CHAPTER XI

HOME SERVICE, 1823–1854

[Sidenote: 1823.]

On their way home the Seventeenth touched at St. Helena, where they found an Army List, and therein learned for the first time that they had become a regiment of Lancers. Such were the fruits of the inspection held at the Queen’s Riding-house in Pimlico six years before. There also they heard of the death of their Colonel, Oliver Delancey, who had held that rank since 1795. He had entered the army as a Cornet in the 14th Dragoons in 1766, and joined the Seventeenth as a Captain in 1773. He had therefore held a commission in the regiment for close on fifty years when he died in September 1822. He had gained some slight reputation as a pamphleteer, and he was for many years a Member of Parliament, but it was as a soldier and an officer in the Seventeenth that he had made his mark, in the New England provinces and Carolina. He was succeeded by Lord R. Somerset, a distinguished Peninsula officer.

On the 18th May the regiment arrived at Gravesend, and marched to Chatham, where all the men, with the exception of some fifty, including non-commissioned officers, were invalided or discharged. At Chatham they returned their carbines into store; it was nearly sixty years before they received them again; and, in accordance with regulation, ceased to shave their upper lips. It must have been rather a curious time, that last half of 1823, between the growing of the moustaches, the learning of the lance exercise, and the constant influx of recruits. In those days it was, as a rule, rare for a regiment to receive above a dozen recruits in the year; [Sidenote: 1823.] and though the heavy mortality in India had caused the rapid passage of many men into the ranks, yet we may guess that the fifty old soldiers, many of whom had probably brought back with them a liver from the East, were not too well pleased at being flooded with five times their number of recruits. The spectacle of 250 bristly upper lips must in itself have been somewhat disquieting. But recruits came in fast. Before the year was out the regiment numbered 311 men, or little below its reduced establishment, viz. six troops of 335 men with 253 horses.

The acquisition of the lance, of course, brought with it a certain change of dress. Lancers being of Polish origin, the Polish fashion in dress was of course imperative. The shako was discarded for ever, and a lance cap of the orthodox shape introduced in its place; the upper part thereof white as at present, and the plume, as ever since 1759, red and white. The officers, besides a huge pair of epaulettes, wore aiguillettes of silver, and were generally very gorgeously attired. For we are now, it must be remembered, in the reign of King George IV., and therefore every uniform is at its zenith of expense and its nadir of taste. Hence, the first lance caps were so high and heavy that they were a misery to wear; and the jackets, though in pattern unchanged, were made so tight that men could hardly cut the sword exercise.

[Sidenote: 1824.]

From this point for the next thirty years the history of the regiment is merely that of home duty in England and Ireland; and as the changes of quarter are recorded in the Appendix, there is no need to repeat them here. Let it, however, be noted that the Seventeenth took the London duty for the first time in 1824, [Sidenote: 1825.] and that in the following year it found itself once more at Chichester, where we hope that it was welcomed by the Mayor and Corporation.

[Sidenote: 1826.]

In 1826, George, Lord Bingham, who had exchanged into the Seventeenth eleven months before, succeeded Colonel Stanhope in command of the regiment. We shall meet with him again as Lord Lucan twenty-eight years hence; not without results. Lord Bingham retained the command until 1837, and brought the regiment up to a very high pitch of efficiency. He was a keen soldier, who had taken the pains to study his profession; a very rare thing in those days; and had even taken the trouble to join the Russian army in the war of 1828–29 against the Turks, in order to gain experience of active service. He came to the Seventeenth at a time when such a commander was especially valuable, for the slack period of the British army, perhaps inevitable after the exertions of the great war, was telling heavily on the cavalry. The drill was stiff, unpractical, and obsolete--designed, apparently, to assimilate the movements of cavalry and infantry as far as possible to each other. It was so useful (this was the pretext alleged) for officers to be able to handle horse and foot with equal facility. “It is hardly credible,” writes a critic in 1832, “that the late regulations did not contain a single formation from column into line, in which one or more of the squadrons had not to rein back as a necessary and essential part of the movement.” Even when this was altered, officers were still posted in the ranks instead of in front of their troops. At this time, too, and for years after, changes of formation were always carried out to the halt. A regiment that required to take ground to the right, wheeled into “columns of troops to the right,” to the halt; then advanced as far as was necessary, then halted, and then wheeled into line, once again to the halt. In many regiments “field cards” were issued, “drawn out in all the pride of red ink,” with each movement numbered and marked in its regular succession; and thus the programme for the day of review was rehearsed for weeks beforehand.

[Sidenote: 1829.]

Lord Bingham had not long been in command before the uniform of the regiment was again changed. When the change was made I cannot with accuracy say; but in 1829 we find the white lapel-like facings on the jacket done away with, and a plain blue jacket with white collar and cuffs preferred in its place. The old red and white plume also disappears at this period for ever, and a black plume is worn in its stead.

[Sidenote: 1830.]

