"Boot and saddle, Colonel Beverley; the 11th and 13th, under Lord
Cardigan, are engaged in front. Cavalry supports and horse artillery
are instantly required."
The trumpets sounded, the regiment formed by troops, and joined the
brigade, which formed in squadrons, and advanced rapidly in search of
the enemy.
"Aw—doocid bore, after our pleasant little tiffin," I heard Berkeley
say, with a bantering air; but I could see that he looked very white for
all that, and Beverley only smiled superciliously, as he twisted his
thick moustaches.
"I wonder Berkeley has not his white gloves on," he whispered to me, and
I saw some of our men smiling, for it was a regimental joke, or
notoriety, that he was in the habit of pencilling on his gloves the
words of command he had to issue in succession.
As the junior regiment, we were in the centre of the brigade, the senior
corps being on the right, and the next in seniority on the left; and we
advanced at a rapid trot, in a column of squadrons at wheeling distance,
while the artillery, making a dreadful clatter, with all their tumbrils
limbered up, their spare wheels, forge waggons, rammers, sponges,
buckets, and other apparatus, went thundering at full gallop to the
front.
"In a few minutes, my lads, we may be hand to hand with the enemy,"
shouted Beverley, as he stood up in his stirrups and brandished his
sword; "let us be true to the old motto of the regiment!"
All knew what he meant, and responded by a long and ringing cheer, for
our lancers had been raised as light dragoons in 1759, by Colonel John
Hale, the officer who came to London with the news of Wolfe’s fall and
victory at Quebec; and in that year it was ordered by his Majesty George
II. that "on the front of the men’s caps, and on the left breast of
their uniforms, there was to be a death’s head, with two crossbones over
it, and underneath the motto, ’_Or Glory_.’" And this grim but
significant badge we still wear on all our appointments.[*] It would
appear that, early in the afternoon, and before the whole army had
halted, our old and one-armed leader, the good Lord Raglan, who had
ridden far in advance of the first division of infantry, observed a
group of Cossacks hovering on the brow of a green hill, towards the
south, on which he ordered part of Lord Cardigan’s command, the 11th
Hussars and 13th Light Dragoons, forward to reconnoitre. On this
occasion Lord Lucan was also present.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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