THE LIVERPOOL REGIMENT ("The Leather Hats")
Reading edition
The Liverpool Regiment, like the 5th Dragoon Guards, was raised to help James, and, like them, it sided with the right against him. When James tried to place Roman Catholic officers over English regiments, with the help of the Liverpool Regiment, the colonel and five officers strongly objected. James sent his son, Fitzjames, Duke of Berwick, to Portsmouth, to correct them; but on this, and the issue of it, the country rose, saying unanimously that James was wrong, and the "six Portsmouth captains" were right. James had to flee from a country which entertained ideas so strange to his way of thinking. In memory of this protest against oppression, the portraits of those "six Portsmouth captains" are preserved to this day by the regiment. Once having definitely seceded, the Liverpool Regiment went further in the defence of liberty, and fought fiercely at the Boyne.
But it was in the Netherlands that the "Leather Hats" performed their first great feat of valour. Lord Cutts, whom they dubbed "The Salamander"—because, where the fire was hottest, there was Cutts to be found—ordered them, against all sane strategy, to storm the fortress of Venloo. Everyone said it was impossible to take it, but the Liverpool Regiment, who were actually facing the matter, got a different view into their heads. They said nothing, but obeyed commands—and took it. "Over bastion, fausse, bray and raveline," says a graphic chronicler, "over trench, glacis and escarpment, Cutts led his dare-devils; the ditches were heaped with the dead, till the living walked over them, and—the enemy ran upon the farther side." It was a magnificent feat of arms, and a fitting preface to Blenheim, Dettingen, Lucknow, and their glorious deeds at the front to-day.
THEIR BADGES AND BATTLE HONOURS, ETC.
Badge.—The White Horse within the Garter. In each of the four corners the Royal Cypher.
Motto.—"Nec aspera terrent."
Battle Honours.—The Sphinx, superscribed Egypt. Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, Malplaquet, Dettingen, Martinique, Niagara, Delhi, Lucknow, Peiwar Kotal, Afghanistan 1878-80, Burma 1885-87, S. Africa 1899-1902, Defence of Ladysmith.
Uniform.—Regular and Reserve Battns., scarlet with blue facings.