Orders, Decorations and Medals

Pair: Private Thomas Hassal, 23rd Light Dragoons, a casualty of the regiment’s ill-fated charge at Talavera, where he was wounded and taken prisoner

Military General Service 1793-1814, 1 clasp, Talavera (Thomas Hassle, 23rd Light Dragoons); Waterloo 1815 (Thomas Hassal, 23rd Reg. Light Dragoons) fitted with replacement steel clip and ring suspension, the second heavily polished and with mount marks in reverse exergue, overall edge bruising and contact marks, therefore good fine or better (2)
£3500-4000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The collection of Medals formed by the Late Clive Nowell.

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Thomas Hassal (Hassle) was born at Oberton, Shropshire, and enlisted for the 23rd Light Dragoons at Guildford on 12 November 1803, aged 17, for unlimited service. He served as a private continuously until discharged on 24 November 1817, in consequence of ‘the disbandment of the regiment and wound of the hip from gun shot. He had ‘served in the Peninsula and Flanders, particularly at the Battles of Talavera, where he was wounded, and at Waterloo’. Thomas Hassle and many others who had become casualties was taken prisoner by the French at Talavera.

At the Battle of Talavera the 23rd Light Dragoons made their famous and costly charge against three lines of cavalry. Napier records 'Sir Arthur ordered Anson's brigade of cavalry, composed of the 23rd Light Dragoons and the First German Hussars, to charge the head of these columns [Villatte's Division, some grenadiers and two regiments of light cavalry]. They went off at a canter, increasing their speed as they advanced and riding head long against the enemy; but in a few moments, a hollow cleft which was not perceptible at a distance intervened, and at the same moment the French, throwing themselves into squares, opened their fire. Colonel Arentschild, commanding the hussars, an officer whom forty years’ experience had made a master in his art, promptly reined up at the brink, exclaiming in his broken phrase, ‘I vill not kill my young mans!’ The 23rd found the chasm more practicable, the English blood is hot, and the regiment plunged down without a check, men and horses rolling over each other in dreadful confusion: yet the survivors, untamed, mounted the opposite bank by twos and threes’ and ‘fell with inexpressible violence upon a brigade of French chasseurs in the rear. The combat was fierce, yet short, for Victor seeing the advance of the English, had detached his Polish lancers and Westphalia light horse to support Villatte, and these fresh men coming up when the 23rd, already over matched, could scarcely hold up against the chasseurs, entirely broke them.

In consequence of losing about half its strength in this action, 102 killed and 105 taken prisoner, the 23rd Light Dragoons were withdrawn to England to recruit and never returned to the Peninsula as a regiment during the war in the Peninsular. In the Waterloo campaign of 1815, on 16 June, the 23rd were rushed up from Brussels to Quatre Bras and the following day were employed with Dornberg's 3rd Cavalry Brigade in covering the retreat of Allied troops. At Waterloo on the 18th, the 23rd Light Dragoons were posted in the rear of Halkett's 5th Infantry Brigade in the Allied right centre, and during that long and dangerous day made several important charges with a ‘high degree of steadiness and determined bravery’. Sold with copy discharge papers.