Yorkshire Almanac The 14th Foot, predecessors of the West Yorkshire Regiment, chant a French Revolutionary song as they storm enemy trenches at Famars (Valenciennes)

23 May 1793: The 14th Foot, predecessors of the West Yorkshire Regiment, chant a French Revolutionary song as they storm enemy trenches at Famars (Valenciennes)

As the blade of the guillotine severs the head of Louis XVI four days before printing, demons stand on the scaffold and fly overhead, singing “Vive la nation” (“Long live the nation”) and “Ça ira” (“It’ll be fine”) (Dent 1793/01/25).

Harriet Ward. 1849. Recollections of an Old Soldier. London: Richard Bentley. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

The morning after Waterloo the 14th had only a march of nine miles before them, to a place called Nivelles. Fancy, after this bloody business, these “boys” equipping themselves in the spoils of the enemy; just as if they were only “playing at soldiers.” One had a cuirass with a bullet-hole in the breast, another a helmet, a third a grenadier’s cap of the Imperial Guard. In this travestie they marched into Nivelles, to the tune of “Ça ira,” and to the utter surprise of the inhabitants, at their thus wearing the habiliments of the enemy, and playing the national tune.

There hangs a tale by this same tune of “Ça ira.”

Ah! Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Les aristocrates à la lanterne.

In the attack on the fortified camp of Famars [on 23 May] 1793, the 14th regiment, under Colonel [Welbore Ellis] Doyle, went gallantly up the trenches, playing the revolutionary air of “Ça ira,” in the same style of bravado and insult that sailors, during the American war, used to strike up “Yankee doodle.” The gallant bearing of the corps, attracting the attention of His Royal Highness [Edward, Duke of York] at the moment, he ordered that “Ça ira” should be the future quick step of the 14th; and so it has remained to this day. It bears a strong resemblance to the “Fall of Paris.” And I have an anecdote of this latter tune that I think makes a tolerable pendant to the story of “Ça ira.” When the Allied Army entered Paris, — what a day of triumph! – the Royal Regiment leading the way, struck up the “Fall of Paris.” An order was immediately given to put a stop to it, and on being desired to play a Scotch air, they changed it to “Croppies lie down.”

In July, 1795, the 14th being ordered to “strike their tents and march away,” from Warley in Essex to Westhaling, Southampton, they passed through Dartford, the band playing the republican air “Ça ira,” when the inhabitants evinced their aversion to democracy, by throwing stones at the musicians, for playing so offensive a tune, but upon an explanation being given, the people responded with three cheers to the honour of the brave soldiers of the 14th, who had fought at Famars.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Here’s Edith Piaf’s version:

Ward’s comparison with “Yankee doodle” is fascinating (can someone tell me more about musical-theatrical parody on the battlefield?!) but possibly misguided: I believe that one hypothesis is that it began its American life as a humorous British song about the shambolic colonials, who went on to own it. Whatever the case, one can imagine rehearsals of enemy music being fairly miserable affairs, rather like the production of American flags designed only for burning – the artists untouchables.

Doyle’s grandson, the poet Francis Hastings Doyle, wrote almost a century later:

For many years this tune continued to be the quick march of the 14th regiment. I understand that of late years the tradition has ceased to operate, and that the march is disused, or, at least, that its origin has been forgotten.

An excerpt from his revival verse:

Straight out in front their leader dashed
(A God-given king of men was he),
And from his bright looks on them flashed
One sparkle of heroic glee:
“They hold us cheap” (he cried) “too soon,
We’ll break them, frantic as they are,
Unto their own accursed tune;
Strike up then Ça ira.”

The drums exulting thundered forth,
Whilst yet with trumpet tones he spoke,
And in those strong sons of the North
The old Berserker laugh awoke.
Their bayonets glowed with life, their eyes
Shone out to greet that eagle glance,
And, in her rush, a strange surprise
Palsied the steps of France.

