The Scottish soldier and Empire, 1854-1902 - Reenactor.ru

Epilogue 215
march, or, exceptionally, committed suicide (see chapters three, four
and seven). Even units, if severely pressed as at Majuba and
Magersfontein, sometimes broke and fled. Nevertheless, the tide of
Scottish martial triumphs rolled on from Balaclava, Lucknow,
Kumase, Tel-el-Kebir, Kirbekan, Dargai and the Atbara; they dwarfed
the episodic lapses, if not the remorse over Magersfontein, and sustained
the imperial legacy.
Linked inextricably with this imperial mission were the heroicwarrior
virtues – duty, honour, loyalty, courage, self-sacrifice and the
noble death – that became almost clichés in Victorian writing.
Evaluating the influence of this work, even of the memorable prose of
George Warrington Steevens in the largest circulation daily, the Daily
Mail, remains a matter of conjecture. As Roger Stearn argues, the
writing may have ‘reached an extensive, largely middle-class, already
imperialist readership and confirmed rather than converted’ 57 but the
Scottish soldier in action enjoyed a broader base of public support.
Admittedly, as memories of recent wars began to fade, the soldier
hardly remained in the forefront of public consciousness and the military
career never had much appeal in peacetime. Yet the assumptions
about how Scots performed in battle, and the national pride in their
military efforts, resurfaced whenever an imperial war erupted.
Irrespective of debates about the origins of these wars, most Scots
lauded their soldiers in action and were rarely disappointed in doing
so. This depth of support would help to explain how Scotland responded
with such passion and alacrity when the First World War
erupted, and how the wells of patriotic and national fervour would
again be tapped to raise vast numbers of Scots to fight and serve their
country.
Notes
1 Fairrie, ‘Cuidich’N Righ’, pp. 44, 51.
2 Jacobson, ‘Rosebery and Liberal Imperialism’, pp. 106–7.
3 Colonel Sir J. Gildea, For Remembrance and In Honour of Those Who
Lost Their Lives in the South African War 1899–1902 (London: Eyre &
Spottiswoode, 1911), pp. 264–94.
4 Whereas the 1st Cameronians came home within months of the peace,
the 2nd Cameronians did not leave Cape Town until 6 May 1904 and
the 2nd Seaforth were sent to Dublin on their return in February 1903.
‘Arrival of Cameron Highlanders at Fort George’, Inverness Courier, 14
October 1902, p. 5; Johnston, The History of The Cameronians, 1,
p. 298; Fairrie, ‘Cuidich’N Righ’, pp. 47, 50.