Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/595

 IIS.V.JCXE- 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

491

SWISS REGIMENTS IN BRITISH

SERVICE :

REGIMENT DE MEURON. (11 S. iv. 110, 171, "Maida.")

WBITLVO on the Regiments de Watteville and de Rolle at the second reference, I incidentally alluded to the interesting career of the Regiment de Meuron. The allusion has brought me a courteous letter from Mr. David Ross McCord, K.C., the founder of the McCord National Museum at Montreal, who desires further information as to this regiment, which served in Canada. In hope that some other readers of ' N. & Q.' may share his interest, I send the following notes.

The Comte de Meuron, a Swiss nobleman, was a subaltern in the Swiss regiment of Hallwyll in French service during the Seven Years' War. Unlike the other Swiss regiments in French pay, this regiment served afloat as marines, furnishing, I imagine, an almost unique instance of the Swiss having anything to do with fleets. At the close of the war it was dis- banded and the Comte de Meuron then entered the Swiss Guards, which ranked as the second regiment of the French Army, and was afterwards famous for its heroic defence of the Bastille. The Comte rose to the rank of captain. When war broke out between Holland and England during the War of American Independence, the Dutch East India Company applied to the French Government for the services of an experienced officer to raise a Swiss regiment for the defence of their Colonial possessions against the English. The Comte de Meuron was placed at their disposal, and he raised in 1780, in his native canton of Neuchatel, a regiment, which, in accordance with the then prevailing custom, bore hio name. It was stipulated that all the men should be Protestants. The regiment marched through France to Brest, where it embarked for the Cape of Good Hope, and garrisoned that colony and Ceylon alternately.

It was stationed in Ceylon when the French Republican forces invaded Holland and expelled the House of Orange, with the result that the English promptly invaded Ceylon. Some of de Meuron's regiment were taken prisoners ; the rest remained unpaid. The affairs of the Dutch East

India Company were in inextricable con- fusion, and the Prince of Orange, who had taken refuge in England, wrote to Ceylon releasing the Regiment de Meuron from its oath of allegiance. The regiment there- upon entered the British service, and the Comte de Meuron was appointed its colonel, with rank of general in the British Army. The uniform, which had been blue, was changed to scarlet with blue facings. It was transferred to India, and took part in the storming of Seringapatam. It served in the Mysore campaign of 1801, and was quartered at various stations in the Madras Presidency, where the graves of several of its officers may still be seen. It fought with courage and honour, and in 1807 it was brought to England. At this time one of its officers obtained leave to visit his home in Switzer- land, and, passing through Paris, had the misfortune to be arrested as a suspected Royalist and shot as a spy by order of Napoleon. This drew the Emperor's atten- tion to the clandestine recruiting for Swiss regiments in the British service which was still going on in Switzerland, and he took such stringent measures to stop it, that this and other regiments had to rely entirely on deserters and prisoners of war to fill their ranks. At the close of the war in 1815, not half the men in de Meuron's regiment were Swiss, the rest being a mixture of all the nationalities of Europe.

The regiment served in the Channel Islands and in the Mediterranean, and in 1813 was transferred to Canada, where it saw severe fighting on the American frontier. During its thirty-five years' existence (fifteen with the Dutch and twenty with the British) it had served in all the four quarters of the globe. It used to fly the Swiss cross in its colours, with the Union Jack in the upper left-hand canton. It had black-and- yellow flames in the other three cantons.

In the reductions that followed Waterloo, the Regiments de Meuron and de Watteville were disbanded in Canada, those men who wished receiving grants of land in that Colony, while the remainder were brought back to Europe. There was at this time ! great hostility on the part of the old North- I West Company and its half-breed hunters to any colonization of the Red River terri- tory. Lord Selkirk, who had obtained a vast grant of land in Assiniboia, was inter- ested in promoting colonization. When the North- West Company's employees in 1816 went to the length of setting fire to the colonists' houses, &c., Lord Selkirk collected, ostensibly as settlers, but really as soldiers,