Royal Sicilian Regiment
military unit
The Sicilian Regiment (also known as The Royal Sicilian Regiment of Foot) was a light infantry regiment recruited from Sicily that served with the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars, from 1806 to its disbandment in 1816.
The Detachment of Royal Sicilian Volunteers
At first, the unit was only a detachment of volunteers, raised in Sicily by Major Count Francesco Rivarola, once he had obtained permission from King Ferdinand I and the British commander General Sir John Stuart to recruit troops in Messina. This detachment, like several other foreign corps in British pay, was to be recruited from locals for the rank and file, with mixed British and Local officers.
The initial conditions were quite favourable, with a salary of a pound a day, subsistence of bread and meat, and treatment and training equal to those of the British infantry. Their first base was the Church and Monastery of S. Girolamo in Messina.
The detachment first experienced action within two months of its creation, when a small party (2 officers and 58 other ranks) at the Battle of Maida on 4 July 1806. With two companies of the Royal Corsican Rangers, they were assigned to the light brigade commanded by Colonel James Kempt. After this victorious first mission the detachment returned to Messina.
The following year, in March 1807, the Royal Sicilian Volunteers embarked for Constantinople in the mission led by General Alexander Mackenzie Fraser. This was later diverted to the Alexandria expedition of 1807.
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This entry incorporates text from “Royal Sicilian Regiment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.