Medals from a Mutiny Collection

Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Lucknow (Lieut. A. F. P. Harcourt Baggage Dept.) minor die flaw to obverse field, toned, good very fine £700-£900

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals from a Mutiny Collection.

View
Collection

Provenance: George McIlroy Collection.

Alfred Frederick Pollock Harcourt, the son of Surgeon John Harcourt, and the grandson of Sir George Pollock, G.C.B., was educated at Addiscombe and was commissioned Ensign on 8 June 1855. Posted to the 30th Bengal Native Infantry, he was promoted Lieutenant on 11 May 1857, and served during the Great Sepoy Mutiny as Assistant Baggage Master to the 5th Brigade of Infantry under the command of Brigadier Douglas C.B. at the capture of Lucknow in March 1858. For a short spell he served with the Oudh Police, before joining the 44th Native Infantry in 1861 and the 4th Sikh Infantry in 1862. In the same year he was transferred to the Bengal Staff Corps and for the remainder of his service worked as a civil officer in the Punjab. During the next twenty-seven years he was posted to Rawalpindi, Der Ismail Khan, Delhi, Jullunder, Kangra, Karnal, Hoshiapur, Jhang, Gurdaspur, Lahore, Montgomery and Rhotak.

Promoted Captain on 1 June 1867, and Major on 8 June 1875, Harcourt was clearly something of a hawk on Russia’s territorial ambitions in central Asia, and wrote a pamphlet entitled ‘Our Northern Frontier’ in 1868 whilst serving as Assistant Commissioner in the Punjab. In it he warns:
‘That Russia has been since 1840, and especially in 1865 and 1868 constantly advancing her line of forts in the direction of the British Frontier; that the practicability of further encroachment is due to the incohesiveness of the Central Asian Khanates or States which touch the Russian border, Central Asia being one vast waste, intersected here and there by abandoned aqueducts, canals, wells and ruined cities, over which the miserable hovels of the peasantry are reared; and that the central Asian trade is of the greatest value, with Russia immensely furthering her commercial interests by acquiring new districts, rich in vegetable and mineral products.’
He concludes by saying, ‘that the boundary limits we have now reached should suffice; but, while confining ourselves to our own borders and endeavouring to raise the people of India to something of our own level, and fostering public and private enterprise in every possible way, it is also incumbent on us to be on the alert, and to avail ourselves of every opportunity that offers of extending our knowledge of Central Asian matters. A generous treatment of the sovereigns on our borders would seem to be an indispensable policy.’

Harcourt obviously delighted in the Punjab Hills, especially Kulu where he was posted in 1869 and where he found scope for painting landscapes and the local people. His book, The Himalayan districts of Kooloo, Lehoul and Spitti, (London 1871) was illustrated with the lithographs from his drawings. A large number of his paintings and drawings are currently housed at the India Office Library. In addition to his career as a soldier, administrator and artist Harcourt was also an adventure novelist, writing The Peril of the Sword about the Indian Mutiny and the siege of Lucknow, in which a young Lord Roberts features; and Jenetha’s Venture, based on the siege of Delhi. Promoted Lieutenant-Colonel on 8 June 1881, he retired from the Bengal Staff Corps in 1889, and died in 1910.

Sold together with a copy of The Peril of the Sword; and a 1972 reprint of The Himalayan districts of Kooloo, Lehoul and Spitti (this edition without illustrations); together with a photographic image of the recipient; and copied research.