DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "A History of the Coldstream Guards, from 1815 to 1895" by J. Ross. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 44. Chapters: Irish Guards, Scots Guards, Queen's Guard, Coldstream Guards, History of the Scots Guards, Guards Armoured Division, Battle of Mount Tumbledown, Bearskin, London Regiment, Highland Laddie, Band of the Scots Guards, Guards Division, Guildford pub bombings, They Were Not Divided, Garrison Sergeant Major, 22nd Guards Brigade, Lance-Sergeant, Guards Machine Gun Regiment, Field Officer in Brigade Waiting, Wellington Barracks, Guards Incremental Companies, Brigade of Guards, 7th Infantry Brigade, Guardsman, The Guards Museum, 5th Guards Armoured Brigade, Victoria Barracks, Windsor Castle, 20th Independent Infantry Brigade. Excerpt: The Queen's Guard and Queen's Life Guard are the names given to contingents of infantry and cavalry soldiers charged with guarding the official royal residences in London. The British Army had regiments of both Horse Guards and Foot Guards predating the English Restoration (1660), and since the reign of King Charles II these have been responsible for guarding the Sovereign's palaces. The Queen's Guard and Queen's Life Guard is mounted at the royal residences that come under the operating area of the British Army's London District, which is responsible for the administration of the Household Division. This covers Buckingham Palace, St James's Palace and the Tower of London, as well as Windsor Castle. The Queen's Guard is also mounted at the sovereign's other official residence, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, but not as regularly as in London. In Edinburgh, the guard is the responsibility of the resident infantry battalion at Redford Barracks. It is not mounted at the Queen's private residences at Sandringham or Balmoral. The Queen's Guard is the name given to the contingent of infantry responsible for guarding Buckingham Palace and St. James's Palace (including Clarence House) in London. The...

The regiments of the British Army have always set great store by their cap-badges which, in miniature, encapsulated the history and traditions of the units that wore them. They were worn with pride by the County Regiments (which formed the bulk of the infantry) throughout the two world wars. While of relatively recent origin, the cap-badge absorbed a far older territorial allegiance, which can almost be traced back to tribal loyalty before the Norman Conquest and which has been reinforced down the ages. This book presents the reader with a comprehensive collection of capbadges through the years of the Second World War. Every cap-badge is clearly illustrated with pictures from the author's own private collection of badges and comes complete with written descriptions. The fascinating histories behind the conjoining of the various units are also included. A regimental index makes it simple to find specific badges quickly. Cap-badges of the British Army 1939–45 successfully removes the confusion surrounding the wearing of cap-badges by British Army formations during the Second World War whilst enabling people to access this information in complete form for the first time. Essential reading for those with a personal or professional interest in the Second World War.

The history of the British Army is commonly supposed to begin with the year 1661, and from the day, the 14th of February, whereon King Charles the Second took over Monk's Regiment of Foot from the Commonwealth's service to his own, and named it the Coldstream Guards. The assumption is unfortunately more convenient than accurate. The British standing army dates not from 1661 but from 1645, not from Monk's regiment but from the famous New Model, which was established by Act of the Long Parliament and maintained, in substance, until the Restoration. The continuity of the Coldstream regiment's existence was practically unbroken by the ceremony of Saint Valentine's day, and this famous corps therefore forms the link that binds the New Model to the Army of Queen Victoria. But we are not therefore justified in opening the history of the army with the birth of the New Model. The very name indicates the existence of an earlier model, and throws us back to the outbreak of the Civil War. There then confronts us the difficulty of conceiving how an organised body of trained fighting men could have been formed without the superintendence of experienced officers. We are forced to ask whence came those officers, and where did they learn their profession. The answer leads us to the Thirty Years' War and the long struggle for Dutch Independence, to the English and Scots, numbered by tens, nay, hundreds of thousands, who fought under Gustavus Adolphus and Maurice of Nassau. Two noble regiments still abide with us as representatives of these two schools, a standing record of our army's 'prentice years. But though we go back two generations before the Civil War to find the foundation of the New Model Army, it is impossible to pause there. In the early years of Queen Elizabeth's reign we are brought face to face with an important period in our military history, with a break in old traditions, an unwilling conformity with foreign standards, in a word, with the renascence in England of the art of war. For there were memories to which the English clung with pathetic tenacity, not in Elizabeth's day only but even to the midst of the Civil War, the memories of King Harry the Fifth, of the Black Prince, of Edward the Third, and of the unconquerable infantry that had won the day at Agincourt, Poitiers, and Creçy. The passion of English sentiment over the change is mirrored to us for all time in the pages of Shakespeare; for no nation loves military reform so little as our own, and we shrink from the thought that if military glory is not to pass from a possession into a legend, it must be eternally renewed with strange weapons and by unfamiliar methods. This was the trouble which afflicted England under the Tudors, and she comforted herself with the immortal prejudice that is still her mainstay in all times of doubt, "I tell thee herald, I thought upon one pair of English legs Did march three Frenchmen." The origin of the new departures in warfare must therefore be briefly traced through the Spaniards, the Landsknechts, and the Swiss, and the old English practice must be followed to its source. Creçy gives us no resting-place, for Edward the Third's also was a time of military reform; the next steps are to the Battle of Falkirk, the Statute of Winchester, and the Assize of Arms; and still the English traditions recede before us, till at last at the Conquest we can seize a great English principle which forced itself upon the conquering Normans, and ultimately upon all Europe. To be continue in this ebook...