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The Regiment has been known by many names over the years: 1661-1684
The Tangier Regiment (of Foot)
In 1661 Charles II married the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza, and as part of her dowry Britain gained the ports of Tangier and Bombay. These were to give Charles's army it's first experience of colonial warfare, as the first overseas garrisons of the British Army were formed. The Portuguese were not in the least reluctant to part with Tangier. The Anchorage was unsafe for shipping and round the massive fortifications on the landward side roamed the savage Moors who never missed an opportunity to harass the garrison. As soon as Charles and Catherine's marriage treaty had been signed, Admiral Edward Montague, Earl of Sandwich, was sent to take possession of Tangier until the arrival of an English garrison. Tangier controlled entry into the Mediterranean and was the principle commercial centre on the North West coast of Africa, with a large European population. Charles rightly called it a jewel of immense value in the royal diadem. Sandwich found the Portuguese garrison under constant attack from fanatical Moorish tribes, under their powerful leader Gayland. The Portuguese asked for his assistance, and he put 300 men ashore. It proved a masterstroke, as Pepys reported: "Now the Spaniards' designs of hindering our getting the place are frustrated."
The army was mustered on Putney heath and set sail for Tangier on 15th January 1662. The Earl of Peterborough arrived in Tangier with a force of 500 horse and 2000 foot. They took with them the wives of two or three hundred of the soldiers - the first time that wives had officially accompanied an English army to an overseas garrison. Peterborough was the governor as well as the commander of the garrison. From the sea, the white walled city, with its red tiled roofs gleaming in the African sun, looked deceptively attractive. However, as soon as Peterborough landed he found the town derelict, with accomodation for only one-third of his troops, and under constant attacks from some 17,000 Berber rebels. Peterborough had to quarter some of his troops on the Portuguese inhabitants, already indignant at having to hand over their city. They were even more angry at the behaviour of the English soldiers, who they accused of looting their houses and taking public liberties with their wives and daughters. Peterborough invited the Portuguese to enrol as soldiers, but they refused and left Tangier, carrying off everything of value, including doors and windows! A decaying fort named York Castle (today's Casbah) was hastily fitted out for the governor and his headquarters staff, and almost immediately became the focus of attack by a Moorish force under its leader, Gayland. For the next 21 years the garrison would face incessant war with the Moors. The second commander and governor was the Lord Andrew Rutherford, a distinguished Scottish soldier, previously the governor of Dunkirk. He was created Earl of Teviot 'to hearten him for his new post'. He was a professional soldier, chiefly responsible for the evacuation of Dunkirk, from which town he brought 400 soldiers who reinforced the Tangier Regiment. These were mostly Irishmen and he reorganised the his troops into separate English and Irish regiments. Many people in Britain felt apprehension that a Roman Catholic should command so many Catholic soldiers. When he arrived he found the garrison demoralised by the constant attacks and the fortifications in urgent need of repair. Under his energetic leadership a line of stone redoubts was constructed beyond the town walls, which were strengthened with a number of forts. Teviot also started to build a much needed breakwater or mole, to provide an all-weather harbour for ships. King Charles offered Sir Christopher Wren a commission 'to survey and direct the works of the mole and fortifications of the citadel and town', but Wren turned it down because of ill health. Truces were agreed with Gayland, but he proved a most treacherous enemy. In one sortie, the heavily outnumbered English troops were ambushed and lost 19 officers and 400 men killed, with Teviot among them, dying at the head of his men. To add to the garrison's problems, illness broke out, stores and provisions were low and costly, and the troops received no pay for several months. The replacement governor (during this governor's rule, it appears the regiment was not under his direct command, but that of a Col. Northwood), John Belasyse was a prominent Catholic, who according to Pepys, accepted the post only for the profit it brought. Unable to take the Oath of Conformity in 1667, he was forced to resign his governorship. His successor, General the Earl of Middleton, had been wounded fighting for Charles at the battle of Worcester. At