The Cavaliers of Fortune; Or, British Heroes in Foreign Wars. James Grant

no fear, and shunned no danger, he accompanied or led, in marches, sieges, and battles, the 92nd Regiment of Scottish Highlanders, always to honour and always to victory; and at length, in the 42nd year of his age, upon the memorable 16th June, 1815, was slain in command of that corps, while actively contributing to achieve the decisive victory of Waterloo, which gave peace to Europe. Thus closing his military career with the long and eventful struggle, in which his services had been so often distinguished; he died, lamented by that unrivalled general, to whose long train of success he had so often contributed; by his country, from which he had repeatedly received marks of the highest consideration, and by his sovereign, who graced his surviving family with those marks of honour which could not follow, to this place, him whom they were designed to commemorate. Reader, call not his fate untimely, who, thus honoured and lamented, closed a life of fame by a death of glory!"

      Few of Camerons old comrades now survive. I know of only three officers and four privates living of the regiment which, between the 27th August, 1799, and the 18th June, 1815, had lost, in killed and wounded, 117 officers and 1634 men. After being discharged, Ewen M'Millan (who could never learn one word of English) died, in 1840, at Callart, the seat of Cameron's brother, and he now sleeps by his old master's side at Kilmalie. He it is whose memory Scott has embalmed in his "Dance of Death," and—

      "Who for many a day

       Had followed stout and stern,

       Where through battles, rout, and reel,

       Storm of shot and hedge of steel,

       Led the grandson of Lochiel,

       Valiant Fassifern!

       Though steel and shot he leads no more,

       Low laid 'mid friends' and foemen's gore

       But long his native lake's wild shore,

       And Suinart rough, and high Ardgower,

       And Morven long and tell;

       And proud Bennevis hear with awe,

       How, upon Bloody Quatre Bras,

       Brave Cameron heard the wild hurrah

       Of conquest, as he fell!"

      Riddled with wounds, Colonel Donald M'Donald of Inch, Knight of St. Vladimir, died in 1830, and is interred at Edinburgh; Lieutenant Winchester died there in 1846. Captain Campbell died, by leaping over a window, with a pistol in each hand, to chastise a person who had insulted him; some have died as emigrants among the wilds of the far West; many more are lying near Uppark, in Jamaica, where the close-ranked headstones show where 1300 of the Gordon Highlanders are sleeping far from their native hills; and now Paymaster Gordon, and Lieutenants Ewen Ross, John Grant, and Alexander Gordon alone survive to wear the war decoration.

      FOOTNOTES:

[3] As an example of the number of officers belonging to the clans, who served during the war and escaped its slaughter, we may state that there were on full and half-pay commissions, in 1816, 22 Buchanans; 67 Camerons; 22 Drummonds; 26 Fergusons; 41 Forbeses; 49 Grahames; 90 Frazers; 96 Grants; 144 M'Leans and M'Kenzies; 248 Campbells; and other names in the same proportion.

[4] MS. Records, 92nd Highlanders.

[5] Lieutenant Hope, 92nd.

[6] "Record:" Lyon Court, Edinburgh.

[7] Note of his services furnished to author from Horse Guards.

      Sir Samuel Greig.

      Sir Samuel Greig, Governor of Cronstadt, Admiral of all the Russias, and commonly called the Father of the Russian Navy, was a Scotsman of humble but respectable parentage, and was born at the ancient seaport town of Inverkeithing, in Fifeshire, on the 30th of November, 1735.[8] He was educated by the parochial schoolmaster, who lived long to boast of his pupil, for the Domini would seem to have been still alive when the old statistical account of Scotland was published in 1794.

      When very young, Samuel Greig entered the British navy, and at an early age obtained the rank of lieutenant. In 1759 he served with the fleet of Admiral Sir Edward Hawke, C.B. (afterwards Lord Hawke), when blockading the harbour of Brest, where a fine French fleet lay, under the pennant of the Marquis de Conflans. At that time a double invasion of Britain (one by the way of Scotland, the other on the coast of England) was threatened; but Commodore Boys blocked up Dunkirk, and Rodney bombarded Havre-de-Grace, while the French transports and flat-bottomed boats lay inactive in Brest, with the fleet of M. de Conflans; till a violent storm in autumn, having driven the ships of Sir Edward Hawke into Torbay, the marquis put to sea with twenty-one sail of the line and four frigates, and threw all England into consternation.

      With twenty sail of the line, Hawke left Torbay, and came up with the French fleet between Belleisle and Cape Quiberon, close in on the coast of France, and in the desperate conflict which ensued, "young Greig," though a subaltern, is said to "have eminently distinguished himself." The battle began at two o'clock, P.M., on the 20th of November.

      Sir Edward, in the Royal George, 110, lay alongside De Conflans in the Soleil Royale, 80, which was soon driven on shore and burned. He then lay alongside the Thesée, and sent her to the bottom by one broadside. La Superbe shared the same fate; the Juste was sunk off the mouth of the Loire; the Hero was burned; and thus M. de Conflans was totally defeated. Nothing saved the rest of his fleet from irretrievable ruin but the shadow of a tempestuous night, in which two British ships of the line were lost. Lieutenant Greig served with the fleet in all its operations, during the long cruise off the coast of Bretagne, and the blockade of the river Vilaine, to prevent seven French ships which lay there from joining Conflans, whose battered squadron had reached Rochefort; but so dangerous were the storms, and so incessantly tempestuous the weather, that the fear of invasion passed away. Sir Edward Hawke was at length recalled, and the thanks of Parliament and a pension were awarded to him. In this war the British destroyed, or took twenty-seven French ships of the line and thirty-one frigates. Six of their vessels perished. Thus, in all they lost sixty-four sail, while Britain, by every casualty, lost only seven line-of-battle ships and five frigates.

      The next scene of Greig's service was at the capture of several of the West India Islands.

      War having been declared against the Spaniards, an attack on their settlements in the West Indies was arranged, and Martinico, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Grenada were taken. Then Cuba was assailed. Greig was with the fleet, consisting of nineteen sail of the line, eighteen frigates, and 150 transports, which had 10,000 soldiers on board, and sailed for Cuba under Admiral Sir George Pocoke, K.B., whose commodore was the Hon. Augustus Keppel, raised to the peerage in 1782.

      The energy and exertions of Lieutenant Greig, during that tremendous cannonading which preceded the siege and capture of the Moro Castle, elicited the praise of his commander; but no promotion followed, for the time was unfavourable for either Scotsmen or Irishmen rising in the British service. After incredible exertions, difficulties, danger, and slaughter, Havannah was captured, with 180 miles of coast; the Puntal Castle, the ships in the harbour, three millions sterling of booty, and an immense quantity of arms, artillery, and stores were surrendered to the British. Greig's share of this enormous prize-money was very small, being somewhere about 80l.

      Lieutenant Greig served in many other engagements during that successful war; and his bravery, activity, and skill as a seaman had so frequently elicited particular attention, that after the treaty of peace which was signed at Paris in February, 1763, under Lord Bute's administration, when the Court of St. Petersburg requested that a few British officers of distinguished ability might be sent to improve the Russian fleet, Greig was one of the five who were first selected, and his