Historical Record of the Thirty-first, or, the Huntingdonshire Regiment of Foot;: containing an account of the formation of the regiment in 1702, and of its subsequent services to 1850Cannon, Richard
History
Historical Record of the Thirty-first, or, the Huntingdonshire Regiment of Foot;: containing an account of the formation of the regiment in 1702, and of its subsequent services to 1850
Cannon, Richard
Great Britain. Army -- History; Great Britain. Army. Regiment of Foot, 31st
On the 20th of August, 1762, Colonel James Adolphus Oughton, from
the fifty-fifth regiment, was appointed by His Majesty King George
III. to the Colonelcy of the THIRTY-FIRST regiment, in succession
to Lieutenant-General Henry Holmes, deceased.
[Sidenote: 1763]
The treaty of Fontainebleau was concluded at Paris on the 10th of
February, the ratifications were exchanged on the 10th of March,
and peace was proclaimed in London on the 22nd of that month.
By this treaty, the whole of Canada, part of Louisiana, together
with Cape Breton, and the other islands in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, were ceded to Great Britain. In the West Indies, the
islands of Tobago, Dominica, St. Vincent, and Grenada were retained
by Great Britain; but Martinique, Guadaloupe, Marigalante, and
St. Lucia were restored to France. In the East Indies, the French
obtained the restitution of their settlements, but agreed not to
erect any fortifications in Bengal. Minorca was restored to England
in exchange for Belle-Isle, which had been captured by the British
in 1761, and it was stipulated that the fortifications of Dunkirk
should be demolished. Spain ceded East and West Florida to Great
Britain, in return for the restitution of the Havannah, Manilla,
and all the places which Spain had lost since the commencement of
the war.
[Sidenote: 1765]
In this year the THIRTY-FIRST regiment was embarked for Pensacola,
the capital of West Florida, which country had been ceded to Great
Britain by Spain at the peace of Fontainebleau; on the passage out,
the transport having the regiment on board put into Blue-field
Bay, Jamaica, at the time the yellow fever was raging with great
violence in that island; the THIRTY-FIRST took the infection, and
unfortunately carried it to Pensacola, where the soldiers continued
to suffer most severely; so great was the mortality, and so rapid
the disease in its course, that the regiment could not supply
men to carry their comrades to the grave. The men who attended
the funerals of their brother soldiers in the morning, while the
regiment was strong enough to preserve some ceremony, were, in
many instances, consigned to the tomb in the evening. It appears
by the newspapers of the period, in which allusion is made to the
mortality, that at one period of its illness the regiment could
muster only a corporal and six men for duty.
[Sidenote: 1772]
The regiment remained in the Floridas, garrisoning alternately St.
Augustine and Pensacola, the capitals of East and West Florida,
until the autumn of 1772, when it was embarked for _St. Vincent_,
to take part in reducing to submission the refractory Caribs in
that island.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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