It is said= to have borne the motto “Motus componere” when raised.
It bears “the Sphinx” for Egypt 1801.
It was nicknamed “the Cherry Pickers” from some of the men being taken prisoners in a fruit garden during the Peninsula war; also “the Cherubims” from its crimson overalls.
TWELFTH LANCERS.
| Titles. | Colour of | Campaigns, Battles, &c. | ||
| Uniform. | Facings. | |||
| Colonel Phineas Bowles’s Regiment of Dragoons. 1715–1740 (Its Colonel’s name.) 1740–1751 12th Dragoons. 1751–1768 12th, or Prince of Wales’s Light Dragoons. 1768–1816 12th, or Prince of Wales’s Lancers. 1816–1817 12th, Prince of Wales’s Royal Lancers. 1817—— | Scarlet, 1715–1784. Blue, 1784–1830. Scarlet, 1830–1842. Blue, 1842—. | White, 1715–1768. Black, 1768–1784. Yellow, 1784–1817. Scarlet, 1817–1830. Blue, 1830–1842. Scarlet, 1842—. | Corsica, 1794. Aboukir, 1801. Mandora, 1801. Alexandria, 1801. Egypt, 1801. Llereena, 1812. Peninsula, 1811–1814. | Waterloo, 1815. Netherlands, 1815. Cape of Good Hope, 1852. Sevastopol, 1855. Central India, 1858. Indian Mutiny, 1858. |
The Regiment was raised in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Hampshire.
It received its title and badges of the Prince’s Plume, the Rising Sun, and the Red Dragon, in 1768, in honour of the Prince of Wales.
It bears “the Sphinx” for Egypt 1801, where it captured a French convoy with Colours.
It has been nicknamed “the Supple Twelfth.”