In 1691 the regiment joined the British army then serving in Flanders against the French, and, by its steady valour, fully maintained its character at the battle of Steenkirk and the siege of Namur. So highly did the King appreciate its worth, that, when peace induced the Government to disband many regiments, he retained the Cameronians in his own pay, on the establishment of the Dutch Estates. The arrogant pretensions of the House of Bourbon to the vacant throne of Spain, in opposition to the claims of the House of Hapsburg, re-kindled the flames of war, and bade France and Austria, as the principals, seconded by Bavaria and Britain, engage in mortal combat. Of the British army sent to Holland in consequence, the Twenty-sixth formed a part. In 1703, brigaded with the Tenth, the Sixteenth, the Twenty-first, and the second battalion of the First Royal Scots, it served with great distinction in the army of Marlborough at Donawerth, and specially at the battle of Blenheim, where, suffering severely, it had to lament the loss of nineteen officers. At the battle of Ramilies, in 1706, the regiment, after being much exposed throughout the fight, was engaged in the pursuit of the beaten foe until midnight. It further shared the sanguinary glories of Malplaquet ere the war was terminated by the peace of Utrecht in 1713. Soon after its return home, the infatuation of the Jacobites, whose licentious habits could not brook to be bridled by the austere yet healthier _morale_ which presided in the Protestant Court of the House of Hanover—longing for the restoration of that of Stuart as likely to afford freer scope for the indulgence of their own evil appetites—organised a conspiracy, which brought forth the rebellion of 1715. The Earl of Mar, an imbecile chief and ungrateful minion of the Court, essayed to be its leader in Scotland, whilst Sir John Foster and other cavaliers vainly strove simultaneously to arouse the malignant Jacobitism which slumbered in the northern counties of England. To meet the few who had dared to challenge the existing sovereignty, and under Foster were advancing southward through Lancashire in hopes of being reinforced by other malcontents, a body of royal troops was hastily collected, chiefly cavalry—the Twenty-sixth being the only infantry regiment. Without order, a distinct plan of action, or any definite understanding as to a leader, the enemy, who had taken possession of, and proposed to hold Preston against the assault of the Royalist army, was easily broken, dispersed, and their cause utterly ruined. During this unfortunate rebellion, which occasioned the effusion of much blood, Colonel Blackader—who had accompanied the Twenty-sixth in its continental campaigns, where he was ever distinguished among “the bravest of the brave,” and whose ably-written records have bequeathed to our day much that is valuable in the thread of Scottish military history, and interesting in the annals of the Cameronian regiment—at