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

The General Officer’s Gold Medal awarded to Lieutenant-General Sir George Wood, K.C.B., ‘The Royal Bengal Tiger’, commander of the Bengal Division at the Capture of Java

General Officers’ Army Large Gold Medal, for the capture of Java (Major Genl. George Wood) complete with gold swivel-ring suspension and gold ribbon buckle, brilliant extremely fine and rare £15000-20000

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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Collection

A total of 86 General Officers’ large gold medals were awarded, including five for the capture of Java.

George Wood, ‘known in the Army as The Royal Bengal Tiger’, was the third son of Alexander Wood of Burncroft, J.P. and Procurator Fiscal of Perthshire, and Jean, daughter of Robert Ramsay of Banff. Wood was born circa 1752 and admitted to the Honourable East India Company’s Service as a ‘Country Cadet’ on 8 October 1771, four years after Clive’s departure from India. In August 1765 the British in Calcutta became masters of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, under the terms of a famous arrangement known as the Grant of the Diwani by which Shah Alam, the ruler of the disintegrating Mogul empire, assigned to the Company the right to collect revenue in exchange for an annual payment of twenty-six lakhs of rupees (£260,000). With a frontier to defend against troublesome neighbours, it was desirable to form an alliance with the Vizier of Oudh, Shuja-ud-daula, whose territory formed a buffer between the Bengal frontier and the rich tract at base of the Himilayas held by the Rohillas, a loose confederation of Afghan chiefs. In 1772 the Mahrattas, eager to avenge the slaughter inflicted upon them by the Rohilla cavalry at the the Battle of Panipat in 1761, invaded Rohilkhand, devastating the country and making no secret of the fact that they intended to carry the war into Oudh. The Rohillas appealed to the Vizier who in turn appealed to the British, who were honour bound to support the Nawab Vizier against the common Mahratta enemy.

It appears that in late 1772 and early 1773 Cadet Wood accompanied the British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Robert Barker, to a meeting between the Oudh forces and the Rohillas, as a result of which the Mahrattas hastily withdrew. The Vizier then demanded the payment of forty lakhs that the Rohilla captain, Rahmat Khan, had agreed to pay in exchange for military aid, but was unable to raise. Taking advantage of the rift, the Mahrattas seized the initiative and formed an alliance with the Rohillas. The Vizier, having set his sights firmly on annexing Rohilkhand, reiterated his demand for British support and sweetened the pill by offering to pay the costs of war. Warren Hastings, the Governor (or President) at Calcutta, who was shortly to become the first ‘Governor-General of all our Indian territories’, entered into a treaty with the Vizier at Benares, and, in the spring of 1774, Wood, who had been commissioned Ensign in the 2nd Bengal Europeans on 22 May 1773, entered Rohilkhand with a British force under Colonel Champion, and on St. George’s Day, 23 April, 1774, took part in the utter defeat of the Rohillas at Minranpur Katra.

Having described the flight of the Rohillas from the ‘Battle of St. George’ in his despatch, Champion made plain his opinion of the Vizier and his troops: ‘And now came on the after-game of the few horse the Nabob sent to the field. No sooner was the enemy irrecoverably broken than they pushed after them, and got much plunder in money, elephants and camels ... Their camp equippage, which was all standing, and proves we came on them by surprise, with whatever effects they could not carry off, fell a sacrifice to the ravages of the Nabob’s people, whilst the Company’s troops, in regular order in their ranks, most justly observed, “We have the honour of the day and these banditti the profit.”’

Three months later, during the so-called ‘depopulation’ of Rohilkhand, which in fact amounted to no more than the banishment of some twenty thousand Rohilla Afghans found to be ‘in arms’ from a population of one million, Wood, according to his own account: ‘Was personally detached with a Company of Irregular Infantry to procure grain for the army, which service I performed, though under the most difficult and often perilous situations and circumstances, in so satisfactory and plentiful a manner as to call forth the thanks of the Commander-in-Chief for the zeal and activity I had manifested on this occasion.’ He remained in Rohilkhand for two more years and in 1777 was ‘employed on survey work’. The following year, having been transferred to the 3rd Europeans, he was placed in command of a detachment ‘on the river below Calcutta on various duties’, for which he received ‘some commendation from the Government’.

Promoted Lieutenant on 19 May 1778, Wood next took the field on the occasion of First Mahratta War in 1780 and, holding the appointment of Staff-Adjutant, was ‘present in the trenches at the siege and capture, by storm, of Fort Lohar’. He was then appointed A.D.C. to Major William Popham and took part in the capture ‘by surprise and escalade’ of the Fortress at Gwalior on 3 August, which being ‘hitherto esteemed impregnable’ was one of the oustanding feats of the war. Early the next year he was present with Lieutenant-Colonel John Carnac’s force at the capture of Sipri and on 15 February 1781 was appointed Assistant Quarter-Master-General to that detachment. Wood’s autobiographical sketch continues: ‘1781 to 1782. Was employed in the province of Malwah, the whole of the campaign being most arduous and interesting, as though on our advance we had only about 15,000 Mahratta horse with some rocket men opposing us, yet before it was concluded, Scindia with his whole army had joined against us, comprising by his own account 60,000 cavalry of different descriptions, including 12,000 Pindaries, with a train of artillery and three battalions of regulars under French officers, armed, clothed and disciplined after our manner.’ Owing to the imperilled predicament of the Madras Presidency, however, from a more dangerous adversary, Hyder Ali of Mysore, operations in the north were hastily brought to a close in May 1782, and a peace concluded by which the British surrendered their territorial gains.

