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Auction: 24002 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 22

Military General Service 1793-1814, 3 clasps, Sahagun, Vittoria, Toulouse (Henry Woodsell, 15th Light Dragoons.), a couple of light contact marks, otherwise very fine

Provenance:
Whitehouse, 1869.
Spink, July 1994.

Henry Woodsell was born at Bitherston, Kent and was present for the Battle of Sahagun on 21 December 1808, likely participating in the battle's famous charge with his Regiment. The 15th Light Dragoons charged the French cavalry over frozen ground and successfully broke the French forces, taking many enemy prisoners at little cost to their own men. Captain Alexander Gordon recalls his experience of the charge in his book The Journal of a Cavalry Officer in the Corunna Campaign 1808-1809:

'we came upon them, shouting: "Emsdorff and victory!" The shock was terrible; horses and men were overthrown, and a shriek of terror, intermixed with oaths, groans, and prayers for mercy, issued from the whole extent of their front.'

Woodsell was also present for the Battle of Vittoria in June 1813 and the Battle of Toulouse in April 1814. He is later noted as taking his pension in 1835; sold together with copied research.

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Sold for
£1,500

Starting price
£600