The 42nd was one of the four regiments
mentioned in dispatches after Waterloo. The 2nd Battn. was at
Magersfontein in 1899, where it lost 19 officers and over 300
killed and wounded. This regiment has a record which is only
equalled by one or two regiments in the British Army.]
THE MANCHESTER REGIMENT
("THE BLOODSUCKERS")
"Shew me a well authenticated instance of the troops of any other
nation gaining and holding an 'impossible' position against fearful
odds, and I will shew you a wavering in, or, at least, a
qualification of, our national faith that our allied British
infantry is the best in the world."--_French Daily Newspaper,
August, 1914._
It was at Elandslaagte that the 1st Battalion of this gallant regiment,
together with the Gordon Highlanders and the Light Horse, distinguished
themselves in a terrible passage of arms. The following graphic account
is taken down from the words of a soldier who went through that
terrible affair:
"It was nearly five o'clock on that day," he said, "when it seemed
to be growing curiously dark. And we soon saw the reason. As our
men moved forward the heavens opened, and from the eastern sky
swept a sheet of rain. With the first stabbing drops the horses
turned their heads, and no whip or spur could bring them up to it.
It drove through our mackintoshes as if they were blotting-paper;
the air was filled with a hissing sound, and underfoot you could
see the solid earth pounded into mud, and the mud flowing away in
streams of slush. The rain blotted out hill and dale and enemy in
one great curtain of swooping water. You would have said that the
heavens had opened to drown the wrath of man.
"Through it the guns still thundered, and the khaki column pushed
doggedly on. The infantry got among the boulders and began to open
out. The supports and reserves followed. Then, in a twinkling, on
the stone-pitted hill-face, burst loose another storm--a storm of
lead and death. In the first line, down behind the rocks, the men
were firing fast, and the bullets came pelting round them. The men
stooped, and staggered, and dropped limply, as if a string that
held them upright had been cut. The line pushed on, and the colonel
fell, shot in the arm.
"The regiment pursued their way until they came to a rocky ledge
twenty feet high. Here they clung to cover, firing, then rose, and
were among the shrill bullets again. A major was left at the bottom
of the ridge with a pipe in his mouth, and a Mauser bullet through
his leg. His company rushed on. Onwards and upwards--down, fire
again--up again, and on. Another ridge won and passed, and only one
more hellish hail of bullets beyond. More men down. More men
hurried forward into the firing line--more death-piping bullets
than ever. The air was a sieve of them; they came with unceasing
ping, and beat on the boulders like a million hammers; they
ploughed the rocks and tore the turf like harrows. Another ridge
crowned, another whistling gust of perdition. More men down; more
men pushing into the firing line. Half the officers killed or
wounded--the men panted and stumbled on--another ridge taken! God!
would this cursed hill never end? It was sown with bleeding and
dead behind us; it was edged with stinging fire before. 'Fix
bayonets!' Staff officers rushed up, urging the men on. There was
now no line, only a surging wave. Devonshires, Gordon Highlanders,
Manchester, and Light Horse all mixed--subalterns commanding
regiments, soldiers yelling advice, officers firing carbines--all
stumbling, leaping, killing, falling--all drunk with battle. At
length we gained the ridge, and saw the Boer camp below. The Boers
were galloping out of it helter skelter, with Lancers and Dragoon
Guards spearing and stamping them into the ground. Suddenly we
heard the bugle call 'Cease fire!' and, wondering slightly at such
an order at such a time, we began to retire. But we were soon met
by a boy bugler rushing forward, who, in reply to our remarks about
the order, yelled, 'Cease fire be damned!' And then we discovered
that the Boers, who had learnt our bugle calls, had blown the
blast. On this, we turned about, charged again, and so made good
the battle of Elandslaagte."
* * * * *
THEIR BADGE AND BATTLE HONOURS, ETC.
BADGE.--The Sphinx, superscribed Egypt.
BATTLE HONOURS.--Egmont-op-Zee, Martinique, Guadaloupe, Peninsula,
Alma, Inkerman, Sevastopol, New Zealand, Afghanistan 1879-80, Egypt
1882, S. Africa 1899-1902, Defence of Ladysmith.
UNIFORM.--Regular and Reserve Battn., scarlet with white facings.
[1st Battn. raised in 1685, 2nd Battn. in 1801. The 1st Battn. was
formerly a Battn. of the 8th Foot, and became the 63rd Regiment in
1758. It served as Mounted Infantry during the war of American
Independence, and won great distinction. The 2nd Battn. was
formerly the Minorca Regiment, and became part of the line in 1804
as the 97th (Queen's German) Regiment. In 1816 it became the 96th
(Queen's Own), and was disbanded in 1818. Raised again in 1824. The
1st Battn. displayed great courage and steadiness during the Siege
of Ladysmith (1899).]
