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Sketches of The
Character, Manners, and Present State of the Highlanders of Scotland |
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Fencible Regiments
Sutherland, 1759
While Scotland, at this period, sent forth many able
and active soldiers, to fight the battles and support the honour of
their country abroad, its internal defence was not neglected. County
militia regiments had been recently established in England, but this
measure was not extended to Scotland. National jealousies still existed,
and it was imagined that the people could not yet be safely trusted with
arms. A mode of embodying troops, somewhat different from the militia,
was therefore had recourse to; and thus the system of Fencible regiments
commenced. The officers were to be appointed, and their commissions
signed, by the King, while the men were to be raised by recruiting in
the common manner, and not by ballot in the particular counties, as in
the case of the militia. The influence of individuals supplied the place
of compulsion. Property, rank, or personal consideration and character,
recommended the leaders to their followers. In the front of Scottish
Chiefs and Landlords stood the late Earl of Sutherland, who, by his
personal accomplishments and amiable disposition, possessed in the
hearts and affections of his adherents a great and powerful influence,
in addition to that which he enjoy-ed from hereditary succession and
great property.
The reciprocal duties of protection and obedience
were then acknowledged and observed, and the common interests of
chieftain and clansmen had not as yet been diminished by considerations
of political expediency, or private emolument.
The chief was satisfied with that species of
dominion, - the power of surrounding himself
with a contented and attached tenantry, and of influencing the mind and
the will; whilst the clansmen were happy in acknowledging the kindness
of their chiefs, not only by a complete devotion to their service, but
by giving such value for the territorial possessions they held and
paying such rents for their lands, as enabled the noblemen and gentlemen
of the Highlands to support with dignity and independence an honourable
station in general society. In what manner the poor, but hardy and
economical tenantry of the North enabled the great chiefs and lairds to
support their independence, preserve their estates, and convey them from
father to son for so many centuries, is evident from the remarkable
circumstance, that, in no part of the kingdom, containing an equal
number of inhabitants, have families and estates been so long preserved
as in the Highlands, where, as I have already noticed, the heirs of
eighteen chiefs who fought at Bannockburn, in 1314, are at this day in
possession of their estates. The Chief of Sutherland had the honour of
bearing a part in that great battle, which may be said to have fixed the
independence of Scotland as a nation. Waterloo and Bannockburn were
similar in the desperate valour displayed, and similar in their results.
As the former sealed the destiny of Buonaparte, so Bannockburn destroyed
the hopes of a proud invader, and established the independence of
Scotland on a foundation which kept it firm, till the Union with a more
powerful kingdom rendered the independence of the one inseparable from
the other.
In the year 1759 the Earl of Sutherland received
proposals from Mr Pitt to raise a Fencible regiment on his estate. The
offer was readily accepted, and in nine days after his Lordship arrived
in Sutherland with his Letters of Service, 1100 men were assembled on
the lawn before Dunrobin Castle. The martial appearance of those men,
when they marched into Perth in May 1760, with the Earl of Sutherland at
their head, was never forgotten by those who saw them, and who never
failed to express admiration of their fine military air. Some old
friends of mine, who often saw these men in Perth, spoke of them with a
kind of enthusiasm. Considering the abstemious habits, or rather the
poverty of the Highlanders, the size and muscular strength of the people
are remarkable. In this corps there was no Light infantry company;
upwards of 260 men being above five feet eleven inches in height, they
were formed into two Grenadier companies, one on each flank of the
battalion.
On the peace of 1763, the regiment was marched back
to Sutherland, and there reduced in the month of May, with this
honourable distinction in the course of their short service, that, in a
regiment of 1050 men, no restrictions had been required, and no man had
been punished; and, as they had assembled as a corps, with the primitive
habits of a pastoral life, so they separated with these habits
unchanged, and had the happiness of returning to their native glens
without a single individual from the mountains having disgraced his
corps, kindred, or district. These facts I have received from the best
authority; from officers who served in the regiment, from soldiers, and
from intelligent and respectable gentlemen, who saw the regiment in
quarters, who were intimate with many of the officers, and who had great
pleasure in talking of and describing the height, strength, and fine
military appearance of these men, and their peaceable domestic habits in
quarters. |
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