Preface

The following pages are a continuation of Colonel MacKinnon’s Origin and Services of the Coldstream Guards, from the victory of Waterloo down to the year 1885. They have been compiled with great care and much labour, and the reader will, I trust, feel justified in adding, with accuracy and marked ability.

The first few chapters deal with events that took place in France, after Waterloo, including the military occupation of the North-Eastern frontier by the Allies, up to the year 1818.

The period onwards to the Crimean War, although containing but few accounts of interest concerning the career of the Regiment, is valuable as continuing, to a considerable extent, the history of events in Europe so far as that is consistent with the subject of the present volume.

There is reference, nevertheless, to the part taken by the Regiment in the suppression of the Canadian rebellion.

From the date, however, of 1854, the subject assumes a different character, and is of absorbing interest to every Officer and man associated with the Coldstream Guards.

The events connected with that campaign have been carefully selected from thoroughly authentic sources; they are recorded in no spirit of vainglory or self-sufficiency, but as a true and faithful tale of the share which the Regiment took in that eventful war,—illustrating, as it does, acts of gallantry, a noble and uncomplaining endurance of difficulties and hardships, and a strict performance of duty under very trying circumstances.

The accuracy of the record of the more recent Egyptian campaigns is of special value, from the fact of the author of this work having himself taken an active part in one of them.

The perusal of these records will be accompanied by the conviction which exists in the minds of all of us, that those who replace their gallant predecessors will, when their turn comes, deserve equally well of their country.