The Royal Regiment, and Other NovelettesGrant, James
History
The Royal Regiment, and Other Novelettes
Grant, James
Scotland -- Fiction; Scotland -- History, Military -- Fiction
Save the Blues, all our cavalry wore scarlet, until the middle of
George III.'s reign, when blue was adopted for the Light corps; but
silver-grey, with red facings, was worn by all dragoons, while
serving in India, until 1820. Eleven years after, scarlet was
resumed for all corps except the Horse Guards and Hussars; but blue
was ordered again for all Lancers and Light Dragoons in 1840.
Blue has always been worn by the Royal Regiment of Artillery, which
was first embodied in England in the year 1750, by Colonel William
Belford, who commanded that arm of the service at the battle of
Culloden, four years before. The facings, vests, and breeches were
all scarlet.
Hussars were first introduced in our service in 1793, and Lancers
after the battle of Waterloo; but so early as 1794 we had a corps of
Lancers, named the British Uhlans, formed out of the remains of the
French Royalist army, and which, with the Hussars of Choiseul, Salm,
and Rohan, perished in the fatal expedition to Quiberon in 1796.
Uniform has ever been considered a badge alike of honour and service;
thus, in the _Gazette_ for June, 1867, we find that Her Majesty was
graciously pleased to permit a retired Captain of the Edinburgh, or
Queen's Own Regiment of Militia, "to retain his rank and _wear his
uniform_ in consideration of his long service in that corps."
We have had the pleasure of knowing more than one brave veteran
officer, who treasured affectionately "the old red rag," in which he
had followed Picton, Grahame, or the Iron Duke, and in which he had
been wounded on the glorious fields of Spain or in the crowning
victory of Waterloo; and in every age there has been some eccentric
enthusiast who stuck manfully to fashions that had departed.
In 1808, many an old officer would as soon have cut off his head as
his pigtail when the Horse Guards ordered the army to be shorn of
that remarkable appendage. Old Sir Thomas Dalyell, of Binns (first
Colonel of the Scots Greys), who rode yearly to London to kiss the
hand of King Charles II., adhered to the close-sleeved doublet of the
days of James VI. This, with his portentous vow-beard (which he had
sworn never to cut after the execution of Charles I), "when he was in
London never failed to draw after him a great crowd of boys, who
constantly attended him at his lodgings, and followed him with huzzas
as he went to Court and returned from it. As he was a man of humour,
he would always thank them for their civilities when he left them at
the door to go to the King, and would let them know exactly at what
hour he intended to come out again and return to his lodgings."
(Memoirs of Captain Crichton, the Cavalier Trooper.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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