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Auction: 18003 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 17

Waterloo 1815 (David Johnson, 1st Regiment Life Guards.), original steel clip and replacement wire bar suspension, contact marks, nearly very fine

Provenance:
Gaskell Collection, 1908.

David Johnson served during the Hundred Days' Campaign as Private with the 1st Regiment of Life Guards. On Saturday 17 June 1815, the regiment covered Wellington's retreat from Quatre Bras, a strategic crossroads which Marshal Ney had attempted to seize the previous day. Although Wellington did not 'lose' at Quatre Bras, he was obliged to withdraw northwards in order to maintain contact with Blücher's Prussian army to the East, which Napoleon had just defeated at the Battle of Ligny.

The 1st Life Guards halted some 700 yards north of the village of Genappe. There they could see the rearmost cavalry units, the 7th Hussars and 23rd Light Dragoons, receiving a severe mauling at the hands of French lancers. Napoleon had at this stage rejoined Ney, ordering his elite Imperial Guard cavalry units to pursue Wellington. Though greatly outnumbered, the 1st Life Guards charged headlong into the pursing lancers and forced them to withdraw. On returning to the column, Lord Uxbridge remarked:

"Well done the Life Guards, you have saved the honour of the British cavalry."

At the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June, both regiments of Life Guards were positioned behind Wellington's centre as part of Lord Somerset's Household Brigade. When D'Erlon's Corps advanced up the Mont St. Jean ridge at 1.30 p.m., the British infantry came under severe pressure. The crucial Allied-held farmhouse of La Haye Sainte was surrounded. French cuirassiers (armoured heavy cavalry) of Milhaud's Corps fell upon the Lüneberg Battalion, a Hanoverian unit sent to reinforce La Haye Sainte. Bylandt's Dutch Brigade panicked and fled; Wellington's centre seemed about to collapse. At this pivotal moment, Lord Uxbridge ordered both brigades of British Heavy Cavalry forward in an historic charge.

The Household Brigade engaged Milhaud's cuirassiers to the west of La Haye Hainte, driving them back in confusion and saving Wellington's position. They then over-played their hand, attacking the French 'Grand Battery'. As canister shot from French 12-pounders decimated their ranks, the Life Guards faced a new onslaught of cuirassiers personally sent by Napoleon. Somerset's Brigade limped back to the ridge having suffered 632 casualties - 48% of its original complement - but with its place in the annals of British military glory firmly secured.


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Sold for
£2,700