Then, like a stream that bursts its banks,
To Ça ira from fifes and drums,
Upon their crushed and shattered ranks
The cataract charge of England comes;
Whilst their own conquering music leapt
Forth in wild mirth to feel them run;
Right o’er the ridge that host was swept,
And the grim battle won.
(Doyle 1887)

I think it was this poem that gave rise to the canonical but improbable anecdote, told here by Ernest Hart:

The terrible and bloody associations of the “Ça ira” make it about the last tune that one would expect to find in the programme of a British military band. Nevertheless that tune has, for considerably more than a century, been the quick-step of what was the old 14th Regiment of Foot, now the West Yorkshire Regiment…

On May 23rd, 1793, the British forces took part in a fierce engagement at Famars, but the French held their positions with indomitable spirit, and their assailants were compelled to fall back. While the English troops were losing hope and courage, the Frenchmen were emboldened by their success, and their bands kept up the fighters’ spirits with the music of the “Ça ira.” Suddenly one of those happy inspirations which so often turn the tide of events occurred to the colonel of the 14th. Galloping up to the band, he commanded it to strike up the same revolutionary air, shouting as he galloped back to the front, “Come on, lads, and we’ll beat ’em to their own damned tune!” The band, which must have had a pretty good ear for melody and key, gave the tune with vigor, we are told, and the colonel led his regiment to an assault which resulted in the rout of the enemy.
(Hart 1918/10)

Here’s a hand-coloured version of the image, which won’t appear in the book. This is because the British Museum, probably illegally, claims copyright over photos of public domain images in its possession, charges absurd fees for even borderline commercial use, and can afford lawyers:

Source: British Museum under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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Comment

Here’s Edith Piaf’s version:

Doyle’s grandson, the poet Francis Hastings Doyle, wrote almost a century later:

For many years this tune continued to be the quick march of the 14th regiment. I understand that of late years the tradition has ceased to operate, and that the march is disused, or, at least, that its origin has been forgotten.

An excerpt from his revival verse:

Straight out in front their leader dashed
(A God-given king of men was he),
And from his bright looks on them flashed
One sparkle of heroic glee:
“They hold us cheap” (he cried) “too soon,
We’ll break them, frantic as they are,
Unto their own accursed tune;
Strike up then Ça ira.”

The drums exulting thundered forth,
Whilst yet with trumpet tones he spoke,
And in those strong sons of the North
The old Berserker laugh awoke.
Their bayonets glowed with life, their eyes
Shone out to greet that eagle glance,
And, in her rush, a strange surprise
Palsied the steps of France.

Then, like a stream that bursts its banks,
To Ça ira from fifes and drums,
Upon their crushed and shattered ranks
The cataract charge of England comes;
Whilst their own conquering music leapt
Forth in wild mirth to feel them run;
Right o’er the ridge that host was swept,
And the grim battle won.
(Doyle 1887)

I think it was this poem that gave rise to the canonical but improbable anecdote, told here by Ernest Hart:

The terrible and bloody associations of the “Ça ira” make it about the last tune that one would expect to find in the programme of a British military band. Nevertheless that tune has, for considerably more than a century, been the quick-step of what was the old 14th Regiment of Foot, now the West Yorkshire Regiment…

On May 23rd, 1793, the British forces took part in a fierce engagement at Famars, but the French held their positions with indomitable spirit, and their assailants were compelled to fall back. While the English troops were losing hope and courage, the Frenchmen were emboldened by their success, and their bands kept up the fighters’ spirits with the music of the “Ça ira.” Suddenly one of those happy inspirations which so often turn the tide of events occurred to the colonel of the 14th. Galloping up to the band, he commanded it to strike up the same revolutionary air, shouting as he galloped back to the front, “Come on, lads, and we’ll beat ’em to their own damned tune!” The band, which must have had a pretty good ear for melody and key, gave the tune with vigor, we are told, and the colonel led his regiment to an assault which resulted in the rout of the enemy.
(Hart 1918/10)

Source: British Museum under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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1 August 1813: The Leeds-based 51st Foot wear bay leaves, not white roses, on Minden (now Yorkshire) Day, as they drive Napoleon’s troops back over the Pyrenees

28 July 1809: The Napoleonic career of Richard Beckett of the Coldstream Guards, Meanwood (Leeds), and the MCC, who fell today at Talavera (Toledo)

