of June—so easy had it been to procure recruits—a magnificent battalion of over a thousand strong paraded at Aberdeen, ready to go anywhere and do anything. They were at once sent to the Mediterranean, but it was five years before they received their baptism of fire, in the attempt to wrest Holland from the grasp of the French. In their eagerness to be the first to land, the impetuous Gordons lost fifteen of their number by drowning. After some futile marching and countermarching, the British commander—the Duke of York—determined to deliver a crushing blow at the French position round Egmont-op-Zee, and with this intent sent to his right front, along the sandy sea-shore, twenty pieces of artillery.
Divining his object, the French launched against these guns a column of six thousand infantry with intent to snap them up—a task which seemed all the easier as they were only escorted by about a battalion of what appeared to them to be mere petticoated Amazons who could be dispersed like chaff.
Alas for the French hopes of swallowing up all the British artillery, it was the Gordons who had the "guidin' o't;" and the Gordons, believing the best parry to be the thrust, rushed forward to meet the advancing foe, whose numbers were more than six to one, and, with a wild cheer, flung themselves on the Frenchmen with the bayonet. But the Gordons were able to emblazon their colors with their first victory only at the cost of sixty-five killed and 208 wounded, the latter including their colonel, the Marquis of Huntly.
General Sir John Moore himself was among the wounded, and had to be carried off the field by two Gordons. Afterwards he offered twenty pounds to the soldiers who had done for him this Samaritan service, but, though the reward was offered to the regiment on parade, no man stepped forward to claim the fee. Afterwards, when Moore was knighted, and assumed a coat of arms, he selected a Highlander for one of his supporters, "in gratitude to, and commemoration of, two soldiers of the Ninety-second, who raised me from the ground when I was lying on my face wounded and stunned."
The Gordons were next sent to help against the French in Egypt. No amount of desperate valor on the part of the Napoleonic "Invincibles" could avail to roll back the fiery tide of battle which was presently poured in upon them by such regiments as the Gordons, the Black Watch, the Camerons, the Ninetieth "Perthshire Grey-breeks," and other British regiments, which, in the teeth of a terrific cannonade, landed on the shore of Aboukir, swept the French from their semi-circular crest of dominating sand-hills as one would sweep a floor with a broom, established themselves on the heights
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From a photograph by Window & Grove, London.
of Mandora, and defied all efforts on the part of Bonaparte's infuriated legions to counter-assault them into the sea. At the first attack on the heights of Mandora the Gordons headed the left column of the army into action; nor, though set upon by a semi-brigade and exposed to a galling fire of grapeshot, did they falter for a moment, but continued unshaken their advance to the very muzzles of the guns, of which they captured three, routing all their defenders and possessing themselves of the right of the position—a feat which compelled the French to fall back under the walls of Alexandria.
Again, the losses—including the death of their colonel, Erskine of Gardross—were very heavy, so much so that the decimated regiment was compassionately ordered back to Aboukir. But, on their way thither, several days later, the Gordons suddenly heard the sound of firing in their rear, and, rightly concluding that the French, with the aid of reinforcements,
