page_title: Royal Horse Guards
section_title: Waterloo
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Horse Guards / Origins and history / Waterloo
caption_attribution_description: English: English Life Guards (left) and Horse Guards (right) of 1815 charging. Deutsch: Knötel, Band IV, Tafel 4: England. Englische Garde-Reiterei. 1815
context_page_description: The Royal Regiment of Horse Guards was a cavalry regiment of the British Army, part of the Household Cavalry.
  Raised in August 1650 at Newcastle upon Tyne and County Durham by Sir Arthur Haselrigge on the orders of Oliver Cromwell as a Regiment of Horse, the regiment became the Earl of Oxford's Regiment in 1660 upon the Restoration of King Charles II. As, uniquely, the regiment's coat was blue in colour at the time, it was nicknamed "the Oxford Blues", from which was derived the nickname the "Blues." In 1750 the regiment became the Royal Horse Guards Blue and eventually, in 1877, the Royal Horse Guards.
  The regiment served in the French Revolutionary Wars and in the Peninsular War. Two squadrons fought, with distinction, in the Household Brigade at the Battle of Waterloo. In 1918, the regiment served as the 3rd Battalion, Guards Machine Gun Regiment. During the Second World War the regiment was part of the Household Cavalry Composite Regiment. The Royal Horse Guards was amalgamated with the Royal Dragoons to form the Blues and Royals in 1969.
context_section_description: Robert Hill was appointed to command The Blues in his brother's stead.  The eldest was ennobled, and the youngest was ADC; but in fact Hill commanded a brigade of artillery on the extreme right of the line near Hougemont.  They were in Lord Uxbridge's Cavalry corps of 14,550 troops.  Not Wellington's first choice, Uxbridge was richly attired, powerful, with influential friends, and a showman to boot.  The Oxford Blues were in the mid-column of Sir John Eiley's Household Brigade, when they marched in the early hours of 16 June 1815 towards Quatre Bras via Enghien down narrow Belgian lanes.  They spent an uncomfortable night; the weather was hot and humid.  It rained all night.  As dawn broke, heavy rain made the ground a quagmire.  On the day of battle, The Blues drew up in the second line behind the Life Guards.  They should have held the formation, when Uxbridge gave the order to charge.  Robert Hill was wounded in the clash with the 4th Cuirassiers, shot by a chasseur.  Major Packe was run through and fell dead off his horse; indeed all the commanding officers in the brigade were slain in their ferocious attack on the Curassiers.  Many hundreds of Frenchmen were killed, and 1200 taken prisoner.  Charging through the regiment was in danger of going too far from La-Haie-Sainte, they were rescued by General Somerset.  They fought Ney's cavalry to a standstill, until Blucher's Prussians appeared to the left, and recovered the hilltop commanded by La Haye.
  
  One historical record that emerges is the perfunctory effectiveness of the surgery on the battlefield of Waterloo.  For example, only six of the wounded fifty Blues actually died. They lost 44 killed. Some reported barbarism by the French upon prisoners.  Waterloo proved the Guards were fit for active service.
  ...when we was about two hundred yards from the French lines a cannon ball came and took off my horses leg so I dismounted but looking around I saw a horse that somebody had been killed off so I soon got another.  So we continued in that state until night the Prussians came up and began to work and the French began to run and a happy sight it was.
  Trumpeter Tom Evans who had saved General Robert Hill's life, retired to start a pub in Old Windsor, called the Oxford Blue.  The Cavalry left Brussels and rode on to Paris.
  On 22 June 1815, Napoleon abdicated having lost the support of the Assembly.  All was lost for the Emperor.  Grouchy's corps was still intact, and Marshall Davout in Paris was willing to fight on, but France was beaten.  The Household Brigade reached Boissy, a town already looted by the Prussians, only 12 miles from Paris, and the war was already over.
  Until early 1816, the British were an army of occupation on French soil.  They took time to recover, and restock the regiments, recruit more men, and promote survivors.  The Blues returned to the barracks at Windsor.  The decisive point for the Cavalry at Waterloo came when the Household and Union Brigades had charged d'Erlon's Corps, making the cavalry brigades national heroes for a few years afterwards.  On Lady Day, 25 March 1816, a medal was struck for "Waterloo men", the first to be so since Battle of Dunbar in 1651.  It started a Victorian tradition rewarding gallantry, bravery and valorous conduct has remained to this day, through a system of medal awards as commemoration.
caption: Trooper of the Royal Horse Guards (on the right) charging in 1815
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