While under the colonelcy of General Lord Robert Bertie, the Royal Fuzileers were posted to the Colony of Quebec in 1773. They were intended to replace the 8th (King's) Regiment which had been part of the Colony's garrison since the early 1760s. However, with civil disorder in Massachusetts, the Governor General, Sir Guy Carleton, retained both regiments so that he could send two regiments to Boston to reinforce that City's garrison. The 7th Royal Fuzileers, the 8th King's, and the 26th Regiment (the Cameronians), formed the garrison of Quebec at the beginning of the Revolutionary War in 1775.
Nine of ten companies of the Regiment were captured at Fort St. John, Fort Chambly, and Montreal in the autumn of 1775. The remaining company formed the only regular unit in the garrison of the City of Quebec during the siege of 1775 to 1776.
In May, 1776, the rebel garrison of Iles-des-Cedres surrendered to a largely native army under the command of Captain George Forster of the 8th (King's) Regiment. As part of the surrender terms, the rebels entered a convention in which they agreed to exchange prisoners on a man-for-man basis. The intention was to exchange captured rebels for the men of the 7th and 26th Regiments taken in 1775. However, the rebel Congress dishonestly repudiated the convention and tried to avoid complying. Eventually the prisoners from the Royal Fuzileers were released in December, 1776 in exchange for rebels captured in the 1776 campaigns around New York City.
The Regiment was reformed at New York City and made up from the survivors of the Quebec Siege, the exchanged prisoners, and new drafts from Britain and other regiments. At the same time, General Lord Robert Bertie conveyed the colonelcy to Lieutenant General Richard Prescott.
In 1777, the Regiment was sent to reinforce the British garrison of Philadelphia. It arrived in time to participate in General Sir Henry Clinton's withdrawl across New Jersey to New York, and fought at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in June, 1778. For the remainder of 1778 and 1779, the Regiment formed part of the garrison of New York.
In 1780, a large British army under the command of General Sir Charles Cornwallis sailed from New York and besieged and captured the City of Charleston in the Colony of South Carolina. The Regiment served with this army and throughout the Southern Campaigns, but suffered heavy casualties at the Battle of Cowpens in January, 1781. The survivors of the Battle were sent back to New York City, but the shattered regiment was never successfully reformed until after it returned to England in 1783
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