The 88th was established in Connaught in 1793 and it bore on its colours and appointments a harp and a crown with the motto Quis Separabit – "Who shall divide us". It first saw service in 1794 in Flanders in the disastrous Walcheren campaign against Napoleon's troops and, despite their inexperience, the troops fought well, but hundreds perished in the British Army’s winter retreat that year. The regiment later fought in the West Indies, Egypt, India and South America before it joined Wellington’s army in the Peninsular in 1808. It was during the Peninsular campaign that the 88th distinguished itself as one of the finest regiments in what Wellington himself was later to describe as "that most astonishing infantry".