In 1779 the men of the ROYAL DRAGOONS, equipped as light dragoons, with the light troops of the third dragoon guards, and sixth and eleventh dragoons, were incorporated into a regiment which was numbered the twentieth light dragoons.[53] During the summer the third dragoon guards, ROYALS, fifteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first dragoons were encamped on Lexden Heath, near Colchester. [Sidenote: 1780] [Sidenote: 1781] [Sidenote: 1783] During the great riots in London in 1780 the ROYAL DRAGOONS were ordered to march thither. In the following year they proceeded to Scotland; and at the termination of the American war, in 1783, the establishment was reduced to two hundred and thirty-one officers and soldiers. [Sidenote: 1784] [Sidenote: 1789] [Sidenote: 1790] [Sidenote: 1791] The regiment left Scotland in 1784, and occupied various quarters in the western and northern counties of England six years. On the breaking out of the revolutionary proceedings in France, the establishment was augmented nine men per troop, and in the spring of 1790 the six troops proceeded to Scotland; they, however, returned to England in the following year, and were employed in suppressing riots at Birmingham. [Sidenote: 1792] [Sidenote: 1793] A further augmentation was made to the establishment in 1792, and again in the spring of 1793, when four troops were ordered to be held in constant readiness for foreign service. The enormities committed by the French republicans occasioned another war; Holland was attacked; a body of British troops was sent to assist the Dutch; and on the 10th of June, 1793, four troops of the ROYAL DRAGOONS embarked for the Netherlands to join the army commanded by his Royal Highness the Duke of York. After landing at Ostend the four troops marched up the country, and formed part of the force which drove a body of French from the _Camp de Cæsar_, behind the Scheldt, on the 8th of August. The ROYAL DRAGOONS were also with the covering army during the siege of Dunkirk, and after the attempt on that place was abandoned, they were employed in operations near the frontiers of Flanders, where they had a sharp encounter with a corps of French cavalry on the 27th of October. [Sidenote: 1794] On the 28th of January, 1794, the colonelcy of the regiment, being vacant by the decease of the Earl of Pembroke, was conferred on Major-General PHILIP GOLDSWORTHY.