Beschreibung:

The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals The Indian Mutiny medal to General Sir Thomas Reed G.C.B., 62nd Foot, a veteran of Waterloo who became Provisional Commander-in-Chief in Bengal following the deaths of Generals Anson and Barnard, and was later Colonel of the 44th (Essex) Regiment Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Delhi (Majr. Genl. T. Reed, C.B. Actg. Provl. C. in C. in Bengal) nearly extremely fine £2000-2500 Footnote Thomas Reed the son of Thomas Reed of Dublin, and his wife, Eliza, daughter of Colonel Sir Francis Buchannan, was born in Dublin on 11 September 1796. Educated at Sandhurst, he was commissioned Cornet in the 12th Light Dragoons on 26 August 1813, and served in the Netherlands campaign of 1815, being present with his regiment at the battle of Waterloo on 18 June. Promoted Captain on 25 March 1824, in H.M’s 31st Regiment of Foot, he transferred to the 53rd Regiment on 7 October following, and became Major on 15 June 1826. He was placed on Half-Pay on 11 August 1829, and remained unattached until 30 May 1834, when he was brought into H.M’s 62nd as Lieutenant-Colonel, joining them the next year in Burma. In 1840, the 62nd were ordered to Hazaribagh, 2,000 feet up in the hills of Bihar, and in July 1841, to Calcutta where Reed took over as Officer Commanding Troops at Fort William. In November 1841, he was appointed an A.D.C. to the Queen, and in 1842 became Brevet Colonel. In July of the latter year the regiment, having been ravaged by cholera, was relieved at Fort William and set off in boats up the Ganges for Dinapore, Reed being accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth Jane. ‘All went well till 6 September when a violent storm arose at two o’clock in the morning. The flotilla was moored to the bank opposite a place called Sickree Gully, near Bhagalpur. Many of the boats were blown from the shore and swamped, Lieutenants E. Scobell and C. H. Gason of the Flank Companies being drowned, together with forty-three of the Rank and File and eighteen women and children ... Colonel and Mrs Reed had the narrowest escape, their pinnace being blown loose and on to her beam-ends. The occupants managed to scramble out and cling to the sides, the Colonel and his wife doing so through the window of the after-cabin. In this position they drifted down with the current for three hours, the boat rolling from side to side but fortunately never righting, in which case she must have sunk. There were people on the banks and plenty of boats there, but their cries for help were ignored. At daybreak the dinghy was discovered, still attached to the stern by a rope; scrambling into this they gradually righted the pinnace and half baled her out, and all were safely landed at Rajmahal.’ ‘About fifty of the rank and file, who had also drifted downstream in their boats, collected here. A steamer was sent from Bhagalpur in which, with the Colonel, they overtook the Regiment. The Colours and the regimental records had been in the pinnace, and all went to the bottom of the river. In May the following year, they were recovered by a party sent from the Regiment, but the Colours had been nearly destroyed, and most of the records were indecipherable.’ At Dinapore on 18 November 1844, new Colours were presented by Elizabeth Reed. Under Lord Hardinge’s policy of strengthening the garrisons along the frontier with the Punjab, the 62nd received orders to start for the north west in December 1844, and, moving up country by way of Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore and Delhi, reached Ferozepore in March 1845, where they joined the division under Sir John Littler (Ritchie 2-33). On 21 November, the Sikhs took the step which Hardinge had foreseen, and left Lahore with the intention of invading British territory. Reed’s regiment slept fully dressed with their muskets beside their cots. On 11 December, the Sikhs commenced crossing the Sutlej fourteen miles above Ferozepore to the north east and by next day had some 12,000 men on the near side