The Cavaliers of Fortune; Or, British Heroes in Foreign Wars. James Grant

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      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.

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