The Story of the Highland RegimentsWatson, Frederick
History
The Story of the Highland Regiments
Watson, Frederick
Great Britain. Army
The Campbells are comin’, O ho, O ho!
The Campbells are comin’, O ho!
The Campbells are comin’ to bonnie Lochleven,
The Campbells are comin’, O ho, O ho!
_Regimental March._
After the Mutiny we say farewell, as it were, to the Old Guard of the
Crimea and India, and hear a great deal about the younger men, Wolseley,
Roberts, and White, all of whom had been through the Mutiny, two of them
being destined to attain to the highest distinction that the British
Army can bestow.
Garnet Wolseley was born in Dublin on June 4, 1833. He lost the use of
one eye in the Crimea, served in India during the Mutiny, and in the
Chinese War of 1860. In 1861 he crossed to Canada, and in 1870 conquered
Louis Riel, the half-breed. In 1873 he led an expedition to Ashanti.
There have been many places of horror and oppression in the histories of
savage peoples, but it is doubtful whether there was ever a town so foul
and brutal as Coomassie, the capital of Ashanti. The shedding of blood
was the daily delight and pastime of the king, while murder upon a
prodigal scale was to him and to his people a kind of rite. His
subjects, instead of rebelling against these practices, delighted in
such spectacles, and encouraged Koffi Calcalli, the king, to further
outrages and orgies. It was, as some one has called it, ‘a metropolis of
murder.’ So far, however, Britain had not seen her way to interfere, and
had she done so, simply on the ground of common humanity, it is probable
that other nations would have suspected her of conspiring to take over
the country. At last King Koffi, craving for something new, decided that
he would attack the English at Cape Coast Castle. Fortunately he was not
able to achieve very much, but on the other hand the English were not
strong enough to retaliate. This position was rendered all the more
dangerous by the policy of toleration, which from the year 1824, when
the Ashantis defeated Sir Charles M’Carthy, to the year 1863, when a
West Indian regiment failed most signally, had given the natives a poor
opinion of the English arms. It was therefore necessary for the safety
of the English settlers that an Expeditionary Force should leave for
Ashanti. It sailed under the command of Sir Garnet Wolseley, with whom
were the Black Watch under Sir John Macleod.
It was no ‘picnic,’ to quote from a popular expression of to-day; and to
give some idea of the country through which the Black Watch marched, I
shall quote a paragraph from Sir Henry Stanley’s _Coomassie and
Magdala_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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