At length allied with France, the Americans were so helped and encouraged that it became necessary to concentrate the British army, and, in consequence, relinquishing many of their more distant conquests, our troops retired to the sea coast to oppose the threatened debarkation of a French force from their fleet which cruised off the coast. Dispersed by a storm, this armament failed to afford that assistance which had been anticipated, compelling General Sullivan, who commanded an auxiliary army of Americans, to abandon the siege of Nieuport, in Rhode Island, and beat a precipitate retreat to the mainland. Meanwhile, the Forty-second, with the Thirty-third, Forty-sixth, and Sixty-fourth regiments, successfully accomplished the destruction of the arsenals and dockyards of Bedford and Martha’s Vineyard. At Stoneypoint and Vereplanks, after a desperate struggle, the persevering efforts of the Royal Highlanders were rewarded with complete success. Under General Sir Henry Clinton, the regiment formed a part of the expedition which undertook and achieved the siege of Charlestown. The increasing force and daring of the enemy, inspired and sustained by the genius of Washington, glorying in the disaster of Yorktown, where a British army was forced to surrender, induced peace, which, concluded in 1782, put an end to further hostilities. The regiment served for a while thereafter in Halifax, and, ere it returned home in 1789, garrisoned the island of Cape Breton. Whilst in Nova Scotia, in 1785, Major-General John Campbell, in presenting a new set of colours to the regiment, thus ably addressed it—an address which, in its excellence, lives to encourage our army, and than which we are convinced no better epitome of a soldier’s duty exists:— “I congratulate you on the service you have done your country, and the honour you have procured yourselves, by protecting your old colours, and defending them from your enemies in different engagements during the late unnatural rebellion. “From those ragged, but honourable remains, you are now to transfer your allegiance and fidelity to these new National and Regimental Standards of Honour, now consecrated and solemnly dedicated to the service of our King and Country. These colours are committed to your immediate care and protection; and I trust you will, on all occasions, defend them from your enemies, with honour to yourselves and service to your country—with that distinguished and noble bravery which have always characterised the ROYAL HIGHLANDERS in the field of battle. “With what pleasure, with what peculiar satisfaction—nay, with what pride, would I enumerate the different memorable actions where the regiment distinguished itself. To particularise the whole would exceed the bounds of this address; let me therefore beg your indulgence while I take notice only of a few of them.