Читать книгу The Cavaliers of Fortune; Or, British Heroes in Foreign Wars - James Grant - Страница 4

Wellington's admirable foresight saved Howard's brigade, which retired to winter quarters at Coria, in Leon, when, with many other officers and soldiers, Colonel Stewart of the 50th, as brave a Scot as ever drew a sword, expired of exhaustion and fatigue. A soldier of the 50th carved a rude stone to mark where this old officer was laid.

Refreshed by six months' rest in winter quarters at Banos, in a beautiful valley of Leon, overshadowed by high mountains, Cameron, after commanding the 1st brigade during General Foy's attack on Bejar, marched with his Highlanders, when the whole army advanced to turn the famous positions of Jourdan on the Ebro and Douro, and to meet him on the green plains of Vittoria, where, on the 21st of June, 1813, he again commanded the 1st brigade of Hill's division, and carried the heights of La Peubla, when the gallant Cadogan fell amid heaps, literally heaps, of his brave Highlanders.

Sir William Stuart having ordered Cameron to secure the heights, added, "yield them to none without a written order from Sir Rowland Hill or myself, and defend them while you have a man remaining." On this Fassifern ordered the pipers to strike up the "Camerons' Gathering," and the regiment advanced with great spirit and alacrity up the mountain side.

After this victory, the most decisive of the Spanish war, Cameron pushed on with his brigade towards the Pyrenees, beyond which the conqueror drove the French like a herd of sheep, and then garrisoned the heights by a chain of outposts, previous to besieging San Sebastian, and blockading Pampeluna. On this occasion the care of the important pass of Maya was entirely assigned to Cameron, with the 1st brigade, after it had crossed the Bidassoa, and skirmished with the routed French until darkness set in, on the 7th July.

Cameron commanded this great outpost until the 25th of that month, when the French advanced to storm the heights under the Duke of Dalmatia, who had assumed the command of Jourdan's discomfited host, and was directed to retrieve all its disasters by driving the British beyond the Ebro. Full of confidence and of hope, at least to relieve the two beleaguered fortresses, this brave marshal sent his legions against the various passes in the mountains which Wellington, who was then urging the siege of San Sebastian in person, had occupied by battalions and brigades.

Cameron's force was encamped in the centre of a lonely gorge, and his outposts were far down the hillside in advance; and these, on Sunday the 25th, descried the division of General Drouet, 15,000 strong, advancing on the road that led from Urdax. Coming on with great spirit, they drove in the three light companies of the brigade (which Cameron had dispatched as skirmishers in front), and gained the high rock of Maya before the 2nd brigade of infantry could come to his support. His little band were thus left to defend that steep and narrow pass against five times their number. On this fatal morning the strength of the Gordon Highlanders was only fifty-five staff, and 762 rank and file.

To deceive the foe as to his real strength, Cameron skilfully divided his Highlanders into two wings, in open columns of companies, thus giving the slender battalion the aspect of two regiments; but this ruse was useless, as the traitor-muleteers, who, for the few weeks preceding, had been passing between the mountains and French outposts, had made Soult fully aware of the actual force left to defend the Pyrenees at every point. The moment the action commenced, Fassifern detached the 50th to the right, where, after a desperate conflict, it was driven back and forced to leave the ridge.

Under Major M'Pherson, Cameron then sent forward first the right wing, and then the left, of his brave Highlanders. Then ensued one of the most appalling scenes of carnage recorded in the annals of that protracted war. The Highlanders stood like a rampart, in which, however, frightful gaps were made by the bullets of the French, who came on, in one vast mob, shouting and brandishing their eagles. Separating the 1st and 2nd brigades, they descended upon the pass of Maya from one flank, while a fresh division poured upon its front from the Urdax road. Cameron, who had repeatedly ordered a charge, which was unheard amid the roar of the musketry, then made the whole fall back gradually upon the rock of Maya; a movement which was slowly and desperately covered by the left wings of the 71st Highland Light Infantry and of the Gordon Highlanders, which, by relieving each other, drenched in blood every inch of the ground; and there these gallant men defended the rock for ten successive hours, until—just when ammunition was falling short—the brigade of General Barnes arrived to their succour, and Lieutenant-General the Hon. Sir William Stuart, a fine old soldier whom all the troops loved well, ordered Cameron's brigade not to charge; but, exasperated by the slaughter they had endured, they rushed upon the French with the bayonet, and the Gordon Highlanders, "for the first time disregarded orders, and not only charged, but led the charge," and recovered every foot of ground as far as the pass from which they had been driven. In this headlong advance the pipers played the "Haughs of Cromdale," and the line was led by Captain Seton of Pitmedden, bonnet and claymore in hand. But the slaughter in their ranks was terrible, for 19 officers and 324 rank and file were killed, wounded, and missing. Among the wounded were—Cameron, who was shot through the thigh, and forced to leave the field; Major Mitchel, who succeeded him; Captains Holmes, and Bevan, who died when his arm was taken out of the socket, and Ronald M'Donald of Coul; Lieutenants Winchester, who commanded the light company; Donald M'Donald, Chisholm, Durie, M'Pherson, and Fife, who, after having one ball turned by a button, and another by his watch, was struck down at last; Gordon, Kerr Ross, and John Grant, who was shot through the side. Among the ensigns were Thomas and George Mitchell, Ewen Kennedy (one of Cameron's Lochaber men), who bled to death on the field, and Alaster M'Donald of Dalchosnie, a youth of eighteen, who afterwards expired of a wound in the head, and was buried by four of his brother officers in a hole outside the town-gate of Vittoria, where Holmes said a short prayer over his grave.

Sir William Napier, in his history, thus alludes to Fassifern and the two regiments of Highlanders: "And that officer (Lieutenant-Colonel Cameron), still holding the pass of Maya with the left wings of the 71st and 92nd Regiments, brought their right wings and the Portuguese guns into action, and thus maintained the fight; but so dreadful was the slaughter, that it is said the advancing enemy was actually stopped by the heaped-up mass of dead and dying. … The stern valour of the 92nd would have graced Thermopylæ."

Strange to say, Lieutenant Gordon died at Edinburgh sixteen years after, under the hands of a surgeon who was extracting the ball received at Maya, and he lies now in the Calton burying-ground. Two balls grazed Cameron, but the third pierced the fleshy part of his right thigh. In great agony he called to M'Millan, who slung his musket, rushed to his side, and led his horse by the bridle out of the field. "The gallant Cameron, who has so frequently bled for his country," says the Pilot of 12th October, 1813, "received three shots in his person, his horse received three, and three more were found in his cloak, which was strapped before his saddle in the usual manner." He lost so much blood, that, being unable to reach Vittoria, which was a hundred miles distant, and to which all the wounded were ordered to repair, he remained at an intermediate village until the scar healed and he could rejoin the regiment at Roncesvalles, after it had been engaged between Lizasso and Eguaros, and on the heights of Donna Maria, having in both affairs 120 officers and men killed and wounded. Captain Seton brought the regiment out of the field: thus the Speaker of the House of Commons, on the 24th of June, might well say that the Spaniards of future times would point with pride to the places "where a Stuart made his stand, and where the best blood of Scotland was shed in their defence." For his bravery at the Pyrenees, his Majesty was pleased to permit Cameron to bear upon his shield the word Maya.

