The Royal Gloucestershire Hussars was a volunteer yeomanry regiment which, in the 20th century, became part of the British Army Reserve. It traced its origins to the First or Cheltenham Troop of Gloucestershire Gentleman and Yeomanry raised in 1795, although a break in the lineage means that its formation is dated to the Marshfield and Dodington Troop raised in 1830. 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. Originally intended to counter insurrection and a French invasion that never materialised, the yeomanry's first deployments were ceremonial and as mounted police during times of civil unrest. Three Gloucestershire troops were deployed to Bristol on two separate occasions in the 1830s in support of the civil authorities.
From the mid-19th century, the yeomanry's policing role diminished with the establishment of a civilian police force, and renewed fears of invasion turned its focus to national defence. 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. Before the First World War, all volunteer forces, including the yeomanry, were brought into the Territorial Force. On the outbreak of the war the regiment raised a second-line unit, which remained in the UK and became a cyclist unit in 1916, and a third-line unit, which served as a reserve. The first-line unit saw action as infantry at Gallipoli and as cavalry in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign; in the latter it fought both mounted and dismounted from the Suez Canal to Aleppo in modern-day Syria. Following the war, the regiment was downsized and converted to the 21st (Royal Gloucestershire Hussars) Armoured Car Company.
When the United Kingdom began mobilising again in the late 1930s, the company converted to an armoured regiment and was restored to its former name. On the outbreak of the Second World War, the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars once again raised second- and third-line units. The first-line regiment remained in the UK as a training unit, seeing service overseas only after the war as part of the army of occupation in Austria, and the third-line regiment was actually a troop-sized unit acting mainly as a deception designed to disguise British armour strength and disposition. The 2nd Royal Gloucestershire Hussars fought in North Africa, initially attached to the 7th Armoured Division (the Desert Rats). The regiment suffered heavy losses during Operation Crusader and the subsequent Battle of Gazala, twice being taken out of the line for refit, and was variously equipped with Crusader, M3 Stuart and M3 Grant tanks. When it lost two commanders killed in action in quick succession, the regiment's individual squadrons were used to reinforce other units, and the 2nd Royal Gloucestershire Hussars was disbanded in 1943. Reduced back to a single regiment after the war, the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars was equipped with armoured cars and given a reconnaissance role. Repeated reorganisation of the Territorial Army in the 1960s reduced the regiment to a squadron assigned to an infantry role. In the 1990s, the squadron returned to an armour role in the Royal Wessex Yeomanry, tasked with training replacement crews for the regular army's Challenger 2 tanks.
Origins In 1794, fearing insurrection and faced with the threat of invasion during the French Revolutionary Wars,Beckett p. 74 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 government subsequently proposed a plan to all Lord-Lieutenants – the monarch's personal representative in each county – to increase the forces at the nation's disposal. This included the raising of volunteer troops of cavalry consisting of gentlemen and yeomanry. Each troop comprised 50 to 80 men, commanded by the person raising it. Commanders received a temporary rank ranging from Captain to Colonel, depending on the number of troops raised. Officers were generally appointed from among the nobility and gentry, and troops were largely recruited from landholders and tenant farmers. Members provided their own horses and were not paid except when called out. Uniforms were provided by the commanders, and weapons by the government. The yeomanry could only be called out by the Lord-Lieutenant or royal warrant to suppress civil unrest in home or neighbouring counties, or by royal warrant in the event of foreign invasion.Wyndham-Quin pp. 1–4Mileham p. 10 The individual troops of the Corps of Gentlemen and Yeomanry, as the force was first called, were initially independent, and only later would they combine to form regiments.Wyndham-Quin pp. 7–8 Each troop was required to conduct exercises, or 'permanent duty', initially for twelve days each year, reduced to six in 1816.Wyndham-Quin p. 77
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, a gentleman of means and good position.Wyndham-Quin p. 4 In total, eight troops had been raised by 1798.Wyndham-Quin pp. 4–5, 9, 15–18 & 22. Following the 1802 Peace of Amiens, all except the Cheltenham Troop were disbanded, but the following year Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom prompted the re-establishment of several old troops and the formation of new troops; by the end of 1803 there were thirteen troops in Gloucestershire, and in 1813 the county's yeomanry had a strength of 582 men.Wyndham-Quin pp. 36, 38, 43–56 & 73. As well as permanent duty, the yeomanry assembled as required for ceremonial and peace-keeping purposes;Beckett p. 190 the Gloucester Troop provided an escort during the visit of the Prince of Wales to the city in 1807, and in 1810 it was called out to an affray between Irish militia and citizens in a local pub.Wyndham-Quin pp. 68–69 & 71Mileham p. 19 A general reduction in volunteer forces followed the defeat of Napoleon, and by 1815 all yeomanry troops in Gloucestershire except one were disbanded. Only the Gloucester Troop was retained, as a mounted police force, until it too was disbanded in 1827.Wyndham-Quin pp. 73–74 & 84–85