THE GORDON HIGHLANDERS
("SCOTLAND FOR EVER")
"You have saved the day, Highlanders, but you must return to your
position. There is more work to be done."--_Sir Denis Pack at
Waterloo._
Sir Denis Pack's words at Waterloo are as true to-day as they were
then. The Gordons have always saved the day, and now they must return
to their position. There is more work to be done and the Gordons are
there to do it, as before.
The following is an extract from a letter to Sir Walter Scott from
Viscount Vanderfosse, first Advocate of the Superior Court of Justice
of Brussels, dated January 5th, 1816:
"Since the arrival of the British troops on the Continent, their
discipline was remarked by all those who had any communication with
them. Among these respectable warriors the Scotch deserve to be
particularly commemorated, and this honourable mention is due to
their discipline, their patience, their humanity, and their bravery
almost without example. Constant and unheard of proofs were given
of devotion to their country quite extraordinary and sublime; nor
must we forget that these men, so terrible in the field of battle,
were mild and tranquil out of it."
Such a testimonial from so high an authority is a treasured document in
the hands of the Gordons, and many are the accounts received to-day
from the front, which go to show that their cheery optimism has not
been dimmed by the passage of a century.
Perhaps there is no regiment that blends so nicely the simple humour
characteristic of the Scot with the grim determination in which no
section of our army is wanting. There are many points which soften to
our hearts the fierce homicidal glory of the Gordon Highlanders. But
first in importance is their grim and terrible side.
On the eventful night of the Duchess of Richmond's ball on the eve of
Waterloo, Colonel Cameron, and some of the N.C. officers of the Gordon
Highlanders, had been invited to give the guests of different nations
there assembled a display of the Highland dances. Poets have sung the
sudden call to arms at the "Cannon's opening roar," but it was not
until daybreak that the Gordons marched off through the Namur Gate
towards the scene of action.
On this occasion their panoply of war set everyone a-thrill. With their
dark plumes waving in the breeze, and the bright sun shining on their
polished accoutrements, they marched to the screel of the bagpipes.
Never had the spectators beheld a prouder, braver, more athletic body
of men; there was not a downcast look among them; only the fearless
eye, the undaunted mien, the cheerful bearing-things which tell of
strength.
In this mood they marched as far as the forest of Soignies, near
Waterloo. Thence, as the day advanced, they proceeded towards Quatre
Bras. The heat was intense, the dust suffocating, but, after a
wearisome march, they reached Genappe, where the people were waiting
for the thirsty regiment with large tubs of water, and of milk, from
which the Highlanders dipped and drank as they passed through the town.
Hard on this refreshment, as they came into the plain beyond, was a
further refreshment to the warlike spirit of the Highlanders; it was
the sound of cannon that fell upon their ears "nearer, clearer than
before." There was a general quickening of pace as the excitement of
promised action ran quickly through the ranks, but Colonel Cameron
checked their eagerness, and held them back, though with difficulty.
It so chanced, by good luck, or good management, that the Gordons
arrived at Quatre Bras just at the very moment they were needed.
Wellington had come in with full information from Blücher as to the
position of the Prussian army, and a fuller scorn of their tactics in
selecting that position--a scorn which was justified by the event. "If
they fight here," he said, in his terse and forcible way, "they will be
damnably mauled." The Duke was a true prophet. They were, in two words,
"mauled."
The enemy's action began with a fierce cannonade, under cover of which
a brigade of infantry and lancers were hurled forward, Our Belgian-Dutch
allies fell back, and their retreat was converted into a rout by the
enemy, who speedily became masters of the situation. Things were
critical, but, at that moment, in came the Gordon Highlanders by the
Namur road. Their march broke into a double, and their ranks opened and
overflowed each side of the road, deploying for immediate action. At
once came an answer from a battery of the enemy perched on one of the
surrounding heights. By this time the Duke was amongst the Highlanders,
giving orders to seek cover in the ditches and behind the banks of the
road; he and his staff following their example. They had not long to
wait, under a terrible fire, before the French cuirassiers came
sweeping through the fields towards them. On they came, with furious
cries, a formidable body; but the Highlanders under command of the
Duke, waited in grim silence, reserving their fire. "Highlanders!" the
Duke cried, "don't fight until I tell you," and so the Gordons lay,
ready for the signal. It came when the charging cuirassiers were within
thirty yards of them. Then a fierce volley rang out, and havoc lighted
on the horsemen. Horses and steel-clad riders went down pell mell, and,
in the confusion, the survivors turned and fled before the coming
steel. Many, whose horses were shot beneath them, attempted to cope
with the Scots, but all their valour was as nothing before the bayonets
of the Gordons.
