Australian/Canadian Military March - “The British Grenadiers”

The exact origins of the tune are disputed but generally date to the early 17th century. It appears in John Playford’s 1728 collection of dance tunes as “The New Bath”, while Victorian musicologist William Chappell also suggested links to a 1622 work called “Sir Edward Nowell’s Delight”. The debate is best summarized by the composer Ernest Walker in 1907 who described the melody as “three centuries’ evolution of an Elizabethan tune”.

The melody was introduced into Britain as a military march during the 1689–1702 reign of William III and has similarities with one written for Prince John William of Friesland (1687–1711). Henry Grattan Flood suggested as another candidate the 1672 Dutch march “Wilhelmus van Nassouwe”, which in turn was a reworking of a French version from 1568.

“The British Grenadiers” refers to grenadiers in general, not the Grenadier Guards Regiment, and all Fusilier units were entitled to use it. It allegedly commemorates an assault in August 1695 by 700 British grenadiers on the French-held fortress of Namur during the Nine Years War. A tune known as “The Granadeer’s March” was mentioned in a London publication in 1706, although it is not clear that it was the same melody known today. Francis Grose in his 1786 work “Military Antiquities” quoted two lines of the lyrics (“Come let us fill a bumper, and drink a health to those,/Who wear the caps and pouches, and eke the looped clothes”) as part of a “grenadier song” he already considered to be “old”.

It was a popular tune in both Britain and North America throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and remains so. It is most commonly heard today in the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony when the Colour Escort marches into position on Horse Guards Parade.

Like “Rule, Britannia!”, the song is frequently used in film and television to introduce a British setting or character, or indicate stereotypical Britishness.