1001 



REGALS. 



REGIMENT. 



1002 



REGALS (Regale, It.), a small portable finger-organ, well known 

 during the 16th and 17th centuries, and probably much earlier, but 

 not now in use : though Snetzler, the celebrated organ-builder, 

 informed the Hon. Daines Harrington, about the year 1770, that it was 

 not then entirely lost in Germany (' Arclueologia,' iii. 32) ; and till 

 eighty years ago, if not later, there still existed an officer in the royal 

 household called " Tuner of the Regalls." In Rees's ' Cyclopaedia' 

 this instrument is described as having " pipes of reeds for convenience 

 of carriage," an error arising from a mistaken application of the organ- 

 builder's term " reed stops," or stops in imitation of hautboys and other 

 instruments blown through a reed. 



REGENT, REGENCY. These words, like rex, contain the same 

 element as rego, "to rule," regera. " ruling ;" and denote the person 

 who exercises the power of a king without being king, and the office 

 of such a person, or the period of time during which he possesses 

 the power. Wherever there has been hereditary sovereignty, or an 

 hereditary kingly office, it has been found necessary sometimes to have 

 recourse to the expedient of appointing a regent. The cases are 

 chiefly those of (1 ) the crown devolving on a minor ; (2) mental inca- 

 pacity of the person in whom the kingly office is vested ; (3) temporary 

 illness, and incapacity is consequence; (4) absence from the realm. 

 In the first case the regent has been called in England by the name 

 of Protector : the latest instance being the minority of Edward VI. 



The occasional absences of George I. and George II. on visits to 

 their continental dominions rendered the appointment of regents a 

 matter of convenience, if not of necessity. Sometimes the power was 

 put, so to speak, in commission, being held by several persons jointly ; 

 but queen Caroline sometimes possessed the functions of regent during 

 the absence of George II. 



The nature of this part of the English constitution was however so 

 little understood, and the practice wag so imperfectly defined, that 

 when George III. was incapacitated for discharging the duties of 

 royalty on the first occasion when his malady became the subject of 

 public notoriety, a question arose, on which the chief constitutional 

 and political authorities of the time were divided in their judgment. 

 The question was this whether the heir apparent, being of full age, 

 and the king's eldest son, did not become of right regent. One party, 

 led by Mr. Fox, contended that he did. On the other side, it was 

 maintained that it lay with parliament to nominate the person who 

 should be regent. No regent was at that time appointed, the recovery 

 "i' the king intervening. When the king was a second time incapaci- 

 tated, all parties agreed in conferring the title, office, and privileges of 

 regent on the Prince of Wales, then heir apparent. But it was done 

 by parliament, who laid certain restrictions upon him during the first 

 year; but in the event (which event did happen) of the continued 

 incapacity of the king, he was to enter into the full possession of all 

 righto and privileges of king, as if the king were dead, using however 

 only the name of regent, not king : so that in reality the constitution 

 of the country remained unaltered. 



The time when the Prince of Wales held the office of regent is the 

 period of English history usually called " the regency," just as " the 

 regency'' in reference to French history denotes the time of the mino- 

 rity of Louis XV., when the duke of Orleans was regent. 



KEIilMKNT, a body of troops, whether infantry or cavalry, forming 

 the third subdivision of an army ; the union of two or more regiments 

 or battalions constituting a brigade, and two or more of the latter 

 making up a grand division or corpi ifarmfe. A regiment is com- 

 manded by a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, and a major ; and when a 

 regiment is divided into two or more battalions, each of these has, at 

 least when complete, its own lieutenant-colonel and major. The word 

 denotes, in general, any government ; but it is now applied only to a 

 body of men, indefinite in number, who are subject to military regu- 

 lations, and immediately under the control of a colonel. The precise 

 period when bodies of men were so designated for the first time is 

 uncertain, yet no doubt exists that the common application of the 

 term took place in France after the middle of the 16th century. 



According to Pere Daniel, the first formation of corps of troops 

 corresponding in organisation to the modern regiments occurred in the 

 reign of Henry II. of France ; and that writer states (' Histoire de la 

 Milice Francoise,' torn, ii., liv. xi.) that, very soon after the battle of 

 St. Quintin (1557), in which the Constable de Montmorenci was 

 defeated and nearly all the French infantry was dispersed, that king 

 issued an ordonnance for the institution of seven legions of foot 

 soldiers, each to consist of 6000 men, who were to be raised, or to do 

 duty, in the frontier provinces of the kingdom. Each of these legions, 

 which was commanded by a colonel, was divided into 15 companies, 

 and to each of the Utter were appointed a captain, a lieutenant, and an 

 ensign. [COMPAXY.] In this respect the legions differed from those 

 which Francis I. had attempted to raise ; for though each of the latter 

 was to have consisted of 6000 men, it was to be commanded by six 

 captains, one of whom only had the title of colonel ; and under each 

 captain there were to be two lieutenants and ten centurions. The 

 legions of Henry II. were never completed to the extent prescribed by 

 the ordonnance, and the number of companies in each was, soon after 

 it* promulgation, reduced to six. 



Though these legions had most of the characteristics of a modern 

 regiment it appears that they were quite distinct from the bodies of 

 troops which, about the same time, bore this name ; and P. Daniel 



conceives that the regiments were first formed from the companies, or 

 bands, as they were called, of which, from the time of Francis I., or 

 earlier, to that of Henry II., the infantry of France chiefly consisted. 

