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Auction: 23003 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 64

The superb and unique Military General Service Medal and Army of India pair awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel F. Meade, 88th Regiment of Foot (Connaught Rangers), who served with distinction during the Napoleonic Wars - being mentioned by name several times in one of the most famous first-hand accounts of the Peninsular War - before being appointed Aide-de-Camp to Major-General Sir Thomas Reynell K.C.B. during the Siege and Assault of Bhurtpore in 1826, for which he was Mentioned in Despatches

Military General Service 1793-1814, 7 clasps, Fuentes d'Onor, Badajoz, Salamanca, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, Toulouse (F. Meade, Lieut. 88th Foot), widely-spaced clasps on a custom-made carriage, this detached from suspension; Army of India 1799-1826, 1 clasp, Bhurtpoor (Captn. F. Meade, 88th Foot, A.D.C.), short-hyphen reverse, clasp detached from suspension, nearly extremely fine and a unique combination to the 88th Foot (2)

It should be noted that Meade appears on the Medal Roll for the Military General Service Medal without entitlement to Clasp for The Nive; he is the only officer of the 88th Regiment of Foot to claim this combination of clasps, and is further the only recipient of the Army of India Medal named to a member of the 88th.

Frederick Meade was Commissioned as Ensign in the 88th Regiment of Foot (Connaught Rangers) on 26 March 1805, the start of an association with this famous Irish regiment which was to last for no less than 36 years. Promoted Lieutenant in March 1809, Meade served with the 2nd Battalion in the Peninsula from January - November 1810 and shortly afterwards the majority of the 'junior' battalion were absorbed into the 1st Battalion: their 'senior' comrades had already laid the foundations of an exceptional fighting record, holding the Medellin hill at Talavera (27-28 July 1809) and conducting a bayonet charge at Busaco (27 September 1810) which drew direct praise from the newly-enobled Viscount Wellington himself. After the withdrawal to the Lines of Torres Vedras and subsequent advance in pursuit of Marshal Massena's demoralised French Army, battle lines were drawn at the village of Fuentes de Onoro, where a very hard-fought engagement took place over 3 - 5 May 1811. The Connaught Rangers played a pivotal role in the battle, being positioned near the village of Fuentes de Onoro itself; when heavy French assaults came within moments of success, the 88th advanced and in a bloody and hard-fought bayonet charge evicted their opponents from the village - indeed, regimental tradition has it that they cornered a company of French grenadiers in a blind alley and bayonetted them to a man. The 'Devil's Own', undoubtedly with Meade as one of their number, had played a crucial part in the overall Allied victory.

From the streets of Fuentes de Onoro, next came the walls of the two great border fortresses of Cuidad Rodrigo and Badajoz, which Wellington had to take in order to advance into Spain. Though Meade was not present at the siege and assault of the former, he would again be in the thick of the fighting during the horrific Storming of Badajoz on the night of 6 April 1812. As part of Sir Thomas Picton's Third Division the 88th were spared the ghastly ordeal of the main breaches, instead being ordered to join the assault on the north-east corner of the city: their objective being the castle, which they had to reach by escalade of the wall between the San Antonio and San Pedro bastions. Nevertheless, staunch French opposition resulted in the fist attack failing (with Picton himself being wounded); regrouping, the second attack gained a foothold and savage hand-to-hand fighting erupted on the city walls. It was, in fact, the gallantry and bravery of Picton's men that the battle was won: the desperate assaults on the main breaches had consistently failed and Wellington was considering abandoning the whole attack when news of the Third Division's success came through. Meade was lucky to come through the night completely unscathed: no less than 10 officers and 135 men of the battalion were killed and wounded, this accounting for the second-highest total in the entire Division.

Advancing into French-occupied Spain, the next major engagement of the campaign came at Salamanca on 22 July 1812. Here, the Connaught Rangers (again members of the Third Division) spearheaded the Allied attack on the right flank; the regimental history records the moments before yet another devastating bayonet charge when one of their officers, riding ahead of the battalion, was shot dead: ...'his body, with one foot caught in the stirrup-iron, was dragged along the front of the Connaught Rangers by his frightened horse. The sight caused the men to become greatly excited. Packenham immediately afterwards, seeing that the right moment was now at hand, called to Wallace: "Let them Loose!". Instantly the three regiments surged forward and with the impact the French column quickly went to pieces.'
Such was the speed and shock of their attack that they captured a most unusual trophy - the "Jingling Johnny" of the French 101st Regiment of the Line; this became one of the most treasured relics of the 88th, who carried it on parade at the head of the Regimental Band and Corps of Drums right up until their disbandment in 1922.