From this period he was incessantly engaged in all the operations along the French Pyrenees, in daily skirmishes, and the capture of entrenched camps. The country was now covered by snow, and the troops endured many privations, which Sir William Stuart (brother of Lord Galloway) did all in his power to alleviate, by issuing extra allowances of rum, which won him the cognomen of Auld Grog Willie; and his popularity was so great among all the troops, that his appearance was always hailed by a noisy cheer, and shouts of "God bless you, Sir William!" Lord Wellington disliked this, and compelled the general to refund to Government all those extra allowances of rum served out to the poor soldiers amid the snows of that severe winter on the Pyrenees.

Cameron, who had long remarked that those officers of his 1st Battalion who became by promotion members of the 2nd, and should consequently be at home, were always unfortunate if the corps were engaged, before the passage of the Nive ordered four of them to leave immediately for Britain, when the troops were about to cross the river.

"God bless you, gentlemen," said he, as they bade him adieu; "I am now tired of war, and may well wish I were going with you."

But, mounted on his charger, he was the first to cross the Nivelle, below Ainhoe, when his daring Highlanders were ordered to storm the strong redoubt in rear of the village, where they drove out the French and took possession of their huts. Here his favourite piper was killed by his side; and with his own hand he strove to raise him, exclaiming, "I would rather lose twenty men than have lost you!" He led them through the Nive at Cambo; and in the attack upon those heavy columns which occupied the ground between the entrenched camp at Bayonne and the road to St. Jean Pied-de-Port, he fought valiantly at the battle of St. Pierre. There (Napier relates), at one period of the day, the overwhelming cannonade and musketry drove the 92nd in rear of the hamlet; however, on being succoured by their old comrades, the 50th, and Ashworth's Caçadores, they re-formed behind St. Pierre, and "then their gallant colonel, Cameron, once more led them down the road, with colours flying and pipes playing, resolved to give the shock to whatever stood in their way. The 92nd was but a small clump compared to the heavy mass in front;" but Fassifern led them on as of old, and the heavy mass rolled before their bayonets like mist before the wind. Four times that day he led them to brilliant charges, and four times the foe was driven back. Cameron had 13 officers and 173 rank and file killed and wounded; but he obtained an honorary badge, inscribed with the word Nive.

After the attack on the enemy at Hellette, in the lower Pyrenees, where General Harispe was driven out, and forced to retire to Meharin; and after that gallant conflict on the heights of Garris, where Cameron lost Seton of Pitmedden, and twelve other brave fellows, the scene of his next achievement was the pretty village of Arriverette, on the right bank of Gave de Mauleon, where the French endeavoured to destroy a wooden bridge, to prevent Wellington from following them; but a ford being discovered above it, Cameron boldly threw himself into the stream, at the head of his Highlanders, crossed under a fire of artillery, stormed the village, drove back the enemy, and, by securing the bridge, enabled the whole troops to pass. For this eminent service his Majesty granted to him, as an additional crest of honourable augmentation, a Highlander of the 92nd foot, "armed and accoutred, up to the middle in water, his dexter hand grasping a broadsword, in his sinister a banner, inscribed, '92nd,' within a wreath of laurel, all proper, and on an escroll above, the word Arriverette."[6] But Cameron had now a fresh cause of displeasure at his great leader; for, on applying to him, through Lieutenant-General Lord Niddry, for leave to inscribe Arriverette upon the regimental colours, Wellington declined, without affording any satisfactory reason. He acknowledged, in his reply, that "the 92nd forded the river, and took the village against a superior force of the enemy, in most gallant style;”" but added that it was beneath their reputation to explain why they should not have Arriverette on their colours. This ambiguous reply Cameron considered another affront, and never forgot or forgave it.

He received an honorary badge for his conduct at the battle of Orthez; and on the 2nd March, 1814, distinguished himself at the capture of Aire so prominently, that George III. desired him to bear embattled in chief above the old cognizance of Lochiel (as the heraldic record above quoted has it), "a representation of the town of Aire, in allusion to his glorious services on the 2nd March last, when, after an arduous and sanguinary conflict, he succeeded in forcing a superior body of the enemy to abandon the said town, and subsequently had the honour to receive an address from the inhabitants, expressive of their gratitude for the maintenance of discipline, by which he had saved them from plunder and destruction." The address, which was so complimentary to his distinguished regiment, was signed by M. Codroy, the mayor, in the name of the people.

From thence he accompanied the troops in that hot and brilliant pursuit, which did not cease until the French evacuated Toulouse, and the white banner of Bourbon was displayed upon its walls. The seizure of Paris by the allies, the abdication of Bonaparte and proclamation of peace, the restoration of Louis XVIII., rapidly followed, and the Peninsular army was ordered home.

In the last skirmish near Toulouse, Cameron had his favourite horse shot under him; and, though there was a hot fire of musketry sweeping the place where it lay, M'Millan deliberately unbuckled the girths of the saddle, and brought it away with the cloak and holsters, saying, that "though the French were welcome to the dead carcase, they should not get the good accoutrements."

When encamped at Blanchefort, two miles from Bordeaux, Cameron obtained his brevet colonelcy on the 4th June, 1814;[7] and when cantoned at Pouillac, his Highlanders joyfully received the route for Scotland, and on the 17th July embarked on board H.M.S. Norge, which, however, by a change of destination, landed them at the Cove of Cork.

While his regiment, now reduced to one battalion, was in Ireland, Cameron returned, on leave, to his native glen at Fassifern.

Wellington had then won all the honours a subject could attain: patents of nobility, baronetcy, and knighthood were issued for generals of division and brigade; Orders of the Garter, the Bath, and the Crescent were unsparingly lavished among the heroes of the war; but the brave Cameron, notwithstanding all his services—though he had been almost riddled by musket-shot, and had served in Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, and France, at home and abroad, for twenty-one years—found that the Duke of Wellington had omitted his name in the list of officers recommended for honorary distinctions. He visited London, and complained to the Duke of York, who offered to have him gazetted as an additional Cross of the Bath.

"I beg your highness will excuse me," said he, "for as my name has been omitted, I will not accept of it now."

"Sir," replied the duke, "do you know to whom you are speaking?"

"A prince of that royal blood for which I have too often shed my own; but am yet willing to do so again. And I have the honour to wish your Highness good morning."

In this haughty fashion he quitted the Horse Guards, but was afterwards prevailed upon to write to Wellington.

Justly indignant, he wrote a fiery remonstrance to the duke, who was then at Vienna, and who, in one of his letters to Earl Bathurst, dated 5th February, mentions it as a somewhat imprudent production; but his Grace replied to the following effect:—

"Vienna, 5th February, 1815.

"Sir—I received your letter of the 8th January, this morning, and I have transmitted it to the Secretary of State, with my recommendation of you.

"The Government fixed the occasions on which medals should be granted to the army, and framed the rules, according to which I was bound to make the lists of those to whom they were to be granted; and not having received their orders to recommend for medals, for the service at Arroya del Molinos, Alba de Tormes, Bejar, Aire, or at Arriverette, it was impossible for me to recommend you for a medal at Fuentes d'Onoro, or in the Pyrenees, according to the rules by which I was bound to make out the lists of those I recommended. I have not an accurate recollection of the lists for Bayonne, the Nivelle, Orthez, and Toulouse; but of this I am very certain, that I have never failed to do your services justice, as it was my earnest desire to render it to every officer and soldier I had the honour of commanding.

