The Cavaliers of Fortune; Or, British Heroes in Foreign Wars. James Grant
career of Count Lally, the victim surrendered by a weak and tyrannical ministry to popular clamour, affording by his fate a memorable instance of the injustice, ingratitude, and barbarity of the Court of Versailles.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The MS. original of these interesting instructions was presented to Charles Grant, Viscount de Vaux, by the directors of the English East India Company.
[2] The 79th, or Draper's Regiment, lost in this siege, and encounters before it, thirty-four officers, whose names were inscribed on a beautiful cenotaph, erected on Clifton Downs by Colonel Sir W. Draper and which he dedicated as,
"Sacred to the Memory of those departed Warriors,
Of the Seventy-ninth Regiment,
By whose Valour, Discipline, and Perseverance
The French land Forces in Asia were first withstood and repulsed."
John Cameron, of Fassifern,
K.T.S.,
COLONEL OF THE GORDON HIGHLANDERS; SLAIN AT QUATRE-BRAS, 1815.
From among the many distinguished Scottish officers who served under Wellington, if we could select one for the delineation of his career, it would be John Cameron of the House of Fassifern and Locheil.
This brave soldier was the eldest of the seven children of Ewen Cameron, Laird of Fassifern (i.e. the Point of Alders), and his wife, Lucy Campbell, of Barcaldine, whose father succeeded to the estate of Glenure on the death of her uncle, Colin Campbell, who was shot at the Ferry of Ballachulish, in Appin, by Allan Breac Stewart, otherwise known as Vic Ian, Vic Alaster—a crime for which the Laird of Ardsheil was judicially murdered by the Duke of Argyle at the Castle of Inverary.
Ewen Cameron was the son of John the Tanister, a younger brother of the great Locheil, who commenced the insurrection of 1745; and it is said that this powerful chief, on being summoned by Prince Charles to attend his memorable lauding in Moidart on the 25th July, was predisposed to warn him against the projected rising of the clans.
"If such be your intention, Donald," said John of Fassifern, "write your opinion to the Prince, but do not trust yourself within the fascination of his presence. I know you better than you know yourself, and foresee that you will be unable to refuse compliance."
But Locheil preferred an interview with the Prince, and the event proved the truth of Fassifern's prophecy. He joined him immediately with all the clan Cameron, and the gallant revolt of the clans immediately followed. Fassifern was taken prisoner after Culloden, and was long detained in the Castle of Edinburgh; there he was kept so close that the year 1752 arrived, yet he heard nothing of the barbarous execution of his brother, the amiable and unfortunate Dr. Archibald Cameron, until one evening a soldier brought him a kettle with hot water. He took off a paper which was twisted round the handle, and found it to be the "last speech and dying confession, &c., of the traitor Archibald Cameron." He immediately ordered a suit of the deepest mourning, and on appearing in it before the authorities was brutally upbraided by the Lord Justice Clerk for putting on mourning for a traitor.
"Alas!" said Cameron, "that traitor was my dear brother!"
"A rebel!" retorted the judge, scornfully. He was exiled, but afterwards returned to die at Fassifern.
Colonel John Cameron, the grand-nephew of the Jacobite chief, was born in Argyleshire, at the farm of Inverscaddle (a house which belonged to his family before the acquisition of Fassifern), on the 16th of August, 1771, only twenty-five years after the battle of Culloden, and while those inhuman butcheries, for which the name of Cumberland is still abhorred in Scotland, were fresh in the memory of the people. According to the old custom, common to Scotland and Ireland, he was assigned to the care of a foster-mother named M'Millan, who dwelt in Glendescherie, on the shore of Locharkaig. Thus, born and bred among the Gael, while the clans were unchanged and uncorrupted, and when the glens were full of that gallant race, with all their old traditions and historic memories, their military pride, and peculiar prejudices, Cameron was reared as thorough a chieftain as if had lived in the days of James IV. Educated among his native mountains, sharing in the athletic sports of the people, and those in which his foster-brother, Ewan M'Millan, who was a fox-hunter in Croydart, and a year his elder, excelled, young Cameron grew up a handsome and hardy Highlander, and early became distinguished by that proud, fiery, and courageous temperament for which he was so well known among the troops of Lord Hill's division, and which sometimes caused him to set the rules of discipline, and the aristocratic coldness of Wellington, alike at defiance, if they interfered with his native ideas of rank and self-esteem.
In the "Romance of War," a work which has made his name familiar to the reading public, a faithful description of him will be found. He was above the middle height, had a pleasing, open countenance, curly brown hair, and bright blue eyes, which, when he was excited, filled with a dusky fire.
Arms were then the only occupation for a Highland gentleman; and thus in his twenty-second year, on the 8th of February, 1793, he obtained an ensigncy in the 26th, or Cameronian Regiment, commanded by Sir William Erskine. He never joined that corps; but on raising a sufficient number of men in Locheil, procured a lieutenantcy in an independent Highland company then being formed by Capt. A. Campbell, of Ardchattan. He was gazetted on the 3rd of April; but this company was either disbanded or incorporated with the old 93rd Regiment, to which he was appointed lieutenant on the 30th of October in the same year. He did not join this regiment either, but busied himself in raising a company to procure the rank of captain in a corps of Highlanders, which, in obedience to a letter of service, dated 10th February, 1794, the Duke of Gordon was raising for his son, the young Marquis of Huntly, then a captain in the Scottish Regiment of Guards. This battalion was to consist of 46 officers, 64 staff, and 1000 rank and file, to be raised among the clan of Gordon.
From the lands of Fassifern and Locheil Cameron drew a company, principally of his own name and kindred, all hardy and handsome young Highlanders, among whom were his foster-brother, Ewen M'Millan, who never left him; three Camerons, Ewen, Alaster, and Angus, whom he made sergeants; Ewen Kennedy, for whom he procured an ensigncy, and another, who died a lieutenant. With these, all clad in their native tartans, he marched from the Braes of Lochaber to Castle Gordon, in Strathspey, where he was introduced to Alexander, Duke of Gordon, the Cock o' the North, by his uncle, the Rev. Dr. Ross, of Kilmanivaig, the worthy author of the statistical account of that parish. He at once received a company in the duke's own regiment, to which he was appointed on the 13th of February, 1794, and with which he attended the grand muster of the whole at Aberdeen on the 24th of June, when the corps was named the Gordon Highlanders, or 100th Regiment, afterwards and now the 92nd. The uniform coats and vests were scarlet, faced with yellow, and laced with silver to suit the epaulettes. The kilts and plaids were in one piece, each containing twelve yards of Gordon tartan; the claymores, dirks, buckles, and sporrans were mounted with silver; the bonnets were plumed with black ostrich feathers, and encircled by the old fess checque of the House of Stuart. The men were all Highlanders; scarcely one of them, and but very few of the officers, could speak English; the enthusiasm was so great in Badenoch that, in some instances, fathers and sons joined its ranks together.
At that time, when the French Revolution menaced Europe with anarchy, and the Convention declared war against Britain and Holland, the number of Highlanders in our service is almost incredible. During a period of fifty years the clans furnished eighty-six battalions of infantry, some of which were twelve hundred strong.[3]
How many could the Highlands raise now? Centralization, corruption, and local tyranny of the most infamous description have turned their beautiful glens into a silent wilderness, and the very place where Cameron raised his company of soldiers is now desolate and bare. "I can point," says the author of a letter to the Marquis of Breadalbane, on his late ruthless clearings, "to a place where thirty recruits that manned the 92nd in Egypt came from—men before whom Napoleon's Invincibles bit the dust—and now only two families reside there together. I was lately informed by a grazier that on his form a hundred