Scottish Regiments at Waterloo (18 June 1815)

The precise roster: who was and was not at Waterloo

Popular memory blurs which Scottish regiments were on the field. This card fixes the record.

Present at Waterloo:

• 1st (Royal Scots), 3rd Battalion – Card #5. Part of Pack's 9th Brigade, Picton's 5th Division. Peninsular veterans (San Sebastián). Their presence was not explicitly addressed in prior cards and is confirmed here.
• 42nd (Royal Highland Regiment, the Black Watch) – also in Pack's brigade; had suffered heavily at Quatre Bras.
• 71st (Highland Light Infantry) – Card #9. Part of Adam's Light Brigade on the right; endured artillery fire and repulsed cavalry.
• 79th (Cameron Highlanders) – Card #12. Kempt's 8th Brigade; one of only four infantry regiments named in Wellington's Waterloo despatch.
• 92nd (Gordon Highlanders) – Card #11. Pack's brigade; the joint action with the Greys.
• 2nd Dragoons (Royal Scots Greys) – Card #16. The Union Brigade; the Eagle capture.
• 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards (later Scots Guards) – Card #15. Its light companies helped hold Hougoumont.
• 2nd/73rd Regiment – a regiment of Scottish origin that had lost its Highland status and kilt in 1809; present but not then reckoned a kilted Highland unit.

Absent (despite popular assumption):

• 21st Royal Scots Fusiliers – Card #6. Fighting in the War of 1812/Battle of New Orleans; not at Waterloo. Confirmed.
• 91st (Argyllshire) and 93rd (Sutherland) Highlanders – Card #13. Antecedents of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders; the 93rd was at New Orleans, and neither was present at Waterloo. Confirmed.

The Union Brigade and the charge against d'Erlon's corps

The Union Brigade – so named for its English, Scottish and Irish regiments (1st Royal Dragoons, 2nd Royal Scots Greys, 6th Inniskilling Dragoons) – was commanded by Major-General Sir William Ponsonby and held in reserve behind Picton's division. When d'Erlon's I Corps assaulted the Allied left-centre around 2pm, Lord Uxbridge launched both the Household and Union brigades. As The Field records, "14,000 French troops of D'Erlon's corps had been committed to the attack on the Allied centre at a cost of some 3,000 casualties."

The Greys advanced through Pack's brigade, including the 92nd, and struck the head of Marcognet's division, led by the 45e Ligne. The French, caught deploying from column, were shattered. According to the Waterloo Association, "in a space of 20 minutes the Union brigade had destroyed five French infantry brigades inflicting 5,000 casualties," with at least 2,000 prisoners taken.

But the charge went too far. Carried away, the cavalry pressed on into the French Grand Battery, exhausting their blown horses on the muddy ground. French lancers and cavalry counter-attacked and caught them scattered. The Greys lost around half their strength; Colonel Hamilton was killed, as was Ponsonby. Per the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, "of the 391 men of the 2nd Dragoons who took the field at Waterloo, 105 were killed in action or died of wounds," with a further 97–98 wounded and 228 of 416 horses lost. Modern scholarship treats this as the central controversy of the action: a decisive blow against Napoleon's masterstroke that simultaneously wrecked Wellington's heavy cavalry for the rest of the day. The Waterloo Association also stresses that it is important to discount the fiction that all the Greys joined Hamilton's suicidal attack on the guns – only a portion followed him into the Grand Battery.

The "hanging on stirrups" tradition, examined

The image is iconic: as the Greys passed through the 92nd Gordons, Highlanders seized the troopers' stirrups and were carried into the charge crying "Scotland Forever!"

The primary basis for this is a recollection by Corporal John Dickson of the Scots Greys: "Many of the Highlanders grasped our stirrups, and in the fiercest excitement dashed with us into the fight" (recorded in Mackenzie Macbride's With Napoleon at Waterloo, 1911). Crucially, Dickson was the last surviving Grey of the battle, and his account was written down by relatives decades later, not in 1815.

Current scholarship and regimental research treat the literal image sceptically. Research undertaken by both the Scots Greys and the Gordons has debunked the notion of men clinging to the stirrups of galloping horses. Two facts undercut the popular picture. First, the Greys did not gallop – the broken, muddy ground and the press of troops meant they advanced at a walk or trot, which is precisely why some Highlanders on foot could plausibly keep pace and surge forward with them. Second, Lady Butler's 1881 painting "Scotland Forever!", which fixed the galloping image in the public mind, was painted by an artist who had never seen a battle and who depicted the charge at full gallop on flat ground, whereas the Greys in reality advanced uphill at a trot through muddy fields. Verdict: Traditional/romanticised, with a plausible kernel – some Highlanders very likely pushed forward alongside the walking cavalry, but the dramatic galloping-stirrups image is later embellishment.

Sergeant Ewart and the Eagle, examined

The documented core is solid. Sergeant Charles Ewart (1769–1846), a Kilmarnock-born fencing-master of the Greys, captured the Eagle and standard of the French 45e Régiment de Ligne during the charge. In Sergeant-Major Edward Cotton's memoir A Voice From Waterloo, Ewart is described as "a man of Herculean strength, and of more than ordinary stature, being six foot, four inches, and of considerable skill as a swordsman." His capture was one of only two French Eagles taken by the British at Waterloo; the other, the Eagle of the 105e Ligne, was taken by Captain Alexander Kennedy Clark and Corporal Francis Stiles of the 1st Royal Dragoons. Ewart's own account survives:

"It was in the first charge I took the eagle from the enemy: he and I had a hard contest for it; he made a thrust at my groin, I parried it off and cut him down through the head. After this a lancer came at me; I threw the lance off by my right side, and cut him through the chin and upward through the teeth. Next, a foot soldier fired at me and charged me with his bayonet, which I also had the good luck to parry, and then I cut him down through the head."

