The British 1st Foot Guards owe their modern name to a single evening. At about 7:30 PM on June 18, 1815, the head of Napoleon's Imperial Guard — the Chasseurs who had never been beaten — climbed the ridge at Waterloo toward Wellington's line. Maitland's brigade of Foot Guards had been lying down behind the crest. As the French came on, they rose at the order, leveled, and fired into the column at point-blank range. The Imperial Guard recoiled and broke, and the battle broke with it. In commemoration of beating Napoleon's grenadiers, the regiment was renamed the First or Grenadier Regiment of Foot Guards — the Grenadier Guards — and given the bearskin to wear.

The figure is an ensign — the most junior officer in the battalion, and the man who carried the Colour into action, where it served as the rallying point and so drew the enemy's fire. He wears the red coat with blue Guards facings, grey campaign trousers, and the black shako, sword drawn, raising the Regimental Colour with its Union field and battle honors — Corunna, Barrosa, Talavera — worked in gold. The Colour was never carried alone. Guard it with a 1st Foot Guards Sergeant with Pike, dress the company beside it with a British 1st Foot Guard Standing Firing, and set the whole scene against the French Imperial Guard it faced at Waterloo.

W. Britain model 36142. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure with Regimental Colour on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.