In our service, the White Horse of Hanover is borne on the colours of the 3rd Dragoons, the 7th, 14th, 23rd, and 27th Foot, &c. This badge is as old in history as the Welsh Dragon of the 10th Hussars and 12th Lancers, having been the ancient cognisance of Saxony or Westphalia,—a White Horse, on a field gules—borne for centuries by the House of Brunswick. Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria, in consequence of his marriage in 1123, with Gertrude, the lineal descendant of Wittekind, last of the Saxon Kings, assumed the armorial bearing of that Sovereign, if a barbarian so weak and savage deserve the title. The banner of Wittekind originally bore a black horse, which, on his compulsory conversion to Christianity, under the sword of Charlemagne, was changed to white, as emblematic of his new and purer faith. Hence our White Horse of Hanover and its motto Nec Aspera Terrent, which appears on the colours of the regiments above mentioned. It made its appearance in our service about the same time as the hideous black leather cockade, so long retained in loyal opposition to the White Rose of the Stuarts, and which is seen now only on the hats of footmen.
But the badge borne for the longest period in succession by the same unbroken body of men, is undoubtedly the St. Andrew's Cross of the 1st Royals, who represent alike the Scottish Guard of St. Louis (the comrades of "Quentin Durward" under Louis XI.), and the Green Brigade of Scots, who served Gustavus Adolphus, a corps whose almost fabulous antiquity was long a jest in the French service, as well as our own, being twitted in both as the Guards of Pontius Pilate, who slept on their post.
A very remarkable instance of love of the "Old Red Coat" occurred when the Scots Greys marched from Carlisle in April, 1766. A troop-quartermaster named Robert Mackenzie, then in his eighty-eighth year, was left behind, totally prostrated by age and infirmity. He was born in Scotland in 1688, had joined the Greys in 1705, when Lord John Hay was colonel, and was proverbially known as "the oldest soldier in the service."
The sound of the trumpets had scarcely died away homeward on the north road, when the hand of death came on the old enthusiast, and feeling that the hour of his dissolution was come, he insisted on being clad in his full uniform, his boots were drawn on, his sword girt about him, and thus accoutred, he expired, of sheer "disappointment at his inability to proceed. He was carried to his grave by six invalids; the pall being supported by six sergeants of recruiting parties in the town, and the Cumberland Militia fired six platoons at his interment."
An old enthusiast of a similar kind, though of higher rank, was the amiable General Charles O'Hara, the comrade of Granby and Ligonier, Lieutenant-Colonel of the 22nd, somewhere before 1788, and who, in the first year of the present century, died Governor of Gibraltar. He was the last British officer who adhered to the uniform of the Minden days, and to that remarkable style of cocked hat introduced by the great Austrian Marshal, with its tall straight feather and large black rosette on the dexter side; hence O'Hara was known in the service as "the last of the Kevenhullers."
At Gibraltar "he was buried with all the honours due to his rank," wrote an officer of the 29th, who was present. "I had never before seen the funeral of a general officer. There was his horse—the well-known charger oh which we had so often seen him mounted—bearing the boots and spurs of his departed master; on the coffin lay other mournful insignia, the sword, the sash, and not the least prominent memorial, the Kevenhuller hat, with its tall, unbending feather, and I gazed on it for the last time."
He was succeeded in his command by the father of her present Majesty.
But in the quaint adherence to the costume of a past age, there are few cases like one recorded by O'Keefe, the player, whose recollections were published in 1826, and who mentions that in his day, there was an aged captain, John Desbrissay, who walked about the streets of Dublin, "unremarked," in the Cavalier dress of the reign of Charles II. This, however, was before the time of the notorious Wilkes. This eccentric veteran lived in Corkhill, Dublin, and his name appears in the Army Lists for 1747, as agent for the 5th Horse, 5th Royal Irish Dragoons, 12th Foot, and several other corps stationed in Dublin.
County designations were not given until 1786, but numbers had been introduced, and badges, pretty generally adopted for all corps of Horse and Foot, on their colours, buttons, or belt-plates, prior to the first year of George the Third's reign.
In 1759, when Colonel John Hale (who came to London with the news of Wolfe's fall, and the conquest of Canada) raised the 17th Light Dragoons (now Lancers), it was ordered that "on the front of the men's caps, and on the left breast of their uniform, there was to be a death's head and cross-bones over it, and under the motto, 'or glory;'" and this grim device (the badge of the famous Black Brunswickers in later times) they still retain, like the old Pomeranian Horse, who, since the days of Gustavus Adolphus, have worn skulls and cross-bones on their high fur caps, and in Sweden are now known as the King's Own Hussars.