A Colonel's Full Dress Uniform of the 17th Lancers probably having originally belonged to HRH The Duke of Cambridge

Details

A Colonel's Full Dress Uniform of the 17th Lancers probably having originally belonged to HRH The Duke of Cambridge

A Victorian blue tunic, the collar and cuffs laced for a field officer, the white plastron bearing fixing-loops for many Orders and decorations; a set of Lancer officer's gold gimp-and-orris cord cap- lines, forming a quadruple-cord body-loop with dark blue lining; a Lancer officer's regulation gold and crimson girdle (modified in service by insertion of an extra length of lace); and a fine pouch-belt of dark blue leather, faced with distinctive 17th Lancers gold lace (1900 Dress Regs No. 61) and with silver fittings (HM B'ham? 1876) including pickers of characteristic 17th Lancer style, together with a black leather pouch with engraved silver flap (HM London 1865), mounted with gilt VR cypher.

See illustration on previous page

Lot Essay

The multitude of fixing-loops indicates that this tunic was worn by a Royal personage. The only such person to have served with the 17th Lancers was Field Marshal HRH The Duke of Cambridge, who was the Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment from 1876 to 1895.

The Duke, who was a younger brother of King George IV and thus the uncle of Queen Victoria, had a distinguished military career. He commanded the 1st Division in the Crimean War and was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army in 1856, a post which he held until his death in 1895, and became a Field Marshal in 1862. Known within the Army as "The Great German Sausage", the obduracy of his resistance to any form of modernisation was only exceeded by the forcefulness of his language. It is recorded that on one occasion he addressed the Gentlemen Cadets of the Royal Military College, on parade, as "You dirty little bastards".