The 3rd (Prince of Wales's) Dragoon Guards was a cavalry regiment

Cavalry regiments of the British Army

There are currently nine regular cavalry regiments of the British Army, with two tank regiments provided by the Royal Tank Regiment, traditionally classed alongside the cavalry, for a total of eleven regiments. Of these, five serve as armoured regiments, and five as formation reconnaissance...

 in the British Army

British Army

The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

, first raised in 1685. It saw service for three centuries, before being amalgamated into the 3rd/6th Dragoon Guards in 1922.

The regiment

Regiment

A regiment is a major tactical military unit, composed of variable numbers of batteries, squadrons or battalions, commanded by a colonel or lieutenant colonel...

 was first raised as the Earl of Plymouth's Regiment of Horse in 1685, by the regimenting of various independent troops, and ranked as the 4th Regiment of Horse.

In 1746 it was ranked as the 3rd Dragoon Guards

Dragoon guards

Dragoon Guards was the designation used to refer to certain heavy cavalry regiments in the British Army from the 18th century onwards. While the Prussian and Russian armies of the same period included dragoon regiments amongst their respective Imperial Guards, different titles were applied to these...

, and formally titled in 1751 as the 3rd Regiment of Dragoon Guards.

Shortly thereafter, in 1765, it took the title 3rd (Prince of Wales's) Dragoon Guards, for the future George IV

George IV of the United Kingdom

George IV was the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and also of Hanover from the death of his father, George III, on 29 January 1820 until his own death ten years later...

.

After service in the First World War, it retitled as 3rd Dragoon Guards (Prince of Wales's) in 1921, and was amalgamated with the 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers) to form the 3rd/6th Dragoon Guards the following year.

Battle honours

The Regiment was awarded the following battle honours

Battle honours of the British and Imperial Armies

The following battle honours were awarded to units of the British Army and the armies of British India and the Dominions of the British Empire. From their institution until the end of the Second World War, awards were made by, or in consultation with, the British government, but, since 1945, the...

:

• Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, Malplaquet, Warburg, Beaumont, Willems, Talavera, Albuhera, Vittoria, Peninsula, Abyssinia, South Africa 1901-02

• The Great War: Ypres 1914 '15, Nonne Bosschen, Frezenberg, Loos, Arras 1917, Scarpe 1917, Somme 1918, St. Quentin, Avre, Amiens, Hindenburg Line, Beaurevoir, Cambrai 1918, Pursuit to Mons, France and Flanders 1914-18