220 ARMY UNIFORMS PAST AND PRESENT 



thoroughly sensible and workmanlike dress, giving 

 perfect freedom to breathing and circulation, together 

 with protection to loins and thighs. The Chelsea 

 pensioners wear a coat of the old infantry pattern to 

 this day. 



With the Regency came a vicious change. The 

 Prince Regent paid incessant attention to dress both 

 to his own and that of others. He was proud of his 

 figure, which, indeed, was a fine one till it was ruined 

 by excess, and he loved to display it in closely-fitting 

 dress. Nor was he content until he got his father's 

 army buttoned up to the limit of endurance and dis- 

 figured by headgear of appalling dimensions. The easy 

 open collar and Ramillies cravat were replaced by an 

 upright fence of buckram and a leather stock. It 

 would hardly be credible, if the copious corre- 

 spondence of the Horse Guards were not there to 

 prove it, that at a time when Wellington's whole 

 faculties were absorbed in manoeuvring against 

 immensely superior forces in Spain, he had to answer 

 letters about the changes in the dress of the army, not 

 with a view of making it more comfortable and work- 

 manlike, but in order to gratify the caprice of the 

 Prince Regent. No man ever gave less thought to 

 niceties of tailoring than Wellington. His views are 

 set forth in a letter to the Military Secretary, who had 

 been instructed to consult him about the uniform to be 

 worn by those regiments of Light Dragoons which the 

 Prince Regent had desired the Duke of York (recently 

 reinstated as Commander-in-Chief) to convert into 

 Hussars. 



