Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part I)

The Sutlej medal to Colonel C. C. Taylor, 29th Foot, who was awarded the C.B. for the Canadian Rebellion 1837, was wounded at Ferozeshuhur in command of the 29th (Worcesters), and killed in action at Sobraon as Brigadier in command of the 3rd Brigade; as Sir Hugh Gough reported in his despatch, he was ‘one of the most gallant and intelligent officers in the army,’ who ‘fell in this fight at the head of his Brigade in close encounter with the enemy, and covered with honourable wounds’

Sutlej 1845-46, for Ferozeshuhur 1845, 1 clasp, Sobraon (Lieut. Col. Chas. C. Taylor C.B. 29th Regt.) good very fine
£4000-5000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals.

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Charles Cyril Taylor, born circa 1805, entered H.M’s 46th Regiment of Foot as an Ensign on 26 March 1823. He was the son of the gallant Colonel Charles Douglas Taylor, 20th Dragoons, who was killed in action at Vimiera in August 1808. Proceeding to India, the young Charles Taylor joined the regiment at Bellary at the end of the year, and went with it the following spring to Cannanore. On 26 May 1824 he was promoted Lieutenant, and in 1826 returned home on leave. While in Europe he was advanced to the rank of Captain and on 19 September 1826 he exchanged into the 20th Foot who were then in India. He joined that corps at Poona in the following year and, from the following September until January 1828, he commanded the Light Company in operations against the Rajah of Kholapur. In 1829, he was made Brigade Major at Poona where he remained until 1831 when rejoined the 20th Foot at Belgaum. On 27 September 1831 he was promoted Major and the next year went on three years leave to Europe. He returned to the regiment at Belgaum and went on leave again in 1836.

The 20th Foot having returned home, he rejoined the regiment at Canterbury, and on 16 June 1836, he was made Lieutenant-Colonel. But a reduction in the establishment resulted in him being placed on half-pay. He remained in that situation until 1 January 1838, when he was re-employed on ‘Particular Service’; namely the suppression of a rebellion which had broken out in Canada during the preceding year as the result of the frequent conflicts between the elected Assemblies and the nominated Councils. In November 1838, about four thousand insurgents under the command of Dr Robert Nelson, a Dr Cote and a Mr Gagnon, crossed into Canada from the United States and concentrated at Napierville. Major-General Sir James Macdonell moved immediately against them but owing to the ‘badness of the weather and the unfavourable state of the roads’ did not reach Napierville until the 10th by which time the insurgents had dispersed. Earlier, however, Nelson had detached a force from the main body at Napierville to open communictions with the United States, in the neighbourhood of Odell on the Richelieu. This force was met on the road by a party of about two hundred loyal volunteers under Taylor, who signally defeated them and drove them across the frontier, killing eleven in the field and taking seven prisoner. A field piece and three hundred stand of arms were also captured.
On the 9th, Taylor and his volunteers learnt of the approach of a gang of 1200 raiders, under Nelson, who were retreating from Napierville. Taylor immediately took up a defensive position in the church at Odell. The insurgents made a vigorous attack upon this position but after two and a half hours were compelled to retire having lost fifty killed and an equal number of wounded. The loss to Taylor’s force comprised one officer and five men killed and one officer and eight men wounded. For this and other distinguished services on several occasions in Canada, Taylor was created a Companion of the Bath in March 1839. He continued on service in Canada until the summer of 1843 when he returned home preparatory to taking up the appointment of Lieutenant-Colonel of the 29th Foot, then serving in India.

He arrived at Calcutta in February 1844, and joined the 29th at Ghazipur. The following year the regiment was at Kasauli when on the outbreak of the First Sikh War it received orders to join Sir Hugh Gough’s Army of the Sutlej. On 13 December Taylor was appointed by Gough, who was still several days’ march away, to the command of the 3rd Brigade (H.M’s 29th and the 45th N.I.) in Major-General W. R. Gilbert’s 2nd Division. On nearing the fortified town of Wadni, orders were received to reduce the place on account of the inhabitants refusal a few days earlier to provision part of the British force. These orders were countermanded when it became clear that the rival armies would meet at Moodkee on the 18th and accordingly Taylor and the 29th Foot hurried on. They did not reach the Army of the Sutlej, however, until the evening of the 19th when they learnt to their disappointment that Gough had already driven the Sikhs from the field of Moodkee.



