POLITICAL HISTORY facings as orange,^ while in 1751 they were ordered by royal warrant to be yellow. The king's colour was to be the great union, and the regimental of yellow silk, with the union in the upper canton.^ It was not until the year 1782 that the Ninth was directed to bear the style of the East Norfolk Regiment of Foot, with a view to encourage local recruiting ; and in the following year men enlisted from the county as well as from Wales helped with repatriated prisoners of war in bringing the corps up to its proper strength.' In 1799 the regiment was divided into three bat- talions, having swollen to over 3,000 men by an influx of volunteers from the Gloucester and other militia corps. The two new battalions were disbanded in 1802.* When the hope of a permanent peace was disappointed and war broke out, a second battalion was again formed, with head quarters at Sher- borne in Dorset. Both battalions did good service in the Peninsular war, while on a fatigue party of the first devolved the sad duty of digging the grave of Sir John Moore at Corunna. This is commemorated by the black line in the officers' lace approved by Her late Majesty Queen Victoria in 1 88 1.* The first battalion showed conspicuous courage and extraordinary discipline at Busaco and many other battles of the Peninsula, while at the passage of the Bidassoa it won the signal honour of being thanked' on the field by the marquis of Wellington in person, and received mention in dispatches. From this time may date the regimental nicknames the 'Fighting Ninth' and the ' Holy Boys.' Of the second of these, two explanations have been given. The first and more complimentary explains it from the fact that our Spanish allies mistook the regimental badge of Britannia for the image of the Blessed Virgin ; a less pleasant derivation suggests that the corps won it as an ironical allusion to their habit of selling their bibles for liquor, and to their activity in despoiling convents. Neither battalion was at Waterloo, though the first landed at Ghent in August, 18 1 5, and till 18 18 formed part of the Army of Occupation in France. Meanwhile the second battalion had at the close of the war been disbanded about Christmas, 18 15.* For nearly thirty years the regiment saw no war service, but in 1842 formed part of the avenging army which marched into Afghanistan, ' the chief meed of praise being only justly due to that noble corps the Ninth Foot, and their gallant and chivalrous leader, Colonel Taylor.'^ A few years later the regiment bore an honourable part in the great Sikh war, and at Ferozeshah, when the first attack had been repulsed, charged the enemy's guns and their infantry escorts with the bayonet, and restored the fortune of the day.^° A little later the Ninth saw service in the trenches at Sebastopol, and in 1858 a second battalion was raised for the third time, which twenty years after took part in the Jowaki expedition of 1877-8 and the Afghan campaigns which followed." During the late South African war the second battalion did hard and most useful work in the seventh division, and saw some sharp fighting at Karee Siding, while the smart defence of Zuurfontein in January, 1901, by ' Lawrence-Archer, op. cit. 173. ' Hist. Rec. ut supra, 23. ' Ibid. 33. • Ibid. 41. ' Rudolf, Short Hist, of Terr. Reg. 90. ' Hist. Rec. ut supra, 71. ' Gurwood, Wellington's Disp. vii, 50. ' Hist. Rec. ut supra, 79. • Low, Life of Sir G. Pollock, 258. '° Rudolf, op. cit. 92. " Archer-Lawrence, op. cit. 175. 525