At Salamanca, Meade's luck finally ran out and he is noted as wounded in action. Fascinatingly the same source, penned by William Grattan who also served as an officer in the regiment during the Peninsular War, mentions Meade on several occasions from this point onwards, in some delightfully personal reminisces that outline his personality both on and off the battlefield:

'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.” ('Adventures with the Connaught Rangers 1809 - 1814, William Grattan, p. 287, refers).

The stunning allied victory at Salamanca, and the subsequent triumphal entrance to Madrid, were however to be all too short-lived; the badly-managed Siege of Burgos led to the retreat back to Portugal. To many, this brought back memories of the Retreat to Corunna several years previously with the weather being equally terrible and the army's commissariat system breaking down. Grattan again takes up the story:

'To describe the state of the officers would be impossible; for myself, I can truly say I was in rags. I wore a frock-coat, made out of a dress belonging to a priest that was captured by my man Dan Carsons at Badajoz. I wore it during our sojourn at Madrid: it was lined with silk, and might be termed a good turn-out there; but, as it turned out on the retreat, it was the worst description of clothing I, or rather my man Dan, could have pitched on. Every copse I passed, and they were many, took a slice off my Madrid frock, and by the time I had undergone three marches, it was reduced to a spencer! 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.' (Ibid, p. 310).

Once his army had recovered over the winter of 1812-13, Wellington then launched a brilliant campaign which after only a year had driven the French not just entirely out of Spain but into southern France: Meade and the men of the 88th shared in this advance and participated in the subsequent battles of Nivelle, the Nive, Orthes and Toulouse. The Connaught Rangers were again in the thick of the action at Orthes on 27 February 1814 - indeed they suffered no less than 269 men killed and wounded, by far the most of any British unit engaged that day. Their casualties mostly arose from two companies being overrun by French cavalry (the 21st Chasseurs-a-Cheval), but the remainder of the battalion then came up and gained revenge in-kind with their volleys of well-directed musket fire emptying almost half the saddles of the entire regiment. Meade, again, must have been witness to this trying ordeal - and yet again he was lucky to escape unwounded as so many company-level officers are noted as casualties after the battle.
At Toulouse (10 April 1814) the 'Devil's Own' were initially held in reserve (due to the casualties they had suffered only a few weeks previously) but later saw perhaps more than their fair share of the action with another 84 men killed and wounded. A sigh of relief was likely audible amongst the men of the 88th when they discovered Peace had been declared on 6 April and the Peninsular War was at an end.

Further Service Abroad

As if their trials in Spain and Portugal were not enough, the battalion was then selected for service in North America and embarked for that theatre of operations in June 1814; however, they arrived too late for the Battle of Plattsburgh (September of that year) and were then ordered back to Europe, also arriving too late for the Battle of Waterloo - nevertheless they formed part of the Army of Occupation until 1817.
Meade, meanwhile, found a Staff appointment and went to India as senior Aide-de-Camp to fellow Peninsular War veteran Major-General Sir Thomas Reynell, commanding the 1st Infantry Division in Lord Combermere's army. Interestingly the junior A.D.C. was one Lieutenant E. Meade. At the Siege of Bhurtpoor (Bharatpur), 9 December 1825 - 18 January 1826, Raynell's division participated in the main assault on the final night, and despite formidable defences the fortress fell within two hours. Meade received a well-earned 'Mention' in Reynell's despatch, this noting: 'I have had every cause to be satisfied with the assistance l experienced from the Division Staff...and from my Aides-de-Camp, Capt. Meade and Lieut. Meade...I beg most particularly to recommend to his Lordship’s favourable notice, the conduct of the former.' ('Narrative of the seige and capture of Bhurtpore, in the province of Agra, upper Hindoostan, by the forces under the command of...Lord Combermere, in the latter end of 1825, and beginning of 1826, Captain J.N. Creighton, 1830, refers).

After many years of service as a Lieutenant, Meade was promoted Captain in April 1825 and Major a mere nine months later. Placed on Half-Pay in August 1827, he nevertheless retained his Commission and was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel on 23 November 1841. In later life he also appears to have kept in touch with old comrades from his Peninsular War days, at one stage supporting William Grattan (who we last encountered writing about Mead after his Salamanca wound) in refuting a wild claim over the indiscipline of the 88th Foot. He wrote from Ireland in August 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.’






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