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Auction: 15002 - Orders, Decorations, Campaign Medals and Militaria
Lot: 271

Waterloo 1815 (Lieut. R.I. Hawley 1st Reg. Dragoon Guards.), minor edge nicks, otherwise good very fine, scarce, with original steel clip and later split ring suspension

Captain Robert Toovey Hawley, commissioned 1st (King's) Dragoon Guards, September 1813; he served with the regiment during the Waterloo Campaign, 16-18.6.1815; during the course of the battle, the K.D.G. were involved in some eleven charges and by the time victory was secured the regiment had sustained casualties of eleven officers (including their commanding officer Lieutenant-Colonel Fuller, who was killed) and 275 other ranks killed, wounded and missing; Hawley is mentioned in the manuscript letters of fellow officer Lieutenant John Hibbert, 1st KDG, which were used extensively in Michael Mann's regimental work, And They Rode On; after the battle and on the road to Paris, Hibbert records Hawley as the regiment's senior Lieutenant; during the occupation of Paris, Hibbert writes 2.12.1815, 'I have applied for leave and it has been refused; if anyone had bet me a thousand pounds to a shilling that I should not obtain it, I would not have believed him. An officer of the name of Hawley and myself went before the Board of Health last Tuesday but one, held at St. Denis, and from the nature of the certificates we got from the regimental surgeon specifying that it was necessary we should go to England, we had no doubt of getting leave. About four days afterwards our Colonel sent us two letters from the Adjutant General, in which we found that Lord Wellington had granted us each a month's leave, but where to? To St. Denis, there to remain under the everyday inspection of the rascally staff surgeons until we had recovered our health, and then to join our regiment. Upon reading this, I wrote to the Adjutant General saying that as St. Denis was only four miles from Ruelle, and as our surgeon had recommended my native air as necessary to the re-establishment of my health, I begged he would erase my name from the sick list and allow me to join the regiment at Ruelle, as there could be no great difference in the air, where the places were only four miles apart'; Hawley was promoted Captain, December 1826, and placed on half pay two years later.

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Sold for
£4,500