Seaforth Highlanders

“ Accordingly, a Letter of Service, dated 7th March, 1793, was granted to him, empowering him, as Lieut.-Colonel Commandant, to raise a Highland battalion, which, as the first to be embodied during the war, was to be numbered the 78th. The strength of the battalion was to be 1 company of grenadiers, 1 of light infantry, and 8 battalion companies. Seaforth immediately appointed as his major his brother-in-law, Alexander Mackenzie of Belmaduthy, son of Mackenzie of Kilcoy, a captain in the 73rd Regiment, and a man in every way fitted for the post. ”

“ It is a pity, they say, that the Highlander, possessing so many noble qualities, and so strongly attached to his native soil, should be compelled to seek a home in a foreign land, and bestow upon it the services which might be profitably employed by his mother country. By permitting, they say, these loyal and brave Highlanders to leave the country, Britain is throwing away some of the finest recruiting material in the world, for—and it is quite true—the Highland soldier has not his match for bravery, moral character, and patriotism. ”

“ The danger was that men so shaken would be stricken with panic, scatter in the darkness over the face of the country, and cease to exist as a military unit. But the Highlanders were true to their character and their traditions. There was shouting in the darkness, hoarse voices calling for the Seaforths, for the Argylls, for Company C, for Company H, and everywhere in the gloom there came the answer of the clansmen. Within half an hour with the break of day the Highland regiments had re-formed, and, shattered and weakened, but undaunted, prepared to renew the contest. ”

“ It appears that, in the crash and roar of the battle, this order was lost upon the foremost pursuers, who were dealing death right and left, and they were not aware of what threatened until the French cavalry was thundering down upon them. It was so sudden that the Highlanders had barely time to retrieve their scattered state, and rally back to back. Thus, raising their fierce northern battle-cry, they fought against fearful odds, a small body of men surrounded on every hand. But even from this they emerged victorious, routing the very flower of the French cavalry. ”

“ After all that has been said of the force and terrour of the Highland sword, I could not find that the art of defence was any part of common education. The gentlemen were perhaps sometimes skilful gladiators, but the common men had no other powers than those of violence and courage. Yet it is well known, that the onset of the Highlanders was very formidable. As an army cannot consist of philosophers, a panick is easily excited by any unwonted mode of annoyance. New dangers are naturally magnified ”

“ Till the end of the century fresh regiments could be raised from the Highlands, as well as corps of Fencible militia and volunteers. The drain of the long French war first made the supply run short. The ranks of the Highland regiments began to be recruited from outside, from the scum of London and Dublin, as Stewart bitterly complains; and this alloy went far to debase their early character. There are too few real Highlanders in the ranks since the glens from which they were recruited have been stocked with sheep and deer in place of men. ”

“ It was the will of Heaven in those days that we should fight for none but the Dutch and Hanoverians.
I had been appointed captain-lieutenant to the Black Watch from the old 26th, or Angus's Foot, and having overtaken the corps on its march between the gloomy old town of Liege and the barrier fortress of Maestricht, the aspect and bearing of the Highlanders—we had then only one regiment of them in the service—seemed new and strange, even barbaric to my eyes; for, as a Lowlander, I had been ever accustomed to associate the tartan with fierce rapine and armed insurrection. ”

“ The majority of “Highland” [35] soldiers are at least Lowland Scots, and some battalions have a considerable percentage of real Highlanders, which will be much larger in the militia contingent. But, as General Stewart noticed, Sassenachs, Irishmen, Cockneys, and other aliens soon catch the infection of enthusiasm for tartans, bagpipes, and the proud traditions of regiments that are the Zouaves or Bersaglieri of our service. They have lost, indeed, the old bonds of caste and custom that held them closely together, for good and evil, like the Brahmin sepoys who stirred mutiny in our Indian army. ”

