The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals

The Indian Mutiny medal to General Sir Thomas Reed, G.C.B., 62nd Foot, a veteran of Waterloo who became Provisional Commander-in-Chief in Bengal following the deaths of Generals Anson and Barnard, and was later Colonel of the 44th (Essex) Regiment

Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Delhi (Majr. Genl. T. Reed, C.B. Actg. Provl. C. in C. in Bengal) nearly extremely fine £2000-2500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals.

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Thomas Reed, the son of Thomas Reed of Dublin, and his wife, Eliza, daughter of Colonel Sir Francis Buchannan, was born in Dublin on 11 September 1796. Educated at Sandhurst, he was commissioned Cornet in the 12th Light Dragoons on 26 August 1813, and served in the Netherlands campaign of 1815, being present with his regiment at the battle of Waterloo on 18 June. Promoted Captain on 25 March 1824, in H.M’s 31st Regiment of Foot, he transferred to the 53rd Regiment on 7 October following, and became Major on 15 June 1826. He was placed on Half-Pay on 11 August 1829, and remained unattached until 30 May 1834, when he was brought into H.M’s 62nd as Lieutenant-Colonel, joining them the next year in Burma.

In 1840, the 62nd were ordered to Hazaribagh, 2,000 feet up in the hills of Bihar, and in July 1841, to Calcutta where Reed took over as Officer Commanding Troops at Fort William. In November 1841, he was appointed an A.D.C. to the Queen, and in 1842 became Brevet Colonel. In July of the latter year the regiment, having been ravaged by cholera, was relieved at Fort William and set off in boats up the Ganges for Dinapore, Reed being accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth Jane. ‘All went well till 6 September when a violent storm arose at two o’clock in the morning. The flotilla was moored to the bank opposite a place called Sickree Gully, near Bhagalpur. Many of the boats were blown from the shore and swamped, Lieutenants E. Scobell and C. H. Gason of the Flank Companies being drowned, together with forty-three of the Rank and File and eighteen women and children ... Colonel and Mrs Reed had the narrowest escape, their pinnace being blown loose and on to her beam-ends. The occupants managed to scramble out and cling to the sides, the Colonel and his wife doing so through the window of the after-cabin. In this position they drifted down with the current for three hours, the boat rolling from side to side but fortunately never righting, in which case she must have sunk. There were people on the banks and plenty of boats there, but their cries for help were ignored. At daybreak the dinghy was discovered, still attached to the stern by a rope; scrambling into this they gradually righted the pinnace and half baled her out, and all were safely landed at Rajmahal.’

‘About fifty of the rank and file, who had also drifted downstream in their boats, collected here. A steamer was sent from Bhagalpur in which, with the Colonel, they overtook the Regiment. The Colours and the regimental records had been in the pinnace, and all went to the bottom of the river. In May the following year, they were recovered by a party sent from the Regiment, but the Colours had been nearly destroyed, and most of the records were indecipherable.’ At Dinapore on 18 November 1844, new Colours were presented by Elizabeth Reed.

Under Lord Hardinge’s policy of strengthening the garrisons along the frontier with the Punjab, the 62nd received orders to start for the north west in December 1844, and, moving up country by way of Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore and Delhi, reached Ferozepore in March 1845, where they joined the division under Sir John Littler (Ritchie 2-33). On 21 November, the Sikhs took the step which Hardinge had foreseen, and left Lahore with the intention of invading British territory. Reed’s regiment slept fully dressed with their muskets beside their cots. On 11 December, the Sikhs commenced crossing the Sutlej fourteen miles above Ferozepore to the north east and by next day had some 12,000 men on the near side. Littler formed two brigades, and placed one under Reed and the other under the 62nd’s junior Lieutenant-Colonel, the Hon. Thomas Ashburnham, to cover the city. The Sikhs under Tej Singh advanced towards Ferozepore, but being afraid of their own daring, proved reluctant to join battle with Littler’s force.

On 18 December, Gough from Ambala and Hardinge from Ludhiana, arrived at Moodkee, twenty-two miles from Ferozepore, and defeated the Sikh army under Lal Singh. Two days later, Littler was ordered by Hardinge to rendezvous with Gough’s army at Ferozeshuhur, and, having marched the intervening twelve miles, was told to form up on the British left. Littler ordered Reed’s brigade to take station next to Wallace’s division in the centre, with Ashburnham’s brigade on his left. Deployment was from the right which meant that Ashburnham’s brigade took longer to get into position than Reed’s. But once Reed’s was deployed, Littler placed himself behind and ordered them to advance. Gough’s total force was about 18,000 men with sixty-three guns mostly of small calibre.


The enemy, under Lal Singh, had been reinforced since Moodkee, and totalled over 30,000 men with more than 100 guns, many of them being of large calibre. The enemy lay behind a long embankment in front of the village of Ferozeshuhur. The ground between the opposing forces was, from the British side, flat and completely open for 300 yards, and then covered in brushwood and jungle.

Whilst Ashburnham struggled to get his men into action, the Sikh guns concentrated on Reed’s brigade, which due to Littler’s premature order, came under fire before anyone else. The 62nd on the right moved steadily forward, but the 12th N.I. on their left and the 14th N.I. behind, started to falter, so that when the 62nd emerged from the jungle, in front of the strongest part. of the Sikh position they were entirely unsupported. Exposed to a storm of grape and cannister at short range, they struggled on towards their objective. Reed ordered a charge, but the 62nd were exhausted, having been on the move for nine hours without food or water, and he ‘took the responsibility of ordering them to retire, which they did in good order’.