 Each of these bands was commanded by a captain, who, according to 

 Brantome, was meitre de camp over his soldiers ; that is, he had no 

 officer above him except the colonel-general of infantry ; and the bands 

 were distinguished by the designation of old and new, according to the 

 dates of their formation. 



The embodiment of the bands in regiments could not, it is supposed, 

 have been later than 1562, which was in the beginning of the reign of 

 Charles IX. ; and Daniel gives in support of this opinion the words of 

 the historians Davila and Daubigne', who, in stating the events of the 

 years 1562 and 1563, mention by name the regiments of Picardy and 

 of Brittany ; the former writer, also, in speaking of the renewal of the 

 civil war in 1567, says that the queen sent in haste for the colonels De 

 Brissac and Strozzi with the old regiments. These last are supposed 

 by Daniel to have been the regiments formed of the old bands above 

 mentioned, and to have been so called in contradistinction from others 

 which may have been more recently raised. In proof that regiments 

 then existed independently of the legions, he remarks that, in the 

 registers of the French army for the year 1567, mention is made of an 

 officer who was colonel of the legion of Picardy, and of another who is 

 called colonel of the regiment of Picardy. The regiment of French 

 guards was raised in 1563, by Charles IX., for the defence of his 

 person ; and the legions of Guienne and Dauphine, which had been 

 instituted by Henry II., and disbanded in 1562, were by the same 

 prince restored .under the name of regiments, the former in 1567 and 

 the latter in 1568. Charles also organised other regiments, and it is 

 probable that during his reign the denomination became general. The 

 word terzo, which, according to Sir James Turner (' Pallas Armata,' 

 1683), was in his time applied by the Spaniards to a regiment, seems 

 to indicate that the numerical strength of the latter was considered as 

 equal to the third part of that of some other body, as a legion. 



The time when the name and institution of a regiment were adopted 

 in England cannot be fixed with precision ; but Sir James Turner, iu 

 the work above quoted, remarks that the word regiment was not then 

 a hundred years old ; and if it is meant that the word had been nearly 

 a century in use in this country, it would follow that it was introduced 

 about 1583, or about twenty years after it began to be used in France. 

 In the account of the pay of the officers of the army which was raised 

 by Queen Elizabeth in 1588, when the country was threatened with 

 the Spanish invasion, mention is made of the colonel and lieutenant- 

 colonel of the regiment (Grose, 'Military Antiquities,' vol. i., p. 348); 

 and both colonel and regiment occur in Morrison's account of the army 

 in Ireland, in 1598. From the time of that queen's reign the British 

 army has been invariably divided into regiments ; and this practice 

 has been followed by all the other nations of Europe. 



The army which it was proposed to raise in 1620 for the protection 

 of the Palatinate was to have been formed of 12 regiments of infantry, 

 each consisting of 13 companies, of which the first, or the colonel's 

 company, was to be composed of 200 men, and the others of 150 men ; 

 and there were to be 50 troops of horse, each consisting of 100 men. 

 At this time, and perhaps earlier, the word battalion came into general 

 use to denote either the whole or some division of a regiment. Sir 

 Walter Raleigh, in his ' History,' calls the maniples of the Roman 

 troops at the battle of Zama small battalions. Each of the four regi- 

 ments of infantry which were raised by Charles I. to serve against the 

 Scots consisted of 1850 men; and in 1659, during the civil wars in 

 this country, the Parliamentary forces consisted of 9 regiments of 

 horse, each divided into 6 troops of 80 men, and 14 regiments of foot, 

 12 of which consisted of 1200 men, and 2 of 1100 men, all exclusive 

 of officers. Each of the regiments was divided into 10 companies; and 

 there were, besides the regiments, 5 bodies each containing 500 men, 

 and 3 others each containing 300 men : these 8 bodies were called 

 companies, and probably they corresponded to the companies or 

 independent bands in the French army before the institution of 

 regiments. 



Soon after the Restoration all the regiments were disbanded ; two of 

 them, however, one of which is designated the lord-general's regi- 

 ment of foot, and the other his life-guard of horse, were immediately 

 (1661) re-engaged in the service of the crown; and in the same year 

 the Scotch corps or band of 1700 men, which in the time of James I. 

 had gone into the service of France, returned to England. (Daniel, 

 torn, i., liv. x.) This body was then denominated the First or the 

 Royal Regiment of Infantry : and it boasts of being the oldest regular 

 corps in Europe. 



In 1684, or near the end of the reign of Charles II., that part of the 

 English army which was assembled near London was reviewed on 

 Putney Heath ; and a list of the officers commanding the several 

 regiments is given by Grose (vol. ii., Appendix No. x.). The first 

 named are three troops of horse-guards, which apparently were the 

 lord-general's life-guards above mentioned. These were afterwards 

 disbanded, and instead of them there were raised two troops of horse- 

 grenadier guards ; and in 1788, when the latter were reduced, the two 

 regiments of life-guards at the head of the present list of the British 

 regiments were raised. The second at the review was the Earl of 

 Oxford's royal regiment of horse-guards, which was divided into eight 

 troops; and these are the royal horse-guards which constitute the 



