About the 91st Argyllshire Highlanders
The 91st Argyllshire Highlanders is an active, disciplined and militarily structured Napoleonic Wars regiment that finds pride in being a very disciplined and experienced regiment. We have members of varying experience in our ranks, from the most seasoned veterans to the most fresh recruits. All are welcome to join the 91st Argyllshire Highlanders: inexperienced NW players will learn to hold their ground in melee quickly; veterans will be able to fight alongside other melee experts, teaching new members tricks and maybe even learning a thing or two themselves. The 91st Argyllshire Highlanders is a highly disciplined regiment; we believe discipline is the most important thing to keeping a regiment structured and professional. In the 91st Argyllshire Highlanders you are rewarded for your actions. Show that you're a leader and perfect example of discipline, and you might become an NCO. | |
If you are interested in joining a serious, disciplined and skilled regiment, enlist for service in the 91st Argyllshire Highlanders!
***Rank Structure| Officers | | Colonel | | Col |  | | Lieutenant Colonel | | LtCol |  | | Major | | Maj |  | | Captain | | Cpt |  | | Lieutenant | | Lt |  | | Ensign | | Ens |  |
| | NCOs | | Serjeant Major | | SjtMaj |  | | Colour Serjeant | | CSjt |  | | Serjeant | | Sjt |  | | Corporal | | Cpl |  |
| | Enlisted | | Lance Corporal | | LCpl |  | | Private | | Pte |  | | Recruit | | Rec |  |
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An account of the 91st Argyllshire Highlanders throughout the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars
In 1793 George III wrote to John, 5th Duke of Argyll, asking him to raise a kilted regiment of 1,100 men. The Duke was unwell at the time and deputed the task to his kinsman, Duncan Campbell, 8th Lochnell. On 9 July 1794, they were formally gazetted into the British Army as the 98th Argyllshire Highlanders, renumbered later, in October 1798, as the 91st. On 5 May 1795 the Regiment embarked for South Africa to capture the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch. At this time 15 of the 33 officers were Campbells and 2 of the others had married Campbells. But the required number of NCOs and rank and file could not be found in Argyllshire, the rest came largely from Glasgow and Edinburgh, Renfrew and Paisley, with a small contingent of Irish. Officers continued to be drawn mainly from Argyllshire, and there were always enough genuine Highlanders to give the Regiment its characteristic stamp. Irish and Englishmen who only reluctantly took to wearing the kilt were in the end successfully absorbed; and the 91st maintained their Highland tradition. The 91st remained as part of the garrison in Cape Town, South Africa, for seven years, returning in 1803 to England to help patrol the southern counties against the event of an invasion by Napoleon.
The 98th Highlanders arrived at Simonstown in September 1795, as part of a force some 4,500 strong under Sir Alured Clarke, an ambitious officer for whom the conquest of the Dutch colony at the Cape was the one great chance of achieving military renown. But the luck was all against him. His Second-in-Command had already forced a landing with the advance guard, and had driven the Dutch off their only tenable defensive position in front of Cape Town. When, after a cautious and leisurely disembarkation lasting no less than ten days, Sir Alured faced the now vastly outnumbered Dutch at Wynberg, they cheated him of his great victory by running away after one ragged volley, which cost his army one seaman killed and 17 soldiers wounded, 4 of them from the 98th. He made the best of a bad job with a general order thanking his troops for ‘their spirited exertions and cheerful perseverance through every hardship’ in terms which Wellington would have thought fulsome after a major victory. So the 98th had, technically, their baptism of fire, and settled down as the permanent garrison, to suffer for seven unhappy years really serious casualties from the insalubrious climate and the insanitary conditions in Cape Castle. They lost 11 dead in the first month; and they seldom had less than 100 sick in hospital.
Much worse, however, for morale was the order in December to adopt the standard uniform of the British Army in India. Lochnell had gone to vast trouble to fit them all out with six yards each of the dark green Campbell tartan with the black stripe. For the rest they wore the full Highland dress: scarlet coats faced with yellow for both officers and men; black stocks, leather for rank and file, velvet for the officers; diced hose in red and white with scarlet garters, and Highland shoes with yellow or gold oval shoe-buckles. Lace with black and white cotton for NCOs and men, silver for officers; and officers’ epaulettes, when worn, were also of silver lace. All ranks wore the regulation Highland feather bonnet and officers wore their own hair, clubbed over the ears with red rosettes on each club and the queue tied with a black bow. All this had now to be abandoned for garments no more suitable for hot climates than the kilt, and drearily undistinguished: white trousers with black half-gaiters, scarlet tunics and absurd round, black, felt hats, ‘at least 6 inches high with a 4-inch brim’, curled up at the sides, with a plume over the left ear, white for the grenadier company, green for the light company and black for battalion companies.
