No regimental biographer has attempted a history of “The Army of Reserve.” It is a theme worthy of the pen of Lorrequer (now that poor Maxwell is gone, there is none other capable of doing it justice), and the materials for constructing it are fading rapidly out of the memory of mankind; yet Chapelizod still remembers “the Blackbelts.” Who that ever saw can forget them? It is scarcely worth being sixty, indeed, or thereabouts, to have seen them; but since that would be in any case, it is a pride and a joy to have enjoyed the vision; for
“Eye ne’er shall look upon their like again.”
The Blackbelts, so called because those decorations of military equipment in which the song exults as
“Your belts of white leather,”
were polished off as glossy as the raven’s down across the shoulders and breasts of this distinguished corps, were known at the Horse Guards as the Second Garrison Battalion. They were physically, as the Sixtieth Regiment in those days was in a moral sense, the sweepings of the service. Every soldier who was blind of an eye, lame of a leg, maimed in an arm, crooked in form, or diminutive in size, and yet considered able to carry arms in the service of his sovereign, was drafted into the “Blackbelts,” and the officers were pretty nearly of a piece with the men. They reminded me of the little hairy men who came in swarms on board Sinbad’s vessel and devoured everything, carnal and vegetable, they could stick their claws into. But they were a well-disciplined battalion, and efficient enough for the sort of duty they had to perform. Excellent shots too they were, every man of them. No rifle corps in any service could have surpassed them with the brown bess; a target was knocked to splinters by them in half-an-hour. They were specially employed, on this account, to escort deserters; for escape was not an uncommon thing while the corporal’s guard were engaged in social chat along a dusty road. The prisoner would slip his wrist through the handcuff, bolt up a lane, and dodge his pursuers from hedge to hedge till he got clear off. But let a Blackbelt catch but a glimpse of his person emerging from a thicket or doubling round a corner, and he had him down as unerringly as O’Gorman Mahon would bag a woodcock.
Two or three incidents of this kind occurred during the stay of the battalion in Chapelizod. One of the occasions was very remarkable. A deserter broke loose in a crowded street and fled amongst men and women, who threw themselves purposely in the way, in order to facilitate his escape. But this manoeuvre did not save him. The corporal levelled his musket, waited coolly till the wretch glanced for a moment into a vacant space, and then shot him dead. The fame of the Blackbelts, as sharpshooters, and the unrelenting sternness with which they acted on such occasions, soon made them the terror of the service, and their prisoners ceased to hope for safety in sudden flight.
Before taking leave of the military reminiscences of Chapelizod, let me throw a Parthian glance upon the yeomanry corps commanded by Captain Wilcocks (the late Sir Richard), whose handsome and portly figure I still seem to behold, like a Colossus looking down upon the evolutions of his men. The vicar of the parish, a loyal man, who took a lively interest in the military education of those heroes, offered a gold medal to be shot for, at a distance of a hundred yards, upon the Palmerston fair-green. It was a great occasion, and all the beauty and fashion of three villages adorned it with their presence. There stood the captain to see fair play and encourage the nervous, while his permanent sergeant, Ned Bullard, was ready with a jeer and a joke at the service of everyone that shot wide of the mark. The zealous parson, adumbrated by a shovel of such dimensions as we see not in these days of skimping economy, rode up and down the line exhorting the brave to fear nothing, but, remembering that the eyes of their country were upon them, to acquit them like men. Point blank was the practice on that memorable day. Had the target been a thing of life, it would have required to be of the feline species to have survived; for I have no doubt that at least nine out of the hundred bullets struck some part of its circumference. The victor was one Pierce Butler, a round, fat, oily son of Crispin, who had never discharged a bit of lead from a musket barrel before, and who approached his task as we may suppose King Agag to have approached the Prophet Samuel. With averted eye he raised the gun to his shoulder, pulled the trigger, in an agony of desperation, and falling back by the force of the rebound amongst his sympathizing fellow-soldiers, exclaimed, “Hould me up!” It was some time before he could collect his scattered senses sufficiently to comprehend