"I have nothing to say about the selection of the officers recently appointed Knights Commanders of the Order of the Bath. I did not know their names till I saw the list of them in the Gazette. If you had known these facts, I hope that the same spirit of justice by which I have always been animated, would have induced you to spare me the pain of reading the reproaches and charges of injustice contained in your letter; and that you would have defended me in the 92nd Regiment; and would have shown them that the regulation, and not I, deprived you of those marks of honour which they wished to see you obtain. As these facts are in the knowledge of everybody, it is scarcely possible to believe that you were not aware of them, and I attribute the harshness of your letter solely to the irritation which you naturally feel in considering your own case. However, the expression of this irritation, however unjust towards me, and unpleasant to my feelings, has not made me forget the services which you and your brave corps rendered upon every occasion on which you were called upon; and, although I am afraid it is too late, I have recommended you in the strongest terms to the Secretary of State; and have the honour to be, &c.,

Wellington.

"To Lieut.-Colonel Cameron, 92nd Regiment."

Cameron saw there was something at least generous in the tone of this letter, and he sent a memorial for the Order of the Bath; for the medal which had been given to officers engaged at Fuentes d'Onoro, and also for the Order of the Tower and Sword. Wellington replied as follows:—

"Vienna, February, 1815.

"Sir—I have received your letter of the 13th January, and the copy of your memorial; in answer to which I can only inform you, that I had no concern whatever in the selection of the officers of the army lately under my command to be Knights Commanders of the Order of the Bath; and as I see that the number limited is filled, I am quite certain that no application I can make will answer any purpose. I will inquire about your claim to a medal for Fuentes d'Onoro. I have recommended you for the Portuguese Order of the Tower and Sword; and have the honour, &c.,

"Wellington.

"To Lieut.-Colonel Cameron, 92nd Regiment."

Fassifern received the Portuguese order, but he was too much of a Highlander to forget the first unmerited affront, of being omitted or forgotten; and now we can but hope that this omission of the great duke was, at least, an unwitting one.

Like every Highlander of the old school, and like many of the present day, Cameron believed in the Taisch, or Second Sight; he had one other fancy, a dread of being on the water, or at sea; thus he who would face without flinching a shower of grape or hedge of bayonets, has been known to grow pale at the rocking of a small boat.

When at home, on leave, in 1815, he visited Mor'ar, in Lochaber, the seat of Colonel Simon M'Donald, a retired officer who had joined the 92nd at their first muster in 1793. One day when passing along a corridor together, and about to enter the dining-room, M'Donald started back, with his eyes fixed in their sockets, his face pale as death, and his limbs trembling.

"In God's name, what is the matter Mor'ar?" asked Cameron.

"Nothing," replied M'Donald, after a pause, and greatly agitated; "nothing."

"You have seen something, Simon," continued Cameron, impressively, for he knew, or believed, that the gift of the Taisch was hereditary in the family of Mor'ar.

"Well, then, I have seen something, Fassifern," said M'Donald, passing a hand over his eyes with a troubled expression; "but do not ask me what it was."

Mor'ar was thoughtful and sad for a long time after, and it was currently believed that he had seen some vision of his old friend's approaching end; for the day-dreams of the Highland seers are always fraught with death and sorrow. Immediately after this, war broke out again; Bonaparte quitted Elba, returned to Paris, and resumed the reins of government, while Louis XVIII. withdrew to Ghent.

Wellington once more took the field, and the 92nd Highlanders were ordered to Flanders, with the other forces under his command. Cameron hastened to rejoin, in Ireland, where the regiment was still stationed. Its second battalion, under Lamond of that ilk, had been disbanded at Edinburgh, all save twelve sergeants and 174 soldiers, who, with five officers, marched to Portpatrick to join the head-quarters; and on this route an interesting episode occurred.

As the Highlanders, with pipes playing, marched past a little wayside cottage, an old and white-haired man came out to see them, and was immediately recognised as their brave and favourite general in Spain, Sir William Stuart, who, neglected by the Government, had retired there to brood over his unrequited services. A hearty cheer welcomed "Auld Grog Willie." Then the brave Stuart burst into tears, and wept like a child. The detachment was formed into line, and inspected by him; perhaps the last military duty he ever performed, for rumour says that he died soon after of a broken heart.

Cameron embarked with his Highlanders at Cork, for Ostend, from whence, with eight battalions under his command, viz., the third battalion of the Royal Scots; the 28th, 32nd, 42nd, 44th, 79th, 92nd, and third battalion of the 95th Rifle corps, he marched, viâ Ghent and Bruges, to Brussels, where, on the 3rd June, 1815, his Highlanders, with the brigade to which they belonged—the 5th or Sir Denis Pack's—were reviewed by Wellington, then a field-marshal. In the 5th corps were also the 1st Royal Scots, the 42nd Highlanders, and 44th Regiment.

When Pack's brigade was under arms in the Park of Brussels, the Duchess of Richmond, who had been Lady Charlotte Gordon, passed in an open carriage along the line. Colonel MacQuarrie, of the 42nd, gallantly made his Highlanders present arms to her, as the Duke of Gordon's daughter, while the pipes played a salute; but on her approaching the 92nd, Cameron, still true to his old feud with her brother the marquis, gave the order—"Gordon Highlanders, order arms—stand at ease!" and thus coldly was the fair duchess received by the clan regiment of her father.

On the 12th June, Napoleon left Paris at the head of his brave army, and the British poured from Brussels. "The 42nd and 92nd Highlanders marched through the Place Royale and the Parc," says the "Circumstantial Detail;" "one could not but admire their fine appearance, their steady, military demeanour, with their pipes playing before them, and the beams of the rising sun shining upon their glittering arms. On many a highland hill and in many a lowland valley will the deeds of these brave men be remembered. It was impossible to witness such a scene unmoved."

It was at four o'clock, on a bright midsummer morning, when the Highlanders of Pack's brigade marched through the Namur gate, and, mounted on a black Spanish horse, Fassifern was at the head of the 92nd. Gallant MacQuarrie led the Royal Highlanders. They were in the division of Sir Thomas Picton, and, about two o'clock in the day, came within range of the French artillery in front of Gemappe, near a farm-house, now immortalised as Les Quatre Bras, where the main road from Charleroi to Brussels is crossed by that which leads from Nivelle to Namur. This was doomed to be, as his friend Mor'ar had, perhaps, too surely foreseen, the scene of Cameron's last achievement.

The 92nd were ordered to line a ditch in front of the Namur road, on the left flank of the farm-house; Wellington took his station near, and a hot cannonade swept over them. The proud and fiery Cameron, still pursuing his feud with the duke, never deigned to take the slightest notice of him, but allowed him to pass and repass his post without according either salute or recognising. At four in the afternoon the Black Brunswick which failed in a charge in front of this position, and their brave prince fell by a mortal wound. Inspired with new ardour, a body of French cavalry, which had taken the colours of the 69th, or South Lincolnshire Regiment, swept forward, and then the 92nd, the moment the Brunswickers were past, poured an oblique but deadly volley upon the foe, piling men and horses breast high before the roadway. Attended by one soldier, his servant, M. Bourgoyne, an officer of these horse chasseurs, clad in light green uniform, tried to escape round the flank of the 92nd. His brass helmet had fallen off, and displayed his curly black hair; he was a handsome young man, and waved his sabre, repeatedly shouting "Vive l'Empereur." Cameron evinced no disposition to molest this gallant Frenchman, but Wellington exclaimed, "92nd, d—n it, do not let that fellow escape." Fifty or sixty men then fired at him; but, such was the speed of his horse, the smoke, confusion, and inutility of firing with fixed bayonets, that he escaped all their shots, and caracoled his horse along the whole line of the 92nd. Then private Harold Chisholm, and a corporal of the 42nd Highlanders (who had lost his regiment and joined Cameron), unfixed their bayonets, knelt down, fired, and the chasseur fell to the earth, while his charger limped away on three legs. M. Bourgoyne had been shot through both ankles. Several Hanoverians now rushed forward to bayonet him, but he was rescued by Lieutenants Chisholm and Ewen Ross, who had him borne to the rear. Lieutenant Hector Innes encountered his servant, who was run through from behind by a Belgian lancer and slain. M. Bourgoyne was afterwards sent to Brussels; and his family in Paris expressed to Lieutenant Winchester, and other Highland officers, their deep gratitude for his preservation.

