Red Lancers: the Guard Lancers Charge at Waterloo (NAP0052)

Red Lancers at Waterloo: what a lance does that a sword cannot

Red jackets, blue facings, czapkas under their plain campaign covers — no plumes, no colour, because this is a working day and the cover is what kept the cap from being ruined. Behind them a hedge of lance points with white-and-red pennons. These are the 2nd Lancers of the Imperial Guard, the regiment everyone called the Red Lancers.

The French adopted the lance because it had been used on them

France had no lancer tradition. The Poles had one, and the Cossacks had one, and the French army met both at close range before deciding it wanted the weapon — line lancer regiments were raised by converting dragoons in 1811. It is a good example of a doctrine that arrives by being on the receiving end of it first.

Reach is the whole argument

A lance is roughly two and a half to three metres long. Against another horseman it arrives before a sabre can; against infantry in square it can reach past the bayonets; and against a man on the ground it is decisive in a way nothing else is. The pennon is not decoration either — the flutter unsettles horses, which is exactly what you want in the last ten metres.

And the argument against it

Everything above is true only on the first pass. In a mêlée the lance is a liability: too long to bring round, useless once someone is inside its point, and a lancer who has lost momentum against a good swordsman is in trouble. It also takes years to teach — which is why the Poles were better at it than the Frenchmen issued the same weapon in 1811.

The covers on the caps

Look again at the headgear. The czapka of this regiment was a spectacular object, red and gold with a plume, and here it is hidden under a plain oilcloth cover. Full dress is what a regiment wears when someone is watching; this is what it wears when it is going to be used. The companion plate NAP0083 shows the same regiment the other way — caps uncovered, plumes up.