“O! to see his tartan trews, Bonnet blue, and laigh-heel’d shoes, Philabeg aboon his knee! That’s the lad that I’ll gang wi’.” THE HIGHLANDS—FRENCH REVOLUTION—FLANDERS—GERMANY—WEST INDIES—GIBRALTAR—MINORCA—EGYPT—EDINBURGH—1789–1803. The honourable bearing of the Royal Highlanders throughout the war had been so conspicuous as to win for them the hearty esteem of their countrymen. Hence their return was welcomed by all classes, and their progress northward was little else than a triumphal march. At Glasgow, the joy of the people was unbounded. Whilst stationed in Scotland, the regiment was called to fulfil a most painful duty, in the suppression of the riots which had arisen in the Highlands from the expulsion of the poorer peasantry from the haunts and homes of “auld langsyne.” From a long and quiet possession, they had come to consider such as their own, and therefore were disposed to resist the right of the legal proprietor, who desired to disencumber his estates of the unproductive poor, and render these lands remunerative, rather than, as hitherto, a barren burden. To curb the furious passions which the evil genii of the French Revolution had let loose, wherewith to plague Christendom, the might of Britain was called to the rescue. The Forty-second, largely recruited, was accordingly embarked at Hull, and joined the British army fighting under the Duke of York in Flanders. Soon, however, the regiment was recalled, to form part of a meditated enterprise against the French West Indian Islands. This scheme being abandoned for the present, it was engaged in a vain attempt to aid, by a descent on the French coast, the Vendean royalists, who yet dared manfully, but, alas! ineffectually, to struggle against the sanguinary tyranny of the Revolution, for liberty and righteousness. Returning to Flanders, the regiment was doomed to share the retrograde movement which had been necessitated by the overwhelming superiority of the enemy, and the listless indifference, nay, even hate, of the Dutch, whose cause we had assumed to espouse. Retreating through Germany to Bremen, the sufferings of the army were severe, but endured with a fortitude which well commanded the admiration of friend and foe. Never were the capabilities of the Highland soldier more thoroughly tested, and more triumphantly apparent, than in the midst of the fatigues of an incessant warfare, the severities of a bitter winter, and the discouraging prospects of retreat. Under these cruel circumstances, whilst other regiments counted their losses by hundreds, the Forty-second only lost twenty-five men.