The Royal Dublin Fusiliers

The Royal Dublin Fusiliers
Royal Dublin Fusiliers Cap Badge
Active	1 July 1881 – 31 July 1922
Country	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Branch	British Army
Type	Line Infantry
Garrison/HQ	RHQ: Naas Barracks, Naas, County Kildare
Nickname(s)	The Blue Caps, The Dubs, The Lambs, The Old Toughs
March	Slow: The British Grenadiers Saint Patrick's Day Unofficial: The Dublin Fusiliers
Commanders
Ceremonial chief	Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (1908)
Colonel of the Regiment	Major-General Charles Duncan Cooper (1910)

External image

Talana Hill memorial to the 2nd Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers at the Genealogical Society of South Africa

The Royal Dublin Fusiliers was an Irish infantry Regiment of the British Army created in 1881, one of eight Irish regiments raised and garrisoned in Ireland, with its home depot in Naas. The Regiment was created by the amalgamation of two British Army regiments in India - the Royal Bombay Fusiliers and Royal Madras Fusiliers - with Dublin and Kildare militia units as part of the Childers Reforms that created larger regiments and linked them with "Regimental Districts". Both regular battalions of the Regiment fought in the Second Boer War. In the First World War, a further six battalions were raised and the regiment saw action on the Western Front, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. In the course of the war three Victoria Cross were awarded.

Following the establishment of the independent Irish Free State in 1922, the five regiments that had their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new state were disbanded.

The regiment was created on 1 July 1881 as a result of Childers Reforms by the amalgamation of the 102nd Regiment of Foot (Royal Madras Fusiliers) and the 103rd Regiment of Foot (Royal Bombay Fusiliers). Both the fusilier regiments had originated as "European" regiments of the East India Company and transferred to the British Army in 1861 when the British Crown took control of the company's private army after the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Under the reforms five infantry battalions were given Irish territorial titles and the 102nd and 103rd Regiments of Foot became the 1st and 2nd Battalions, The Royal Dublin Fusiliers.