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From the earliest times, when standing armies were needless, inasmuch as every human unit that made part of a nation’s total was more or less a soldier, and was ready and willing to buckle on his harness and fight at the beck of the ruler to whom he owed allegiance, to the present day when the army and navy estimates are the bêtes noirs of every would-be politician who prefers money-grubbing to national honour, the chosen head or chief magistrate of every nation—no matter what his style and title may have been, or may be—has always had a select body-guard at his command, partly as a mark of distinction and honour, and partly for the special defence of his person against malcontents at home and enemies abroad.

To this rule Victoria, by the Grace of God, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of Hindostan, is no exception, and could our eyes be gratified with a review in which the “household troops” of all nations took part, from the Cent Gardes of Napoleon III. to the Amazons of His Brutality of Dahomey, it would be seen that there are none superior to the British Guards.

The Guards, or Household Troops of England, consist of six regiments, three of cavalry and three of infantry. The three regiments of cavalry are styled respectively, the First Life Guards, the Second Life Guards, and the Horse Guards, or Oxford Blues; while the three regiments of Foot Guards are known as the First, or Grenadier Guards, the Second, or Coldstream Guards, and the Third, or Scots Fusilier Guards. These six magnificent regiments of cavalry and infantry are—and it is just and right to say so, though it be said with the pride of an Englishman—unequalled in the world, whether it be in appointments or soldierly bearing, in physical strength or majesty of stature, in dash or discipline, unflinching endurance of hardships or superb indifference to death—which last, by the way, are qualities common to all British soldiers and sailors at all times and under all circumstances.

The First and Second Life Guards owe their origin to a troop of eighty Cavalier gentlemen who were enrolled in Holland, on May 17, 1660, as a body of Life Guards for the protection of the person of Charles II. against the conspiracies that were said to be forming in England to assassinate him as soon as he set foot once more on English soil. The number of this body-guard was raised to six hundred before the king quitted Holland; but after the Restoration had been effected, several gentlemen retired from the service to return to their homes in the country, and it dwindled down to two troops—one of which remained with the king in London, while the other went into garrison under the Duke of York at Dunkirk. The attempt, however, of the “Fifth Monarchy Men” to overthrow the king’s authority in 1661 led to the recall of the Duke of York and his troopers, when the corps of Life Guards was raised to five hundred men, and divided into three troops—the first being called His Majesty’s Own; the second, the Duke of York’s, as before; and the third the Duke of Albemarle’s.

No change was made in the constitution of the Life Guards, with the exception of the addition of a fourth troop after the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion in 1685, until October, 1693, when the Horse Grenadiers, who had hitherto been attached to each troop of Life Guards—just as a company of grenadiers formed part of almost every infantry regiment in the British service until a few years ago—were embodied and formed into a separate troop, distinguished by the title of the Horse Grenadier Guards. It should also be stated that the Scots Life Guards and Horse Grenadier Guards, which had been raised after the Restoration to act as a guard of honour to the Lord High Commissioner and the Scottish Parliament, were marched to London, and incorporated with the English Life Guards shortly after the union of the two kingdoms.

In 1745, after the defeat of Prince Charles Edward—otherwise styled the Pretender—at Culloden, the four troops of Life Guards were reduced to two; but the establishment of the Horse Grenadier Guards, which now consisted of two troops, remained on the same footing. This continued until June 25, 1788, when the two troops of Life Guards and the two troops of Horse Grenadier Guards were embodied into two regiments, the former bearing the title of the First Regiment of Life Guards, and the latter that of the Second Regiment of Life Guards; and no further alteration has been made to the present day, except in the number of companies in each regiment, and the numerical strength of the companies.

The third cavalry regiment of the Household Troops—the Royal Regiment of Horse Guards, or Oxford Blues, as it is familiarly called—was originally a body of horse that had been raised by Cromwell as a body-guard, and had been retained after his death to act as a guard of honour to the Parliament and General Monk, who then bore the title of the Lord General. After the Restoration the whole of the troops that had been in the service of the Parliament were disembodied; but the officers and men of the Lord General’s troop of horse were immediately formed into a new regiment, which received the title it now bears, and was placed under the command of the Earl of Oxford. With the exception of alterations at various periods in its numerical strength, no change has taken place in the constitution of this regiment from the time of its enrolment for the service of Charles II. until the present time.

