page_title: Highland Fencible Corps
section_title: Glengarry Fencibles (1794)
hierarchical_section_title: Highland Fencible Corps / French Revolutionary Wars and the Irish Rebellion of 1798 / Glengarry Fencibles (1794)
context_page_description: The plan of raising a fencible corps in the Highlands was first proposed and carried into effect by William Pitt the Elder, in the year 1759. During the three preceding years both the fleets and armies of Great Britain had suffered reverses, and it was thought that a "home guard" was necessary as a bulwark against invasion.
  In England county militia regiments were raised for internal defence in the absence of the regular army; but it was not deemed prudent to extend the system to Scotland, the inhabitants of which, it was supposed, could not yet be safely entrusted with arms because of The 'Fifteen' and The 'Forty-Five' rebellions. Groundless as the reasons for this caution undoubtedly were in regard to the Lowlands, it would certainly have been hazardous at a time when the Stuarts and their adherents were still plotting a restoration to have armed the clans.
context_section_description: The idea of raising the Glengarry Fencibles originated with the Rev. Alexander Macdonell, a Roman Catholic priest, who later became the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Kingston in Ontario Canada.
  Some Glengarry Highlanders who due to the clearance of their land had taken passage on ship leaving the Isle of Harris to emigrate to America, but the ship had been wrecked and had put into Greenock in 1792. The intended emigrants were forced to disembark, and were left in the port destitute. Alexander Macdonell involved himself in their affairs and persuaded Glasgow business men to employ them while he acted as the Highlanders priest and interpreter (for they were Catholics in a predominantly Protestant town and spoke Gaelic not Scottish English).
  For two years the business concerns in Glasgow for which Glengarry Highlanders worked continued to increase and prosper, but in the year 1794 trade received a sudden check, and the war with France almost put an end to the exportation of British manufactures to the Continent. The credit of the manufacturers was checked; their factories were almost at a standstill, and frequent bankruptcies ensued. The labouring classes were thrown out of employment, and amongst others the poor Highlanders. With little support from outside their immediate community, and totally ignorant of the English language, the latter became more helpless and destitute than any other group in Glasgow.
  At this crisis Alexander Macdonell conceived the plan of getting these unfortunate Highlanders embodied as a Catholic corps in the service of the government, with the then young chief Macdonell of Glengarry. Having assembled a meeting of the Catholics at Fort Augustus in February, 1794, a loyal address was drawn up to the king, offering to raise a Catholic corps under the command of the young chieftain, who, together with John Fletcher of Dunans, proceeded as a deputation to London with the address, which was most graciously received by King George III. Their former employers in Glasgow furnished them with the most ample and favourable testimonials of the good conduct of the Highlanders during the time they had been in their works, and strongly recommended that they should be employed in the service of their country.
  Letters of service were accordingly issued in August, 1794, to Alexander Macdonell of Glengarry, to raise the Glengarry Fencible regiment as a Catholic corps, and of which he was appointed the colonel. Though contrary to the then existing law, Alexander Macdonell was gazetted as chaplain to the regiment. The Glengarry Fencibles were a handsome body of men, and more than one-half were from the estate of Glengarry.
  Some of the Fencible regiments having refused to extend their services to England, and two of them (Breadalbane and Grant) having mutinied, in consequence of the attempt to induce them to march into England; the Glengarry Fencibles, by the persuasion of their chaplain, offered to extend their services to any part of Great Britain or Ireland, or even to the islands of Jersey and Guernsey. This offer was very acceptable to the government, as it formed a precedent to all Fencible corps raised after this period. The regiment was embodied in June, 1795, and was soon afterwards moved to Guernsey, where it remained until the summer of 1798.
  The Glengarry Fencibles volunteered to provide a garrison for the Îles Saint-Marcouf, which the Royal Navy occupied in July 1795. However, the French captured Captain Sidney Smith, who had captured the islands and was in charge of a coastal flotilla that operated from there, and his secretary John Wesley Wright. The idea of placing the Fencibles on the island then fell by the wayside. This would mean that the Fencibles lost the opportunity to participate in the battle of the Îles Saint-Marcouf, a lopsided victory in which the British repelled a French attempt to retake the islands.
  In the summer of 1798 the Glengarry Fencibles moved to Ireland. On landing at Balleback, they marched to Waterford, and thence to New Ross the same day. At Waterford an amusing incident occu
caption: Portrait of Glengarry Colonel Alexander MacDonell of Glengarry in 1812 (by Henry Raeburn).
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