The 4th Division was originally formed in 1809 by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, as part of the Anglo-Portuguese Army, for service in the Peninsular War.

[1] The order of battle from January 1812 was as follows:[2] Major General Sir Charles Colville (to April 1812) Major General Lowry Cole (from June 1812) At the Battle of Waterloo it was tasked with holding Wellington's right flank and, with the exception of its 4th brigade, took no active part in the fighting, but did capture the town of Cambrai afterwards.

In his novel Les Misérables Victor Hugo credits Colville with asking for the surrender of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo and receiving General Cambronne's reply of "Merde".

[7][8]) It was only after the Relief of Ladysmith in March 1900 that the 4th Division under the command of Lieutenant-General the Hon Neville Lyttelton was formed from the garrison and joined the Natal Field Force.

The division fought an engagement with the Boers on the way to Amersfoort on 7 August, then carried out a 10-day march via Ermelo, skirmishing every day, with the opposition increasing as the column advanced.

On 22 August Walter Kitchener was detached with part of his brigade to clear some troublesome Kopjes on the flank, and next day section of 21st Battery, RFA, was heavily engaged with Boer guns.

Lyttelton's division was reduced to five-and-a-half battalions and a Mounted infantry detachment for Buller's advance to Lydenburg in September.

[19][20] As a permanently established Regular Army division it was amongst the first to be sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force at the outbreak of the First World War.

Artillery Engineers[24] Pioneers Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 the 4th Division, under Major General Dudley Johnson, who had won the Victoria Cross (VC) in the Great War, was sent to the border between France and Belgium as part of Lieutenant-General Alan Brooke's II Corps of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

After the disastrous Battle of France in May–June 1940, where the division sustained heavy losses, and the evacuation at Dunkirk, it spent the next two years in the United Kingdom on anti-invasion duties and training for its next deployment.

[25] The division departed for North Africa in early 1943, arriving in Tunisia in March, coming under Lieutenant-General John Crocker's IX Corps, part of the British First Army.

[26] After the Axis defeat in North Africa, in May 1943, the division was to remain there for the next 9 months, during which time it was converted back into a standard infantry division, with the 28th Infantry Brigade, consisting mainly of Regular Army battalions who had served on garrison duties in Gibraltar, arriving to replace the 21st Tank Brigade.

During the battle of Cassino Captain Richard Wakeford of the 2/4th Battalion, Hampshire Regiment was awarded the Victoria Cross.

Two years later, following the disbanding of different BAOR formations and further restructuring, the division comprised the 4th (Guards), the 5th Infantry, and the 20th Armoured Brigades.

The approach intended to provide greater flexibility in tailoring forces to meet unforeseen events and allow for an overall reduction in the size of a division by 700 men.

This framework sought to restructure the British military based on the new strategic situation, allow for further cost saving measures to be enacted, and to reduce the BAOR by half.

[61] Alongside the 2nd and the 5th Divisions, the 4th was dubbed a "regenerative" formation; holding administrative and training responsibilities for all non-deployed forces located within its geographical boundaries (the south east and parts of eastern England, excluding the Greater London area).

On 1 April 2000, the boundaries of the division were expanded so that it then over oversaw London District (for budgetary purposes) and it took command of the 49th (Eastern) Brigade.

[48] The Strategic Defence and Security Review of 2010 identified that the army had had become optimised for operations in Afghanistan, but in order to meet potential future threats would need to be reorgnised to become more flexible.