the restoration he was rewarded with an earldom and made commander-in-chief in Scotland. When he arrived in Tangier in October 1668, he found it had ceased to be a purely military outpost. Jewish and European settlers had arrived from Morocco, Spain, France and Holland, and a small but turbulent civilian population now added to the difficulties faced by the governor. Shocked by the constant drain on funds and manpower, the Tangier Committee was determined to establish the colony's prosperity through a civil government, instead of military commanders. On 4th June 1668 Tangier was declared a free city by charter, with a mayor and corporation to govern instead of the army. One of Middleton's most important duties was to settle the inevitable disputes and disturbances which arose between the civil authorities and the army. His attempts to improve local standards of living by growing food rather than importing it failed. The mole remained uncompleted and broken by storms; and the soldiers could not pay the merchants because, as usual, their pay was in arrears. Middleton's urgent requests for more artificers to rebuild the mole, and more troops to face the ferocious Emperor of Morocco's Moorish armies, remained unanswered. Small wonder that Middleton took to drink and died in 1675, falling from his horse in a drunken stupor. Yet his soldiers loved him as a commander, and his officers had perfect trust in his generalship. Middleton was followed as Governor by the second Earl of Inchiquin, who had been colonel of the Queen's Regiment since 5th March 1674, and who would end his career as governor of Jamaica. During his six years as governor of Tangier (1675-80), he was so long absent from his post that most of his duties fell on his deputy, Sir Palmes Fairborne, seemingly the only attractive personality in a succession of idle and often corrupt administrators. Fairborn was a professional soldier and no courtier, who had arrived in Tangier as a captain in Lord Peterborough's Foot Regiment and became its commanding officer in 1667. He lived at Tangier for 18 years and never sought advancement beyond that of commanding the garrison. His whole life was embittered by the system, which left promotion to the whim or favour of a secretary of state. The constant arrears of pay often pushed him to the verge of poverty, while anxiety on behalf of his wife and seven children led him to use every means in his power to gain some addition to his income. This included trying to buy the favour of Baron Arlington, the current secretary of state, with presents he could ill afford. He was responsible for erecting new forts on the perimeter and for strengthening the town walls in order to withstand the Moorish attacks. But conditions had become so bad and morale so low that he had to take disciplinary measures within the garrison against such offences as sleeping on sentry duty, theft from comrades and drunkenness on parade. On one occasion he was faced with a mass refusal to obey orders, until he ordered two soldiers to be marched out of the ranks and publicly shot. "Rape, adultery, fornication and dissolute lasciviousness must be punished at discretion, according to the quality of the offence', ran his orders. For more information on crime and punishment in the British Army please see the link below. 1680 proved a black year for the garrison. The Earl of Ossory was appointed governor-general, but died before he could take up his appointment. The fortifications fell into disrepair; illness laid low the latest batch of recruits. "very sad creatures, some old men and two of them women in men's clothes"; and enemy sappers gradually dug their way beneath the outlying forts. A short truce was arranged, but the English had to agree to return to the original Portuguese boundaries of the town, surrendering all their added fortifications. The gravity of the situation at last forced Parliament to pay for and fit out a strong relief force to bring the garrison's strength up to 3,200 foot and 600 horse. Twelve companies of the Earl of Dumbarton's regiment (First Foot, the Royal Scots) were sent out from Ireland. A further foot regiment was raised on 13th July 1680, the Second Tangier, "with many brave Volunteer Gentlemen, encouraged to undertake this noble enterprize in the Service of their King and country, by that hopeful youth the Earl of Plymouth," and sent to Tangier. In addition a 600-strong composite battalion, called the King's Battalion, was formed from the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards, the Maritime and Musgrave's Regiments, placed under the command of Colonel Edward Sackville of the First or king's Regiment of Foot Guards, and sent to the garrison. The reinforcements
arrived in Tangier just in time to support a sortie led by Fairborne
to recover lost ground and reoccupy the outlying forts.