Ewart was ordered to carry the Eagle to the rear, took it to Brussels, was commissioned Ensign in 1816, and became a celebrity, feted by Sir Walter Scott at a Waterloo dinner in Edinburgh.

What is embellished: The popular "revenge" sub-story – that Cornet Francis Kinchant spared a French officer who then treacherously shot him with a concealed pistol, prompting an enraged Ewart to kill the officer before seizing the Eagle – rests on late after-dinner recollections recorded by James Paterson in the 1840s–1870s and does not appear in Ewart's own account of the capture. It is best classed as a later, romanticised embellishment. There is also a documented complication with the capture narrative: the 45e's eagle-bearer, Pierre Guillot, is recorded as having survived the battle unwounded, which raises questions about the exact sequence – though there is little doubt Ewart secured the Eagle. Verdict: Established core, disputed embellishment.

The Greys did not adopt the Eagle as a badge immediately; it was worn on accoutrements after 1815 and became the cap badge only decades later, around the turn of the 20th century (institutional sources point to c. 1877–1900, not any single confirmable year, and certainly not 1815).

Hougoumont and the Scots Guards, 79th and 92nd

On the Allied right, the walled farm-château of Hougoumont was defended throughout the day, its garrison including the light companies of the 3rd Foot Guards (later Scots Guards) under Lieutenant-Colonel James Macdonnell, a Highlander (brother of the Glengarry chief). Wellington later said the outcome of the battle turned on the closing of the gates of Hougoumont. Per the regimental history, "the 3rd Guards [suffered] well over 200 men killed or wounded," out of over 1,000 total defenders of Hougoumont killed or wounded.

On the left-centre, the Scottish infantry held the line. The 79th Camerons, of the 675 men who fought in the campaign, lost 103 killed and a further 353 wounded across Quatre Bras and Waterloo (456 total casualties), and the National Army Museum confirms the 79th "was one of only four infantry regiments to be mentioned by name in the Duke of Wellington's Waterloo Despatch." Piper Kenneth Mackay of the 79th famously stepped outside the regiment's square under cavalry attack and played the pibroch, later being presented with silver-mounted pipes by the King. The 92nd Gordons, reduced to around 250–300 men after Quatre Bras, made a bayonet advance against the French column just before the Greys' charge; the 92nd's own casualties on 18 June were comparatively light (around 20 killed and 99 wounded), reflecting how much of their loss had already fallen at Quatre Bras.

Commemoration and legacy

The captured Eagle of the 45e is displayed at the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Museum, Edinburgh Castle (it had been kept at the Royal Hospital Chelsea for many years before returning to the regiment). Ewart's remains, discovered under a Salford builders' yard, were reinterred beneath a granite memorial on Edinburgh Castle Esplanade in 1938; a pub on the Royal Mile bears his name. Lady Butler's "Scotland Forever!" hangs in Leeds Art Gallery, and "The Fight for the Standard" (depicting Ewart) is in the collection of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, on long-term loan to Edinburgh Castle. Waterloo occupies an outsized place in Scottish military memory – a place complicated by the fact that the same era saw the Highland Clearances emptying the very glens that furnished many of the regiments' recruits.

• The Royal Scots Greys were nicknamed "the Bird Catchers" by the rest of the army after capturing the Eagle.
• Napoleon is traditionally said to have called the Greys "ces terribles chevaux gris" ("those terrible grey horses").
• Piper Kenneth Mackay of the 79th Camerons played the pibroch "Peace or War" around the outside of the regiment's square during a French cavalry attack, and was later presented with silver-mounted pipes by the King.
• The 42nd Black Watch lost its commanding officer, Sir Robert Macara, at Quatre Bras when he was speared by lancers while being carried wounded from the field.
• Only two French Imperial Eagles were captured by British forces in the entire battle – the 45e (Ewart, Scots Greys) and the 105e (Clark and Stiles, 1st Royal Dragoons).
• Lady Butler, who painted the definitive image of the charge, had never witnessed a battle and studied cavalry movement by standing in front of charging horses during her husband's regiment's manoeuvres.
• The 2nd/73rd, present at Waterloo, was a regiment of Scottish origin that had abandoned the kilt in 1809 to ease recruiting in the Lowlands and England.
• Ewart's Eagle was kept at the Royal Hospital Chelsea for many years before being returned to the regiment.

• The "hanging on stirrups" tradition [Traditional/romanticised]: based on a single late recollection by Corporal John Dickson of the Greys, written down decades after the battle; the Greys advanced at a walk, not a gallop, making a modest version plausible, but the galloping image (fixed by Lady Butler's 1881 painting) is embellishment. Research by both the Greys and the Gordons has debunked the literal picture.
• The Ewart Eagle-capture story [Established core / Disputed embellishment]: Ewart's capture of the 45e's Eagle is documented fact and one of only two British Eagle captures at Waterloo. The Kinchant "revenge" sub-story is a later embellishment absent from Ewart's own account, and the recorded survival of the 45e's eagle-bearer (Pierre Guillot) complicates the exact sequence.
• Roster clarity established: present – 1st Royal Scots, 42nd, 71st, 79th, 92nd, Scots Greys, 3rd Foot Guards and 2nd/73rd; absent – 21st Royal Scots Fusiliers and the 91st/93rd antecedents of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders.
• "A single act ended the battle" [Legend]: neither the Eagle capture nor the charge "ended" Waterloo; the battle continued for hours before the Imperial Guard was finally repulsed in the evening.