Orders, Decorations and Medals

Military General Service 1793-1814, 6 clasps, Talavera, Albuhera, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Vittoria, Pyrenees (Edwd. Rigley, 48th Foot) edge bruising, nearly very fine £1200-1400

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Fine Series of Peninsular War Medals.

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Ex Sotheby’s, June 1904, and the only known Military General Service 1793-1814 with this clasp combination.

Edward Rigley, from Middleton, Lancashire, enlisted in the 48th Foot in August 1803, aged 18 years.

Both of his Regiment’s battalions were subsequently engaged at Talavera and Albuhera, the 1st in Hoghton’s Brigade and the 2nd in Colborne’s, total casualties amounting to 247 men at the former engagement and a shocking 623 at the latter - so heavy in fact that the 2/48th was forced to return home shortly after Albuhera to recruit, after transferring its few fit men to the 1st Battalion, and, sadly, without its Colours. The newly amalgamated 1st Battalion sustained further casualties at Ciudad Rodrigo (62 men) and Badajoz (173 men), while at Vittoria in the following month it did good work at a crucial point in the engagement at Sorauren, albeit at a cost of another 135 casualties. Finally, at Nivelle, Rigley’s last Peninsula action, the Regiment sustained 68 casualties.

In 1817 the 1/48th was posted to Australia and Rigley was discharged in Sydney, New South Wales, in November 1824, in consequence of ‘Length of service’. He returned to his native Lancashire and lived in Manchester, where he died in October 1849. By coincidence his Commanding Officer at discharge was Major Cimitiere, a French émigré, who as a Captain, had led the remnants of Hoghton’s Brigade from the field at Albuhera.