17 July 1815: John Dunhill and William Bewell stand trial for their lives shortly after Waterloo, accused of the riotous demolition of a press-gang pub at 41, Humber Street, Hull

15 September 1872: Death of “York’s last Waterloo hero”

30 July 1798: The homeward-bound Greenland whaler Blenheim fights off a Royal Navy press gang in Hull harbour, killing two boarders

27 September 1696: Scarborough’s mock mayor collects his municipal dues by Scarborough warning in a Michaelmas parade

20 September 1819: Flags and fasces at a procession from Briggate to Hunslet Moor to protest the Peterloo Massacre

29 May 1934: Maurice Wilson of Bradford begins his solo ascent of Everest, equipped with some knowledge of yoga, a small tent, three loaves of bread, two tins of porridge and a camera

30 October 1914: Joseph Colgrave of Sheffield and the 5th Royal Irish Lancers wins a DCM rallying leaderless Punjabi Muslims at Hollebeke (Ypres)

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Comment

Via Chris Hobbs, who has traced some of Colgrave’s life and death, but doesn’t seem to have met with the following sensational account by Tim Carew of the events of 30 October 1914:

This preamble leads up to one story of what happened during the fighting round Messines.
A certain sector of the line became untenable, and the order came from the 3rd Cavalry Brigade for a general retirement. The orders did not reach Captain Forbes, commanding the Punjabi Mussulman Company of the 57th Rifles, and they were attacked frontally, from both flanks and surrounded. They fought back valiantly with bayonets, rifle butts, boots and fists, but Captain Forbes received severe wounds from which he subsequently died and Lieutenant Clarke was killed. A bare half company – some forty men in all – managed to escape.
All the Indian officers had become casualties, and there was no one above the rank of naik left alive in the company: the bugbear of jimmiwari was ruthlessly exposed.
Obeying some herd instinct the survivors sought the temporary shelter of a shell-torn barn, where they huddled together in miserable groups, awaiting what fate had in store for them.
It may seem that the conduct of these men was not entirely creditable. They had no British officers and no orders; they did not know where they were. But one and all had fought with the greatest gallantry against an enemy who had outnumbered them by something like ten to one; they were not afraid, they simply did not know what to do. They needed a leader, and they needed him quickly.
They were soon to get one, in the improbable shape of Corporal Colgrave of the 5th Lancers.
Colgrave was a Kiplingesque character. Once, a long time ago, he had been a Squadron Quartermaster-Sergeant. But a fondness for liquor, first in a trickle, and then in a rush, had brought him down. He claimed intimate acquaintance with General Allenby, which was true in a way because Allenby, when Commanding Officer of the 5th Lancers, had ‘busted’ Colgrave to the ranks.
Now Corporal Colgrave was climbing the weary promotion ladder once more. His officers had looked for qualities of leadership in him and looked in vain; it seemed almost certain that the two stripes he wore, precarious at that, represented the peak of his promotion prospects.
Colgrave and a squad of a dozen men had been looking after horses about a mile in rear of Messines, when an urgent order summoned them forward to a point in the line where the addition of thirteen more rifles would be of incalculable value. The barn on which they happened looked tempting, and Corporal Colgrave ordered five minutes’ halt for a smoke.
‘Got a fag, Corp?’ asked a trooper hopefully outside the barn. ‘Only got one,’ said Colgrave.
‘I only want one.’
‘Less of your lip. Get inside.’
Corporal Colgrave had done many years’ service in India, and regaled newly-joined young soldiers with largely untrue stories of gory encounters on the North-West Frontier against the wily ‘Paythan’, massive commercial deals in bazaars and gargantuan copulation in native brothels. Like many another vintage British soldier, he was firmly convinced that he was a fluent speaker of Hindustani.
The Lancers entered the barn and gazed upon forty miserable Indian faces; when he is really downcast, no race of man can wear a darker mask of woe than an Indian.
‘Blimey, what a bunch,’ said the corporal; then loudly, ‘Sab thik hai idher?’
Clearly, everything was very far from being ‘thik‘. The Indians eyed him warily and without enthusiasm. On the other hand, although he was not a Sahib he had a white face and wore the two stripes of a naik and might take on the jimmiwari.
‘Kis waste this ‘ere? asked Colgrave. ‘Sahib kidher hai?’
‘Sahib margya,’ said a dozen sad voices.
‘Well, blimey,’ said Colgrave, in trouble with the language already, ‘you want to marrow the fuckin’ Germans, don’t you, malum?’
The idea was beginning to catch on. ‘Jee-han!’ said a dozen voices.
Corporal Colgrave winked at the other Lancers, one of whom was heard to say ‘old Charlie fancies ‘isself as a fuckin’ general’.
Smiles were beginning to appear on downcast brown faces; there was something about the gamey, ribald approach of Corporal Colgrave which seemed to be a positive denial of defeat. Murderous shelling, which had blown men to pieces and buried men alive, had taken some of the heart out of the Punjabi Mussulmans, but Colgrave was putting it back.
‘Right, then, you miserable-looking lot of buggers,’ said Corporal Colgrave with affection, ‘idher ao: Abhi wapas, got it? Marrow all the German soors. Abhi thik hai?’
‘Thik hai!’ said forty voices in unison.
‘Achi bat. Now, then, who’s going to win the bleedin’ V.C.? Chalo!’
And so thirteen Lancers went into the line, with the priceless addition of forty by now one-hundred-per-cent belligerent Indians, and that particular sector of line was held for the next twenty-four hours.
(Carew 1974)

