2/87th return from the Napoleonic Wars

Lieutenant General Sir John Doyle (1756-1834), Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey (1803-1816)

Having spent the previous five years serving under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula Campaign against the armies of Napoleon, the 2nd Battalion of the 87th Regiment of Foot fought its last battle at Toulouse in April 1814.

There followed a spell of peaceful garrison duties in the south-west of France but the Regiment, not unnaturally, looked forward to returning to Ireland. On 7 July 1814, the 2/87th embarked at Pouillac and sailed to Cork where it landed thirteen days later.

To everyone’s surprise, the Regiment crossed to England within a month and stayed in the south – one of its duties was to guard American prisoners of war at Dartmoor – until 6 December 1814 when it sailed to garrison Guernsey, where Lieutenant General Sir John Doyle, still the Colonel of the 87th Regiment, was the Lieutenant Governor*.

*
He was the Lieutenant Governor and not the Governor as described in Marcus Cunliffe's history of The Royal Irish Fusiliers 1793-1968.