Other ranks' cap badge of the 1st King's Dragoon Guards, c1904.
NAM. 1964-04-83-1Introduction
The regiment was originally raised in June 1685 to fight against the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion against James II and named after James' wife Mary. This makes it the oldest line-cavalry regiment in the British Army. It escorted Monmouth to London as a prisoner after his capture at Sedgemoor a month after its formation, but later went over to James's rival William III.
It fought against the Jacobites in Scotland and Ireland in the first decade of its life, as well as being renamed 'The King's Own Regiment of Horse' in 1714 after Britain's new Hanoverian monarch George I. From 1688 onwards William and his Hanoverian successors increased British military involvement on the continent and so the unit repeatedly returned to Germany and Flanders, in the 1690s, 1702, 1714, 1742, 1759 and 1793.
The unit's 18th century officers included William Pitt the Elder, later a noted wartime prime minister, and Banastre Tarleton, who became a notorious cavalry commander in the American Revolutionary War soon after joining the regiment. However, the regiment remained in Britain throughout that conflict and again from 1793 through to 1838, with the sole exception of the Waterloo campaign.
It suppressed uprisings in Canada in 1838 to 1843 and in India in 1857, as well as fighting at Sebastopol during the Crimean War. The unit fought in the Second Chinese War of 1857 to 1860 and then spent most of the rest of the 19th century in India. It also deployed to the Zulu War in 1879, where one of its officers, Major Richard Marter, led the cavalry patrol which captured the Zulu king Cetshwayo.
A soldier of the 1st King's Dragoon Guards, 1820.
NAM. 1982-04-217-3The regiment fought in South Africa in 1881 and 1901 and during the first of these conflicts Private John Doogan of the regiment won the Victoria Cross. In 1896 Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria became the regiment's colonel-in-chief, but 1914 saw it deploy from India to France and end its association with Austria, though the double-headed Austrian eagle later returned to its cap badge in 1937.
It returned from France in October 1917 and in 1919 fought in Afghanistan, where at Dakka it made the last ever cavalry charge by a British unit on horseback. It spent the rest of the inter-war period in England, Germany, Egypt and India, finally returning to Britain to mechanise in 1938.
In November 1939 it deployed to Egypt and turned into an armoured car regiment. It fought exclusively in North Africa and Italy for the next five years, before serving in peacekeeping and counter-insurgency roles in Greece, Palestine, Northern Ireland and Malaya from 1944 until amalgamation. It also spent five years as part of the occupying force in West Germany from 1951 onwards. In 1959 it merged with the 2nd Dragoon Guards to form the 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards.
Key facts
Motto:
- 'Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense' (meaning 'Shame On Him Who Thinks This Evil')
Nicknames:
- The Trades Union (after they quelled trade riots in Britain in the 1800s)
- The KDGs (from their initials)
- Bland's Horse (after its colonel from 1752 to 1763)
Titles to date:
- 2nd Horse
- The Queen's Regiment of Horse
- The King's Own Regiment of Horse
- The King's Dragoon Guards
- 1st (The King's) Dragoon Guards
- 1st (King's) Dragoon Guards
- 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards
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