Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day 37

Ever a keen traveller, Crabbe visited Niagara Falls, slept under the stars in a wigwam and in winter, took up sledging

Eyre John Crabbe, born in 1791, followed his father into the army. After a tough early army life, Eyre John underwent three decades of uneventful peace, as his regiment “policed” British territories overseas. Within the armed forces it was quite common for soldiers to experience long stretches of boredom with abrupt interludes of fierce fighting. Eyre John was scarcely out of his teens when he sailed with the 74th Regiment of Foot to Portugal and Spain to take part in the Peninsular War.

Between 1810 and 1814 he fought in many battles, took part in the siege of Badajoz and was involved in “Wellington’s masterpiece”, the battle of Salamanca. He was wounded at least once, received an inordinate quantity of clasps (medals) and was promoted to the rank of captain.

In March 1814, the 74th was sent to Ireland and never met Napoleon’s forces at Waterloo.

Eyre John is a less hazy figure than his father. During the latter period of his army career, while serving in the West Indies and Canada, he wrote letters home to his unmarried sister, Eliza and to Sarah, his widowed mother, who outlived Joseph by 60 years.

Struggle

Between 1840 and 1845, Eyre John scribbled dozens of chatty, inconsequential notes to his family. What emerges from them is his struggle against boredom. In Barbados, he created an ornamental garden on waste ground outside his barracks.

As a soldier, Eyre John, now colonel of the 74th with 900 men under his command, took physical exercise seriously, both at work and at play.

When his regiment moved to Montreal to guard the Colony (as it was termed) against possible American expansionism and threats from the French, based in Quebec, Crabbe tended a garden of exotic blooms and vegetables.

Ever a keen traveller, he visited Niagara Falls, slept under the stars in a wigwam and in winter, took up sledging.

At Christmas-time in 1840, the sprightly 49-yearold danced the quadrille at a grand ball “and kept it up until 3 o’clock in the morning and on Wednesday was at another and kept it up again until the same hour”

Like his great-grandson Angus, who longed to return to the UK from Singapore and never knew where or when he would be posted next, Eyre John in 1842 heard rumours that his regiment might be sent to India or China.

But they were false and the 74th headed back to Britain in 1845. Shortly afterwards, Colonel Crabbe retired from the army, after artist David Cunliffe, well known for his military groups, depicted Crabbe on a bay horse accompanied by his officers.

Dressed in red tunics and tartan trews, they stand before a background of supposed Highland scenery. This painting now hangs in Edinburgh Castle Museum.

I assumed it was commissioned as a golden handshake to mark Eyre’s retirement after he’d honoured the 74th with 38 years service but its real purpose was to acknowledge the restoration of the regiment to its original status.

Although the 74th was founded as a Highland regiment, for more than 30 years its officers and men had ceased wearing the kilt and the unit’s association with the area was all but forgotten.

Joining up as early as 1807, Eyre John remembered when officers and men wore Highland dress and knew how powerful a connection this Scottish region was with his troops.

Destruction

On his return from Canada, Crabbe asked his commander-in-chief (the aged Duke of Wellington) if he could help. The duke lobbied the Crown, who agreed to the restoration of the regiment’s original status and allowed the officers and men to wear tartan trews but not the kilt.

Many anniversaries hold sway in a nation’s mind and it is no coincidence that 1845 marked the centenary of the Jacobite defeat under Bonnie Prince Charlie and the destruction of Highland society.

During the aftermath of the rebellion, the wearing of the kilt was forbidden by an Act of Parliament for up to 36 years.

When I investigated Joseph’s grandson, Eyre Macdonell Stewart Crabbe (I’ll refer to him as EMSC), I also found a wealth of material. Like his grandfather and father, EMSC joined the army but, in his case, it was the fashionable Grenadier Guards.

Unlike Eyre John, who began his soldiering in the long, hard Peninsular War and ended it with a period of relative inactivity, EMSC spent his early days in England and Ireland and only later saw active service, first in Egypt where, in 1882 a nationalist revolt prompted Gladstone’s government to intervene militarily.

Then thirty and married with five young children, EMSC, attached to the Commissariat and transport staff, sailed with the guards as part of the British Army. The Egyptians were soon defeated and my great-grandfather returned with a medal.

EMSC made two more military forays into Africa as the continent became the focus of imperialism from British and other European nations in the late 19th Century.

In 1884 as a captain, my great-grandfather volunteered “for the fun of it” to join “the Soudan Expedition”, leaving behind his wife Emily and a brood now of six.

Coerced into taking action against the Mahdi in the Sudan (a southern state of Egypt), Gladstone made the decision to send Major-General Charles Gordon to quell this Islamic revolutionary leader.

But it was a disaster and by September 1884, Gordon was besieged 1,600 miles up the Nile at Khartoum.

Attacked

EMSC, serving in the Camel Corps’ Guards Camel Regiment as acting quartermaster, set out to rescue the hapless Gordon.

On arrival at Port Said, they travelled by train to Cairo, camped near the pyramids, then proceeded upstream in barges to Aswan, from which they reached a camp south of Dongola.

After a week, the brigade rode 70 miles upstream to Korti, where they prepared to cross a stretch of desert in order to cut off a bend of the Nile.

On their way, at Abu Klea, the troops caught sight of the enemy. By daybreak they were attacked. Forming a defensive square the British, including EMSC’s section, fought off the far greater number of adversaries.

At one point, the defensive square was broken and the battle, though brief, was fierce and bloody. The guards were lucky in their position, which helped them to avoid many more casualties and deaths than their comrades-in-arms.