NINTH (QUEEN’S ROYAL) LANCERS 1715-1903

The first thing that struck me about this history was the number of appendices and the information they contained. There are nine of them and they take up over 100 pages, beginning with the list of battles (in effect battle honours) which are keyed to the campaign medals depicted in colour on a double page spread in the colour plate section at the beginning of the book. Then there is an explanation of guidons and standards (two of these are illustrated in colour).There is a table showing the establishment of the Regiment in 1715 and all the changes up to 1903 with explanatory footnotes. Most useful is the list of the places where the Regiment has been stationed and on active service, with dates, from 1715 to January 1903. Other appendices give details of dress depicted in eight colour plates; succession of Colonels of the Regiment with biographical information, succession of Commanding Officers, Adjutants and Quartermasters; extracts from the Annual Army Lists from 1715; alphabetical list of officers appointed to the Regiment, 1715-1903, showing date of appointment, cause of leaving etc; and finally, and most unusual, a list of Officers attending the annual Regimental Dinner during the period1866 to 1903.
The history itself is arranged in chapters, each chapter covering a specific time frame and in the text the year in which the events being described took place is shown in the margin, in effect a chronology. Formed as Major-General Owen Wynne’s Regiment of Dragoons in 1715 it was, within a few weeks, in action at Preston against the Jacobite rebel forces of the Old Pretender. The title changed to 9h Dragoons in 1751 and subsequently to Light Dragoons and finally, after Waterloo, to 9th Lancers becoming Queen’s Royal (Queen Adelaide)in 1830. It saw action in S America, Walcheren, the Peninsula, the Sikh Wars, the Mutiny, Kabul, Kandahar, Afghanistan and S Africa. Probably its finest achievement was during the Indian Mutiny in which it was engaged between June 1857 and January 1859, losing 5 officers and 143 men and being awarded 13 VCs (one of them an officer of 2nd Dragoon Guards attached to the Regiment) which must be the greatest number of VCs awarded to a unit during the course of a campaign. There is plenty of action in this account but for regimental detail this history takes some beating