On 14 January 1784 Wood was promoted Captain and later in the year appointed Assistant Quarter-Master General to the force which accompanied Governor-General Warren Hastings to Lucknow to recover monies owed to the British by Shuja-ud-daula’s weak and self-indulgent successor Asaf-ud-daula. Wood’s daughter, Mrs Montagu, states in her privately published Memorials of the Family of Wood of Largo (1863) that between her father ‘and Warren Hastings there appears to have existed a personal friendship’ and supports this by saying that when Hastings was impeached, ‘and apphrehended difficulty in regard to meeting the heavy expenses of his trial in England, our father proposed that his friends and adherents in Bengal should make a subscription for his aid, offering on his own part, I think, a considerable sum, but his proposal was not responded to.’

In July 1787, Wood was serving with the 2nd Battalion Sepoys, and following ten years service at stations in the Lower, Upper and Central Provinces of Bengal was promoted Major on 30 October 1797. In July of the following year he was serving with the 2/6th Native Infantry, and in 1798-99 was present with ‘the army under Sir James Craig when the Shah of Cabul was threatening to invade Hindostan’. Advanced to Lieutenant-Colonel on 29 May 1800, Wood was next actively employed during the closing stages of the Second Mahratta War: ‘1804 to 1807. Was employed with my battalion [2/19th Native Infantry] for the cover of Mirzapore during the latter part of the Mahratta war, and in expelling the inroad of a predatory force which came through the Rewah passes in 1806.’ Wood was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant on 27 September 1807, and on 25 April 1808 was made Colonel. From 1808 to 1810 he was on furough in Europe.

In 1811 the eastern repercussions of the Napoleonic Wars obliged the then Governor-General, Lord Minto, to mount an expedition for the capture of Java from some 20,000 troops under the French General Jansens. On 4 June of that year Wood was appointed Major-General and given command of the Bengal Division forming part of the 12,000-strong expeditionary force which landed at Chillinching on 4 August. On the 10th the enemy was driven from Weltervreeden back into an entrenched position on the heights of Meester Cornelis. On the morning of the 26th the British assault went in, and, after a number of redoubts had been captured at bayonet point, the enemy was completely defeated. Wood’s eldest brother Sir Mark Wood, Bart., writing from his house in Pall Mall in 1815, told the Earl of Buckinghamshire in a resumé of George’s military career that in consequence of ‘his gallant conduct at the capture of Java, the Prince Regent was pleased to testify his approbation, and to honour him with the medal of a general officer’.

Minto was succeeded by the Prince Regent’s ‘monkey-faced friend’ Lord Moira and on 1 November 1814 he declared war on the Gurkhas in order to halt their encroachments into northern India. Wood evidently appealed to the Governor-General expressing his desire for a command in Nepal, but was at first disappointed although Moira told him: ‘Let me assure you that your character is too well known to me for it to be possible that I should not have you in contemplation when I look forward to staff appointments’. The war then started without him and four British columns attempted to advance into Gurkha territory. The 4th (Dinapore) Division was commanded Major-General Bennet Marley, who advanced into Nepal unopposed and dithered to a halt with three widely separated outposts flung far out in front. The Gurkhas swept down and wiped out all three in one blow. This put the wind up Marley who perceiving a small Gurkha force making straight for him, ordered a retreat ‘to defend the Company’s territory’. Next, his nerve broke and at the dead of night on 19 February 1815 he crept away without breathing a word to anyone. Moira, meanwhile, furious at the recent reverses, had despatched Wood from the Presidency to superseed Marley. He arrived on the 20th.

Contrary to the expectations of the division, Wood was against a direct advance on Khatmandu as a board of medical officers had decreed that the risk of ‘the malarial fever called aul’ was too great. Instead, according to his own grand statement, he ‘swept the whole of the Eastern Ghoorka territory, destroying several stockades,’ though in reality this was no more than a futile demonstration along the the frontier. After a month on the march he reached the Teesta River and here ordered the grumbling 4th Division to turn about and go into quarters for the rains at Nathpore on Kosi River, where malaria carried off a good portion of his men during the summer. With the exception of Major-General Ochterlony operating in the north west provinces of Nepal, Wood and the other divisional commanders were criticized for their over caution in the camaign of 1815, and Wood was himself superseeded on Moira’s orders. Mrs Montagu defended her father by maintaining no one but a mad man would enter the unhealthy country of Nepal and that he had done the Army a great service by operating solely on the frontier. Major-General Hearsey (Lot xxx), who served under Wood as a Lieutenant with Gardener’s Horse, was less charitable and called him ‘this disagreeable and incapable old General’. The war was concluded in a third campaign in 1816 with Ochterlony in command of the whole show. He made a rapid advance on Khatmandu which resulted in the Gurkhas signing the treaty which remained unbroken up to Indian Independence in 1947.

On 7 April 1815 Wood was created a Knight Commander of the Bath, and from 1816 to 1819 took leave in the Cape. He continued on furlough in 1819, and, returning to his property Ottershaw Park in Surrey, was made Lieutenant-General in July 1821. ‘The Royal Bengal Tiger’ was thrown from his horse while riding over his estate at Ottershaw and sustained injuries from which he never fully recovered. He died several months later at his house in Clifford Street, London, on 1 March 1824, leaving a fortune of twenty lakhs.

Refs: Officers of the Bengal Army, 1758-1834 (Hodson); Memorials of the Family of Wood of Largo (Mrs Montagu).