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:
“Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?”
—William Morris (1834–1896)
“One key, one solution to the mysteries of the human condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)