The retirement or the removal of one of their favourite officers to another regiment called forth the strongest feelings of sorrow, and sometimes almost led to open resistance. It occasionally happened that these officers were Englishmen, who with the garb of the mountains had adopted all the feelings of the mountaineers. Cadogan, who commanded the 71st in the Peninsula, was a Saxon, and yet no Celt was ever dearer to his men. The Pretender would never have been so popular in the North if he had not worn the tartan; the same may be said of Montrose and Dundee, neither of whom was a Highlander by birth. If English officers failed to gain the affections and respect of their men, it was because they failed to make themselves acquainted with their character, and inadvertently wounded their feelings. Such cases, however, were rare. English officers serving in Highland regiments possessed the _esprit de corps_ as much as the Highlanders themselves. At first, as we have shown, all the officers belonged to the North, and it was a point of honour with the men either to protect them in battle or to avenge them if slain. We might cite many cases where Highland soldiers sacrificed their own lives to save those of their officers, stepping before them and receiving in their own bodies the bullet or the bayonet-thrust aimed at their officers’ breasts. When a favourite fell, woe betide the enemy at the next charge: every Highlander fought as if his arm alone were the instrument of vengeance. When Cameron fell at Quatre Bras, by a shot fired from the upper storey of the farm-house, his men rushed with a wild shout on the building, burst their way in, and avenged by the slaughter of all its occupants, the death of their leader. [Illustration: Major Murray and the Highlanders at Fort Washington.]