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British Army

United Kingdom military land warfare branch of the British Armed Forces

44 dated entries naming British Army, drawn from 38 separate years between 1537 CE and 2013 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

Also written as British army in the source articles; Wikipedia redirects those to the same subject, so their entries are on this page.

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16th century

  • 1537August 25 – The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, is formed.source

18th century

  • 1717The Board of Ordnance establishes an Officer Corps of Engineers within the British Army, the immediate predecessor of the Royal Engineers.source
  • 1722The "Brown Bess" muzzle-loading smoothbore musket becomes the British Army's standard infantry firearm for land combat for more than a century.source
  • 1741May 21 – War of the Austrian Succession: King George II of Great Britain orders the British Army to prepare for an invasion of Prussia to defend his Electorate of Hanover.source
  • 1756June 20 – A garrison of the British Army in India is imprisoned in the Black Hole of Calcutta.source
  • 1761August 29 – Cherokee chief Attakullakulla and British Army officer Major James Grant meet at Fort Prince George in the Province of South Carolina and begin negotiations to end the Anglo-Cherokee War.source
  • 1777April 27 – American Revolutionary War – Battle of Ridgefield: The British Army defeats Patriot militias, galvanizing resistance in the Connecticut Colony.source
  • 1794The Ayrshire (Earl of Carrick's Own) Yeomanry, a British Yeomanry Cavalry Regiment, is formed by the Earl of Cassillis at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire.source
  • 1795April – the British Army is evacuated from Bremen, having been unsuccessful in the Flanders Campaign under Prince Frederick, Duke of York.source
  • 1798The Ayrshire (Earl of Carrick's Own) Yeomanry, a British Army Yeomanry Cavalry Regiment, formed by The Earl of Cassillis at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire in 1794, is adopted onto the British Army List.source

19th century

  • 18159 March – Richard Kelly, 82, British Army officersource
  • 183418 December – Tithe War: "Rathcormac massacre": At Gortroe, near Rathcormac, County Cork, armed Constabulary reinforced by the regular British Army kill at least nine and wound thirty protesters.source
  • 183418 December – Tithe War in Ireland: "Rathcormac massacre": At Gortroe, near Rathcormac, County Cork, armed Constabulary reinforced by the regular British Army kill at least nine and wound thirty protesters against tithes.source
  • 1838December – First Anglo-Afghan War: British and Presidency armies set out from Punjab in support of Shah Shujah Durrani's claim to the throne of Afghanistan.source
  • 1842New pattern musket with percussion cap produced to replace the flintlock in the British Army.source
  • 18424 June – In South Africa, hunter Dick King rides into the British military base in Grahamstown to warn that Boers have besieged Durban. He had set out eleven days earlier. The British Army dispatches a relief force.source
  • 1847April 16 – New Zealand Wars: A minor Māori chief is accidentally shot by a junior British Army officer in Whanganui on New Zealand's North Island, triggering the Wanganui Campaign (which continues until July 23).source
  • 18525 January – the troopship HMS Birkenhead boards British Army recruits at Queenstown. It has insufficient lifeboats.source
  • 1854Florence Nightingale and her team of 38 trained volunteer nurses, having set out on October 21 from England, arrive at Selimiye Barracks in Scutari in the Ottoman Empire, to care for British Army troops wounded in the Crimean War.source
  • 1871November 11 – The last of the British Army leaves Canadasource
  • 1877February 17 – Major General Charles George Gordon of the British Army is appointed Governor-General of the Sudan.source
  • 1881July 1 – General Order 70, the culmination of the Cardwell–Childers reforms of the British Army's organization, comes into effect.source
  • 18811 July – formation, under the Childers Reforms of the British Army, of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), Gordon Highlanders, Highland Light Infantry and Seaforth Highlanders.source
  • 1896January – Fourth Anglo-Ashanti War: British redcoats enter the Ashanti capital, Kumasi, and Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh I is deposed.source
  • 1896January 17 – Fourth Anglo-Ashanti War: British redcoats enter the Ashanti capital, Kumasi, and Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh I is deposed.source
  • 1899April 14 – British Army troops in Hong Kong attack the Walled City of Kowloon, based on intelligence that Chinese Imperial Army troops have been stationed behind the walls to subvert Britain's 1898 lease.source
  • 1899October 20 – In the first major clash of the Second Boer War, the Battle of Talana Hill, the British Army drives the Boers from a hilltop position, but with heavy casualties, including their commanding general Sir Penn Symons.source
  • 1900January 24 – Second Boer War: Battle of Spion Kop – Boer troops defeat the British Army.source