“ The gallant deeds of the Highland regiments in every quarter of the globe added to the general enthusiasm for Caledonians. It was long, indeed, before the English government would believe that they could be trusted. To have armed the Highlanders about the beginning of the last century, would have been deemed as much an act of insanity as to arm at the present hour the New Zealand Maoris. Scottish men were known to be under the control of their chiefs, and their chiefs, almost to a man, were devoted to the Pretender. ”

“ The Highland regiments took part in the retreat from Mons, the most terrible in history, and throughout that awful action, when officers could not ride their horses for fear of sleeping and falling to the ground, when fighting never ceased for days on end, and our soldiers held at bay a German force many times their superior in numbers—the Highlanders fought sternly, heroically, giving way with an utter disdain for their own safety, and a longing for the day when the retreat would end. ”

“ We have already referred to, in its proper place, a mandate from King James V. in 1583, against the clan Chattan, in which he charges his lieges to invade the clan “to their utter destruction by slaughter, burning, drowning, and otherways; and leave no creature living of that clan, except priests, women, and bairns.” Even Captain Burt, in the beginning of the next century, writes of the Highlanders as if they were an interesting race of semi-barbarians, many of whom would cut a man’s throat for the mere sake of keeping their hands in practice. ”

“ Fortunately the Highland Regiments have earned by more than glamour the admiration of Britain. In campaigns extending over the last hundred and fifty odd years the Highlanders have borne their share of the fighting, and whenever the call has come have proved themselves ‘second to none.’
It was in the eighteenth century that the Jacobites rose for the last time against the King of England, and whatever the rights or wrongs of the rebellion, the loyalty and bravery of the clans will for ever remain undimmed by time. ”

“ In this day—when it is but a pleasant outing to motor from England into the Highlands—it seems almost unbelievable that the laws, language, customs, and social usages of the Highlanders should for centuries have remained utterly different from those of England and the lowlands, and that the people of the lowlands should have almost no knowledge of neighbours so near. The sturdy and soldierly qualities of the Highlanders of the six companies, however, couldn’t escape the notice of England’s generals, ever seeking new drafts for England’s fighting forces. ”

“ The Macraes, as we have already said, had never attained to the dignity of a clan; they were a sort of caterans or pilfering tinkers, who had found it convenient to place themselves under the protection of the chief of the Mackenzies. It appears that Seaforth had no particular liking for his pilfering protégés, and deemed this a favourable opportunity for getting quit of them. It is a fact not generally known that our Highland regiments have often obtained their best recruits from the fraternity of cairds or caterans. ”

“ He represented, that the regular troops now in the kingdom were insufficient to withstand the body of Highlanders his friends could bring into the field; and he stated his belief, that if in the outset he obtained an advantage over the government forces, the country in general would declare in his favour, and his friends abroad would at once aid him,—that every thing, in fact, now depended upon the Highlanders,—and that to accomplish the restoration of his father, it was only necessary that they should instantly declare themselves and begin the war. ”

“ After the Flemish campaign, under his Royal Highness the Duke of York, and the terrible retreat to Deventer—a retreat in which the sufferings of our troops rivalled those endured by the French after Moscow—the 42nd Highlanders were encamped during the spring of 1795 at Hanbury, in England, under the command of General Sir William Meadows, when their strength, which had been weakened by their recent operations against the French republican armies, was greatly augmented by volunteers from various Highland fencible corps, which had been raised in the preceding year. ”

“ THE LEGEND OF THE VISION OF CAMPBELL OF INVERAWE.
Perhaps you are all acquainted with the history of the Black Watch, which, as Mr. Macpherson has already told you, was afterwards formed into that gallant corps now immortalized by its actions as the Forty-Second Highlanders? General Stewart of Garth, in his interesting account of the Highland Regiments, tells us that it was originally composed of independent companies, which were raised about 1725 or 1730. These were stationed in small bodies in different parts of the country, in order to preserve the peace of the Highlands. ”

