Explore Listing
Whilst serving in the Peninsular in 1813, the 2/87th took part in the winter march to Seville. Major Gough, the Commanding Officer, made the following comment about his men:
Having spent the previous five years serving under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula Campaign against the armies of Napoleon, the 2nd Battalion of the 87th Regiment of Foot fought its last battle at Toulouse in April 1814.
There followed a spell of peaceful garrison duties in the south-west of France but the Regiment, not unnaturally, looked forward to returning to Ireland. On 7 July 1814, the 2/87th embarked at Pouillac and sailed to Cork where it landed thirteen days later.
The 2/89th Regiment was under the command of Major General Lord Blayney who had been directed to launch a diversionary attack against the French in order to ease the pressure on besieged Cadiz. The area chosen was in the vicinity of the southern Spanish port of Malaga and Blayney sailed with an allied expeditionary force of some 1,700 from Gibraltar.
When the United States invading army abandoned the Canadian side of the St Lawrence on 5 November 1814, the 2nd Battalion of the 89th Regiment moved to Quebec via York, Ernest Town and William Henry and embarked on 4 June 1815 for England, arriving at Portsmouth in August. In November, the 2/89th was disbanded and those fit men whose service term had not expired were sent to the Regiment's 1st Battalion serving in Quilon, India (now Kollam in Kerala).
Raised during the Indian Mutiny, the Peshawur* Light Horse was commanded by Captain Francis Augustus Fane and manned by soldiers from the 27th Inniskilling and the 87th Regiment of Foot, both stationed in Peshawar. The unit was mounted on horses removed from the local disarmed cavalry, had a strength of two officers, four sergeants and 84 other ranks, the latter mainly local Hindu Sepoys. The Peshawur Light Horse was disbanded in 1861 after the end of the Mutiny.
During the Seven Years’ War, the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Foot was ordered, in February 1757, to march from its stations in Ireland to Cork where it arrived with families following. While the Inniskillings waited some two months for the transports and the right sailing conditions, the Regiment’s records noted the warm hospitality afforded by Cork’s citizens and businesses. This became important for the soldiers’ wives and children who had to remain in Cork when the Regiment departed for North America.
After the fall of Badajoz at the end of the third siege on 6 April 1812, there was a delay of about one month before the Duke of Wellington continued his Peninsular Campaign against the French.
The 27th Inniskillings sailed from Cork to South Africa, arriving in Algoa Bay (now Port Elizabeth) on 18 August 1835 where the light company and the grenadiers proceeded to Cape Town. The remainder of the Regiment relieved other regiments deployed in frontier areas in the eastern provinces during what was the Sixth Cape Frontier War.
When Britain declared war on Spain in January 1762*, the Earl of Albemarle was appointed to command an expedition of 12,000 men against the Spanish city of Havana, Cuba. The whole force assembled off Fort Royal, Martinique, on 5 May 1762
The Secretary of State for War, Hugh Childers, restructured the infantry regiments of the British Army in 1881 in what was known as the Childers Reforms. The 27th Inniskillings and the 108th Regiment became the 1st and 2nd Battalions The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The Fermanagh, Tyrone and Donegal Militia Regiments initially became the 3rd, 4th and 5th Battalions, but later the 3rd (Fermanagh) Battalion became the 4th, and the 4th (Tyrone) Battalion became the 3rd.