Again the chasseurs charged, and again they were repulsed; while a fire of cannon and musket-shot was thinning fast the ranks of Cameron. Forming under cover of these attacks, the French infantry, flanked by artillery, possessed themselves of a two-storied house, and in heavy column advanced beyond it with great spirit. At that moment,

"92nd!" exclaimed the Duke of Wellington, waving his cocked hat, "prepare to charge."

Fassifern raised his bonnet, set spurs to his horse, the whole regiment sprang over the ditch which bounded the road, and with bayonets charged, dashed through the smoke upon the enemy, and routed them. Officers and men fell fast on every side; but on went the 92nd until the gable of the two-storied house at the corner of the Charleroi road broke the centre of their line. Then they formed up in two wings, rank entire, with the house in the centre; and Cameron sent forward his cousin Ewen Ross, with the light company, into a wood of olives to skirmish, where he received a severe wound in the groin. At that time the grape-shot of the French artillery was sweeping the corn-field between the wood and the farm-house, and shredding away the ripe ears like flakes of snow in the wind. A body of French, who occupied the upper story, were firing briskly from the windows; and others who lined a thick thorn hedge, defended the avenues to the building.

Here it was that the brave Cameron, of Fassifern, fell; but the accounts of his death, as related by Siborne and others, are not strictly correct in detail. He had led his Highlanders close to the hedge, when a shot from the house passed through his belly, entering on the left side, and passing out on the right, tearing the intestines, and inflicting a mortal wound. At the same moment his horse sank under him, pierced by four musket balls.

The regiment gave a wild cheer, burst in the gates of the garden, and fearfully was he avenged by the charged bayonet and clubbed musket; but ere this Captain William Grant, Lieutenants Chisholm, Becher, and M'Pherson were killed, and soon after were barbarously stripped by the French. Nineteen officers of the 92nd were wounded, and 280 rank and file killed and wounded. The aged mother of Chisholm received a widow's pension from the Government, and Campbell, the adjutant, brought his claymore and watch home to her in Strathglass, as mementos of that dark day at Les Quatre Bras.

"The warlike and lamented Colonel Cameron," says his cousin Lieutenant Ewen Ross (92nd), who was wounded on that day by his side, and whose letter is now before me, "Cameron, than whom there was not a braver or better officer in the best or bravest of armies, was left to the chance care of his orderly sergeant, William Grant, who with a private of the 4th company led him carefully and slowly to a square of office houses at Quatre Bras. His horse being perforated by four musket balls, could carry him no further, and was then shot. The colonel was then carried in a blanket to Gemappe by Sergeant Grant, Colin Mackenzie the drum-major, two drummers named MacLean, and three MacRaes belonging to the band."

Ewen M'Millan and another Highlander carried Cameron into what the soldiers not inaptly named the bloody hospital at Gemappe, where his wound was at once pronounced to be mortal. On the position being abandoned, in his hereditary hatred and horror of the French, he expressed great dread of being left to die in their hands; and by nine in the evening his faithful and sorrowing foster-brother procured a common cart, the only vehicle to be had, and placed him in it with Ensign Angus M'Donald, who was also severely wounded, and conveyed them towards Brussels. On the way Cameron asked if the enemy had been defeated? M'Millan answered "yes," though such was not the case, but the poor fellow's heart was ready to burst.

"Defeated—then I die happy!" said Cameron; "but, oh! I hope my dear native country will believe that I have served her faithfully."

After this the power of language failed him; but Angus M'Donald (who afterwards died from the effect of his own wound) related that he heard him praying fervently in Gaelic, and in whispers. He was sinking fast. As the cart passed near where his cousin Ross lay wounded, the latter sent his servant, Angus Sutherland, to inquire how he was; but Cameron's speech was gone—he could only shake his head mournfully, without replying; and just as the cart entered the village of Waterloo, he laid his head on the breast of the brave and good M'Millan, on whose arm he had reclined, and expired without a sigh.

His faithful follower conveyed the body in by the Namur gate, through which Cameron had that morning ridden forth at the head of his Highlanders, and took it straight to the billet they had occupied in Brussels. As he was obliged to rejoin the regiment without delay for the coming conflict at Waterloo, he made a rough deal coffin, and in this placed the body of his master, brother, and friend—for Cameron had been all these three to the poor Highland private; and thus he interred him, still in his full uniform, by the side of the King's Avenue, on the Ghent road, the Allée Verte. This was on the evening of Saturday, the 17th of June. The body was conveyed to its hastily-made tomb, in a common cart, for poor Ewen could afford nothing better; and the only persons who accompanied him were the landlord of the billet, an honest Belgian, and three wounded Highlanders, who, with their open scars, had tottered out of Brussels to pay the last tribute to him they loved so well, and had followed so long.

"Your lordships will see in the enclosed lists," says Wellington, in a dispatch to the Treasury, dated Orville, 25th June, "the names of some most valuable officers lost to His Majesty's service. Among them, I cannot avoid to mention Colonel Cameron, of the 92nd Regiment, and Colonel Sir H. Ellis of the 23rd, to whose conduct I have frequently called your lordships' attention, and who at last fell, distinguishing themselves at the head of the brave troops which they commanded. Notwithstanding the glory of the occasion, it is impossible not to lament such men, both on account of the public and as friends."

Such was the eulogium of Wellington!

When Cameron was lying dead in the hospital of Gemappe, there was found in the pocket of his Highland regimentals a touching memento, illustrative of his character, and more honourable even than the trophies of battle which he bore on his breast; viz., a pocket-book, containing the names of all the Highland soldiers who had come with him from his father's lands and from Lochaber; marking those whom he had promoted, and those who were dead; for he counted many of them as his clansmen and kindred, and had ever looked after the interests and welfare of them all as if they had been the children of his own hearth, and he had carried this list with him in all his battles, for it was dated at Alexandria, in Egypt, 24th September, 1801.

A captain of an English regiment was buried near him; and there in that lonely place the graves lay undisturbed until the month of April, 1816. In that year the colonel's brother, Captain Peter Cameron, of the Balcarris, came to Brussels, accompanied by Ewen M'Millan, who led him to the well-remembered place, where the graves lay, near three trees at a corner of the Allée Verte. The colonel's remains were exhumed, placed within another coffin, and brought to Leith; from whence a king's ship conveyed them to his native Lochaber, where a grand Highland funeral was prepared.

From Fassifern the remains of the colonel were borne for five miles, on the shoulders of his friends and clansmen, to the old kirkyard of Kilmalie, where, in presence of 3000 Highlanders, his aged father, then verging on his eightieth year, laid his head in the grave a second time, while the pipes played a lament; and now he sleeps in his native earth by the tomb of the MacLauchlans, the Leine Chrios of Locheil. Donald Cameron, his chief, was in attendance, with Barra, Barcaldine, and Glencoe, and seventy gentlemen of the clans dined in honour of the occasion, at the Inn of Maryburgh.

Old Highlanders yet tell how sadly and how solemnly on that day the march of Gille Chriosd rang in the great glen of Caledonia, and yet remember the dirge composed on that occasion by Ailean Dall, or "Blind Allan," the bard of the chieftain of Glengarry—perhaps the last of the family bards in the Scottish Highlands.

