56th (West Essex) Regiment of Foot

The 56th (West Essex) Regiment of Foot was an infantry regiment in the British Army, active from 1755 to 1881. It was originally raised in Northumbria as the 58th Regiment, and renumbered the 56th the following year when two senior regiments were disbanded. It saw service in Cuba at the capture of Havana in the Seven Years' War, and was later part of the garrison during the Great Siege of Gibraltar in the American Revolutionary War. During the French Revolutionary Wars it fought in the Caribbean and then in Holland. On the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars the 56th raised a second battalion in 1804 as part of the anti-invasion preparations; both saw service in India and in the Indian Ocean, with the first capturing Réunion and Mauritius. A third battalion was formed in the later years of the war, but was disbanded after a brief period of service in the Netherlands.

The regiment spent much of the following period on foreign garrison duties, and saw service in the later stages of the Crimean War, at the Siege of Sevastopol. It was despatched to India during the Indian Mutiny, but did not see active service. The regiment was amalgamated with the 44th (East Essex) Regiment of Foot to form the 2nd Battalion of the Essex Regiment in 1881, as part of the Childers Reforms; the Essex Regiment's lineage is currently maintained by the 1st Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment, a mechanised infantry unit.

Read more about 56th (West Essex) Regiment Of Foot:  Formation and Early Service, West Indies Campaign, Gibraltar, French Revolutionary Wars, Napoleonic Wars

Famous quotes containing the words regiment and/or foot:

    What makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms, their dresses, their banners, and the art and artificial symmetry of their position and movements.
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)

    Usually the scenery about them is drear and savage enough; and the logger’s camp is as completely in the woods as a fungus at the foot of a pine in a swamp; no outlook but to the sky overhead; no more clearing than is made by cutting down the trees of which it is built, and those which are necessary for fuel.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)