In this costume, deeply resented by all ranks, the 98th soldiered on as the Cape Town garrison. There was little excitement to be had in a city of 1,200 houses inhabited by 5,000 free folk, Dutch and mixed races, and 10,000 black slaves. Food was cheap, but widespread deforestation had made firewood extremely expensive and also deprived the officers of any decent shooting. They improved their lot, however, by fetching out a pack of foxhounds and hunting jackal, while the troops stagnated and went down in large numbers with various local diseases. There was a brief flutter of military activity when the Dutch attempted to recover their colony in 1796. Morale in the Regiment was never allowed seriously to sink. With a typical Scots desire for self-improvement they formed a regimental school, with a fee of 1s. a month; and from Scotland Lochnell busied himself with the formation of a regimental band.
Thus, nothing very decisive had happened to the now renumbered 91st when, under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens, they handed Cape Colony back to the Dutch and reassembled at Bexhill in May 1803. They were much depleted in numbers, having been heavily milked in their last months at the Cape to bring the regiments destined for India up to full strength; and it took them more than a year to get back their full Highland dress. From 1804 onwards the men were issued with six yards of tartan every two years for the upkeep of their kilts. All ranks wore the Kilmarnock bonnet, cocked, for fatigues and minor parades, covering it with the feather bonnet for ceremonial occasions. The plaid became increasingly a purely ceremonial garment and officers were forbidden the kilt as ball and dinner dress. To compensate, they were allowed gold epaulettes instead of silver.
All this helped to keep up morale for another five years of inactive soldiering, moving about southern England as part of the forces hopefully gathered to defeat Napoleon if the admirals ever let him slip across the Channel. They had a brief hope of better things when the Highland Brigade was sent to Hanover at the end of I805. But they were back in Kent throughout 1806 and thereafter in Cork. Throughout all this they clearly remained a very good regiment. They were ceaselessly inspected and invariably earned the ‘Strong Approbation’ of the generals. The Commander- in-Chief, H.R.H. the Duke of York, was ‘Highly Pleased’ with them in 1805. Rather more significantly, Sir John Moore was ‘Extremely Well Pleased’; and before they left Dublin, in June 1808, to join the army in Portugal, they paraded for the Lord Lieutenant and gave him ‘Great Satisfaction’.
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The campaign was as disappointing for the 91st as it was for the nation as a whole. The light company of the 91st was engaged at Rolica and had a sergeant severely wounded. But the Regiment as a whole was in reserve and was not engaged in either of the major battles. It was again in the reserve division for Sir John Moore’s spectacular march to Salamanca which disrupted Napoleon’s whole campaign; and it came into its own at last when the reserve division became the rearguard for the epic retreat which culminated in Moore’s victory and death at Corunna.
The 91st had then more than their fair share of privations and forced marches; and in the rearguard actions in which they were engaged they lost 164 of all ranks killed, wounded or missing. At Corunna itself, though ‘in the very centre of the line and next the Guards’, they were not heavily engaged and lost only two men wounded. ‘Corunna’, nevertheless, was a worthily won Battle Honour to be placed on the Colours beside ‘Rolica’ and ‘Vimeira’. But for the 91st the rest of the year 1809 was disastrous. The first and, from the point of view of regimental morale, the worst blow was the loss of their kilt and of their status as a Highland regiment. It was, of course, from the office of the Adjutant-General, whose clerks have for over 200 years put their own convenience before the interests of the fighting soldier, that the blow fell. Recruiting difficulties and the allegation that their national dress was ‘objectionable to the natives of South Britain’ were made the excuse for striking six regiments off the Highland establishment, though in fact the 91st enlisted in all, between 1800 and 1818, 970 Scots as against 171 Englishmen, 218 Irishmen and 22 foreigners, mostly Germans. Moreover from 1807 to 1814 their 2nd Battalion recruited 599 Scots, 168 Englishmen, 142 Irishmen and 197 foreigners. Since the tartan had already been issued for new kilts, the 91st found some consolation in having it made up into trews; and they adopted a flat, black bonnet ornamented with a single feather. This was the uniform in which they were despatched on what the history books always call the ‘ill-fated’ Walcheren expedition.