In consideration of his son's brilliant services, the venerable Ewen of Fassifern received a baronetcy, and in Kilmalie a monument has been raised above the grave of the hero of Arriverette. Its epitaph is from the pen of Sir Walter Scott, and is remarkable for the elegance of its expression:—

"Sacred to the memory of Colonel John Cameron, eldest son of Ewen Cameron of Fassifern, Bart., whose mortal remains, transported from the field of glory where he died, rest here with those of his forefathers. During twenty years of active military service, with a spirit which knew no fear, and shunned no danger, he accompanied or led, in marches, sieges, and battles, the 92nd Regiment of Scottish Highlanders, always to honour and always to victory; and at length, in the 42nd year of his age, upon the memorable 16th June, 1815, was slain in command of that corps, while actively contributing to achieve the decisive victory of Waterloo, which gave peace to Europe. Thus closing his military career with the long and eventful struggle, in which his services had been so often distinguished; he died, lamented by that unrivalled general, to whose long train of success he had so often contributed; by his country, from which he had repeatedly received marks of the highest consideration, and by his sovereign, who graced his surviving family with those marks of honour which could not follow, to this place, him whom they were designed to commemorate. Reader, call not his fate untimely, who, thus honoured and lamented, closed a life of fame by a death of glory!"

Few of Camerons old comrades now survive. I know of only three officers and four privates living of the regiment which, between the 27th August, 1799, and the 18th June, 1815, had lost, in killed and wounded, 117 officers and 1634 men. After being discharged, Ewen M'Millan (who could never learn one word of English) died, in 1840, at Callart, the seat of Cameron's brother, and he now sleeps by his old master's side at Kilmalie. He it is whose memory Scott has embalmed in his "Dance of Death," and—

"Who for many a day

Had followed stout and stern,

Where through battles, rout, and reel,

Storm of shot and hedge of steel,

Led the grandson of Lochiel,

Valiant Fassifern!

Though steel and shot he leads no more,

Low laid 'mid friends' and foemen's gore

But long his native lake's wild shore,

And Suinart rough, and high Ardgower,

And Morven long and tell;

And proud Bennevis hear with awe,

How, upon Bloody Quatre Bras,

Brave Cameron heard the wild hurrah

Of conquest, as he fell!"

Riddled with wounds, Colonel Donald M'Donald of Inch, Knight of St. Vladimir, died in 1830, and is interred at Edinburgh; Lieutenant Winchester died there in 1846. Captain Campbell died, by leaping over a window, with a pistol in each hand, to chastise a person who had insulted him; some have died as emigrants among the wilds of the far West; many more are lying near Uppark, in Jamaica, where the close-ranked headstones show where 1300 of the Gordon Highlanders are sleeping far from their native hills; and now Paymaster Gordon, and Lieutenants Ewen Ross, John Grant, and Alexander Gordon alone survive to wear the war decoration.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] As an example of the number of officers belonging to the clans, who served during the war and escaped its slaughter, we may state that there were on full and half-pay commissions, in 1816, 22 Buchanans; 67 Camerons; 22 Drummonds; 26 Fergusons; 41 Forbeses; 49 Grahames; 90 Frazers; 96 Grants; 144 M'Leans and M'Kenzies; 248 Campbells; and other names in the same proportion.

[4] MS. Records, 92nd Highlanders.

[5] Lieutenant Hope, 92nd.

[6] "Record:" Lyon Court, Edinburgh.

[7] Note of his services furnished to author from Horse Guards.

Sir Samuel Greig.

Sir Samuel Greig, Governor of Cronstadt, Admiral of all the Russias, and commonly called the Father of the Russian Navy, was a Scotsman of humble but respectable parentage, and was born at the ancient seaport town of Inverkeithing, in Fifeshire, on the 30th of November, 1735.[8] He was educated by the parochial schoolmaster, who lived long to boast of his pupil, for the Domini would seem to have been still alive when the old statistical account of Scotland was published in 1794.

When very young, Samuel Greig entered the British navy, and at an early age obtained the rank of lieutenant. In 1759 he served with the fleet of Admiral Sir Edward Hawke, C.B. (afterwards Lord Hawke), when blockading the harbour of Brest, where a fine French fleet lay, under the pennant of the Marquis de Conflans. At that time a double invasion of Britain (one by the way of Scotland, the other on the coast of England) was threatened; but Commodore Boys blocked up Dunkirk, and Rodney bombarded Havre-de-Grace, while the French transports and flat-bottomed boats lay inactive in Brest, with the fleet of M. de Conflans; till a violent storm in autumn, having driven the ships of Sir Edward Hawke into Torbay, the marquis put to sea with twenty-one sail of the line and four frigates, and threw all England into consternation.

With twenty sail of the line, Hawke left Torbay, and came up with the French fleet between Belleisle and Cape Quiberon, close in on the coast of France, and in the desperate conflict which ensued, "young Greig," though a subaltern, is said to "have eminently distinguished himself." The battle began at two o'clock, P.M., on the 20th of November.

Sir Edward, in the Royal George, 110, lay alongside De Conflans in the Soleil Royale, 80, which was soon driven on shore and burned. He then lay alongside the Thesée, and sent her to the bottom by one broadside. La Superbe shared the same fate; the Juste was sunk off the mouth of the Loire; the Hero was burned; and thus M. de Conflans was totally defeated. Nothing saved the rest of his fleet from irretrievable ruin but the shadow of a tempestuous night, in which two British ships of the line were lost. Lieutenant Greig served with the fleet in all its operations, during the long cruise off the coast of Bretagne, and the blockade of the river Vilaine, to prevent seven French ships which lay there from joining Conflans, whose battered squadron had reached Rochefort; but so dangerous were the storms, and so incessantly tempestuous the weather, that the fear of invasion passed away. Sir Edward Hawke was at length recalled, and the thanks of Parliament and a pension were awarded to him. In this war the British destroyed, or took twenty-seven French ships of the line and thirty-one frigates. Six of their vessels perished. Thus, in all they lost sixty-four sail, while Britain, by every casualty, lost only seven line-of-battle ships and five frigates.

The next scene of Greig's service was at the capture of several of the West India Islands.

War having been declared against the Spaniards, an attack on their settlements in the West Indies was arranged, and Martinico, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Grenada were taken. Then Cuba was assailed. Greig was with the fleet, consisting of nineteen sail of the line, eighteen frigates, and 150 transports, which had 10,000 soldiers on board, and sailed for Cuba under Admiral Sir George Pocoke, K.B., whose commodore was the Hon. Augustus Keppel, raised to the peerage in 1782.

The energy and exertions of Lieutenant Greig, during that tremendous cannonading which preceded the siege and capture of the Moro Castle, elicited the praise of his commander; but no promotion followed, for the time was unfavourable for either Scotsmen or Irishmen rising in the British service. After incredible exertions, difficulties, danger, and slaughter, Havannah was captured, with 180 miles of coast; the Puntal Castle, the ships in the harbour, three millions sterling of booty, and an immense quantity of arms, artillery, and stores were surrendered to the British. Greig's share of this enormous prize-money was very small, being somewhere about 80l.

Lieutenant Greig served in many other engagements during that successful war; and his bravery, activity, and skill as a seaman had so frequently elicited particular attention, that after the treaty of peace which was signed at Paris in February, 1763, under Lord Bute's administration, when the Court of St. Petersburg requested that a few British officers of distinguished ability might be sent to improve the Russian fleet, Greig was one of the five who were first selected, and his rank as lieutenant in the navy of Russia was confirmed by the Empress Catherine II., in 1764. The only stipulation he and the others made was, that they were to have the power of returning to the British service whenever they chose.

