British 4th (Queen;'s Own) Dragoons

    This regiment was first raised in 1685, by amalgamating several existing troops, as Princess Anne of Denmark's Dragoons. It saw action by 1689, and participated in the War of the Spanish Succession and the War of the Austrian succession. It was formally titled as the 4th Regiment of Dragoons in 1751, and became the Queen's own, in honor of Queen Charlotte, in 1788.

The 4th  regiment had green facings and white lace. as their distinctions 

I have painted the regiment in it's full dress white pants and green edged white shabraques, and also left the gauntlets off to show the facing color on the cuffs as well.

The use of sabretaches for Dragoons is a British peculiarity; they were black for the rank and file, green trimmed silver for the officers, with a royal badge embroidered on them for full dress. 

I chose to mount this unit on Roan horses, which I think contrasts very nicely with the green facings. 

The front of the jacket had white lace (silver for officers) with a center band of white and green; I have taken the easy way out and went with plain green for the middle stripe. 

Although the helmet strongly resembles that of the French dragoons, the colors are reversed; where the French dragoons had a brass helmet with a brown turban, the British helmet (adopted circa 1812 - 1813) has a black leather helmet with brass decorations and crest. This messed me up on my first attempt painting them!

British cavalry used natural leather for their horse furniture; I made this a pale tan here, once again to complement the white lace. 

The light blue canteens are similar to those used by the British infantry.  The "magic wash (I used a lighter version for these bright uniforms) has nicely picked out some of the details of the sculpts. 

Being Dragoons, the white lace on the front of the jacket extends up the front of the collar as well. 

This regiment didn't participate in the 7 Years War or the American Revolutionary War. It did see extensive combat in the Peninsular War, however, including the battles of Talavera (1809), Usagre (1811), Salamanca (1812), Vittoria (1813), and Tolouse (1814). It did not participate in the 100 Days campaign. 

In 1818, the regiment was converted to Light Dragoons, as the 4th (Queen's Own) regiment. As such, it participated in the Crimean war, fighting the Battle of Alma, and the Charge of the Light Brigade at the battle of Balaclava (both 1854). 

The regiment became the 4th (Queen's Own) Hussars in 1861. A young Winston Churchill was commissioned a cornet in the regiment in 1895. In 1958 it was amalgamated with the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars to form the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars. 

    The 4th is the first of three units of Old Glory British Dragoons to canter off the painting table this month; its sister regiments will be seen in due time. I did a bit of a photographic experiment with these units. The first 4 pictures were taken using my 20 year old Nikkon Coolpix800 camera, the next 4 were taken with my I pad, which I have hardly used for pictures before, and the last 4 with my i-phone 6 (the i-6 camera is far superior to the crappy one in the i phone 3!). they were all taken at the same time, outdoors, an an overcast morning.  I must say that I am hard pressed to see any great difference between them! 

Oh where, oh where did my little flags go?

One might notice the lack of a flag for this unit, despite the presence of a standard bearer. While few if any of the British cavalry carried their flags in the field by the later part of the Napoleonic Wars, as we have discussed previously, I like the look of the British cavalry flags, and adopt the parade ground appearance wherever possible, so my British cavalry all have flags. Well, darned if I can find the rest of my beautiful GMB British cavalry flags. I have found all manner of other GMB flags that I had forgotten that I even had, but can I find the rest of my cavalry flags?  No, I cannot!  I know that I have them (and if there is any doubt, there are deliberately blurry pictures of all of them in a previous post.  I say, twisted knickers and bloody well annoying, eh what, chaps?!