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Beauharnais, was quite capable of such a dramatic gesture. But when the regiment
was raised, the countryside had been squeezed so dry, and the competition of rival
recruiters was so intense, that with all her blandishments she could not have got even
a drummer boy for so small a bounty as a guinea. Furthermore, one doubts the story
from the fact that it was told of her eldest daughter, Lady Madelina Sinclair, in the
matter of the Caithness Fencibles, and was laughingly dismissed by the girl's husband
as a canard started by jealous recruiting rivals to discredit her.
The family feeling in the Gordons is shown by the fact that Inverness-shire and
Aberdeenshire, where the Duke had huge estates, supplied respectively 240 and 124 men
out of 894. Only nine came from England, 51 from Ireland, and two from Wales
while 361 were Macs of one kind or another. It may surprise some people to know that
the original recruits were not the giants usually supposed. Being essentially Highland,
they averaged only 5 ft. 5J in., and only six men were 6 ft. or over.
The family feeling was further emphasised by the command of the regiment being
given to the Duke's heir, the dashing Marquis of Huntly, for whom his father raised a
company on his joining the Black Watch in 1790. It was the Black Watch, indeed,
which suggested Gordon tartan, for that sett was designed by William Forsyth, a manu
facturer at Huntly, Aberdeenshire, for the Northern Fencibles in 1793. What Forsyth
did was simply to run a yellow strip through Black Watch tartan.
The tartan and badge of the Highland regiments illustrate the personal equation
element in the Army, because it must be remembered that they were really the monopoly
of private families just like the uniform of the old feudal levy. But what is far more
remarkable is the fact that the piper of each company carries on his pipe' banner the
arms of the captain of that company for the time being. The city of Aberdeen was the
first rendezvous of the new regiment, and though other regiments were subsequently
quartered there, it remains the depot of the Gordons to this day.
The regiment received its baptism of fire in the mismanaged Walcheren expedition
of 1799, on setting out for which the Marquis of Huntly, who was wounded at Egmont-
on-Zee, was greeted with Mrs. Grant of Laggan's song, Highland Laddie." Sir John
Moore, who was also wounded, was carried off the field by the Gordons, and always kept
in touch with them. That is why the officers wear a thread of black in their gold braid
to remember his death at Corunna, while it is said the black buttons on the men's gaiters
are for the same purpose.
The achievement of the Gordons in the field, including Egypt, the Peninsula, Waterloo,
Afghanistan, Transvaal, Tirah, South African and the Great War, are part and parcel of
our military history and need not be detailed.
In 1881 the 92nd was linked with the 75th and became the 2nd battalion of the
Gordon Highlanders. The 75th was raised in 1787 by General Sir Ralph Abercromby
(1734-1801) of the Tullibody family, and became known as the Stirlingshire Regiment.
But in 1809 its Highland dress was abandoned, and to all intents and purposes the 75th
became an English regiment, being ultimately, under the linked system, semi-attached
to the Dorsetshire Regiment (the 39th). In 1881, under the territorial system, it was
amalgamated with the Gordons, and as if in verification of the old alliterative rhyme about
the family, the Gordons hae the guidin' o't," the 75th took the tartan and the kilt
not without a humorous protest. But as Col. Greenhill Gardyne, the admirable historian
of the Gordon Highlanders, says in The Life of a Regiment," the union has been
a happy one."
During the Great War, the Gordons had eleven battalions in the field, including
seven battalions of Territorials. One of these battalions, the 4th, had an (Aberdeen)
University Company, which was the only distinctly university battalion in the war. Its
history will shortly be published.
The Gordons, who will be installed this year in their barracks in Aberdeen, have
a first rate magazine, The Tiger and Sphinx," which deals with all the battalions. Sir
Ian Hamilton, who is a child of the regiment, is colonel, and the Gordons have allied
