The 75th (Stirlingshire) Regiment of Foot, was a

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurkha ...

line infantry Line infantry was the type of infantry that composed the basis of European land armies from the late 17th century to the mid-19th century. Maurice of Nassau and Gustavus Adolphus are generally regarded as its pioneers, while Turenne and Mon ...

regiment A regiment is a military unit. Its role and size varies markedly, depending on the country, service and/or a specialisation. In Medieval Europe, the term "regiment" denoted any large body of front-line soldiers, recruited or conscript ...

, raised in 1787. Under the

Childers Reforms The Childers Reforms of 1881 reorganised the infantry regiments of the British Army. The reforms were done by Secretary of State for War Hugh Childers during 1881, and were a continuation of the earlier Cardwell Reforms. The reorganisation wa ...

it amalgamated with the 92nd (Gordon Highlanders) Regiment of Foot to form the

Gordon Highlanders Gordon may refer to: People * Gordon (given name), a masculine given name, including list of persons and fictional characters * Gordon (surname), the surname * Gordon (slave), escaped to a Union Army camp during the U.S. Civil War * Clan Gord ...

in 1881.

History

Formation

George Romney - Colonel Robert Abercrombie - Google Art Project

The regiment was raised in

Stirling Stirling (; sco, Stirlin; gd, Sruighlea ) is a city in central Scotland, northeast of Glasgow and north-west of Edinburgh. The market town, surrounded by rich farmland, grew up connecting the royal citadel, the medieval old town with its me ...

by Colonel Robert Abercromby for service in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

as the 75th (Highland) Regiment of Foot in October 1787. In accordance with the Declaratory Act 1788 the cost of raising the regiment was recharged to

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Sou ...

on the basis that the act required that expenses "should be defrayed out of the revenues" arising there. First assembled in June 1788, the regiment proceeded to England and embarked for

arriving there by the end of the year. It saw action at the siege of Seringapatam in February 1792 during the

Third Anglo-Mysore War The Third Anglo-Mysore War (1790–1792) was a conflict in South India between the Kingdom of Mysore and the British East India Company, the Kingdom of Travancore, the Maratha Empire, and the Nizam of Hyderabad. It was the third of four Angl ...

. It went on to fight at the Battle of Seedaseer in March 1799 and formed part of the storming party at the siege of Seringapatam in April 1799 during the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War. It also took part in the

siege of Bharatpur The siege of Bharatpore was a siege that took place in the Indian princely state of Bharatpur (now part of Rajasthan) between December 1825 and January 1826. British troops under Lord Combermere initially surrounded the state's capital until ...

in January 1805 during the

Second Anglo-Maratha War } The Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803–1805) was the second conflict between the British East India Company and the Maratha Empire in India. Background The British had supported the "fugitive" Peshwa Raghunathrao in the First Anglo-Maratha War ...

. It then returned home in August 1806 and then lost its Highland status due to recruiting difficulties, becoming the 75th Regiment of Foot in April 1809.

Napoleonic Wars

The regiment embarked for

Jersey Jersey ( , ; nrf, Jèrri, label= Jèrriais ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (french: Bailliage de Jersey, links=no; Jèrriais: ), is an island country and self-governing Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the ...

in June 1811 and was deployed to

Messina Messina (, also , ) is a harbour city and the capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, and the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of more than 219,000 inhabitants in t ...

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

in October 1811. Internal dissensions in the Sicilian government and an ever-increasing suspicion that Queen Maria Carolina was aiming to have the French reinstate her in Sicily had led to

Lord William Bentinck Lieutenant General Lord William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (14 September 177417 June 1839), known as Lord William Bentinck, was a British soldier and statesman who served as the Governor of Fort William (Bengal) from 1828 to 1834 and the First G ...

's appointment as British representative to the Court of Palermo in July 1811.Lackland, H.M.. "Lord William Bentinck in Sicily, 1811 – 12." ''The English Historical Review'' 42.167 (1927): 371 – 396.

JSTOR JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...

. 4 March 2009. Bentinck established a new constitution under which the Sicilians gained an autonomy they had never experienced before. The constitution set up the separation of the legislative and executive powers and abolished the feudalistic practices that had been established and recognised for the past 700 years. Bentinck went on to lead an Anglo-Sicilian force, involving the regiment, which raided the

Calabria , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

n coast in February 1813. The regiment transferred to the Ionian Islands in July 1814 and to

Gibraltar ) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song = "Gibraltar Anthem" , image_map = Gibraltar location in Europe.svg , map_alt = Location of Gibraltar in Europe , map_caption = United Kingdom shown in pale green , mapsize = , image_map2 = Gibr ...

in 1821 before returning to England in 1823.