The attack completely surprised the enemy, but a well aimed bullet
mortally wounded Fairborne in the moment of victory. Sitting on
a chair on the ramparts of the Upper Castle, he survived long
enough to see the garrison march back into town to celebrate the
victory, won at the cost of barely 100 casualties. Colonel Sackville
took over the temporary command of the garrison, until failing
health necessitated his return to England.
Plymouth's regiment meanwhile sailed from Plymouth under Kirke's command, with Major Charles Trelawney as his deputy, losing one officer and 50 men to disease during the month's journey. They did not learn of their colonel's death until they arrived in Tangier on 28th December. According to custom, the regimental colours were immediately placed in mourning, and so remained until the news of Percy Kirke's appointment to the colonelcy was received in Tangier (at which point he seems to have taken over the colonelcy of the Governor's regiment, later known as Kirke's Lambs). Lord Macaulay in his History of England called Kirke a bully, coward, bungler, liar, libertine, butcher, embezzler and traitor. But, although this was undoubtedly true in some respects, the facts do not substantiate many of these accusations. He was a soldier's soldier - imagine the state of mind of a modern officer on being given command of a garrison of 2,000 men, none of whom had been paid for a year, in a station in constant danger of attack by a superior force, and with no facilities for recreation, poor food, inferior equipment, inefficient medical and non-existent welfare services. During the truce which followed the siege of Tangier in 1680, Kirke made friends with the Emperor of Morocco, Ismail, who would rule his country for 55 years. However, despite an exchange of gifts between the two, in the negotiations for the release of prisoners from his bagnio at Meknes, which was reputed to hold 30,000 slaves, including 2,500 Christians and 70 prisoners-of-war, Ismail demanded too high a price for their ransom, so that only a few could ever be redeemed from the terrible fate of a galley slave. Despite the Emperor's vows of eternal friendship, Kirke did not trust him and kept the garrison in constant readiness to resist attack. Out of a total of some 1,200-1,400 men, 400 would be on guard every night, and no soldier was ever allowed more than three nights running in bed "lest he should fall into idle ways". The Castle, built on a rock some 200 feet above sea level, was strongly fortified and in good repair, but only three of the numerous forts built upon the surrounding sand-hills remained. The rest were either in ruins or in the hands of the Moors. York Castle housed the ammunition and stores, carried there by garrison troops from the Water Gate, where the provisions were unloaded from ships. The strength of the garrison dwindled rapidly. Over half the officers were on prolonged leave, some of them "having other employments at home and more taken with the satisfaction of being with their friends, never intending to return". Five officers of Kirke's regiment, for example, were given permission to return home in two visiting frigates, because "they were in great extremity for want of pay, being 16 months in arrears". The men were decimated by sickness and short of rations. In October 1682, nearly 24,000 pounds of Irish meat had to be thrown into the sea, "so extremely corrupted", that it was both inedible and "of a noisome smell". Such rations were responsible for the frequent outbreaks of scurvy, which with the tainted water and hard drinking caused uncounted deaths amongst the garrison. For Kirke's men there was little amusement or recreation to relieve the boredom, except sitting on the seashore catching fish to supplement their rations, playing cards or dice, or drinking and whoring in the taverns, many of which were kept by soldier's widows. For some time Parliament had been concerned about the cost of maintaining the Tangier garrison and the difficulties of constructing the mole. As early as 1680, the King had threatened to give up Tangier unless the supplies were voted for it. The mole, intended to provide a safe harbour for shipping, had proved a costly illusion. Merchant ships continued to be harassed by Barbary pirates, and captured crews were regularly sent as slaves to the Emperor's bagnios. Tangier, moreover, was regarded as a nursery for a Popish army, since Irish troops had been employed to guard it and several of the governors had been Catholic. The Popish plot in England had intensified the dread of Catholicism, and the King's frequent request for more troops to increase the size of the garrison renewed suspicions that a standing army was being retained in Tangier to ensure a Catholic succession and absolute monarchy. On 20th December 1680, the House of Commons petitioned the King to give his assent to a Bill of Exclusion