“ Without hesitation, but fired by the honour laid upon them, the Highlanders charged headlong at the French cavalry who fell into disorder. The artillery horses had already fallen, but undismayed the 42nd pulled the precious guns home again.
It was a swift, minor incident, but at the moment when the British army was in the heart of a hostile and frost-bound country it stood out of the dreary story like a splash of gold upon a grey sky. Never have the Black Watch refused the call, and very seldom have they failed. ”

“ Fordun, who concludes his Chronicle immediately before the first appearance of a Highland clan beyond the Highland Line, gives the following description of the inhabitants of the Highlands:—‘The Highlanders and people of the Islands are,’ he says, ‘a savage and untamed nation, rude and independent, given to rapine, ease-loving, of a docile and warm disposition, comely in person but unsightly in dress, hostile to the Anglic people and language, and, owing to diversity of speech, even to their own nation, and exceedingly cruel. ”

“ The Earl of Seaforth and his clan, who had also favoured the designs of Macintosh, were in like manner reconciled, at the same time, to the Earl of Enzie, at Aberdeen, through the mediation of the Earl of Dunfermline, the Chancellor of Scotland, whose daughter the Earl of Seaforth had married. [209]
In no part of the Highlands did the spirit of faction operate so powerfully, or reign with greater virulence, than in Sutherland and Caithness and the adjacent country. ”

“ Animated by his example they crossed the ford at a gallop, dashing the water right and left; and forcing their horses up to the bank, even while exposed to a hot fire, they fell furiously with hoof and blade among the scattered Highlanders. It was a piece of unexampled daring for a few dragoons to cross a river thus, under a hot fire from concealed musquetry.
"Vive l'Empereur! No quarter to the Germans!" shouted De Mesmai, leaping his horse over the underwood.
"Form square!" cried the deep and manly voice of Seaton. "Rally—rally! Quick, Highlanders, or you will be cut to pieces! ”

“ In their own country the Highlanders possessed many natural advantages over an invading foe, which gave them almost an absolute assurance of success in any contest even with forces greatly superior in numbers; and, in the adjoining Lowlands, they could, if worsted, easily retreat to their fastnesses; but their situation was very different on the south of the Forth, where they were more particularly exposed to be attacked by cavalry,—a species of force which they greatly dreaded, and from which they could, if routed, scarcely expect to escape. ”

“ Vast lakes and rivers, mountains and cañons, not unlike to the glens the Highlanders had left in Scotland, confronted them. In the deep stillness of the woods wild animals slipped into the darkness, and savages were a sleepless menace. In the dead of a summer night the long-drawn cry of an Indian brave would chill the blood of some straggling soldier, or from the thicket would fly the arrows of death. It was a country where one force could not hope to keep in touch with another nor guard its lines of communication: an army was swallowed up in a wilderness of forests and rivers. ”

“ At the sight of the grim faces of the Black Watch the French fell back for the time being, while the Highlanders advanced, at which Marshal Ney ordered a regiment of Lancers to break upon their flank. They came with such rapidity that they almost took the Highlanders off their guard. “We instantly formed ‘rally-square,’” says Anton. “Every man’s piece was loaded, and our enemies approached at full charge, the feet of their horses seemed to tear up the ground. ”

“ Their isolation is so complete that they have no race consciousness at all. In this respect I can think of no other people on the face of the earth to which they may be likened.
As compensation for the peculiar weakness of their social structure, the Highlanders display an undying devotion to family and kindred. Mountaineers everywhere are passionately attached to their homes. Tear away from his native rock your Switzer, your Tyrolean, your Basque, your Montenegrin, and all alike are stricken with homesickness beyond speech or cure. ”

“ Indeed Jacobitism, as an active principle, is as much a thing of the past as clan-feuds, cattle-lifting, and active religious intolerance.
Her present Majesty has done more to win the hearts and command the loyalty of the Highlanders than ever did any of her predecessors, by taking up her residence yearly in their midst, and in many other ways showing her trust in and love for them, and her unbounded admiration for all that is Highland. As is well known, before her widowhood, her favourite plaid was one of Stuart tartan of a special pattern. ”