"The World Turned Upside Down – HM 35th Foot" Topic

As part of my efforts to develop my AWI collection over the foreseeable, I have added His Majesty's 35th Foot to the collection sporting their rather unique orange facings.

The 35th had a hard fighting record in North America from the massacre at Fort William Henry in 1757, the Siege of Louisbourg in 1758, the Plains of Abraham in 1759 where they routed the French Royal Roussillon Regiment, through to the New York Campaign in the AWI in 1776 and later withdrawal to garrison New York, before departing for the West Indies in 1778.

If you would like to know more then follow the link to JJ's.

link

JJ

Great stuff!! I want to paint up the 35th myself at some point (for earlier periods), if only for those unique orange facings. They'll really stand out on the tabletop. And they had a sterling service record.

Hi,
Thank you, yes indeed, the 35th are quite unique in their look , and I think will stand out among my other redcoat units.

Cheers
JJ

The traditions associated with the service of the 35th Regt during the Seven Years war in North America are a little hazy.
It seems the Indian attack on the column withdrawing from Ft William Henry in 1757 concentrated on the provincial troops and their civilian followers. Numbers of reported casualties vary widely. We have Fenimore Cooper and Michael Mann to thank for more lurid versions of events.

At Quebec, the 35th were placed roughly in the same portion of the field as the French Royal Roussillon Regiment. When the French line crumbled as the British advanced, the Royal Roussillon are said to have made a brief stand some way back towards the walls of the city, before being swept along in the rout. That at that moment the 35th should have confronted the enemy regiment that had presided over their humbling at the fall of Fort William Henry in 1757 would have seemed a fitting denoument but there appears to be no contemporary evidence that the two regiments actually crossed bayonets.
There is no mention of such an encounter in the journal of commanding officer Henry Fletcher or other officers and it seems that the survivors of the Royal Roussillon continued in their retreat and the 35th continued as part of the British line marching on Quebec.

As significant perhaps, is that in 1759 the French infantry did not wear feathers in their hats and the fashion for wearing feathers or tufts in British regiments only grew up in the wake of the AWI (about the same time as in the French army).

The earliest reference to the 'Roussillon feather' tradition dates from the presentation of new colours in 1834 when Colonel of the 35th, Lieutenant-General Sir John Oswald recalled being told of it on joining the regiment in 1791- when the 35th appear to have adopted a white tuft in their hats. That non-regulation ornament was dispensed with on the introduction of the infantry cap in 1800 with strict-(ish) regulations imposed on the wearing of 'feathers' in the infantry headgear.
The French in 1759 did wear a white cockade in their hats and it may be that this played some part in the tradition, but there is no indication, and little likelihood, that between 1759-1791 the 35th replaced their black Hanoverian cockades with the white of Bourbon.
Quebec was granted as an honorary distinction in 1882, a year after the ‘Rousillon Plume' featured in the new cap badge of the Royal Sussex.