The regiment consisted of twelve companies, with Loudoun as colonel and John Campbell (later 5th Duke of Argyll) as lieutenant-colonel.

Loudoun set out in February 1746 with that portion of his regiment and several of the Independent Companies in an attempt to capture the Jacobite pretender, Charles Edward Stuart.

The expedition was met by a ruse de guerre by only four Jacobites, which suggested a large force was protecting Stuart, and it returned without engagement.

After the Battle of Culloden, Loudoun led his mixed force of regulars, militia and Highlanders in mopping-up operations against the remaining rebels.

While Loudoun was thus engaged in Canada, French forces captured Fort William Henry from the British, and he was replaced by James Abercrombie and returned to London.

His focus was centralising the system of supplies and had built storehouses in Halifax and Albany and recognised the importance of waterways as a means of transport.

Most notably, he integrated regular troops with local militias, and the irregulars were to fight a different kind of war from the linear European style of warfare in which the British had previously been trained.

[citation needed] Benjamin Franklin provides several first-hand anecdotes of Loudon's North American days in his Autobiography, none of which is complimentary.

By some accidental hindrance at a ferry, it was Monday noon before I arrived, and I was much afraid she might have sailed, as the wind was fair; but I was soon made easy by the information that she was still in the harbor, and would not move till the next day.

Going myself one morning to pay my respects, I found in his antechamber one Innis, a messenger of Philadelphia, who had come from thence express with a packet from Governor Denny for the general.

Despite being unable to prevent the loss of Almeida, the British forces soon launched a counter-attack that drove the invaders back across the border.

Back in Scotland, Loudon in 1763 was made Governor of Edinburgh Castle,[3] a post that he held for the rest of his life.