Regiment de Roll

A couple of large parcels of the Perry Egyptian Campaign figures (mainly British but some French) arrived last Tuesday and I at once set working on the next unit.

This one is the second of the émigré units in the British Army. Like de Watteville's it is a Swiss unit in British service. In 1794 Baron Louis de Roll, a former officer in Louis XVI's Swiss Guards, recruired a regiment two battalions in his name from Switzerland, Alsace and Germany for British service and the regiment was posted to the Mediterranean with De Roll as its colonel, serving in Corsica and Elba before transferring to Portugal where it was reduced to a single battalion. Further postings around the Mediterranean continued with the regiment sent to Minorca and Gibraltar before ordered to Egypt.

In Egypt command of the regiment passed to its lieutenant colonel, Jost Dürler, another former Swiss Guards officer who had commanded the rearguard of the Guards in the defence of the Tuileries on 10  August 1792,  where he was captured, but managed to survive the subsequent September Massacres. The regiment fought with distinction at the Battle of Alexandria, where Dürler was killed, and lost so heavily in the campaign that it was forced to recruit from French POWs. 

After Egypt the regiment continued service in the Mediterranean before merging with Dillon's Regiment to fight in the Peninsular. At the conclusion of that campaign the regiment returned to the Mediterranean and was disbanded at Corfu in 1815.

This unit sports the thirteenth different type of headwear in this army of millinery oddities and there are still more hat variations to come.