The History of the Black Watch

The first 150 years of one of the British Army's most renowned regiments

Archibald Forbes was a notable author, journalist and special correspondent during the British colonial wars of the Victorian era, so he was well positioned by personal experience to pen this history of a famous Scottish Highland regiment. 'The Black Watch,' 'The Forty-Twa,' the '42nd Regiment of Foot,' 'The Royal Highlanders'-First to come, Last to go. The titles of this legendary regiment are many and its fame well and hard earned on many a bloodily contested ground from its birth to the present day. Forbes wrote his own history from the perspective of his own time-a decade before the close of the nineteenth century. We join the regiment in these pages during the Seven Years War in Europe and in its theatre of the New World-popularly known as the French and Indian War-where the regiment would pay dearly before Ticonderoga. The Black Watch had not done with Indians as it fought to secure the backwoods frontier, notably at Bloody Run and Bushy Run. The American War of Independence was followed by the war against Napoleonic France which would see the regiment in service in Egypt, in battles across the Peninsula, at Corunna with Moore and, as the epoch came to an end with the Emperor's fall, with great loss at Quatre Bras and Waterloo with Wellington. More hard soldiering came in the Crimea and this valiant force was the hand of retribution in the Indian Mutiny. The book closes with encounters with the Ashanti and the expedition to relieve Gordon in Khartoum. Forbes is the author of two other books published by Leonaur on Britain's Wars in Afghanistan. Available in soft cover and hard cover with dust jacket for collectors.