Amongst the many means adopted to secure an effectual national defence, the increase of our army was deservedly the chief. From the youth of the counties of Renfrew and Ayr a second battalion was raised for our Fusiliers in December 1804; but it was not until 1806 called to an active part in the terrible contest which then shook Europe to its base. The defence of Sicily for the legitimate sovereignty of Naples, to which the Twenty-first was called, although a duty but of minor importance when compared with the mighty events which were being enacted on the vaster theatre of Europe, still the result, redundant with glory, served to give hope to liberty when the threatened night of tyranny had elsewhere descended to cloud the nationalities of Christendom; whilst our British soldiers, if aught dare aspire to the title, proved themselves to be the real “_invincibles_”—when all else had been borne down by the legions of France, they alone remained _unconquered_. Under Major-General Alexander Mackenzie Fraser, the first battalion was engaged in the expedition to Egypt against the Turks; who, in an evil hour, when French power seemed omnipotent, and French influences in consequence triumphed, had been pressed into the service of the Emperor, against their better judgment and truer interests. A single campaign successfully terminated the war, when our first battalion returned to Sicily. In 1809, with the expedition under Sir John Stuart, the Twenty-first attacked and captured from Murat, vicegerent[*typo for viceregent?] of Napoleon, styled King of Naples, the islands Ischia and Procida, containing immense material of war. An attack upon the castle of Scylla in Calabria failed, and an attempt to defend the town of Valmi resulted in serious loss to our gallant Fusiliers—no fewer than 80 officers and men falling into the hands of the enemy. Imbued, like his great master, with an insatiate appetite for conquest, and a restless ambition, Murat vehemently longed for an opportunity to expel the British from Sicily, and so unite that valuable island to his new kingdom. Having concentrated a powerful army, and prepared an immense flotilla of gunboats and transports on the shores of Calabria, he, on a dark night in September, 1810, attempted a descent. As the morning dawned it revealed the enemy to the British, and so interrupted their further transport and landing. Those who had come over in the night were so fiercely assailed by the Twenty-first and other regiments, that, with the sea behind and a powerful enemy around, without the prospect of relief or any chance of escape, the French surrendered. The ill success of this well-concerted expedition, induced Murat to abandon for the present the idea of extending his territory beyond the mainland. But our troops were not always thus successful. In 1812 the grenadiers of the Twenty-first sustained a severe disaster as part of the British expedition which failed in an attempted descent upon the Spanish coast