Beschreibung:

The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals The General Officer’s Gold Medal awarded to Lieutenant-General Sir George Wood, K.C.B., ‘The Royal Bengal Tiger’, commander of the Bengal Division at the Capture of Java General Officers’ Army Large Gold Medal, for the capture of Java (Major Genl. George Wood) complete with gold swivel-ring suspension and gold ribbon buckle, brilliant extremely fine and rare £15000-20000 Footnote A total of 86 General Officers’ large gold medals were awarded, including five for the capture of Java. George Wood, ‘known in the Army as The Royal Bengal Tiger’, was the third son of Alexander Wood of Burncroft, J.P. and Procurator Fiscal of Perthshire, and Jean, daughter of Robert Ramsay of Banff. Wood was born circa 1752 and admitted to the Honourable East India Company’s Service as a ‘Country Cadet’ on 8 October 1771, four years after Clive’s departure from India. In August 1765 the British in Calcutta became masters of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, under the terms of a famous arrangement known as the Grant of the Diwani by which Shah Alam, the ruler of the disintegrating Mogul empire, assigned to the Company the right to collect revenue in exchange for an annual payment of twenty-six lakhs of rupees (£260,000). With a frontier to defend against troublesome neighbours, it was desirable to form an alliance with the Vizier of Oudh, Shuja-ud-daula, whose territory formed a buffer between the Bengal frontier and the rich tract at base of the Himilayas held by the Rohillas, a loose confederation of Afghan chiefs. In 1772 the Mahrattas, eager to avenge the slaughter inflicted upon them by the Rohilla cavalry at the the Battle of Panipat in 1761, invaded Rohilkhand, devastating the country and making no secret of the fact that they intended to carry the war into Oudh. The Rohillas appealed to the Vizier who in turn appealed to the British, who were honour bound to support the Nawab Vizier against the common Mahratta enemy. It appears that in late 1772 and early 1773 Cadet Wood accompanied the British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Robert Barker to a meeting between the Oudh forces and the Rohillas, as a result of which the Mahrattas hastily withdrew. The Vizier then demanded the payment of forty lakhs that the Rohilla captain, Rahmat Khan, had agreed to pay in exchange for military aid, but was unable to raise. Taking advantage of the rift, the Mahrattas seized the initiative and formed an alliance with the Rohillas. The Vizier, having set his sights firmly on annexing Rohilkhand, reiterated his demand for British support and sweetened the pill by offering to pay the costs of war. Warren Hastings, the Governor (or President) at Calcutta, who was shortly to become the first ‘Governor-General of all our Indian territories’, entered into a treaty with the Vizier at Benares, and, in the spring of 1774, Wood, who had been commissioned Ensign in the 2nd Bengal Europeans on 22 May 1773, entered Rohilkhand with a British force under Colonel Champion, and on St. George’s Day, 23 April, 1774, took part in the utter defeat of the Rohillas at Minranpur Katra. Having described the flight of the Rohillas from the ‘Battle of St. George’ in his despatch, Champion made plain his opinion of the Vizier and his troops: ‘And now came on the after-game of the few horse the Nabob sent to the field. No sooner was the enemy irrecoverably broken than they pushed after them, and got much plunder in money, elephants and camels ... Their camp equippage, which was all standing, and proves we came on them by surprise, with whatever effects they could not carry off, fell a sacrifice to the ravages of the Nabob’s people, whilst the Company’s troops, in regular order in their ranks, most justly observed, “We have the honour of the day and these banditti the profit.”’ Three months later, during the so-called ‘depopulation’ of Rohilkhand, which in fact amounted to no more than the banishment of some twenty thousand Rohilla Afghans fo