Dragoon - 19th Century

19th Century

During the Napoleonic Wars, dragoons generally assumed a cavalry role, though remaining a lighter class of mounted troops than the armored cuirassiers. Dragoons rode larger horses than the light cavalry and wielded straight, rather than curved swords. Emperor Napoleon often formed complete divisions out of his 20 to 30 dragoon regiments and used them as battle cavalry owing to shortage of cavalry mounts, to break the enemy's main resistance. In 1809, French dragoons scored notable successes against Spanish armies at the Battle of Ocana and the Battle of Alba de Tormes. British heavy dragoons made devastating charges against French infantry at the Battle of Salamanca in 1812 and at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

In the Spanish army, in 1635, Pedro de la Puente organized in Innsbruck (Austria) a body of dragoons, and in 1640 one was created in Spain as a tercio of a thousand dragoons armed with the arqabus. In 1704 like the rest of the tercios, the Spanish dragoons were reorganised into regiments by Felipe V. During the 18th century several additional regiments of dragoons were created in the Spanish Americas, some of them to function as a police force. In 1803 the regiments of dragoons began to be called light cavalry and shortly after 1815 this class of cavalry disappeared from the Spanish Army. However three regiments of Spanish dragoons had been reestablished by the 1880s and these continued in existence until the overthrow of the Monarch in 1931.

In several stages between 1816 and 1861, the 21 existing Light Dragoon regiments in the British Army were disbanded or converted to lancers or hussars.

Between 1881 and 1910 all Russian cavalry (other than Cossacks and Imperial Guard regiments) were designated as dragoons; reflecting an emphasis on dismounted action in their training and a growing acceptance of the impracticality of employing historical cavalry tactics against modern firepower.

In Japan, in the late 19th century/early 20th century, dragoons were deployed in the same way as in other armies, but were dressed as hussars.