Beschreibung:

The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals The campaign pair to Colonel N. C. Macleod, Bengal Engineers, one of the ‘explosion party’ at the blowing of the Cabul Gate at the fortress of Ghuznee in July 1839 (a) Ghuznee 1839, unnamed (b) Indian Mutiny 1857-59, no clasp (Lieut. Col. N. C. McLeod, Bengal Engrs.) nearly extremely fine £4000-5000 Footnote Norman Chester Macleod, a scion of the Macleods of Drynoch, was the son of Norman Macleod, B.C.S., the officiating Judge of the Provincial Court at Murshidabad, and was born in Calcutta on 15 June 1813. He was nominated for a Cadetship in the Bengal Engineers in 1830 by N. B. Edmonstone, Esq., on the recommendation of his widowed mother, Eleanora, then residing at Bath. Having attended the Military Seminary at Addiscombe, near Croydon, he was appointed 2nd Lieutenant on 8 December 1831 and passed the following year at Chatham before proceeding to India in August 1833. In October of the latter year he was directed to Delhi to do duty with the Bengal Sappers and Miners and was appointed Acting Assistant Engineer to the Delhi Division in March 1834 till January 1836. Between May 1834 and January 1835, he oversaw the construction of a bridge over the Hindaun River, and in early 1837, he was appointed 2nd Assistant to the Superintendent of Canals West of the Jumna. It was probably during this period that he contracted the ‘fearful jungle fever’ which dogged him for the rest of his days, and which he kept at bay with a vegetable diet and by the use of ‘hydropathic appliances’. On Lord Auckland’s disastrous decision to send an army into Afghanistan to support Shah Soojah, Macleod was attached to the Engineer cadre of the Bengal Column with the Army of the Indus on 21 October 1838, and was appointed to the command of a company of Sappers and Miners. The Bengal Column assembled at Ferozepore under Sir Willoughby Cotton and marched out on 10 December, much hampered by fifty to sixty thousand camp followers. A junction was made with the Bombay Column under Sir John Keane in the Indus delta, and the difficult crossing of the two channels of the river at Rohri effected solely due to the efforts of ‘the relatively junior Engineer officers of the Bengal corps’, Lieutenants Macleod and Robert Pigou (Ritchie 1-53) among them. With great difficulty the Army struggled on in temperatures of over 100° F on the 150-mile journey to Quetta, via the sixty-mile long Bolan Pass, and after a heavy loss in transport animals and baggage to the predatory Baluchi robber bands, the Bengal Column, suffering from the effects of intense heat, inadequate rations and dysentery, arrived at Candahar on 26 April 1839. Keane arrived eight days later with the Bengal Column, and on 27 June the Army staggered on towards Ghuznee, where, according to the Envoy to Afghanistan, Sir William MacNaghten, there would be no resistance. On 21 July, they came within sight of the fortress of Ghuznee, which contrary to all reports had been fortified by Hyder Khan, and was held by a garrison of some four thousand men who immediately opened a heavy fire. The walls were over sixty feet high ruling out the possibility of an assault by escalade and mining operations were impracticable due to the wet ditch which surrounded the place. Furthermore, Keane had left all of his 18-pounder guns at Candahar due to the shortage of draught-animals, the rugged terrain and the false intelligence. He was now in a critical situation, he only had two days’ rations in hand and no more than one day’s supply of ammunition for his light artillery. Either side of him lay the two armies of Ghilzai tribesmen who had shadowed him since leaving Candahar, and beyond Ghuznee lay the main Afghan army under Dost Mohamed. In his dilemma, Keane consulted his Chief Engineer, Captain George Thomson Bengal Engineers, who pronounced there were two alternatives. Either Keane could mask Ghuznee and advance to fight Dost Mohamed or carry the fortress by a