The Victorian era

The regiment embarked for the

Cape Colony The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with ...

in 1830 and took part in the

Sixth Xhosa War The Xhosa Wars (also known as the Cape Frontier Wars or the Kaffir Wars) were a series of nine wars (from 1779 to 1879) between the Xhosa people, Xhosa Kingdom and the British Empire as well as Trekboers in what is now the Eastern Cape in Sout ...

in December 1834. It returned home in 1843 and then embarked for India again in 1849. The regiment, as part of the first storming column, led a bayonet charge at the

siege of Delhi The siege of Delhi was one of the decisive conflicts of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The rebellion against the authority of the East India Company was widespread through much of Northern India, but essentially it was sparked by the mass ...

in June 1857 during efforts to suppress the

Indian Rebellion The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against Company rule in India, the rule of the East India Company, British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the The Crown, British ...

. It was also engaged at the

siege of Lucknow The siege of Lucknow was the prolonged defence of the British The Residency, Lucknow, Residency within the city of Lucknow from rebel Sepoy, sepoys (Indian soldiers in the East India Company, British East India Company's Army) during the Indian ...

in November 1857 and formed the funeral party for Major-General Sir Henry Havelock later that month before going on to take part in the

Capture of Lucknow The Capture of Lucknow (Hindi: लखनऊ का क़ब्ज़ा, ur, ) was a battle of Indian rebellion of 1857. The British recaptured the city of Lucknow which they had abandoned in the previous winter after the relief of a besieg ...

in March 1858. The regiment returned home in 1862 and was renamed the 75th (Stirlingshire) Regiment of Foot later in November 1862. It was deployed to Gibraltar again in 1867, to

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...

in 1868 and to

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

in 1869 before returning to the Cape Colony in 1870. It returned home again in 1875. As part of the

Cardwell Reforms The Cardwell Reforms were a series of reforms of the British Army undertaken by Secretary of State for War Edward Cardwell between 1868 and 1874 with the support of Liberal prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. Gladstone paid little attention ...

of the 1870s, where single-battalion regiments were linked together to share a single depot and recruiting district in the United Kingdom, the 75th was linked with the

39th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot The 39th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot was an infantry regiment of the British Army, raised in 1702. Under the Childers Reforms it amalgamated with the 54th (West Norfolk) Regiment of Foot to form the Dorsetshire Regiment in 1881. History Ear ...

, and assigned to district no. 39 at Dorchester Barracks in Dorchester. On 1 July 1881 the

came into effect and the regiment amalgamated with the 92nd (Gordon Highlanders) Regiment of Foot to become the 1st battalion, the

Battle honours

Battle honours won by the regiment were: *Fourth Anglo-Mysore War:

Seringapatam Srirangapatna is a town and headquarters of one of the seven Taluks of Mandya district, in the Indian State of Karnataka. It gets its name from the Ranganthaswamy temple consecrated at around 984 CE. Later, under the British rule the city wa ...

, India *Indian Mutiny:

Delhi 1857 Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and divis ...

Victoria Cross recipients

*Colour Sergeant Cornelius Coughlan,

Indian Mutiny The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the for ...

(8 June 1857) *Private Patrick Green, Indian Mutiny (11 September 1857) *Lieutenant Richard Wadeson, Indian Mutiny (17 July 1857)

Colonels of the Regiment

Colonels of the Regiment were:

75th (Highland) Regiment of Foot

*1787–1827: Gen. Sir

Robert Abercromby of Airthrey General Sir Robert Abercromby (21 October 17403 November 1827), the youngest brother of Sir Ralph Abercromby, was a general in the army, Governor of Bombay and Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay Army and then Commander-in-Chief, India, the East I ...

, GCB

75th Regiment of Foot – (1809)

*1827–1832: Lt-Gen. James Dunlop of Dunlop *1832–1841: Lt-Gen. Sir Joseph Fuller, GCH *1841–1845: Gen. Sir William Hutchinson, KCH *1845–1858: Gen. Sackville Hamilton Berkeley *1858–1870: Gen. St. John Augustus Clerke, KH

75th (Stirlingshire) Regiment of Foot – (1862)

*1870–1872: Gen. Sir David Russell, KCB *1872–1881: Gen. John Thomas Hill (to 1st Battalion,

) *''1881: amalgamated with the 92nd (Gordon Highlanders) Regiment of Foot to form the

References

Sources

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