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.
1784
1789
1790
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.
1792
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.
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.
In April the four troops on foreign service were assembled with the army near Cateau, and were engaged in the general attack made on the enemy's positions at Prémont, &c. on the 17th of April, when Captain-Lieutenant the Honourable Thomas Carlton, of the regiment, was killed. The siege of Landrécies was immediately undertaken: the Royal Dragoons formed part of the covering army, and on the 24th of April were engaged in an affair with the enemy at Villers en Couché, when the French lost twelve hundred men and three pieces of cannon: the Royals had one man and two horses killed, and two men and three horses wounded.
The Royal Dragoons had another opportunity of distinguishing themselves on the 26th of April at Cateau. The enemy had marched out of Cambray, and at daybreak attacked the British army. The Duke of York detached the Royals and seven other cavalry regiments to turn the left flank of the French army: this movement was attended with the most brilliant success; the enemy was overthrown with immense slaughter; the rout became general—cavalry and infantry, mingled in promiscuous crowds, were scattered over the plains, and the fugitives fell beneath the sabres of the British dragoons, who captured the French commander, Lieut.-General Chapuy, and thirty-five pieces of cannon. The Duke of York, in his account of this action, observes, "The behaviour of the British cavalry has been beyond all praise." The Royal Dragoons were among the corps which were declared in general orders to have "ACQUIRED IMMORTAL HONOUR." Their loss on this occasion was six men and twelve horses killed; with Lieutenant Froom, two serjeants, eleven men, and fourteen horses wounded.