THE SEVENTY-FIFTH FOOT; ORIGINALLY HIGHLANDERS. CHAPTER XX. "Courage! Nothing e'er withstood That shall go to endless glory, For the good they gave to earth.” 1787-1862-INDIA-CAPE OF GOOD HOPE-INDIAN MUTINY. IN General Stuart's admirable and interesting annals of the Highland Regiments, the brief record of the Seventy-fifth Highlanders is introduced by a series of wholesome counsels as to military administration, gathered from his own large experience and wide field of diligent inquiry, from which we shall quote a few extracts, as being useful and helpful to our history. It seems that this regiment, raised by Colonel Robert Abercromby in 1787 from among his tenantry around Stirling, and the veterans who, in earlier life, had served under him in the army as a light brigade, had been subjected to an unusually strict system of discipline, which had operated prejudicially upon the corps. The system adopted "was formed on the old Prussian model; fear was the great principle of action; consequently, it became the first object of the soldiers. to escape detection, more than to avoid crimes." This system, when enforced, "was carried into effect by one of the captains who commanded in the absence of the field-officers. He was an able and intelligent officer; but he had been educated in a school in which he had imbibed ideas of correctness which required no small strength of mind to enforce, and which, when enforced with severity, tended to break the spirit of the soldiers to a degree which no perfection in movement can ever compensate. When applied to the British soldier in particular, this system has frequently frustrated its own purpose.' Brotherly-kindness and charity-patience and forbearanceeare virtues which should not be banished, but rather be exercised, as thoroughly consistent with the best military institutions. A considerate attention to the wants, nay, the very weaknesses of the soldier, is likely to accomplish more for good discipline than the stern frigidity of mere military despotism. It was in the camp that the iron will of Napoleon, unbending, achieved a charmed omnipotence over his soldiers, and by a single simple, pithy sentence fired them with that ardour and devotion which made Europe tremble beneath the tread of his invincible legions. The charm was only broken when the vastness of his dominion had scattered the old soldiers of the empire, and the feeble conscript failed to sustain the veteran remnant of "The Guard," the more especially at a time when disasters, quickly crowding upon his arms, and bereft of the invincibility which had hitherto been inseparable to his presence, no power remained to animate the soul of the recruit, rudely torn from his home and pressed into the fatal vortex of the dying army. The marvellous sway of this great captain over the hearts as well as the wills of his soldiers teaches many useful lessons, and illustrates what General Stuart so well observes:-"When a soldier's honour is in such little consideration that disgraceful punishments are applied to trifling faults, it will soon be thought not worth preserving." We must have a degree of faith equally in the honour as well as the loyalty of our soldiers, to help them to a cheerful and not a Russian stolidness in the discharge of duty. In the case of the Seventy-fifth "the necessity of this severe discipline was not proved by the results, when the regiment passed under the command of another officer. The system was then softened and relaxed, and much of the necessity of punishment ceased; the men became more quiet and regular, and in every respect better soldiers. A soldier sees his rights respected, and while he performs his duty, he is certain of being well treated, well fed, well clothed, and regularly paid; he is, consequently, contented in his mind and moral in his habits." At length released from the terrors under which, for eighteen months, the corps had been trained, it embarked for India, where, with other King's regiments, chiefly High land, and the British native troops, it was present with great credit at the several attacks upon Seringapatam, which, in 1799, terminated in the capture of that capital. Subsequently the Seventy-fifth was engaged with the army under Lord Lake in the campaigns of Upper India. It was one of the five British regiments which, in 1805, were so disastrously repulsed in an attempt upon the strong fortress of Bhurtpore. Returning to England in 1806, like the Seventy-third, the regiment was shortly thereafter shorn of its dignity as a Highland corps, not a hundred Highlanders remaining in its ranks. We cannot but lament the circumstances which have bereaved us of an interest in so many regiments once representatives of our Old Highland Brigade. Believing our "Scottish Rights Association to sympathise with us in these regrets, and believing it to be composed of men truly in earnest, we commend, to their most serious consideration—not merely as a theme for eloquent disquisition, but as a field for action-the revival and preservation, in their original integrity, of the old Scottish and Highland regiments. By suggesting some better mode of recruiting and stirring up our countrymen to rally round the national colours of those regiments, which still in name belong to us, they may be prevented from still farther degenerating, and sharing a similar fate as those who have already been lopped from the parent stem-lost to our nationality, lost because of our own apathy, lost in the great sea of British valour. A very interesting cotemporary work, giving "An Account of the Scottish Regiments," published by Mr Nimmo |