to disinherit the Duke of York; adding that, unless and until the bill was passed, Parliament could not give give any supplies to Charles. The King refused to sacrifice his brother's right of succession to save Tangier. Finally, in 1683, Charles gave Admiral Dartmouth secret orders to abandon Tangier. Dartmouth was to level the fortifications, destroy the mole and harbour, and evacuate the troops. Pepys was summoned to accompany the expedition as Dartmouth's adviser on matters concerning the civilian population. In August 1683 Dartmouth, given the Rank of Admiral of the Fleet and captain-general in Tangier, sailed from Plymouth ostensibly to succour the garrison, but in truth "on a voyage for the destroying and deserting of Tangier". After 21 years of occupation, Pepys found the place a sink of iniquity and corruption, with few women of quality or beauty, except the mayoress and her two sisters. In the whole place there was nothing but vice of all sorts, swearing, drinking, cursing and whoring, the women as bad as the men. While the mole was being demolished, Pepys and the lawyers cleared the town of European inhabitants and dealt with the compensation claims for the loss of their property. All the forts and walls were mined for last-minute destruction. Soldiers and sailors carried stores on board the ships and sufficient water for the journey. Lord Dartmouth addressed the garrison officers and told them the King intended to keep the two Tangier regiments on a permanent establishment. He praised them for their service, and blamed the abuses in Tangier on "the Worth of the men, the smallness and arrears of their pay and the leanness of the place". One of Dartmouth's chief concerns was the evacuation of sick soldiers "and the many families and their effects to be brought off". The hospital ship Unity sailed for England on 18th October 1683 with 114 invalid soldiers and 104 women and children under the care of John Eccles, "usher and writing master of the school and gunner", who had served the garrison school for seven-and-a-half years. The military families were quartered at Falmouth on an allowance of three pence a day to each soldier's wife, until the arrival of the battalion. The disabled soldiers were sent to the newly opened Royal Hospital at Chelsea. The main force of 2,830 officers and men and 361 wives and children finally completed the demolition of the mole and fortifications, and evacuated the garrison during the early months of 1684. The Second Tangier Regiment left on 13-14th February for Plymouth with some 600 men and 30 wives and children. The Earl of Dumbarton's regiment went into quarters at Rochester, and Trelawney's Regiment to Portsmouth. Colonel Kirke returned home with his Lady Mary and their two children to be stationed with the Queen's First Tangier Regiment at Pendennis Castle. Their eldest son, Percy, would also become colonel of the 'Lambs', and succeeded his father as keeper of the palace at Whitehall. Before leaving, Dartmouth was able to purchase the release of many English prisoners from Ismail's bagnio, including several officers and about 40 men, some of whom had spent 10 years in the hands of the Moors. As the last soldiers embarked and the flag was hauled down, the besieging Moors took possession of the ruined town. In due course, Britain would replace Tangier with the more useful and defensible Gibralter (1704) and the Magnificent harbour of Port Mahon in Minorca (1763), which ensured British control of the Mediterranean. The garrison
at Tangier had to be constantly reinforced, having cost nearly
two millions of royal treasure and many lives had been sacrificed
in its defence. The original battalions dwindled in strength,
were amalgamated into one, received new reinforcements and they
too would be incorporated into the steadily reducing force. But
out of these constant changes, two regiments emerged – the Governor's
Regiment, known as the 'Old Tangier Regiment' (which became the
2nd Foot or Queen's regiment) and the other, the 'New Tangier
Regiment' (which became the 4th Foot or the King's Own).
Little sure evidence exists of the dress of these regiments during their stay in that now lost outpost of the Empire, but if we can trust the contemporary oil-painting by Dirck Stoop, both the Tangier Regiments wore red coats with red linings with breeches and hose to match. However, due to the figures being so small the artist may have had to simplify the costume, and perhaps the green facings seen later were in use in Tangier. Certainly the Regimental Colours of the Old Tangier Regiment have a green ground. Officers are sometimes shown in this artist's work wearing blue coats or even undress greys. Undress clothing was worn even in Britain, to save the red coat for important occasions. On 5th Feb. 1684 Tangier was officially evacuated, leaving the town in Ruins, and Kirke's Regiment returned to England.
