Brave British soldiers and the Victoria Cross / a general account of the regiments and men of the British Army, and stories of the brave deeds which won the prize "for valour"

by Unknown

The regiment known as the Coldstream Guards derives its origin from a regiment of the Commonwealth that served against the king in the Civil War under the command of General Monk. It takes its name from Coldstream, a small border town in the south of Berwickshire on the left bank of the Tweed. This town formed the head-quarters of General Monk for some time before he set out on his march for London with the view of effecting the restoration of Charles II., and it was here, indeed, that this movement was projected and matured. During his sojourn in this town in 1659, Monk may rather be said to have reorganised and recruited his old corps, originally called “Monk’s Regiment,” than to have raised a new one, as it is commonly stated, and, having surrounded himself with a body of troops on whose fidelity he could rely, he commenced his march towards London on January 1, 1660. On his arrival his soldiers were employed in repressing the tendency which was evinced by the citizens of London to dispute the authority of the Parliament then sitting. Immediately after the Restoration the forces of the Commonwealth were disbanded by Act of Parliament, but Charles had resolved to add “Monk’s Regiment” to the Household Troops that were then forming for the defence of his person against the attempts of the more desperate republicans who still cherished a bitter hatred to the monarchical form of government, and the soldiers, having laid down their arms on Tower Hill as a mark of obedience to the king’s authority, and in token of their dissolution as a regiment of the Commonwealth, immediately took the oath of allegiance, and sprung into existence anew as an English regiment, under the name of “The Duke of Albemarle’s, or Lord General’s Regiment,” which appellation was changed to that of the “Coldstream Guards” about 1670, after the death of Monk, in remembrance of the place where he had prepared for the enterprise which it was his good fortune to bring to such a happy issue.

The precedence of the Grenadier Guards over the Coldstream Guards was established by a general order, dated September 12, 1666, in which it was directed “that the regiment of Guards (composed of the two regiments of Foot Guards, commanded by Colonel Russell and Lord Wentworth) take place of all other regiments, and the colonell take place as the first foot colonell; the General’s Regiment (the Duke of Albemarle’s, or Coldstream Guards) to take place next.”

The Scots Fusilier Guards were placed on the roll of the English army, and first shared the duties and privileges of the Household Troops, shortly after the union had been effected between England and Scotland, in 1707, and it was found unnecessary to retain them any longer in Edinburgh, where, in conjunction with the Scots Life Guards, they had acted as a guard of honour to the Lord High Commissioner and the Scottish Parliament, besides rendering efficient service in the various continental wars in which England had been involved during the latter part of the seventeenth century.

The Scots Life Guards were established in Edinburgh in 1661, a single troop having been enrolled in that year, to which a second was added about two years after, to assist in the maintenance of order and the enforcement of the Episcopalian form of worship, which the covenanting Scotch, especially the Lowlanders, cordially hated. It is probable that the Scots Foot Guards were enrolled at the same time, as it appears that after the suppression of the risings in Scotland in 1667, and the peace that was concluded in that year with Holland, all the regular Scottish forces were disbanded, with the exception of the two troops of Scots Life Guards above mentioned and the regiment of Scots Foot Guards.

Space would fail us entirely if we attempted to notice even a tithe of the thousand and one battles and exploits in which our Household Troops have signalized themselves. We can, indeed, only mention the few hard-fought fights, the names of which are blazoned in scrolls of glowing gold on the regimental colours of these regiments, in memory of the battle-fields in which they have won such a glorious meed of honour and renown at the priceless cost of life and limb and liberty; and we must abstain from making more than the briefest mention of the services rendered by detachments of the Life Guards and Coldstream Guards, who acted as Marines on board the English fleet in 1665 and 1666, under Prince Rupert and the Dukes of York and Albemarle (some fifty years prior to the addition of the splendid and distinguished corps that is now known as the “Royal Marines” to the British army), and at the battle of Solebay in 1672; the gallant deeds of the same regiments before Maestricht in 1673, under the Duke of Monmouth and John Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, the services of the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards in Flanders, in 1678, under the same generals; the share that these regiments had in the occupation of Tangiers in 1680, in conjunction with the Spanish troops, and the subsequent battles with the Moors; the battle of Bothwell Bridge, in Scotland, with the rebel covenanters, in which the Scots Life Guards and Foot Guards bore a conspicuous part under the Duke of Monmouth; the frustration of the attempt of the same nobleman to wrest the crown from James II., by the untoward battle of Sedgemoor, in which all the regiments of English Life and Foot Guards were engaged; the campaigns against France in the Netherlands, in 1689 and 1691, the last of which was followed by the loss of Namur; and the long list of battles and sieges in which these regiments took part during the latter part of the reign of William III. and Mary, those of Queen Anne, George I., and George II., and the early part of the reign of George III., including the battles of Steenkirk, Landen, Blenheim, Ramilies, Almanza, Oudenarde, Malplaquet, Dettingen, Fontenoy, Minden, Warburg, the American campaigns, and the battle of Valenciennes in 1793.

