Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Waterloo 1815 (Lieut. William Lindsey, 10th Royal Reg. Hussars.) fitted with original steel clip and silver bar suspension, and later silver ribbon buckle, very fine and better £3,000-£4,000

William Henry Bingham Lindsey/Lindsay was the third son of Thomas Lindsey of Hollymount, County Mayo, by Lady Margaret Bingham, daughter of the 1st Earl of Lucan. He was appointed a Cornet in the 10th Hussars on 12 January 1815, and was promoted to Lieutenant on 15 June, immediately prior to the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo.

His services on the 18th June are described in the Memoirs of the Tenth Royal Hussars:

‘On the morning of the 18th a reconnoitring party was sent out from the Sixth Cavalry Brigade, by order of Sir Hussey Vivian, to guard the left flank of the British army, which was much exposed, and also in hopes of gaining some intelligence of the near approach of the Prussians. This patrol was taken from the 10th Hussars, and was under the command of Major Taylor, who proceeded with it in the direction of Ohain, and placed his picquets at Ter la Haye and Frischermont. About ten in the morning a Prussian patrol was met with, when the officer in charge of it informed Major Taylor that General Bülow was at St. Lambert, advancing with his corps d’armée. Major Taylor immediately despatched this important intelligence by Lieutenant Lindsay to the Duke’s head-quarters, besides reporting it to Sir Hussey Vivian.’

The same work also published a letter from Lieutenant Lindsay to his mother, Lady G. Lindsay, written on the field of Waterloo on Monday, 19th June, and sealed with a wafer made of pinched bread:

‘My Dearest Mother, - We have just had the happiness of giving the French the most complete drubbing they ever got, having beaten them on the heights of Waterloo, destroyed nearly their whole army, taking nearly an hundred pieces of cannon. They drove in a piquet of the Tenth on which I happened to be at ten o’clock, and a charge of the Tenth on the 18th decided the fate of the day. Nearly the whole of their officers have either been killed or wounded, and, thank God, I escaped without the least accident. I write this in the most shocking place you ever saw, but you must be satisfied with it till I can write a fuller account. We are about to pursue them immediately. The Prussians have saved us that trouble, for they have followed them. Eight officers are the whole we can muster. Most are killed or wounded. Adieu, my dearest mother, with thousand loves to all.’

Lieutenant Lindsey was placed on half-pay on 25 May 1816, but exchanged into the 17th Light Dragoons on 22 June 1820, who he joined in India where they had been stationed since 1808. He died at the village of Booisud on the river Mhye in India on 1 June 1822; he had been absent from the regiment since April 1822 ‘on private affairs’ in Bombay, and was on his way back to join it.

Sold with comprehensive research, including copied Commander-in-Chief’s Memoranda for his various appointments.