An amusing, but at the same time tragic, story reminiscent of Monthy Python surrounds the hangings in Taunton. One Martin Killigrew, who was reputedly at the time an officer in Kirke's Lambs and was present at the hangings told the following story. An order came from Court for Kirke to take out twenty of the rebels and hang them under Martial Law. A relation of one of the prisoners prevailed upon Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe, a lady widely known for her charity, to beg for the life of one of the men named. Kirk,
with several of his officers, was standing in a balcony to see
the execution, when he was approached by the lady, who earnestly
begged the life she had been asked to save. Kirk at once conceded
her prayer, and turning to Lieutenant Bush, who was nearest him
(and who was considered the most stupid man in the Regiment),
said to him, in his short, bluff way, "Go and bid the executioner
cut him from the gallows," taking for granted that Bush heard
the name of the man for whom the intercession had been made. The
stupid Lieutenant not only had not remarked the name, but further,
did not ask for it, and when he told the executioner to "cut him
down," was naturally asked "Which him? for there are twenty."
Shortly after Sedgemoor Col. Kirke was promoted to Brigadier-General. In 1686 Kirke's son, Percy Kirke (the Younger) joined the regiment as an Ensign. He appears to have been very much his father's son, and by 1710 had risen to command the Regiment, a position he held for 30 years, rising to eventually become a Lieutenant-General. In 1689 Kirke (now a Lieutenant-General) and his 'Lambs' were in Ireland, where he relieved the town of Londonderry after a 105 day siege by James's army. They were also involved in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 on 1st July and the assault on Athlone and fall of Limerick in 1691, by which time Kirke had been promoted to Major-General. Kirke went from Ireland to Flanders, where he died on 31st October 1691 at Breda. They returned to England in 1692, and then on to Flanders. The Regiment saw action in the 'War of the League of Augsburg' (1689-97), fighting with distinction at Landau in 1693, and being involved in the Siege of Namur in 1695. The Regiment returned to England in 1696. In 1701 an independent company of the Regiment went to Bermuda, where it served until 1763. Meanwhile the rest of the Regiment went to Flanders in 1703 where it served in the Duke of Marlborough's Wars against Louis XIV's France. In this year the Regiment confirmed its reputation for courage and tenacity by its conduct at Tongres. The main body of the Army under Marlborough was deployed besieging Bonn on the Rhine, while the remainder was scattered in the Low Countries under Marshal Overkirk, the Dutch Commander. The Queen's, along with a Dutch battalion were in a forward position in the town of Tongres, near Liege, when the opposing French Marshals Boufflers and Villeroi decided to advance rapidly with 40,000 men to destroy the scattered Dutch units. Only Tongres stood in the way, but in spite of being surrounded by overwhelming forces, The Queen's and the Dutch battalion stood fast for 28 hours, and gave time for Marshal Overkirk to concentrate his forces, and the French had to abandon their plans. For this action the Queen's Regiment was given the title "Royal" and the mottoes Pristinae Virtutis Memor (Mindful of their former glory) and Vel Exuviae Triumphant (Victorious even in adversity). The men of both The Queen's and the Dutch battalion at Tongres became prisoners of war, but not for long as their release was negotiated three months later. On reforming, The Queen's were sent to join the Army in Spain in 1704, only to be virtually destroyed again at the Battle of Almanza in 1707. Reformed once more they took part in the Expedition to Canada in 1711, but this achieved little and when the War was ended by the Treaty of Utrecht the Regiment returned to England where it remained until 1730.
Kirke's
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Kirke's Lambs Graphics Copyright © N. Cargill-Kipar 2003-2008. Contents Copyright © Ben Levick 1998-2008. With permission by the author. |