Russia, since the beginning of the seventeenth century, has ever been an excellent field for Scottish talent and valour. Thus Greig, by his superior skill in naval affairs, his intelligence and diligent discharge of the duties entrusted to him, soon attracted the special notice of the Imperial Government, and the Empress appointed him a captain in her fleet. He drew many other Scotsmen around him, and, with these, he was at incredible pains to teach the half-barbarous and wholly unlettered Russians the science of seamanship and the art of gunnery, in all of which they were very deficient, "and he rapidly raised the Russian naval service to a degree of respectability and importance which it never before had attained."

In 1769, when he was in his thirty-fourth year, a war broke out between Russia and Turkey, consequent on the civil strife which religious intolerance had kindled in Poland. The Czarina marched in her troops; and while pretending that her sole object was to rescue one body of Polish citizens from the tyranny of the other, she secretly sought to enslave them all, and render their country a province of the Russian empire.

The growing greatness of the latter had alarmed its old hereditary enemy, the Grand Seignior, who required Catherine immediately to withdraw her troops from the Polish republic. Evasions were given, and conflicts began between the Russian and Turkish outposts, on the borders of the Ottoman empire, until the sack of Balta, in Lesser Tartary, and a general massacre of its inhabitants, by the soldiers of the Czarina, procured the committal of her ambassador to the Castle of the Seven Towers, in October, 1769; and hostilities, which were only suspended by the rigour of the season, began early in the spring of the ensuing year.

Captain Greig was appointed commodore of the fleet which was to sail for the Mediterranean, under Alexis Count Orloff; and in that ample arena of service he had an opportunity of displaying his zeal and intrepidity in such a manner as led to his immediate promotion to the rank of flag-officer.

A partial breaking up of the ice in the Baltic enabled some of the fleet to sail; and so early as the 14th of January, 1770, one part of the armament, under the Scottish admiral Elphinstone, consisting of one 70-gun ship, two of sixty guns each, and five others, arrived at Spithead, en route for the Archipelago.

The other division, of twenty-two sail of the line, reached Port Mahon, in Minorca, so early as the 4th of January; and by the 6th of March appeared off Cephalonia, the largest of the Ionian Isles, and, with a fair wind, bore away directly for the Morea. At Minorca they left some vessels to wait for Elphinstone, who left Spithead on the 14th of April, passed Gibraltar on the 4th of May, and before the end of July had twice defeated the Turkish fleet—on one occasion encountering three times his force, and destroying eight ships; on the second occasion, with nineteen ships, encountering Giafar Bey, with twenty-three. Giafar's largest ships were destroyed, and his fleet dispersed.

In the great battle of the 6th of July, Greig, Mackenzie, and other officers in the Russian fleet, had an opportunity of eminently rendering good and gallant service; and by their energy and skill the world now saw a naval force, which, as Cormick says, had issued from the foot of the Baltic, able "to shake the remotest parts of the Mediterranean, to intercept the trade of the Levant, to excite and support the insurrection of the Greek Christians, and to leave nothing of the vast empire of their enemies free from alarm and confusion."

The united squadron of the Admirals Count Orloff, Elphinstone, Spiritoff, and Commodore Greig, followed the Turkish fleet, which consisted of fifteen sail of the line, twelve frigates, &c., into the Channel of Scio, which divides the island from Anadoli, or the Lesser Asia; there the Turks were at anchor in a most advantageous position, at the foot of the Gulf of Liberno, where their rear and flanks were protected by rocks.

Early in the morning of the 5th, Commodore Greig was sent to reconnoitre the roads between Scio and the main; and in the afternoon he signalled the enemy in sight, consisting of thirty sail in all. Orloff, the admiral-general, held a council of war, at which Greig's opinion was specially asked, and his advice followed.

On the 6th, at ten in the morning, Orloff signalled to form line, and the Russian fleet approached the Turks. Orloff was in the centre, with three Birnates; Commodore Greig led one division, and Elphinstone the other—in all, ten sail of the line, and five frigates; and they each bore down with ensigns flying, all their ports open, and decks cleared for action. There were many French officers on board of the Turkish fleet, which had been joined by about thirty lieutenants, who had received the permission of King Louis to enter the Sultan's service. A terrible scene of carnage ensued, and the whole conflict is admirably detailed in a letter published in the Scots' Magazine for that year, by a Lieutenant Mackenzie, who served on board of her Imperial Majesty's ship the Switostoff.

At eleven o'clock the battle began. Admiral Spiritoff ranged up alongside of the Turkish admiral, who was in the Sultana, of ninety brass guns, and thus they fought yard-arm and yard-arm together, pouring in and receiving cannon-shot, chain-shot, hand-grenades and musketry. Spiritoff's topmasts were shot away, his bulwarks battered down, and blood ran from his scuppers into the sea. He led his sailors in an attempt to board the Sultana, and tore the banner of the Crescent from her stern; but the boarders were repulsed, and obliged to sheer off, for the Turk took fire, and his burning mainmast fell on board of Spiritoff's ship, which also became wrapped in flames; and in ten minutes both ships blew up. "I leave you to judge," says Mackenzie, "of the dreadful scene of seeing so many hundreds of poor souls blown into the air, while the rest were hotly engaged." Spiritoff and twenty-four officers saved themselves in the barge.

The remainder of the Turkish fleet, after being severely mauled by Elphinstone and Greig (Orloff was little of a seaman), cut their cables, and ran into the harbour of Chismeh, a small town in the Sanjak of Siglah, at the bottom of a bay one mile broad, and two miles long. Across the mouth of this bay the fleet, under Orloff, Elphinstone, and the Commodore, lay for the whole night, firing round shot, and throwing in bombs. The fire of Greig's ship was particularly destructive; but on the Turks getting batteries established on the height between Scio and the coast of Anadoli, he and the two admirals were obliged to haul off. Two fireships were prepared an the 7th, under the direction of Elphinstone and Greig; and a council of war was held by the principal officers in the cabin of Count Orloff. It was there suggested by the Commodore, and resolved upon, that at midnight four ships of the line, two frigates, and the bomb-ketch, should enter the harbour, and while attacking the enemy, send the fireships on their errand of destruction; but volunteers were required to lead, and three officers, all Scotsmen, at once stepped forward. These were, Commodore Greig, Lieutenant Mackenzie, of the Switostoff, and Captain-Lieutenant Drysdale (or Dugdale, for this officer is called alternately by both names in many accounts of these wars), and they made every preparation for the desperate duty before them. At half-past twelve at night the signal was made to weigh anchor, and bear into the little bay; Drysdale and Mackenzie had the fireships; Greig led the ships of the line and the two frigates, which, at four hundred yards' distance, cannonaded the Turks, while the bomb-ketch plied its mortars. Greig signalled the fireships to bear down; Drysdale and Mackenzie answered it, and, favoured by the wind, ran right into the teeth of the Turks, whose centre ship was at that moment set on fire by a fortunate shot from the Commodore.

Drysdale's crew unfortunately left his ship before the proper time. Indeed, the Russians were so overcome with terror by the darkness of the night, the boom of the Turkish shot, and by the fireships, of which they were unable to comprehend the use, that it was only by dint of his sword and pistols that Drysdale kept them to their duty; but when near the enemy the helmsman abandoned the rudder, the whole crew sprang into their boat, and abandoned the brave Scotsman on board of the fireship!

