HISTORICAL RECORD OF THE EIGHTY-NINTH PRINCESS VICTORIA’S REGIMENT

Originally commissioned by order of King William IV oin the 1830s, publication of this full and fascinating regimental history was suspended, then work resumed on it in the 1880s. The result of this delay is a particularly detailed account of a unit that saw service in most of the British Empire’s theatres of war and peace between the 1790s when it was raised, down to the high noon of the Victorian Empire in the 1880s. The 89th Princess Victoria Regiment was recruited in Ireland, and speedily saw service in their native island in repelling a French landing at Bantry Bay in 1796, and again saw action during the French-backed 1798 rebellion, when it fought at the battle of Vinegar Hill. In 1800 the 89th were again in action against the French in Sicily and Malta, and in 1801 fought under Sir Ralph Abercrombie in Egypt. At the time of the Napoleonic Wars the regiment served in South America and India, while its 2nd Battalion also served in the 1812 War against the United States. The Regiment fought in India’s Mahratta War in 1818, and the Burmese War of 1824-25. It continued to do garrison duty in India in the late 1820s, and in the Caribbean in the 1830s, where it suffered cruelly from the ravages of Yellow fever. In the ‘year of revolutions’, 1848, the regiment was employed at home in England during the repression of the Chartist riots. During the Crimean War the regiment served with distiction at the Battle of Balaclava and the Siege of Sebastopol. In the following year, 1857, the regiment was rushed to India to deal with the Indian Mutiny, where it remained for much of the 1860s and 1870s, before seeing service in the Suakim War in the Sudan. This account of the 89th’s eventful history was written by Rowland Brinckman, the Regimental adjutant. It is illustrated by particularly fine colour engravings, and accompanied by appendices listing officers who served with the 89th, Index etc.