18th (King's Irish) Regiment of (Light) Dragoons (Hussars)

"

"For King, for Law, for Country we strive."

Motto of the 18th Royal Irish

A rum looking lot of fellows, to be sure. 

I'm going off to London in about ten days to take part in a Waterloo bicentennial Little Wars game which I'm particularly looking forward to. Not least because I will get the chance to catch up with some of my fellow bloggers, young Masters Gow and  Cordery. It will also be a chance to play Little Wars in the open air with matchstick firing cannon, as God (or in this case HGW) intended. 

However casting my eye over the order of battle, there was a distinct lack of Irish units on show.  Having given this two perhaps three seconds thought, I realised that this state of affairs could not stand.  The phrase that has launched a thousand disasters danced through my brain. 

"Something must be done."

In this case, something meant contacting my old chum Shifty "Cut me own throat" Gow, who set me up with ten 54mm hussars which I believe fell off the back of a passing expeditionary force and into his white van. This is not the start of a new collection, I hasten to add. Starting a second collection of Napoleonics in a new scale would be the mark of a man so lost to sense that he might marry a horse (or wargame in 15mm). 

No, this is a small unit of Hussars being brought over to the UK to fly the flag so to speak. 

The unit in question is the 18th Light Dragoons otherwise known as the Drogheda Cossacks.  I have written about them before, but in brief, they were a hard drinking, hard fighting lot and developed a lamentable reputation for looting, being described by irate Dublin man Sir. Arthur Wellesley as "...a disgrace to the name of soldier..."

But they did the business in their time, proving I suppose the old adage that saints rarely wear regimentals.