Quote Originally Posted by cajunscot
-- but also raised Highland regiments like the Black Watch for service on foreign shores --
Mind if I amend this just a bit?

The Black Watch was originally raised for the purpose of watching over and enforcing the disarming of their own countrymen, within their own country. They were, for all intents and purposes, the long arm of English law in Scotland.

They were actually formed with the understanding that they were to be used for the express purpose of policing Scotland and that they would never be required to leave Scotland to fight for the English. Of course that was not true and the Black Watch fought its first real engagement at the Battle of Fontenoy, in Flanders, under the Butcher Cumberland.

While the Black Watch has distinguished itself well in military engagements all over the world, there are those that remember well the initial duties of Am Freiceadan Dubh was to impose English law on their fellow Scots.