Of the three infantry regiments of the Household Troops, the First, or Grenadier Guards, although it takes precedence of the other two regiments in point of rank, yields to the Coldstream Guards in priority of enrolment. This regiment was incorporated at Brussels in 1657, having been raised at that time by the Duke of York for the service of the Spanish crown in the Netherlands. It consisted of about four hundred men of all ranks, the majority of whom were gallant, reckless, royalist gentlemen, who had fought and bled for Charles I. and his son Charles II. in the Civil War, and had followed the fortunes of the latter and his brother, the Duke of York, when they were driven from England, and obliged to take refuge in France, from which country they were also expelled when peace was made between Louis XIV. and Oliver Cromwell in 1655. The regiment was cut to pieces before Dunkirk in 1658, when that town was taken from the Spaniards by the French troops and the soldiers of the Commonwealth; but it was reorganised two years subsequently by Lord Wentworth, who then assumed the command. In 1662 it was ordered to repair to England, where it was incorporated with a regiment known as the “King’s Regiment,” commanded by Colonel Russell, under the title of the “First Regiment of Foot Guards.” It did not receive its present appellation of the “Grenadier Guards” until after the battle of Waterloo, when it was thus distinguished in commemoration of the glorious charge in which its officers and men broke and routed the veteran Grenadiers of the far-famed French Imperial Guard—the last charge of the British line on June 18, 1815, which decided the terrible struggle of that eventful day in favour of the English arms, and crushed for ever the power and _prestige_ of Napoleon I.