20th century

  • 1902March 7 – Second Boer War: Battle of Tweebosch – South African Boers win their last battle over the British Army, with the capture of a British general and 200 of his men.source
  • 1914July 26 – Howth gun-running: former British civil servant and novelist Erskine Childers and his wife Molly sail into Howth in Ireland and land 2,500 guns for the nationalist Irish Volunteers from a German dealer. British Army troops of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, returning to Dublin having been called out to assist police in attempting to prevent the Volunteers from moving the arms to the city, perpetrate the Bachelor's Walk massacre, firing on a crowd of protestors at Bachelors Walk, killing three; a fourth man dies later from bayonet wounds and more than 37 others are injured.source
  • 1915September 6 – The prototype military tank is first tested by the British Army.source
  • 1916April 24–30 – The Easter Rising occurs in Ireland. Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood proclaim an Irish Republic, and the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army occupy the General Post Office and other buildings in Dublin, before surrendering to the British Army. A total of 485 Irish Volunteers, British soldiers and Irish civilians were killed as well as 2,200 wounded and 16 rebel leaders would be executed.source
  • 1918September 19 – The British Army's Egyptian Expeditionary Force launches the Battle of Megiddo, incorporating the Battle of Sharon, and the Battle of Nablus, an attack in the Judaean Mountains. This day are fought the Battle of Tulkarm, and the Battle of Arara, which break the Ottoman front line stretching from the Mediterranean coast to the Judaean Mountains, while the Battle of Tabsor extends into September 20.source
  • 1919May 27 – Siege of Spin Boldak (Third Anglo-Afghan War). This is the last time the British Army uses an escalade.source
  • 1920March 29 – Sir William Robertson is promoted to Field Marshal, the first man to rise from private (enlisted 1877) to the highest rank in the British Army.source
  • 1921May 25 – Irish War of Independence: The Irish Republican Army occupies and burns The Custom House in Dublin, the centre of local government in Ireland. Five IRA men are killed, and over 80 are captured by the British Army which surrounds the building.source
  • 1921July 11 – The Irish War of Independence ends under the terms of the truce (signed on 9 July) which becomes effective at noon between the British Army and the Irish Republican Army.source
  • 19224 June - The British Army recaptures Belleek, County Fermanagh, from the Irish Republican Army.source
  • 195612 December – The Irish Republican Army launches its Border Campaign with the bombing of a BBC relay transmitter in County Londonderry, burning of a courthouse in Magherafelt by a unit led by 18-year-old Seamus Costello and of an Ulster Special Constabulary post near Newry and blowing up of a half-built British Army barracks at Enniskillen. A raid on Gough Barracks in Armagh is beaten off after a brief exchange of fire.source
  • 197821 June – An outbreak of shooting between Provisional IRA members and the British Army leaves one civilian and three IRA men dead.source
  • 1987May 8 – Loughgall ambush: A 24-man unit of the British Army Special Air Service (SAS) ambushed eight members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) as they mounted an attack on a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) barracks. All IRA members were killed as well as one civilian.source
  • 1988March 6 – Operation Flavius: A Special Air Service team of the British Army shoots dead 3 unarmed members of a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) Active service unit in Gibraltar.source
  • 1990June 1 – Members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army shoot and kill Major Michael Dillon-Lee and Private William Robert Davies of the British Army. Dillon-Lee is killed outside his home in Dortmund, Germany and Davies is killed at a railway station in Lichfield, England.source

21st century

  • 2013May 22 – Off-duty British Army soldier Fusilier Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers is murdered in Woolwich, southeast London, by Islamic terrorists Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale.source

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