Five years later the regiment saw its first active service abroad at Fontenoy, when its men charged with such spirit that they were described by a French writer as "Highland furies." In 1756 the Black Watch went to America, and at Ticonderaga the loss in killed and wounded amounted to 647 officers and men. So conspicuous was the bravery of the regiment on this occasion that the King conferred on it the title of "Royal," and unto this day the Black Watch are "The Royal Highlanders." The regiment was in at the capture of Montreal, and later took part in the American War of Independence, when, in spite of the offers of heavy bribes, not a single man could be induced to desert from the ranks, bad as was the cause in which the British troops were fighting then. In 1780 the second battalion of the Black Watch was raised, to begin its active service in India. It was constituted a separate regiment in 1786, and named the "Perthshire Regiment," numbered "73." (Two officers and fifty-three men of this battalion were among the heroes who went down with the _Birkenhead_.) It was nearly a century later that the Perthshire Regiment was again joined to the Black Watch as its second battalion, and thenceforth the battle honours of both battalions have been borne on the colours of the regiment. The campaign in Flanders in 1794 and the following year gave to the regiment the "red hackle" that is still worn in the full-dress feather bonnet. Again the Black Watch went to the front for the Egyptian campaign of 1800, and at Alexandria Sir Ralph Abercromby called on the Highlanders for the effort that won the battle. The next great event in the history of the regiment was Corunna, where Sir John Moore bade the Highlanders "Remember Egypt!" On to the siege of Toulouse the Black Watch took their part in all fighting that was to be had, and at Toulouse itself they lost over 300 officers and men in driving back the French Army into the city. Just on 300 more officers and men fell in the three days' fighting of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, and the Royal Highlanders were mentioned specially in dispatches by the Duke of Wellington--an honour accorded to only four of the regiments that took part in the final overthrow of Napoleon. From then on to the middle of the nineteenth century the life of the regiment was uneventful, for Europe slept, and it did not fall to the Black Watch to engage in the little frontier and colonial wars of the Empire.