Bagpipe Influence

A piper in Lord McLeod’s regiment, seeing the British army giving way before superior numbers, played a rousing tune which filled the Highlanders with such spirit that, immediately rallying, they cut through their enemies. For this fortunate circumstance, Sir Eyre Coote, filled with admiration, and appreciating the value of such music, presented the regiment with fifty pounds to buy a stand of pipes.

At the battle of Quebec, the troops were retreating in disorder, and the general complained to a field officer
in Fraser’s regiment of the bad conduct of his corps.
Sir,” said the officer, with some wrath, “you did very wrong in forbidding the pipers to play.”

“Let them blow in God’s name, then,” said the general; and the order being given, the pipers with alacrity
sounded, on which the Gaels fornied in the rear, and bravely returned to the charge.

George Clark was piper to the 71st at the battle of Vimiera, where he was wounded in the leg by a ball as he advanced at the head of his regiment.Finding himself disabled he sat down, and putting Ins pipes in order, called out:

“Well, lads, I am sorry I can go no farther wth you, but lads you shall have music,” and struck up a favourite pibroch with the utmost unconcern for anything but the delight of sending to battle his comrades with the animating sounds.

It is a popular tradition that the enemy anxiously levelled at the pipers, aware of the power of their music; and
a story is related of a piper who, at the battle of Waterloo, received a shot in thc bag before he had time to make a fair beginning, which so roused his highland blood, that, dashing his pipes to the ground, he drew his sword and attacked the foe with the fury of a lion, until his career was stopped by death, by a ball too surely aimed.

It is also related of the pipe-major of the 92nd, that on the same occasion, he placed himself on an eminence where the shot was flying like hail, and, regardless of his danger, proudly sounded the battle air to animate his comparnons.

And on one occasion during the Peninsular war, the same regiment came suddenly on the French army, and the
intimation of their approach was so suddenly given by the pipers bursting out their “gathering,” that the enemy
fled and the Highlanders pursued.

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