"Were not the Highlanders put upon every hazardous enterprise where nothing was to be got but broken bones, and are not all these regiments _discarded_ now, but the 42nd?" says a writer in the _Edinburgh Advertiser_ of 6th July, 1764. "The Scots colonel who entered the Moro Castle* is now reduced to half-pay; while an English general, whose avarice was the occasion of the death of many thousands of brave men, is not only on full pay, but in possession of one-fifth of the whole money gained at the Havannah--what proportion does the service of this general, who received £86,000, bear to a private soldier who got about fifty shillings, or an officer who received about £80?** * Lieutenant-Colonel James Stuart, who afterwards commanded at Cuddalore, in 1789. ** Lieut.-General the Earl of Albemarle received £112,697 10s. The writer is in error. "The 42nd regiment consisted of two battalions and three companies, in all 2800 men, and now (in 1764) there remain only about ninety privates alive of the whole." A passion for military glory and adventure, with the old patriarchal love of the chiefs and gentlemen who officered the Highland regiments, drew our mountain peasantry in great numbers into their ranks. "Thus we find," according to General Stewart, whose work has been quoted in the text, "that the whole corps embodied in the Highlands amounted to twenty-six battalions of fencible infantry, which, in addition to the _fifty battalions of the line_, three of reserve and seven of militia, formed altogether a force of EIGHTY-SIX HIGHLAND REGIMENTS embodied in the course of the four wars in which Britain had been engaged since the Black Watch was regimented in 1740. From a first glance, allowing 1000 men to each of these eighty-six regiments, would appear to come near the truth; but on a closer view it will be found to be far short of the actual number--several of the regiments had in the course of their service treble or quadruple their original number in their ranks. Thus the 71st, the 72nd and the 73rd, during the thirty-one years they were Highland (_i.e._ kilted), had at least 3000 Highlanders each, and other regiments had numbers in proportion to the length and nature of their service, both in tropical and temperate climate. "From the commencement of the late war," according to another and equally careful writer, "the Island of Skye alone had furnished no fewer than 21 Lieutenant-Generals and Major-Generals; 48 Lieutenant-Colonels; 600 other commissioned officers and 10,000 foot soldiers; 4 Governors of British colonies; 1 Governor-General; 1 Adjutant-General; 1 Chief Baron of England; and 1 Judge of the Supreme Court of Scotland."