On 21 December Gough’s army advanced across the battlefield, still strewn with dead, towards the enemy now occupying a series of formidable entrenchments at Ferozeshuhur. Having effected a junction with the Ferozepore Division under Sir John Littler (qv), Gough drew up the army with the 2nd Division posted on the right front. The action commenced an hour before sunset and the 2nd Division advanced in the teeth of a heavy fire of shell, grape shot and musketry. As darkness fell, Taylor, whose charger had aready been shot from under him, was ‘struck by a round shot on the side, and suffered a good deal from the effects of the blow and shock together’, and, having been removed to the field hospital, ‘He was laid on the ground with the rest of the wounded, and later in the evening, having been attended to, and feeling better, went away on a gun carriage’.

The following morning the attack was resumed and at length the weary troops carried each of the entrenchments at the point of the bayonet. Thereafter, the Sikhs re-crossed the Sutlej, and Gough, having taken delivery of the siege train and reserve ammunition sent up from Delhi, followed. On 1 January 1846 Taylor’s brigade was ordered to advance to a point close to the strong position taken up by the enemy at Sobraon. This forward post, known as Chota Sobraon, was occupied by two companies, while the remainder of the brigade encamped a short distance away in the rear. On the 26th, Taylor received new orders and his brigade, with a troop of horse artillery and a regiment of irregular cavalry, was detached to co-operate with Sir Harry Smith’s force, which had marched out from Gough’s main camp towards Ludihana a few days earlier. At Dharmkot, however, heavy firing was heard from the direction of Aliwal and soon afterwards a messenger arrived with the news of Smith’s victory over Ranjur Singh. Next morning Taylor commenced the march back to rejoin Gough.

Gough, having been rejoined by Smith and the heavy ordnance, decided to attack the enemy’s position at Sobraon on 10 February, and in the small hours Taylor’s brigade (now comprising H.M’s 29th, 41st N.I. and 68th N.I.) moved cautiously forward to re-occupy its former outpost at Chota Sobraon. A thick haze covered the initial advance, but as dawn broke the Sikhs opened a smart fire on Gilbert’s Division, which, facing the strongest part of the enemy defences, was ordered into a neighbouring nullah for shelter. At 10 a.m. the 2nd Division received orders for a general advance in conjunction with the 1st Division. Taylor’s brigade advanced in line for about three quarters of a mile under a heavy fire from a battery of thirteen guns and occupied a ravine about 70 yards from the entrenchments prior to delivering the assault. With a wild yell the 29th charged, racing across the intervening ground and outsripping the native regiments. Nothing could be seen of the enemy except the muzzles of their guns issuing a withering and constant discharge of grape. With the 29th lacking support from the native regiments, Taylor ordered the brigade back to the shelter of the ravine for a brief respite. He then led a second charge, his troops maddened by the sight of the Sikh infantry emerging from the entrenchments to cut the throats of the wounded who had fallen in the first rush. But once again the assault was repulsed, and the men returned to the ravine. Undaunted, Taylor rallied the brigade for a third charge, and placing himself at the head of the 29th Foot galloped forward. On closing with the entrenchment he received a cut across the face, and then when almost on top of the Sikh guns he was shot in the head and killed.

On 14 February, Lord Hardinge wrote in his General Order: ‘The army has also sustained a heavy loss by the death of Brigadier Taylor, commanding the 3d brigade of the 2d division, a most able officer, and very worthy to have been at the head of so distinguished a corps as Her Majesty’s 29th regiment, by which he was well beloved and respected.’ Likewise, Sir Hugh Gough recorded in his despatch written at Camp Kussor a day earlier: ‘Brigadier Taylor, C.B. one of the most gallant and intelligent officers in the army, to whom I have felt deeply indebted on many occasions, fell in this fight at the head of his brigade in close encounter with the enemy, and covered with honourable wounds’ ... ‘Brigadier Taylor, Her Majesty’s 29th, fell nobly as has already been told, in the discharge of his duty. He is himself beyond the reach of earthly praise; but it is my earnest desire that his memory may be honoured in his fall, and that his regiment, the army with which he served, and his country, may know that no other officer held a higher place, in my poor estimation, for gallantry and skill than Brigadier Taylor.’ For his services at Ferozeshuhur, Taylor was appointed an Aide-de-Camp to Queen Victoria and given the rank of Colonel in the Army. Notification of this honour, however, did not appear until two months after he was killed at Sobraon. Colonel Charles Taylor is commemorated on the memorial in Worcester Cathedral to the members of the Worcestershire Regiment who fell in the Sutlej Campaign, and also on a memorial tablet in Canterbury Cathedral.

Refs: Soldier’s of the Raj (De Rhé-Philipe); History of Thos. Farrington’s Regiment, subsequently designated The 29th (Worcestershire) Foot, 1694 to 1891 (Everard).