BUT THEY DIDN’T GET OUT AGAIN
King George II was the last British king to personally command an army in battle. At the battle of Dettingen in 1743 against the French, a regiment of enemy cavalry managed to surprise the Royal Scots Fusiliers before they could form a protective square. The Scots opened their ranks and let the French cuirassiers ride through them before unleashing a devastating volley of musket fire into their backs. As the French reeled, the Fusiliers charged them with bayonets flashing and routed the cavalry.
After the battle, the king encountered the commander of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, Sir Andrew Agnew, and could not help noting “I saw the cuirassiers among your men this morning colonel”. To which the notoriously peppery Scot replied “Oh aye, your majesty, but they didnae get oot again”.
Agnew may have been the originator of the classic order “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes”. Only the Scot told his countrymen at Dettingen “My lads, ye see thon loons on yon hill. Weel, if you dinnae kill them, they’ll kill ye. Dinnae fire until ye see the whites o’ their e’en”. Earlier in the battle when Agnew saw the French Army manoeuvring into position to attack he decided to steady his men’s nerves by having the dinner-call sounded and tucking into his own meal. It was only when a French bullet hit a chicken bone he was holding that he ordered his own men into battle formation.
Agnew was notoriously bad tempered. When Jacobite troops besieged him and his men at Blair Castle in 1746 the rebels were too afraid of him to send a soldier in to demand his surrender. Instead a pretty local girl, Molly McGlashan, was sent in with a note demanding the castle’s surrender. A young officer took the note to Agnew. His response was to kick the officer down the castle’s stair case and threaten to shoot the next person who mentioned surrender through the head. Blair Castle belonged to the Duke of Atholl, whose brother George Murray was the Jacobites’ best general. Agnew couldn’t help noting as the Jacobite cannon bombarded the castle’s seven-feet thick walls “It’s loon daft knocking down his own brother’s house”. The first cannon shot was fired by Lady Robertson of Lude, who had been arrested by Agnew’s men before the siege began as a Jacobite sympathiser but whom he had released after treating her to a lavish dinner at a local inn.
Next Week - SOLDIER OF GOD
ROYAL REVIEW
Several years after the Royal Scots Greys fought at Ramillies in 1706 the regiment put on a display of its skills in London’s Hyde Park for King George I and a visiting French prince. The Greys were one the British king’s favourite regiments and he asked the Frenchman if he had ever seen such a fine body of men. The prince, flushed with national pride, could not help replying “They are a fine corps indeed; but I think inferior to the Gens d’Armes, which perhaps your majesty has never seen.”
King George had indeed never seen the elite French cavalrymen but he knew the Greys had routed them at Ramillies and he immediately snapped back “No, but my Scots Greys have!”
Next Week - But They Didn't Get Out Again