At another stage of the battle, when the Duke of Brunswick's hussars
were in flight before the red (Polish) lancers and French light
infantry, Wellington, involved in the charge, and carried away in their
mad career, was in great danger; but, seeing a way out, he headed his
horse for a position that had been taken up by the Gordons. As he
neared them, at full gallop, he ordered them to lie still; then he
leapt the intervening fence clearing, at one jump, fence, trench, and
men. With the Gordons now between him and the foe, he wheeled his horse
to a standstill, and ordered the Highlanders to get ready. The
Brunswickers had passed, severely handled by the French bayonets, and
the grenadiers, on the right, retired to the road, leaving the Gordons
an opportunity to fire obliquely upon the oncoming cavalry. These
shared the same fate as the cuirassiers, being met at short distance
with a volley which threw them into confusion. Those in front were cut
off, by dead and wounded, from those in the rear, who retreated in
disorder, while the front passed on in their headlong career, which was
really a retreat, through the village. Meanwhile, the Gordons turned
their attention to the rest, and put them to rout.
Now Napoleon had impressed upon Ney to act in a manner that must prove
decisive. The British had to be swept entirely off the field--the fate
of France depended upon this. Ney's position was a difficult one,
especially as he saw that reinforcements were coming up against him.
Accordingly, he attacked again vigorously, and sent two columns of
cavalry down upon the posts held by the Gordons. But these met with a
similar fate to those who had tried that way before. But Ney still
persisted and the Gordons were suffering heavily. How the day would
have gone, and what would have happened to our Highlanders had not the
Guards come up on their left soon afterwards, military experts alone
can conjecture; but even with their assistance--and very welcome it
was--the Gordons were yet to experience a severer trial.
It came in this way. Two columns of French infantry advanced rapidly,
by means of the Charleroi road, and the outskirts of the wood of Bossu,
and occupied a roadside house, with a thick hedge running some distance
into a field, a part of their number gaining the cover of a
thickly-hedged garden on the other side of the road. The main body of
these troops, some 14,000 strong, took up a position in the rear of
this garden.
Colonel Cameron with difficulty curbed his eagerness to let his men go,
but the Duke, who foresaw a prolonged struggle, refused to allow it. He
was, as usual, waiting for the right moment. When that moment came, and
the order was given, Cameron leapt the ditch, at the head of his men,
with old General Barnes at his side, crying, "Come on, my old 92nd!"
Then, to the shrill piping of the pibrochs, the intrepid Gordons leapt
from the ditch and fell upon the enemy with an impetus that was
irresistible. The bayonet did its terrible work, and the opposing
column fell back in confusion.
Meanwhile other sections advanced upon the hedged garden, the house,
and the field hedge, suffering heavily from these points. It was in
this advance that the staff of the colour was split into six pieces by
three bullets, and the staff of the king's colour by one. It was here,
too, that Cameron himself was wounded. Being shot in the groin, he lost
control of his horse, which galloped away with him, and finally stopped
suddenly before his own groom, who was holding a second horse. There
Cameron, in a fainting condition, was thrown out of the saddle
violently on to the road.
Colonel Cameron died of his wound late that night, but not before he
had learnt that the British arms had conquered--a fact which forms the
theme of Sir Walter Scott's immortal verse:
And Sunart rough, and wild Ardgour,
And Morven long shall tell,
And proud Ben Nevis hear with awe,
How, upon bloody Quatre-Bras,
Brave Cameron heard the wild hurrah
Of conquest as he fell.
Meanwhile, the Gordons had fully avenged their leader's death. With
repeated rushes upon the roadside house, they did deadly work with the
bayonet, and, amid the hail of bullets from superior forces of the
enemy, they still continued their fierce onslaughts under conditions
that would have demoralized soldiers less cool and experienced.
In the midst of the appalling fire, they separated and formed up in
three parts, one part moving to the right of the house and garden,
another part to the left, while a third prepared to assault the garden
itself. At a given moment, when the whole battalion was ready, the
order to charge was given. Then, with a resounding cheer, they rushed
forward, "the bagpipes screaming out the notes of the 'Cameron's
Gathering,' as they levelled their bayonets, and charged with the
elastic step learnt on the hillside."