Les Grognards (The Grumblers)
- Nation
- French Empire
- Type
- Élite Infantry / Cavalry Corps
- Raised
- 1804 (from the Consular Guard, 1799)
- Dress
- Blue coat, white facings, bearskin bonnet
- Battles
- Austerlitz · Friedland · Wagram · Borodino · Leipzig · Waterloo
Every man a veteran of ten campaigns; a moustache and two earrings a matter of right. Napoleon's last reserve, seldom committed. They grumbled in his face and worshipped him behind his back. At Waterloo six battalions advanced up the ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean in the twilight; they were broken by the 52nd Light and the Guards, and the Empire went with them.
❦NoteAttributed saying: 'La Garde meurt, elle ne se rend pas' (The Guard dies, it does not surrender). Attributed to General Cambronne at Waterloo. Authenticity disputed by historians.
- Nation
- Great Britain
- Type
- Heavy Cavalry · Household
- Raised
- 1650 (as the Earl of Oxford's Regiment)
- Dress
- Blue coat, red facings, gold lace
- Motto
- Honi soit qui mal y pense
- Battles
- Villers-en-Cauchies · Willems · Waterloo
One of the three Household regiments, who together with the Life Guards formed the Household Brigade at Waterloo. Their charge down the slope against d'Erlon's I Corps, alongside the Scots Greys of the Union Brigade, was one of the great moments of the day, and then, unsupported, they were slaughtered by Milhaud's cuirassiers in the hollow beyond.
- Nation
- Great Britain (Scotland)
- Type
- Line Infantry · Highland
- Raised
- 1739 (as independent companies from 1725)
- Dress
- Government Sett kilt · blue facings on scarlet
- Motto
- Nemo me impune lacessit
- Battles
- Alexandria · Corunna · Burgos · Quatre Bras · Waterloo
Black tartan against red coat, bagpipes on the march. At Quatre Bras they formed square in a field of head-high rye and broke a French lancer charge that killed half their officers. The regimental memory of Waterloo: the piper Kenneth Mackay pacing outside the square, playing 'Cogadh no Sith', meaning War or Peace.
Les Gros Frères (The Big Brothers)
- Nation
- French Empire
- Type
- Heavy Cavalry
- Raised
- An VI (1798) · reorganised 1802–03
- Dress
- Steel breastplate and helmet, blue coat, red facings
- Battles
- Austerlitz · Eylau · Borodino · Waterloo
Six feet on a seventeen-hand horse, in three stone of steel. Their armour would turn a spent musket-ball. At Waterloo Ney launched them, again and again, unsupported by infantry, against Wellington's squares; they could neither break nor ride round, and in two hours they destroyed themselves.
- Nation
- French Empire (originally Hungarian)
- Type
- Light Cavalry
- Raised
- 1720
- Dress
- Sky-blue dolman, red pelisse, fur shako
- Battles
- Marengo · Austerlitz · Eylau · Friedland · Wagram
The oldest hussar regiment in French service. Dolmans braided, pelisses slung, shakos with a horsehair plume: they scouted, raided, drank, duelled and, when the moment came, charged. Lasalle of this school declared: 'Any hussar who is not dead by thirty is a blackguard.' He died at thirty-four, at Wagram.
- Nation
- French Empire
- Type
- Élite Light Cavalry · Imperial Guard
- Raised
- 1800 (as Consular Guard squadron)
- Dress
- Green dolman, red pelisse, bearskin colpack
- Battles
- Marengo · Austerlitz · Eylau · Wagram · Borodino · Waterloo
Napoleon's personal escort. He wore their green coat in preference to any other uniform, and on St Helena he still kept one. In the retreat from Moscow they formed the final cordon of cavalry around the Emperor's sleigh, riding skeletons on skeletal horses. Not many returned.
- Nation
- Great Britain
- Type
- Line Infantry
- Raised
- 1702
- Dress
- Scarlet coat, red facings, silver lace
- Battles
- Seringapatam · Assaye · Waterloo
Arthur Wesley's first command as a lieutenant-colonel in 1793. He fought his apprenticeship in India at their head, at Seringapatam and Assaye. In fiction, it is the 33rd from which Sergeant Richard Sharpe is plucked for a commission. In fact, the regiment gave the British army its greatest commander, and took the name 'The Duke of Wellington's' in 1853.
The Broken-Mitre Grenadiers
- Nation
- Russia
- Type
- Grenadier Infantry · Guard
- Raised
- 1796
- Dress
- Dark green coat, red facings, brass-fronted mitre cap
- Battles
- Friedland · Borodino · Leipzig · Paris 1814
By tradition, after their slaughter at Friedland in 1807, Tsar Alexander decreed that they would continue to wear the old-pattern grenadier mitre, bullet-pierced, dented, unrepaired, as their battle-honour. No other regiment in Europe dressed like them. They carried those battered brass caps into Paris in 1814.
- Nation
- Hanover (in British service)
- Type
- Combined Arms: Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery
- Raised
- 1803 (from the disbanded Hanoverian army)
- Dress
- British pattern · distinctive KGL shoulder-strap
- Battles
- Copenhagen · Talavera · Albuera · Salamanca · Waterloo
German exiles who fought under the British colours from 1803 to 1816. Their light battalions, under Baring, held La Haye Sainte at Waterloo all afternoon with Baker rifles, until their ammunition ran out and French engineers broke the door. Wellington said afterwards: 'I never saw steadier troops.' Few compliments were higher.
