DECEMBER 223 



' An officer of rank commanding one of the Lancer regi- 

 ments was ordered to attend the Prince Eegent to fit the 

 new jacket on him. The tailor, with a pair of scissors, was 

 ordered to cut smooth every wrinkle and fine-draw the 

 seams. The consequence was that the coats of the private 

 soldiers, as well as those of the officers, were made so tight 

 they could hardly get into them ; the freedom of action was 

 so restricted that the infantry with difficulty handled their 

 muskets, and the cavalry could scarcely do the sword 



The cuirass had been discontinued in the British 

 cavalry since 1794, when its unsuitability for active 

 service had been amply demonstrated in the Nether- 

 lands campaign. But it was far too showy a piece of 

 goods for the Prince Regent to allow to disappear. 

 Accordingly the three regiments of Household Cavalry 

 appeared at his coronation in 1820 in steel cuirasses 

 and burnished helmets, with enormous combs of bear- 

 skin ; the latter, as Colonel Luard caustically observes, 

 rendering it impossible for a man to deliver the sixth 

 cut in the sword exercise of that day. The cuirass and 

 helmet, with the unwieldy jackboots and white buck- 

 skin breeches, remain, after the lapse of a century, 

 archaic features in a theatrical pageant which Lon- 

 doners have learnt to love ; but as the equipment of a 

 modern soldier the costume is ludicrously inapt and 

 very costly. In an era when war has become more 

 terrible and more intensely destructive than in any 

 previous age, and now, when the whole resources of the 

 Empire have been strained to hold its own, it may well 

 be asked whether money could not be more profitably 

 employed than in causing the splendid men of the 



