| PAGE | ||
|---|---|---|
| Lieutenant-Colonel John Hale | [Frontispiece] | |
| H.R.H. The Duke of Cambridge, K.G., Colonel-in-Chief 17th Seventeenth Light Dragoons, 1764 | To face | [1] |
| Seventeenth Light Dragoons, 1764 | „ | [11] |
| Privates, 1784–1810 | „ | [31] |
| Officers, 1810–1813 | „ | [48] |
| Privates, 1810–1813 | „ | [48] |
| Officer, Corporal, and Privates, 1814 | „ | [65] |
| Officers and Private, 1817–1823 | „ | [87] |
| Officers, 1824 | „ | [102] |
| Privates, 1824–1829 | „ | [117] |
| George, Lord Bingham | „ | [121] |
| Officers, 1829 | „ | [128] |
| Officer and Privates, 1829–1832 | „ | [143] |
| Officers, 1832–1841 | „ | [155] |
| Central India, 1858, 1859 | „ | [165] |
| Lieutenant-General Sir Drury Curzon Drury Lowe, K.C.B. | „ | [179] |
| Seventeenth Lancers, 1895 | „ | [227] |
W. & D. Downey Photo.
Walker & Burstall Ph. Sc.
H.R.H. The Duke of Cambridge, K.G.
Colonel-in-chief 17th Lancers, 1876.
CHAPTER I
THE RISE OF THE 17TH LIGHT DRAGOONS, 1759
1645.
The British Cavalry Soldier and the British Cavalry Regiment, such as we now know them, may be said to date from 1645, that being the year in which the Parliamentary Army, then engaged in fighting against King Charles the First, was finally remodelled. At the outbreak of the war the Parliamentary cavalry was organised in seventy-five troops of horse and five of dragoons: the Captain of the 67th troop of horse was Oliver Cromwell. In the winter of 1642–43 Captain Cromwell was promoted to be Colonel, and entrusted with the task of raising a regiment of horse. This duty he fulfilled after a fashion peculiarly his own. Hitherto the Parliamentary horse had been little better than a lot of half-trained yeomen: Colonel Cromwell took the trouble to make his men into disciplined cavalry soldiers. Moreover, he raised not one regiment, but two, which soon made a mark by their superior discipline and efficiency, and finally at the battle of Marston Moor defeated the hitherto invincible cavalry of the Royalists. After that battle Prince Rupert, the Royalist cavalry leader, gave Colonel Cromwell the nickname of Ironside; the name was passed on to his regiments, which grew to be known no longer as Cromwell’s, but as Ironside’s.
In 1645, when the army was remodelled, these two famous regiments were taken as the pattern for the English cavalry; and having been blent into one, appear at the head of the list as Sir Thomas Fairfax’s Regiment of Horse. Fairfax was General-in-Chief, and his appointment to the colonelcy was of course a compliment to the regiment. Besides Fairfax’s there were ten other regiments of horse, each consisting of six troops of 100 men apiece, including three corporals and two trumpeters. As the field-officers in those days had each a troop of his own, the full establishment of the regiments was 1 colonel, 1 major, 4 captains, 6 lieutenants, 6 cornets, 6 quartermasters. Such was the origin of the British Cavalry Regiment.