The devastating low fever peculiar to the island of Walcheren had already destroyed one British army 200 years before. This time, from 3 September to 23 December, an army of 40,000 men lay encamped there because the generals could not agree on what to do with them. During these four months no less than 35,000 of them passed through the military hospitals to a precarious convalescence or the grave. By 25 September, after only three weeks, the 91st had only 246 rank and file fit for duty out of 608. From disease the Regiment lost a total of 218 dead – far more than all their casualties in the Corunna campaign. During the six months following their return to Kent they had an average of 250 sick and it was quite impossible to train or drill them to any acceptable standard. On top of this they were deprived of even their trews and bonnets. Henceforth they wore the blue-grey trousers and black cap of an English line regiment: a uniform in which few of the troops and none of the officers took the smallest pride. All that remained of their origin was the Pipe Band and the title of His Majesty’s 91st Argyllshire Regiment. As such, they rejoined Wellington in 1812. They missed Vitoria. But were with the 6th Division at Sorauren on 28 and 30 July 1813, in what Wellington called ‘bludgeon work’, they played a decisive part in dislodging Marshal Soult from the positions he had hoped to hold in the Pyrenees. On the first day the 91st suffered heavily, losing 115 killed and wounded out of a total strength of 821 . On the second day, when the brigaded light companies bore the brunt, they got off lightly. But they clearly played their full part in what even Wellington called ‘desperate fighting’, adding that he had ‘never known the troops behave so well’.
‘Pyrenees’ was another battle honour on the 91st Colours which was well and truly earned. They were to win four more in France: ‘Nivelle’, ‘Nive’, ‘Orthes’, ‘Toulouse’, and ‘Peninsula’. The first three were not costly, and the only distinction was the promotion in the field of the Adjutant, Lieutenant MacNeil of Colonsay after he had had two horses killed under him at the passage of the Nivelle. At Toulouse, on 10 April 1814, Soult put up a last, desperate fight, which cost Wellington close on 5,000 casualties. Sir Denis Pack’s Highland Brigade led the 6th Division attack brilliantly, ending up with the 42nd and 78th holding three captured enemy redoubts, and the 91st in close support in a farmyard behind. The crunch came when a French column, 6,000 strong, counter-attacked. The 42nd were driven back in some disorder, but the prompt support of the 91st gave them time to re-form; and the two battalions together then successfully restored the position.
By the time the 91st got back to their farmhouse the other wing was in trouble; once more they sallied out, restored the position and incidentally rescued a large party of the 78th who had been surrounded and were in danger of being made prisoner. Every general present reckoned that only the prompt and vigorous support afforded by the Argyllshire Regiment had saved the Brigade at a very critical moment in the battle. So the war ended for the 91st in a blaze of glory, with nine battle honours on the Regimental Colour. But at Waterloo they were left far on the right flank; and though they got the campaign medal, that great battle was never inscribed on their Colours. One more fragment of military glory nevertheless came their way. The 2nd Battalion, raised purely as a feeder for the 1st, was a pretty motley crew. At their annual inspection in 1809 the older men were still wearing out their forbidden kilts, the rest were wearing ‘pantaloons, breeches, or trews’, and they could only muster 130 all ranks. But their acquisition three years later of a dynamic Commanding Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Ottley, some able lieutenants and 309 disbanded militiamen, encouraged the War Department to bring them up to full strength with all sorts of ‘undesirables’ – ‘old, worn-out men’, ‘an inferior type of boy’ and some displaced Swedes, Pomeranians and Hanoverians – and send them to the Baltic. They saw their first and last action at the disastrous night attack on the fortress of Bergen-op-Zoom in 1814, and thanks to Ottley’s training did very well. All four of the assaulting columns successfully stormed the outer walls, only to be thrown back by superior numbers of veteran French troops manning the inner defences.
The Battalion withdrew in admirable order, leaving 13 officers and an unrecorded number of men wounded and losing altogether 45 killed or mortally wounded. So far as is known, the Surgeon and Assistant Surgeon were the only unwounded to fall into enemy hands; and Sergeant-Major Cahill was commissioned in the field for saving the Regimental Colour when the Ensign carrying it went down. So, having unexpectedly found a niche in military history, the 2nd Battalion came home to be disbanded after sending 240 men to the 1st Battalion for the Waterloo campaign.
