Orders, Decorations and Medals

Pair: Major-General G. Rigaud, 60th Rifles

South Africa 1834-53 (Capt., 2nd Bn. 60th Rifles); China 1857-60, 2 clasps, Taku Forts 1860, Pekin 1860 (Major, 2nd Bn. 60th Rl. Rifles), officially impressed naming, edge bruising and contact marks, good fine (2) £600-700

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to the 60th Rifles and King’s Royal Rifle Corps.

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Collection

Ex Elson Collection.

Gibbes Rigaud was born in Richmond, Surrey, the third son of Stephen Peter Rigaud, the Astronomer and Radcliff Observer at Oxford. Commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in 1841; he was promoted to Lieutenant in 1844 and Captain in 1850. With the 2nd Battalion 60th Rifles he served in the 3rd Kaffir War, 1850-53. Promoted to Major in 1858, he sailed to India in that year and was instrumental in quelling a mutiny which broke out on board the troopship which had become becalmed. He then served in the 2nd China War, for which he was mentioned in despatches and received the brevet of Lieutenant-Colonel. Rigaud was promoted to Colonel in 1868 and attained the rank of Major-General in 1873. Retiring on Full Pay to the City of Oxford, he spent his remaining years writing, and received an honorary degree of M.A. from Oxford University. Amongst his works was Celer et Audax - a history of the 60th Rifles in the Peninsular War. Sold with copied research including an account of the fateful voyage to India in 1858; also with the book Celer et Audax, a Sketch of the Services of the Fifth Battalion Sixtieth Regiment (Rifles), by Major-General Gibbes Rigaud, originally published in 1879, this was a Trotman edition, published in 2002 and limited to 75 copies.