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!"