Cap badge of the 12th Royal Lancers, c1910.
NAM. 1968-06-37-1Introduction
In 1715 Britain’s new Hanoverian monarchy was under threat from the First Jacobite Rebellion and needed troops. One man commissioned to raise them was Phineas Bowles, an experienced army commander who had seen action in Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession. He travelled through Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hampshire recruiting before formally raising a regiment of dragoons or mounted infantry in Reading in July that year.
Three years after its formation the regiment was sent to garrison Ireland, remaining there until the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. During this time it was ranked as the 12th Regiment of Dragoons and received the ‘Prince of Wales’s’ prefix, motto and crest, named after the future George IV. One of the regiment’s subalterns early in the French Revolutionary Wars was Arthur Wellesley, later to become the Duke of Wellington, whilst that war also saw its first battle honour in 1801 after an action against French camel-mounted troops in Egypt. The aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars also saw the regiment’s conversion to a lancers unit in 1816.
12th Royal Lancers Crossing the German Frontier, 1 December 1918. NAM. 1977-11-248-231855 saw them reinforce the Light Brigade in the Crimea after its disastrous charge at Balaclava. The unit also fought in the Second Afghan War and the Boer War before fighting its final mounted action on the Western Front during the first month of the First World War. In 1919 the future Edward VIII became its colonel-in-chief. The unit switched to armoured cars in 1928, seeing inter-war service soon afterwards in Palestine and Cyprus.
It shielded the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940 - one of its officers during the retreat, Bruce Shand, won the Military Cross for his actions. The regiment also fought at El Alamein and carried out reconnaissance in Italy. After 1945 they spent three years in Malaya before finally being amalgamated with 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers in 1960.
Key facts
Motto:
- 'Ich Dien' (meaning 'I Serve')
Nickname:
Titles to date:
- Phineas Bowles’s Regiment of Dragoons
- 12th Regiment of Dragoons
- 12th (The Prince of Wales’s) Regiment of (Light) Dragoons
- 12th (The Prince of Wales’s) Regiment of (Light) Dragoons (Lancers)
- 12th (The Prince of Wales’s) Royal Regiment of (Light) Dragoons (Lancers)
- 12th (The Prince of Wales’s) Royal Regiment of Lancers
- 12th (The Prince of Wales’s Royal) Lancers
- 12th Royal Lancers (Prince of Wales’s)
- 9th/12th Royal Lancers (Prince of Wales’s)
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