The British Grenadier Guards are one of the older, Foot Guards regiments of the British Army.

The grouping of buttons on the tunic is a common way to distinguish between the regiments of Foot Guards. Grenadier Guards' buttons are equally spaced and plain (they are not marked with a regimental number). Modern Grenadier Guards carry the 'flaming bomb' badge.

In 1656, Lord Wentworth's Regiment was formed in the Spanish Netherlands, forming a portion of exiled King Charles II's bodyguard. A few years later, a similar regiment known as John Russell's Regiment of Guards was formed. In 1665, these two regiments were combined to form the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards, which is an ancestor to the modern Grenadier Guards.

The 1st Foot Guards received many battle honours, including:

• various actions near the Strait of Gibraltar
• the War of the Spanish Succession, including Oudenarde
• the War of the Austrian Succession
• the Peninsular War
• the Napoleonic Wars, namely Waterloo
• the Crimean War
• the Urabi Revolt
• the Opium Wars, namely Khartoum
• the Boer Wars
• World War I and World War II (North Africa, Italy, Northwest Europe)
• the Persian Gulf War

As a result of their heroic actions in fighting off the French grenadiers at Waterloo, the 1st Guards were renamed by Royal Proclamation as the Grenadier Guards, thus becoming the only regiment in the British Army to be named for one of its battle honours.

In 1994, under the Options for Change reforms, the Grenadier Guards was reduced to a single battalion. The 2nd Battalion was put into 'suspended animation', and its colours passed for safekeeping to No 2 Company, which was renamed 'Nijmegen Company', nominally attached to the 1st Battalion, Scots Guards.

The Grenadier Guards' various colonels-in-chief have generally been the British monarchs, including Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI, and Elizabeth II.

Many prestigious military officers have been colonels of this regiment, including:

• the Duke of Marlborough
• the Duke of Cumberland
• the Lord Ligonier
• the Duke of Wellington
• the Prince Consort
• the Duke of Cambridge
• the Duke of Edinburgh

The Regimental Slow March is the march Scipio, from the opera of the same name by George Frideric Handel, inspired by the exploits of the Roman General Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major.

See also

• Military history of the United Kingdom
• British Army
• Canadian Grenadier Guards

External links

• British Army: Grenadier Guards (http://www.army.mod.uk/grenadier/index.htm)
• The Grenadier Guards (http://regiments.org/milhist/uk/guards/f-1GG.htm)