The First and Second Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards all bear the words “Peninsula” and “Waterloo” on their guidons. The Grenadier Guards bear the memorable names of “Lincelles,” “Corunna,” “Barossa,” “Peninsula,” “Waterloo,” “Alma,” “Inkerman,” and “Sevastopol” on their colours; and in addition to these, Corunna only being excepted, the Coldstream Guards and Scots Fusiliers have the words “Sphinx,” “Egypt,” and “Talavera.”

To speak further of the achievements of the Household Troops in Belgium, Egypt, Spain, and Portugal, would be to write a military history of the reign of George III., or to tell again the oft-told but never tiring tale of the Peninsular War, the disastrous retreat on Corunna, the battle fought there on the eve of embarkation, the death and burial of Sir John Moore, the triumphs of Talavera, Vittoria, Salamanca, and Barossa, and the “crowning mercy” of Waterloo, in which battle the Household Cavalry and the First Dragoon Guards broke and utterly routed Napoleon’s magnificent Cuirassiers, and won the right to bear the word “Waterloo” on their standards and appointments for ever.

From 1815 a long rest from war’s alarm fell to the lot of the Household Troops until the outbreak of the Crimean War, in the hardships and glories of which the three regiments of Foot Guards participated. As the honour of the battle of Balaclava belongs peculiarly to the “six hundred,” who were set face to face with sure and sudden death when they were launched against the Russian batteries, and rode, like heroes as they were, into the graves that yawned to receive them, so the glory of Inkerman adds especial lustre to the laurels of the British Foot Guards.

Amid the cold grey mists of that dark November morning they bore the brunt of an almost hopeless struggle, as line after line of Russian soldiers, maddened with drink, swarmed up the hill from the valley of the Tchernaya to recoil with broken ranks from the base of the little battery that the Guards held with desperate courage. It was the key of the position: to have been forced from it would have brought destruction on the entire British camp. They knew this, and officers and men would all have died there gladly, like Leonidas and his three hundred at the pass of Thermopylæ, rather than have quitted the earthwork alive, though not dishonoured. Tears trickled down the cheeks of their royal leader as he saw his men falling, like autumn leaves, before the fire of the infuriated foe. With bleeding heart he gasped, “My poor Guards! What will they say in England?” Ay! what, indeed? What, but honour to the men who esteemed life as nothing in comparison with England’s reputation? What, but honour to the Duke who dared to sigh for his maimed and slaughtered men as a father would sorrow for his dying son? Even when ammunition failed them they did not abandon the post they had held so long, and at so great a cost. No! if they could no longer pour a shower of lead into the advancing masses of the Russians, they could at least rain stones upon them, and many a Russian soldier fell to the rear that day with loosened teeth and shattered jaws, smarting under the blows of the rough missiles that the Guards tore from the banks and mould around them. But succour was at hand: the red-breeched Zouaves of France came leaping to the rescue at the pas de charge; and, as they advanced, the Guards sprang, with a cheer, over the parapet of the earthwork, and drove the blades of Bayonne to the very muzzles of their muskets into the backs of the running foe, who left behind them more killed and wounded than the British numbered at the commencement of the battle.

It may have been noticed that all officers in the Guards are entitled to hold that rank in the army which is immediately above the rank which they hold in their own regiments: an ensign in the Guards being styled “ensign and lieutenant” in his commission, and so on. The privilege of holding the rank of lieutenant-colonels and captains in the army was granted to captains and lieutenants in the Guards in 1691, when the allied armies, under the command of William III., were encamped on the plain of Gerpynes, in the Netherlands, near the French frontier, a few weeks before the battle fought between the Allies and the French on the banks of the little rivulet near Catoir; but the rank of lieutenant in the army was not held by ensigns in the Guards until after the battle of Waterloo, when this privilege was conceded to them by the Prince Regent, in an order from the War Office, dated July 29, 1815.