Carew’s footnote:

Some sort of glossary of this strange conversation is required. Sab thik hai idher is ‘everything all right here?’ (clearly it was not); margya is dead; malum, literally translated, means ‘know’; jee-han is ‘yes’; idher ao is ‘come here’; abhi wapas roughly means ‘we are going back now’; achi bat, in the language of a British N.C.O., can be construed as ‘right, then’; chalo, literally translated means ‘dive’, but in this context can be taken as meaning ‘let’s go’; ‘kis waste this ‘ere’ almost explains itself – it is ‘what’s going on here, then?’, the rhetorical question asked by English policemen in almost any circumstance.

Who was his source? Not everybody trusts him!

Ciarán Byrne says that Colgrave’s band were also from the 129th Baluchis, but I trust Carew more. I think that, in General Willcocks’s discussion of the 57th at Hollebeke, Colgrave is the officer referred to here:

It is instructive to read in the reports that some of the men in Messines “had the good fortune” to come across an officer who spoke Hindustani, and was thus able to direct them to rejoin their Headquarters (Willcocks 1920).

Khudadad Khan of the 129th Baluchis won a VC on the following day:

In October 1914, when the Germans launched the First Battle of Ypres, the newly arrived 129th Baluchis were rushed to the frontline to support the hard-pressed British troops. On 31 October, two companies of the Baluchis bore the brunt of the main German attack near the village of Gheluvelt in Hollebeke Sector. The out-numbered Baluchis fought gallantly but were overwhelmed after suffering heavy casualties. Sepoy Khudadad Khan’s machine-gun team, along with one other, kept their guns in action throughout the day, preventing the Germans from making the final breakthrough. The other gun was disabled by a shell and eventually, Khudadad Khan’s own team was overrun. All the men were killed by bullets or bayonets except Khudadad Khan who, despite being badly wounded, had continued working his gun. He was left for dead by the enemy but managed to crawl back to his regiment during the night. Thanks to his bravery, and that of his fellow Baluchis, the Germans were held up just long enough for Indian and British reinforcements to arrive. They strengthened the line, and prevented the German Army from reaching the vital ports; Khan was awarded the Victoria Cross.

Khan also figures in Carew.

Michael Keary has some excellent excerpts from the letters of Henry D’Urban Keary, who commanded an Indian Division on the Western Front, e.g.

Douglas Haig and French hate the Indian Army and want to get rid of the whole thing… No recognition of anything good … I think no-one in the Indian Corps feels safe or induced to do his best… I suppose this is the penalty for going into the Indian Army and having the bad luck to be sent to France where we are in a minority, rather than to Egypt or Dardanelles where they are equal or a majority (Keary 2021).

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