e-iUJl
X
Preface
This history has been compiled at the request of the Colonel and Officers of the Seventeenth Lancers.
The materials in possession of the Regiment are unfortun- ately very scanty, being in fact little more than the manuscript of the short, and not very accurate summary drawn up nearly sixty years ago for Cannon's Historical Records of the British Army, The loss of the regimental papers by shipwreck in 1797 accounts for the absence of all documents previous to that year, as also, I take it, for the neglect to preserve any sufficient records during
XT many subsequent decades. I have therefore been forced to seek
information almost exclusively from external sources.
f- The material for the first three chapters has been gathered
in part from original documents preserved in the Record Office, — Minutes of the Board of General Officers, Muster-Rolls, Pay- sheets, Inspection Returns, Marching Orders, and the like; in part from a mass of old drill-books, printed Standing Orders, and military treatises, French and English, in the British Museum. The most important* of these latter are Dalrymple's Military Essayy Bland's Military Discipline^ and, above all, Hinde's Discipline of the Light Horse (1778).
For the American War I have relied principally on the
ix
