(Formerly also in sing.) A body of picked foot-soldiers for special service as a guard. Now the proper name of three infantry regiments, the Coldstream, Grenadier, and Scots Fusilier Guards.
1675. trans. Machiavelli’s Prince (Rtldg., 1883). 289. His German foot-guards consisted formerly of 300 men, with each of them a pension of ten francs a month, and two suits of apparel a year.
1678. trans. Gaya’s Art of War, I. 75. When the Princes of blood … and the Generals of an Army pass through any Town, the Governours furnish them with a Foot-guard.
1703. Steele, Tend. Husb., II. i. The joiner of the Foot-guards has made his Fortune by it.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., IV. 588. A strong body of infantry, the English footguards leading the way, stormed, after a bloody conflict, the outworks on the Brussels side.