Of the three infantry regiments of the Household Troops, the First, or Grenadier Guards, although it takes precedence of the other two regiments in point of rank, yields to the Coldstream Guards in priority of enrolment. This regiment was incorporated at Brussels in 1657, having been raised at that time by the Duke of York for the service of the Spanish crown in the Netherlands. It consisted of about four hundred men of all ranks, the majority of whom were gallant, reckless, royalist gentlemen, who had fought and bled for Charles I. and his son Charles II. in the Civil War, and had followed the fortunes of the latter and his brother, the Duke of York, when they were driven from England, and obliged to take refuge in France, from which country they were also expelled when peace was made between Louis XIV. and Oliver Cromwell in 1655. The regiment was cut to pieces before Dunkirk in 1658, when that town was taken from the Spaniards by the French troops and the soldiers of the Commonwealth; but it was reorganised two years subsequently by Lord Wentworth, who then assumed the command. In 1662 it was ordered to repair to England, where it was incorporated with a regiment known as the “King’s Regiment,” commanded by Colonel Russell, under the title of the “First Regiment of Foot Guards.” It did not receive its present appellation of the “Grenadier Guards” until after the battle of Waterloo, when it was thus distinguished in commemoration of the glorious charge in which its officers and men broke and routed the veteran Grenadiers of the far-famed French Imperial Guard—the last charge of the British line on June 18, 1815, which decided the terrible struggle of that eventful day in favour of the English arms, and crushed for ever the power and prestige of Napoleon I.

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.

The illustration that accompanies this chapter gives the present costume of the three regiments of Foot Guards—a scarlet tunic, lately introduced, with blue facings, white cross-belt and waist-belt, and black trousers, with a scarlet cord down the seams in winter, and white in summer. When in full dress, the whole wear bearskin caps, but each regiment has distinctive ornaments on the collar of the tunic, etc.; and when in undress, the men belonging to each may be distinguished by the band round the cap—the Grenadier Guards wearing a red band, the Coldstream Guards a white band, and the Scots Fusiliers a band chequered with red and white.

The two regiments of Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards all wear corselets—consisting of a breast-plate and back-piece—and helmets of polished steel, with breeches, sword-belts, cross-belts, and gauntlets of white leather. They are, however, to be distinguished by the colour of their coats, and the plume that they wear in their helmets—the Life Guards being clad in scarlet coats, and having white plumes, while the Horse Guards wear blue coats, and scarlet plumes. They are all armed alike, with sword and rifled carbine, and carry pistols in the holsters of their saddles, which are covered with white sheep-skin for the Life Guards, and black sheep-skin for the Horse Guards Blue. In undress the former wear a scarlet shell-jacket with blue facings, while the latter wear a blue shell-jacket with scarlet facings. The cap—black, with a scarlet band—is the same for each regiment.

Apropos of this subject, it may not be generally known that the First Royals, or First (Royal) Regiment of Foot, are a corps of Foot Guards by regimental tradition, if not by authority from the Horse Guards.

The writer of this chapter once knew an old Devonshire pensioner, John Sculley by name, who belonged to the “Fust Ry-uls,” as he used to style his old regiment, who had fought in almost every one of the principal battles of the Peninsular war, and had escaped without a scratch.

“John,” I would sometimes say to the old fellow, as he stood leaning on his spade, “what regiment did you belong to?”

“Why, Sponshus Pilut’s Guards, to be sure,” he would curtly reply. “I’ve told ’ee so often enough, I reckon.”

“No, I think not. But Pontius Pilate’s Guards—what a queer title! Why in the world were you called so?”

“Why, you see, the ridg’ment was raised in Sponshus Pilut’s time, and that’s how us got the name.”

And this he implicitly believed.