In this terrible situation his native courage never deserted him; he lashed the helm, and (though a boat full of armed Turks was pulling alongside) held the ship on her course till, with his own unaided hands, he hooked the grapnel-irons to the anchor-cable of the nearest ship, which proved to be a large caravella. He then fired the train by discharging a pistol, and in doing so was severely scorched by the explosion. At the moment the Turks boarded him on one side he sprang into the sea from the other, and swam from the blazing ship. Many a shot was fired after him, but he escaped, and was saved with difficulty by the boats of Greig.

The fireships blew up with the most admirable effect, and the result was, beyond Greig's utmost expectations, decisive and disastrous, for in five hours the whole Turkish fleet was burned to the water-edge and totally destroyed—all, save one ship, Giafar Bey's, of seventy guns, four row-galleys, and some gilt barges of twenty-four oars. The morning sun, as he shone upon the Isle of Scio and Anadolian shore, saw a scene of unexampled devastation—every Turkish mast had vanished from the bay, and pieces of charred and floating wreck alone remained! The following were the ships destroyed by Greig:——

Capitan Alebi, 84 guns.	Achmet, 86 guns.
Bashaw, 90 guns.	Hamisi, 60 guns.
Patrona Ayckrece, 80 guns.	Ali Randioto, 60 guns.
Reala Mustapha, 96 guns.	Melehin, 80 guns.
Mulensi Achmet, 84 guns.	Rapislan Bashaw, 64 guns.
Emir Mustapha, 84 guns.	Zefirbe, 84 guns.

La Barbarocine, 64 guns, was towed out of the harbour by his boats. Two other large ships (names unknown) were burned, with four frigates, eight 40-gun ships, eight galleys, and several row-boats. He rescued 400 Christian slaves, hauled close in shore, bombarded the town, blew up the castle, and reduced the whole place to a heap of rubbish before nine o'clock in the morning, by which time more than 6000 Turks had been shot, burned, or drowned.

For this brilliant service Greig was at once made a rear-admiral by Count Orloff, while Lieutenants Drysdale and Mackenzie received the rank of captain, all of which appointments the Empress was pleased to confirm. Though the unfortunate Capitan Pacha, who commanded, was severely wounded, the Sultan ordered his head to be struck off, and appointed Giafar Bey admiral in his place. As rear-admiral Greig's pay amounted to 2160 roubles per annum. Immediately after this victory Admiral Elphinstone sailed with his squadron for the Isle of Tenedos, to block up the Dardanelles, where he captured forty vessels destined for Constantinople, forced most of the Isles of the Archipelago to declare for Russia, and levied contributions everywhere, taxing Mitylene in 150,000 piastres. Greig accompanied Count Orloff to the liege of the Castle of Lemnos, which proceeded slowly, the only troops they had being revolted Greeks, who were afterwards cut to pieces by Hassan Bey, and then the Russians bent all their efforts to force the passage of the Dardanelles; but so strongly was it fortified by the Chevalier Tott, and other Frenchmen, that every attempt proved futile.

In the winter of 1770 Greig's commission was further confirmed by a letter from the Empress, and in his ship, the Three Primates, he brought the nominal commander-in-chief, Count Orloff, to Leghorn on the 7th of December, as the fleet was leaving the Archipelago for want of men, and the batteries of the Dardanelles were daily becoming stronger under the skilful eye of Tott, to whom the grateful Sultan paid 100 scudi daily, as the saviour of his capital.

At Leghorn the Sieur Rutherford, Commissary of the Russian Court, sold all the prizes taken by the fleet. Having secret views of his own concerning the unfortunate Princess Tarakanoff, the Count Orloff, who is styled minister plenipotentiary, general of the Russian troops, and admiral-general, proposed to spend the winter partly at Pisa, and partly at Leghorn, "in order to take care of the Russian squadron," as peace was expected. Greig is said to have demurred; Admiral Elphinstone expressed dissatisfaction, and when ordered to sail on "a secret expedition" he bluntly declined. An altercation ensued between him and the count. He was put under arrest, and reported to the Empress, who recalled him, and he retired from her service in disgust. On his presentation to Catherine he appeared in the blue uniform of the British navy, on which she turned coldly away, saying to one of her favourites, "It is high time this Scot was out of my service, when he has laid aside my uniform!"

Meanwhile the fleet was not inactive, for Mackenzie, Brodie, and other officers, who served under Spiritoff, were very zealous. Thus, by the 20th January, 1771, they had destroyed nineteen Dulcignotte tartans, and exacted from the Isles of the Archipelago the same tribute which they yearly paid the Sultan. At the same time the Russian troops had taken the city of Sinope, on the Black Sea, the fortress of Giurgievo, and other places in the Turkish provinces. A squadron, commanded by the Knights of Malta, joined Orloff's flag; Scio was again ravaged by the Russians, a large dulcignotte destroyed, and the fighting among the fertile and beautiful isles of Greece was incessant; Greig was constantly employed, and daily added to his reputation as a brave and skilful officer.

He had assisted in the destruction of all the magazines which had been formed to supply the Turkish capital; at the bombardment of Negropont, the capital of the ancient Eubœa, where the troops were landed to destroy the stores of corn and flour; he had cruised along the shore of Macedonia; been at the bombardment of Cavalla in Romelia, and the destruction of the storehouses at Salonica; and in the Gulf of Kassanderah, while Count Theodore, the brother of Count Alexis Orloff, scoured all the shores of Anadoli, and cannonaded Rhodez. The united Russian fleet, under the three admirals, Orloff, Spiritoff, and Greig, made sixty-six sail in all on the 1st of November.

While the Russian army by land was making daily successful attacks on the Turks, and had crossed the Danube under General Romanzow, and twice besieged Silistria, pushing the war round the shores of the Black Sea, and into the Crimea, the naval squadrons had many desperate encounters in the Archipelago, and one very sharp action off the Isle of Scio, when seven Russian ships of the line and two frigates engaged ten Turkish ships and six large galleys, on the 10th of October, 1773, and after fighting from ten in the morning until long past mid-day, entirely defeated them, taking five sail, sinking two, and putting the rest to flight. In one of these encounters a ball struck Admiral Greig, and bent one of the points of his cross of St. George, carrying away a piece of the enamel. Every captain of the Russian navy then wore the military order of St. George, the badge of which is a knight and dragon, attached to a black ribbon.

A descent was made upon the Isle of Cyprus; another on Candia, and elsewhere; but the Russians were repulsed, and four sacks filled with their scalps were sent from Stanchio as a proof of the reception they had met with in that island.

In the end of 1773 Greig returned to St. Petersburg, and, with Admiral Sir Charles Knowles, made every exertion to have a better and more efficient squadron dispatched to the Dardanelles. With this under his command he sailed again from Cronstadt, and after touching at Portsmouth, bore on for the Mediterranean on the 17th of February, 1774. With his flag flying as vice-admiral, he reached Leghorn, where, for purposes of his own, Alexis Orloff was again loitering. On this expedition Greig was accompanied by his wife, for whom every accommodation had been made in his ship, the Issidorum; but being of course unwilling that she should risk the dangers of the Turkish war, he landed her at Leghorn, where the house of the Russian consul was assigned to her as a residence. The ships composing his fleet were—

The Issidorum,	74 guns Captain Surminoff.
The Mironfitz,	74 guns Captain Mouskin Pouskin.
St. Alexander Newski,	64 guns Captain Voronari.
Demetrius Douski,	64 guns Captain Pajaskoff.
St. Paulus,	30 guns Captain Palovski.

During Greig's brief sojourn at Leghorn there occurred one of those atrocities which so frequently blackened the reign of Catherine II.

