The Scotch rebellion over, the Duke of Kingston’s Light Horse were disbanded and re-established forthwith as the Duke of Cumberland’s own, a delicate compliment to their distinguished service. As such they fought in Flanders in 1747, but were finally disbanded in the following year. For seven years after the British Army possessed no Light Cavalry, until at the end of 1755 a single troop of Light Dragoons--3 officers and 65 men strong--was added to each of the eleven cavalry regiments on the British establishment, viz., the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Dragoon Guards, and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 10th, and 11th Dragoons. These light dragoons were armed with carbine and bayonet and a single pistol, the second holster being filled (sufficiently filled, one must conclude) with an axe, a hedging-bill, and a spade. Their shoulder-belts were provided with a swivel to which the carbine could be sprung; for these light troops were expected to do a deal of firing from the saddle. Their main distinction of dress was that they wore not hats like the rest of the army, but helmets--helmets of strong black jacked leather with bars down the sides and a brass comb on the top. The front of the helmet was red, ornamented with the royal cypher and the regimental number in brass; and at the back of the comb was a tuft of horse-hair, half coloured red for the King, and half of the hue of the regimental facings for the regiment. The Light Dragoon-horse, we learn, was of the “nag or hunter kind,” standing from 14.3 to 15.1, for he was not expected to carry so heavy a man nor such cumbrous saddlery as the Heavy Dragoon-horse. Of this latter we can only say that he was a most ponderous animal, with a character of his own, known as the “true dragoon mould, short-backed, well-coupled, buttocked, quartered, forehanded, and limbed,”--all of which qualities had to be purchased for twenty guineas. At this time, and until 1764, all troop horses were docked so short that they can hardly be said to have kept any tail at all. In the year 1758 nine of these eleven light troops took part in an expedition to the coast of France, England having two years before allied herself with Prussia against France for the great struggle known as the Seven Years’ War. [Sidenote: 1759.] So eminent was the service which they rendered, that in March 1759, King George II. decided to raise an entire regiment of Light Dragoons. On the 10th of March, accordingly, the first regiment was raised by General Elliott and numbered the 15th. The Major of this regiment, whom we shall meet again as Brigadier of cavalry in America, was William Erskine. On the 4th August another regiment of Light Dragoons was raised by Colonel Burgoyne, and numbered the 16th. We shall see the 16th distinguished and Burgoyne disgraced before twenty years are past.