A year later King William IV. came to the throne and made yet another change. Whether from jealousy of the colour of his own service, the Navy, or from whatever cause, he clothed the whole Army, except the artillery and riflemen, in scarlet. The Lancer regiments, one and all, were accordingly arrayed in a double-breasted scarlet jacket with two rows of buttons and gorgeous embroidery, and blue overalls with a double scarlet stripe. The plume for the officers was of black cocktail feathers; and as the cap was very high, and measured ten inches square at the top, and the plume was sixteen inches long, it may be guessed that heads were sufficiently covered. Large gold epaulettes and gold cap-lines with large gold tassels completed the dress. Those were merry days for the army tailor, if not for the Army. That there were curses both loud and deep from the service we need not doubt; but the King at least permitted the Seventeenth to retain its facings, which was more than he allowed to the Navy. With almost incredible want of tact the sailor-king altered the time-honoured white facings of the Navy to scarlet. Happily neither of these changes lasted long; though the appropriation of gold lace to the regular army, and the relegation of silver to the auxiliary forces, has continued to be the rule up to the present day. As a finishing touch to the trials of the Lancers at this period, a general order compelled the shaving of the moustaches which had been so carefully cultivated for the previous eight years.

[Sidenote: 1828–32.]

From 1828 to 1832 the Seventeenth was quartered in Ireland. In the latter year they encountered an old Indian enemy in Dublin, namely Asiatic cholera, by which they lost three men. On crossing to England in June they were isolated for some months, lest they should spread the disease from their quarters.

[Sidenote: 1833.]

In the following year the regiment was reviewed by King William IV. in Windsor Park. After the review the King invited the officers to dinner, and reminded them then that he had inspected the Seventeenth half a century before at New York. It is noteworthy that one officer, who was still borne on the strength of the regiment, had served with it at that time. Sir Evan Lloyds’ name still appeared on the roll as senior lieutenant-colonel; and thus there was at least one man who could say that he had worn both the scarlet and gold and the scarlet and silver. Nor must we omit to add that among those who witnessed the review on that day was the future colonel-in-chief of the regiment, Prince George of Cambridge, then a boy of fourteen. Thus the lives of two colonels of the Seventeenth actually bridge over the gulf between the American War of Independence and the fifty-eighth year of Queen Victoria. Sir Evan Lloyds’ name remained on the regimental list from 1785 until 1836, when he was appointed to the colonelcy of the 7th Dragoon Guards.

[Sidenote: 1834.]

The year 1834 witnessed the abolition of a time-honoured institution, namely, the squadron standards. A relic of feudal days, which had kept its significance and its value up to the first years of the great Civil War, the troop or squadron standard had long been obsolete. In fact it is rather surprising that such standards should ever have been issued to Light Dragoons. Nevertheless they survived to a time within the memory of living men in all cavalry regiments, and are fortunately still preserved, together with the blue dress and axes of the farriers and other historic distinctions, in that walking museum of the British cavalry, the Household Brigade.

[Sidenote: 1837.]

The year 1837 found the headquarters of the Seventeenth at Coventry for the first time since 1760, when it had but just sprung into existence. On this occasion we may hope that it was allowed to remain in the town during the race meeting. It is somewhat of a coincidence that the regiment should have opened the two longest reigns on record, those, namely, of King George III. and Queen Victoria, in the same quarters. In this same year Lord Bingham retired from the command, and was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel Pratt, who in his turn gave place after two years to Lieutenant-Colonel St. Quintin.

[Sidenote: 1840.]

In 1840 the Light Dragoons and Lancers discarded the scarlet which had been imposed upon them, and reverted once more to the blue jackets and the overalls of Oxford mixture, which had been ordained in 1829. [Sidenote: 1841.] In 1841 the Seventeenth, after a three years’ stay in Ireland, was moved to Scotland; its first visit to North Britain since 1764. [Sidenote: 1842.]Coming down to Leeds in the following year it received a new colonel in the person of Prince George of Cambridge, the present Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment and Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Under his command the regiment was employed in aid of the civil power to suppress serious riots in the manufacturing districts in August 1842. [Sidenote: 1843.] In the following year, headquarters and three troops of the regiment being stationed at Birmingham, there occurred an accident which, after fifty years, sounds almost incredible. The men had just left barracks, in watering order, for the exercise of the horses, and were about to pass under an arch of what in the infancy of railways was called the “Liverpool line,” when an engine, with its whistle shrieking loudly, passed over the arch at a high speed. In an instant every horse swung violently round, dismounting almost, if not actually, every man, and the whole hundred of them stampeded wildly back through the streets to their stables. Many of the men were injured, some so seriously that they had to be carried back to barracks; and all this came about through the now familiar whistle of a railway engine. The incident gives us a momentary glimpse of one feature in the England of half a century ago.

[Sidenote: 1844.]

Next year the regiment took part in the review held by the Queen in honour of the Czar of Russia. Another ten years was to see it fighting that Czar’s army, and helping to break his heart. The vicissitudes of a regiment’s life are strange, and the Seventeenth had its share thereof in the forties: first putting down rioters at Leeds; then marching past the Czar at Windsor; then rushing across to Ireland to maintain order there during the abortive insurrection headed by Smith O’Brien; and, [Sidenote: 1848.] finally, escorting Her Majesty Queen Victoria on her first entry into the city of Dublin. [Sidenote: 1850.] The year 1850 brought it back to England once more, where, after one bout of peace manœuvres at Chobham, it at last received orders, for the first time for thirty-four years, to hold itself in readiness for active service. The warning came in February 1854, and the scene of action was destined to be the Crimea.

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