Alexis Count Orloff, a man of the most inhuman character and brutal propensities, had conceived a passion for the young and beautiful Princess Tarakanoff, daughter of the late Empress Elizabeth, by her clandestine marriage with the Grand Veneur. This princess had been conveyed to Rome by the artful Prince Radzivil, beyond the reach of Catherine's intrigues and tyranny. But Orloff had been ordered to decoy her back to St. Petersburg on the first opportunity. Accordingly, during one of his visits to Leghorn, he laid a snare for her, by sending an Italian, named Signor Ribas, afterwards a Knight of Malta, to visit her. This vile person, who found the poor princess in a mean lodging, told her that he "had come to pay homage to her beauty and misfortunes, and to deplore the destitution in which he found her." He then offered her money, adding that he "was commissioned by Alexis Orloff to promise her the throne her mother had filled, and at the same time his sincere love, if she would honour him with her hand." After some hesitation she was overcome by the apparent sincerity and brilliance of the proposal, which seemed the more splendid by her destitute condition, and accepted the offer of Orloff. He visited her repeatedly; a feigned marriage was performed by two Russian officers, disguised as Catholic priests; villainy completed the imposture: for a time—two or three months—he placed her in a magnificent palace at Pisa, and then brought her to Leghorn. It was at this crisis that Admiral Greig entered the port, and his wife[9] is mentioned as being among the first to visit the young princess, who was far from suspecting the terrible snare laid for her—a snare of which the English consul is said to have been cognizant. Deluded by the caresses and feigned love of Orloff, she begged to be "shown the large and beautiful ships of the Russian fleet," which was ordered to prepare for her reception.

On her arriving at the beach, she was placed by Orloff in a handsome boat, screened by a silken awning; the second barge conveyed the vice-admiral and other British officers, who for many years after were all unconscious of the villainy of Orloff. Music, huzzas, and salutes of artillery welcomed the unhappy daughter of the Empress Elizabeth on board the nearest ship; and the moment she stood upon its deck, she was handcuffed with heavy irons, and thrust into one of the lowest cabins. She threw herself at the feet of Orloff, and implored pity as his wife; but was answered by laughter and mockery, while the anchor was weighed, and the ship sailed for St. Petersburg, where she was shut up in a fortress on the Neva, and was never heard of again!

Rumour adds a darker tinge to this tale of Russian cruelty, by asserting that, two years afterwards, when the waters of the Neva rose ten feet by an inundation, they filled the horrid vault in which she was confined, and drowned her. Her body was then flung into the stream, and swept by its current into the Gulf of Finland.

But to return. As the wind continued fair, Greig bore away for Paros, a beautiful isle of the central Cyclades, which was the rendezvous of the fleet under Spiritoff, and where a great many small vessels of an entirely new construction, were prepared for the purpose of embarking and landing troops.

Here the Russians had seized and sold a number of Venetian ships, consequently the senate ordered all their vessels of war to be prepared to resist the new armament of Greig, and in March rigged two ships of 84 guns each, and two more of 75: these ultimately came to blows with the Turks, and defeated them off the Isle of Candia.

On the 10th of March, tidings having come to Paros that the Turkish fleet were about to surprise the Russian garrison at Sciros, a 50-gun ship and four frigates were despatched to oppose the attempt, but signally failed—for they were all burned or taken but one. The general head-quarters of the Czarina's forces were at the Isle of Paros; and there, during the spring of 1774, the Admirals Spiritoff and Greig anchored their armaments at Port Naussa, on the northern shore—one of the finest harbours in the Archipelago, and in the channel between Paros and the bold and lofty coast of Naxos. Their regular troops occupied Marmora and Zimbido, while their Albanian allies were at Bachia. Greig and Spiritoff made every effort to refit the old ships, and prepare them for hostilities in summer, and when their cruisers joined them from Patmos and Tasso; but before anything of importance was achieved, the Empress concluded a peace with the Turks—a peace, says Frederick the Great, "resplendent with glory, by the success which her arms had met with against her enemies during the war;" and by this peace, the treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardgi, Catherine stipulated that the Crimea, which had hitherto been under the subjection of the Turks, should be, in all time coming, an independent sovereignty under its own khans, thus lessening the power of the Porte.

Admiral Greig now returned to Russia with the fleet, and for many years devoted himself entirely to the improvement of the Russian marine, and the development of the naval resources of the Empire—remodelling its code of discipline, relaxing its barbarity, civilizing and educating its officers and men, by training the marine cadets on board of two frigates or floating academies, and thus justly earning for himself the honourable and endearing sobriquet of the Father of the Russian Navy. For these and other valuable services the grateful Empress bestowed upon him the government of Cronstadt, and a commission as High Admiral of all the Russias, at the same time decorating him with the Orders of St. Andrew, St. George of the second class, St. Vladimir, which she instituted on the 22nd September, 1782 (her twentieth coronation day), and St. Anne of Holstein, which is always the gift of the Grand Duke. His great assistant was Mr. Gordon, director-general of the ship-building, who at one time had building, under his own immediate care, two ships of 100 guns each, three of 90 guns each, six of 70 guns each, and ten of 40 guns each—all of which, for their skilful construction, strength, swiftness, and beauty of mould, had never been equalled by any previous effort of Russian naval architecture.

The admiral's pay was now 7000 roubles per annum.

In accordance with the custom of the Russian nobility, who add the Christian name of their father to their own, with the termination owitch, which signifies the son of, we find the Scottish admiral signing and designating himself "Samuel Carlovitch Greig." He was ever treated with the greatest consideration and honour by the Empress, who, in the year 1776, paid him the compliment of a visit—then esteemed an unparalleled act of condescension for the crowned head of Russia, who, among many absurd and hyperbolical titles, had (and perhaps still retains) the blasphemous one of "Chamberlain to Almighty God."

On the 18th of July the Empress, attended by all the great officers of her state and household, went in a magnificent barge from Oranienbaum to Admiral Greig's ship, the yards of which he had manned. As soon as he had handed her on board, the Imperial standard was hoisted, and the whole fleet fired a salute, which was responded to by nine hundred pieces of cannon in Cronstadt. Dinner was set in Greig's cabin for the Empress and a hundred guests, who were the principal officers of her marine and other departments. The whole fleet then weighed anchor, and Catherine, accompanied by the infamous Orloff, Field-Marshal Count Galitzin, and Count Bruce, the adjutant on duty, was rowed in her barge along the line amid another salute of cannon. Before returning to Oranienbaum she placed on Greig's breast the golden and eight-pointed star of St. Alexander Newski, with the red ribbon, which is worn over the left shoulder.

During the peace, Greig was unremitting in his efforts to draw British officers into the service, and the number who offered their swords and valour to the Czarina soon conduced, by their skill and talent, to render her navy for the first time respectable and formidable in Europe.[10]

Thus it was that, in 1799, in Lord Duncan's line of battle, August 24th, at the Texel, we find among the Russian ships of war, the Ratisvan, commanded by Captain Greig; and in September, under the same gallant admiral, the Scottish captains Scott, Dunn, Boyle, Maclagan, Ogilvie, and Rose, commanding the Russian ships Alexander Newski, 74; Neptune, 54; Rafaill, 44; Revel, 44; Minerva, 38; and St. Nicholas, 38, embarking the Russian troops at Revel; and thus it was, that when Russia, fifteen years before, projected a new war against the Turks, in consequence of their interference with the affairs of the independent Crimea, the Empress found her fleet to consist of upwards of ninety sail at Cronstadt, Revel, and in the Sea of Asoph.