Royal Gloucestershire Hussars

 

 

Other Ranks, Royal Gloucestershire Hussars

 Review Order, c. 1911

In 1794, fearing insurrection and faced with the threat of invasion during the French Revolutionary Wars, British Prime Minister William Pitt made the first ever recorded mention of yeoman cavalry when he called for an augmentation of the cavalry for internal defence. The first yeomanry troop raised in Gloucestershire was the 60-strong First or Cheltenham Troop of Gloucestershire Gentlemen and Yeomanry, formed in 1795 by Powell Snell. In total, eight troops had been raised by 1798. All except the Cheltenham Troop were disbanded in 1802 following the Peace of Amiens, and it too was disbanded in 1827.

New troops of yeomanry were raised in the 1830s in response to the Swing Riots. The first such troop established in Gloucestershire was the Marshfield and Dodington Troop, raised in 1830 by William Codrington. Six further troops – officered by nobility and gentry, and recruited largely from among landholders and tenant farmers – were subsequently raised in Gloucestershire, and in 1834 they came together to form the Gloucestershire Yeomanry Cavalry.

In 1847, the regiment adopted a hussar uniform and the name Royal Gloucestershire Hussars. The yeomanry's first deployments were ceremonial and as mounted police during times of civil unrest. The Royal Gloucestershire Hussars' first battle honour was won in South Africa during the Second Boer War, when a contingent of Gloucestershire yeomanry served as mounted infantry in the Imperial Yeomanry.

 

 

Sergeant Major, Royal Gloucestershire Hussars, 1895

By Colonel Philip Henry Smitherman