Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Pair: Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Meade, 88th Foot, who was severely wounded at Salamanca and afterwards served in India as A.D.C. to General Sir Thomas Reynell

Military General Service 1793-1814, 7 clasps, Fuentes D’Onor, Badajoz, Salamanca, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, Toulouse (F. Meade, Lieut. 88th Foot) clasps widely spaced on a custom-made carriage which is detached from the suspension; Army of India 1799-1826, 1 clasp, Bhurtpoor (Captn. F. Meade, 88th Foot, A.D.C.) short hyphen reverse, officially impressed naming, clasp detached from suspension and loose on ribbon, toned, nearly extremely fine and a unique pair to the 88th (2) £4,000-£5,000

Note: Meade was officially issued with 6 clasps to his M.G.S. medal and is not entitled to the clasp for Nive. His Army of India medal is unique to the 88th Foot.

Frederick Meade was appointed Ensign in the 88th Foot on 26 March 1805; Lieutenant, 30 March 1809; Captain, 7 April 1825; Major, 19 January 1826; Half-pay, 28 August 1827; Lieutenant-Colonel, 23 November 1841.

He served with the 2nd Battalion 88th in the Peninsula from January to November 1810, including the siege of Cadiz, after which he served in the lines of Torres Vedras where he transferred to the 1st Battalion. He then served with 1/88th at Redhina, Casal Nova, Foz d’Arrouce, Sabugal, Fuentes D’Onor, 2nd siege of Badajoz, El Boden, capture of Badajoz, Salamanca (severely wounded), Nivelle, Orthes, Vic Bigorre, and Toulouse. He also served in North America in 1814 and France in 1815. He then proceeded to India as A.D.C. on the staff of Sir Thomas Reynell and took part in the second siege and capture of Bhurtpoor in 1826, under Sir Stapleton Cotton, afterwards Lord Combermere.

William Grattan, in his Adventures with the Connaught Rangers 1809-1814, makes the following mentions of Lieutenant Meade, a little time after his severe wounding at Salamanca:
‘The season was on the wane, summer was almost over, and it was well known that Lord Wellington meditated an attack on the town of Burgos; nevertheless all was tranquillity and gaiety with the troops at Madrid, and many of the sick and wounded from Salamanca reached us. Amongst the number was my friend and companion, Frederick Meade of the 88th. He had been badly wounded in the action of the 22nd, and with his arm in a sling, his wounds still unhealed, and his frame worn down by fatigue and exhaustion, his commanding officer was surprised to see him again so soon with his regiment; but various rumours were afloat as to the advance of the Madrid army upon Burgos, and Meade was not the kind of person likely to be absent from his corps when anything like active service was to be performed by it. Endowed with qualities which few young men in the army could boast of, he soon made his way into the very best society that the capital of Spain could be said to possess. A finished gentleman in the fullest acceptation of the word; young, handsome, speaking the Castilian language well, the French fluently, a first-rate musician, endowed by nature with a fine voice, which had been well cultivated, it is not surprising that he soon became a general favourite. In a word, wherever he went he was the magnet of attraction, and when we quitted Madrid it would have required a train of vehicles much more numerous than would have suited our order of march to convey those ladies who were, and would like to be more closely, attached to him. Poor fellow! he was greatly to blame, but it was not his fault; if the ladies of Madrid liked his face, or his voice, how could he help that? My man, Dan Carsons—and here I must say a word of apology to my friend Meade for coupling their names together—told me when we were on the eve of quitting Madrid, “that he (Carsons) didn’t know how the devil he could get away at-all-at-all, without taking three women, besides his wife Nelly with him.”’

On the subsequent bleak and disorderly retreat into Portugal during the winter of 1812-13, Grattan finds Meade once more:
‘My feet never quitted the shoes in which they were placed, from the moment of the retreat until its close. I knew too well their value, and if I once got my feet out of them (no easy matter), I knew right well it would take some days to get them back again, they were so swollen; and even if I were dead, much less crippled, there were many to be found anxious to stand in my shoes—to boot!
There were others, and many others, as badly off as I was. My friend Meade was obliged to leave his shoes behind him. He tried to walk barefooted for a while, but it was impossible. The gravel so lacerated his feet that he could not move, and he was obliged to make some shift to get a pair in place of those he had abandoned. Captain Graham of the 21st Portuguese, a lieutenant in my regiment, was so worn out with fatigue, barebacked and barefooted, that, on one night of the retreat, having been fortunate enough to get a loaf of bread, he joined me and my companion Meade; but, so unable was he to eat of the food he brought to share with us, that he fell down on the ground and never tasted a morsel of it. It is, therefore, tolerably clear to any man possessing common understanding, that the junior officers of the army, from the neglect of their superiors, were not in a state to do more than they did.
The retreat still continued, but the army was unmolested, and at length, after an absence of so many days, we once more got sight of our baggage. The poor animals that carried it were in a bad state; but they were even better than our cavalry or artillery horses. Of the former, three-fourths of the men were dismounted; and the latter could, with difficulty, show three horses, in place of eight, to a gun.’

H. H. Robinson, the author of The Life of Sir Thomas Picton, made some ill-considered and inaccurate statements about the 88th to which William Grattan took great exception. Consequently he wrote to the then surviving officers, whose replies he published as an appendix of Vol. II of his Adventures with the Connaught Rangers. His old friend Meade was happy to oblige and wrote as follows:

‘Belmont, Innishannon, Aug. 12, 1836.
My dear Friend - Being called upon by you, as a Peninsular man, to state whether I remember any instances having occurred in the 88th Regiment of men going into action deficient of ammunition, and of their having sold their ball cartridges for agua ardiente [moonshine], substituting in lieu thereof pieces of coloured wood, I do hereby declare that, although I served with that corps as a Subaltern during the greater part of the Peninsular campaigns, I never heard of such a practice in the regiment, nor can I believe that such a deception could have been practised without the knowledge of the officers.
Frederick Meade,
Major unattached.’

For related family medals to General Michael Meade, Royal Marines, see Lot 271.