The Rogue's March

The march was taken up by civilian bands as a kind of rough music to show contempt for unpopular individuals or causes, notably during the American Revolution.

The Rogue's March could be played by the regimental fifers or trumpeters, as the case might be,[1][2] but these woodwind and brass instruments demanded different tunes.

[10] In one anecdote, members of a Scottish crowd recognised it when played by a solitary drummer,[11] as was done in the naval ritual of flogging round the fleet (see below).

[15][16] The military field trumpet, like the bugle, had no valves and could not play the notes of the diatonic scale,[17] so a different tune had to be employed.

[19] It appears again in Instructions for the Trumpet and Drum, Washington, 1915,[20] an American training manual for machine-gunners heading for World War I, facsimile reproduced,[21] and the 1927 U.S. Navy ship and gunnery drills 1927.

Corporal punishment, when it could be administered in the British army of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was inflicted by the military bandsmen, e.g.: drummers, to increase the ignominy.

[40] In the 1812 war in one regiment "a soldier convicted of swindling had to forfeit half of his pay for two months, lose his liquor ration for the rest of the campaign, and – with his bayonet reversed and the right side of his face shaved close to the skin – be drummed up and down the lines to the Rogue's March three times".

[42] On the Texas frontier, recalled General Zenas Bliss, the usual penalty for desertion was fifty lashes "well laid on with a raw-hide" by the drummer-boys, after which his back was washed with brine.

[27] General Meade expelled a newspaper reporter by having him placed backwards on a mule and led through the ranks to the Rogue's March.

An eyewitness recalled the practice during one of the Indian wars:His head was shaved and he was branded with a hot iron and drummed out of the army.

At that time it was suicide to go a mile from the fort, for the Indians watched the road constantly, but this did not seem to matter... [B]y February or March 1869, there had been four or five men drummed out of the Omaha Barracks.

[48] In some cases the culprit's offence was placarded e.g. "Deserter: Skulked through the war"; "A chicken-thief'; "I presented a forged order for liquor and got caught at it"; "I struck a noncommissioned officer"; "I robbed the mail — I am sent to the penitentiary for 5 years".

[22] It appeared from Winthrop's Military Law and Precedents (1920) that the playing of The Rogue's March during ignominious discharge was a punishment considered appropriate for enlisted men, not officers.

[55] A 1995 article in Air Force Law Review argued that drumming out to the Rogue's March ought to be revived and would be good for discipline, but the humiliation risked counting as cruel and unusual punishment within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment.

[56] During World War II the Royal Canadian Regiment bugle band – which, having been officially disbanded, theoretically did not exist – smuggled its instruments ashore in the Allied invasion of Sicily.

[63] Like Yankee Doodle, British troops were known to play the Rogue's March to annoy troublesome colonial citizens.

[74] When Benedict Arnold was hanged in effigy for treachery his 'corpse' was carried in procession with fifes and drums playing the march.

[75] And when the crowd pulled down the statue of George III in Bowling Green, New York, on 9 July 1776 they carried it off to the tune of the Rogue's March.

[79] When vice-president Aaron Burr was acquitted of treason in 1807, a Baltimore mob hanged him (together with presiding Chief Justice Marshall) in effigy while a band played the Rogue's March.

In some labour disputes in nineteenth century America unpopular masters might hear drum and fife bands playing the Rogue's March as a prelude to tarring and feathering or riding out on a rail.

[82] During the anti-abolitionist riots of 1834, in Norwich, Connecticutthe mob entered a church during the delivery of an abolition sermon, took the parson from the pulpit, walked him into the open air to the tune of the "Rogue's March", drummed him out of the town, and threatened if he ever made his appearance in the place again they would give him " a coat of tar and feathers.

Then they herded the culprits down Pennsylvania Avenue to the train station and out of the city, appropriately followed by a brass band serenading the gathering with The Rogue's March.

"[84] In the mutiny of the Nore (1797) rebellious seamen seized a boatswain and, in a parody of the naval punishment, rowed him round the Fleet while a drummer beat the Rogue's March.

[92] The expression "to face the music", to confront the unavoidable, may derive from the Rogue's March ritual, though there are alternative theories.

[10] The Rogue's March: A Romance, a novel by E. W. Hornung, author of the Raffles stories, is set in Australia and was in part inspired by the Sudds-Thompson case mentioned in this article.

'"[94] Rogue's March is a 1953 American film in which a British officer is falsely accused of treason and drummed out of the regiment.

Rogue's March is a 1982 noir spy novel by "W. T. Tyler" (Samuel J. Hamrick) about a CIA officer in Central Africa.