Formation and early history
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, from which the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars dated its formation. The troop comprised three officers, a quartermaster, four non-commissioned officers, a trumpeter and fifty troopers, and was recruited from the tenants of Codrington's estate and those of his neighbours, including that of the Duke of Beaufort.Wyndham-Quin pp. 8 & 88–92. Wyndham-Quin variously names Codrington as William C. and Christoper William, and reports on p. 147 the marriage of Codrington to Lady Georgiana Somerset in 1836. In 1831, six more troops were raised by members of the Gloucestershire gentry in Fairford and Cirencester, Stroudwater, Tetbury, Gloucester, Winterbourne and Stapleton, and Alveston.Wyndham-Quin pp. 95–100 That same year, the Dodington and Tetbury Troops were sent to Bristol in response to civil unrest following the defeat of the Second Reform Bill in the House of Lords.Wyndham-Quin pp. 116 & 123
In 1834, all of the Gloucestershire yeomanry captains met in the hamlet of Petty France in south Gloucestershire and agreed to combine their troops into a single regiment, to be named the Gloucestershire Yeomanry Cavalry. Its first commanding officer was the Marquis of Worcester, who became the 7th Duke of Beaufort in 1835, thus beginning the regiment's long association with the Beaufort family.Wyndham-Quin p. 129 The new regiment was ranked 24th in the yeomanry order of precedence and comprised seven troops with a total strength of 26 officers and 382 other ranks. Adopting the uniform of light dragoons, each man was armed with sword and pistol, and twelve skirmishers in each troop were armed with muzzle-loading carbines.Wyndham-Quin pp. 9 & 133 The regiment's first deployment came in 1838, when the Dodington and Winterbourne Troops helped police a Chartist rally in Bristol.Wyndham-Quin pp. 148–149 The 'Royal' prefix was granted in 1841, and in 1847 the regiment adopted a blue hussar uniform and the name Royal Gloucestershire Hussars.Wyndham-Quin pp. 153–154 & 164 The authority of the Duke of Beaufort is evident in his order, in 1846, that all members should grow moustaches "in the form of a carving knife", an instruction that was derided in the pages of Punch magazine at the time, and his insistence the next year that the regiment wear the second jacket over the back, Hungarian style, instead of the usual English-style over the shoulder.Wyndham-Quin pp. 158 & 170–171
The influence of the social order on the composition of the regiment at this time can be observed from an incident in 1847. It involved a disagreement between Lord FitzHardinge, Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, and his brother, Grantley Berkeley, a member of parliament and captain of the Berkeley Troop, which had joined the regiment in 1840. In pursuing his grievance against his brother, FitzHardinge pressured his tenants into resigning from the troop and threatened some with the loss of their farms if they did not.Wyndham-Quin pp. 152 & 161–170 Further insight into the regiment's strong ties to the farming community can be found in the records of the annual exercises. In 1865, the permanent duty was deferred until the autumn due to an early harvest, and participation in a major 14-day exercise in 1871 was cancelled due to a late harvest. Attendance at the annual assemblies dropped below 300 men in the late 1870s and early 1880s, compared to 445 in 1875, due to a succession of bad harvests.Wyndham-Quin pp. 189, 198, 205 & 213 In 1890, the regiment boasted four Masters of Hounds and a large number of fox hunters in its membership, both officers and other ranks, and that year it adopted an old hunting song, D'ye ken John Peel, as its regimental march.Wyndham-Quin pp. 237–238
The establishment of a civilian police force and renewed fears of invasion in the mid-19th century turned the yeomanry's focus to national defence.Mileham pp. 19–20 In 1871, Westley Richards breech-loading carbines replaced the muzzle-loading carbines and were issued to all troopers rather than just the skirmishers, and three years later responsibility for the yeomanry was transferred from the Lord-Lieutenants to district military commanders of the War Office.Wyndham-Quin pp. 195 & 204 In 1867, the regiment's annual inspection had involved drill, but from 1875 the regiment was practising outpost duties, reconnaissance, and rear-guard exercises in the local hills.Wyndham-Quin pp. 190, 205 & 208–210 As the years passed, old troops were disbanded, renamed or amalgamated and new troops raised, and in 1893 the troops then existing were formally organised by order of the army into squadrons: A Squadron – Gloucester and Berkeley Troops B Squadron – Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Troops C Squadron – Monmouth and Chepstow Troops D Squadron – Badminton and Dodington TroopsWyndham-Quin pp. 242–243 The order also allocated the yeomanry regiments to brigades and required them to train at brigade level every three years. Accordingly, the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars joined the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry in the 3rd Yeomanry Brigade, and the two regiments conducted their first joint permanent duty in 1895.Wyndham-Quin pp. 244 & 250–251