‘Thomas Reed thus saved the remains of the regiment from being wiped out. He had no authority to give such an order without confirmation from the Divisional Commander close by, but showed great moral courage and sense in doing so. This, and occurences earlier in the advance, subsequently led to much accusation before Reed and the 62nd were completely vindicated by both the Commander-in-Chief and the Governor-General in person.’ Battered but not broken the 62nd formed around their Colours and retired through H.M.’s 9th, having lost eighteen officers out of twenty-three and 281 rank and file out of 580. Meanwhile on the right the 3rd Light Dragoons made a brilliant charge and the main body of infantry effected a lodgement in part of the Sikh position. Littler was ordered to join the main body with his division but the onset of dark and general confusion prevented him from doing so. Reed, who was wounded and had had a horse killed under him, elected to spend the night with his men who dug trenches with their bayonets and bare hands. ‘The night was very cold, and for some time Colonel Reed sat back to back with Sergeant W. Morris of the Light Company, who also acted as assistant Orderly room Clerk when required ... Colonel Reed muttered from time to time, “Oh my poor Regiment.”

At dawn Ashburnham moved his brigade direct on the centre to support a successful assault which captured the enemy’s guns and took the rest of the position. Reed with the 62nd and some of his native troops moved up between Ashburnham’s brigade and the main body, and at about 9:30 saw Tej Singh’s cavalry from Ferozepore supported by 9-pounder guns approaching from the north west. The cavalry did not advance further but the guns kept up a constant but ineffective bombardment for about an hour, when all withdrew. They were followed up by Gough, Hardinge and the remains of the army. Fortunately Tej Singh did not seem particularly keen to save the day for Lal Singh, and his force was dispersed by mid afternoon.

‘On Christmas Day Sir John Littler sent a despatch to the Adjutant-General of the Army of the Sutlej. Littler was an impulsive man, and had felt bitterly disappointed and disgraced over the repulse of his Divisional attack on the 21st ... he thought the 62nd had let him down. In a state of great emotion he wrote accusing the Regiment of panicking and having a bad influence on the Native Regiments, whereas it was the latter who, in most cases, failed even to go into action. Colonel Reed heard of this report, and at once applied to the Governor-General for permission to submit the true facts of the case to the Commander-in-Chief. This request was granted, and for the next few days Sergeant Morris was kept very busy by his Colonel in the Orderly Room. Littler’s report was published but not with the authority of the Commander-in-Chief’s office.’

Created a C.B. on 7 April 1846, Reed, after a period of sickness resumed command of the 62nd at Ferozepore in November, and as the regiment was tour expired acccompanied it part of the way down country before leaving to travel home independently. He was reunited with the corps at Winchester in the summer of 1847, and continued with them until 1852, when he was appointed Colonel on the staff at Birmingham. He held the latter appointment until 30 September 1854, whence he proceeded as Major-General to command the troops in Ceylon. In 1856 he was given command of the Peshawar Division, with Lieutenant Frederick Roberts on his staff.

Roberts later wrote: ‘In the afternoon of Tuesday, the 12th May, I received a note from the General commanding the division directing me to present myself at his house the following morning which I did. Besides General Reed I found there the Brigadier, Sydney Cotton [Ritchie 2-41]; the Commissioner, Herbert Edwardes; the Deputy Commissioner, John Nicholson; Brigadier Neville Chamberlain [See Lot 92], and Captain Wright, Deputy Assistant-Adjutant General, who like myself had been summoned to record the decisions that might be arrived at. This meeting was a most momentous one ...’ As might be expected, the meeting was hijacked by Nicholson and Edwardes, and Reed soon found himself being diplomatically packed off to join the Chief Commissioner, Sir John Lawrence, at Rawalpindi, whence he joined the Delhi Field Force on the morning of the action at Badli-ki-Serai on 8 June. Sir Henry Barnard was then in temporary command of the Delhi Field Force, having taken over from the Commander-in-Chief, the Hon. George Anson (See Lot 64), and while Reed was senior to Barnard he permitted him to continue in command since he himself was ‘too much knocked up by the intense heat of the long journey from Peshawar’.

On 5 July Barnard died of cholera, and Reed was obliged to take over as Provisional Commander-in-Chief in Bengal. No one on the Ridge expected much of ‘his slender talents’, but if he did nothing else he should have been thanked for sacking Major Laughton who commanded the Engineers. Laughton showed no interest in drawing up plans for breaching the Delhi walls and had been glad to delegate most of his duties to his junior officers while spending most of his days confined to his tent with his demanding Persian wife. Barnard had been under the impression that Laughton had ‘influence’. On 17 July Reed’s health completely failed, and he was forced to hand over to Archdale Wilson and leave the Ridge on sick certificate. Reed returned to England and, in 1858, was appointed Colonel of H.M.’s 44th Foot. He became Lieutenant-General on 4 May 1860, and General on 1 January 1868, having been advanced to a K.C.B. in March 1865. Promoted to a G.C.B. on 29 May 1875, he finally retired on 1 October 1877. Sir Thomas Reed died at his residence, Baddesley Manor, near Romsey, on 24 July 1883.

Refs: Modern English Biography (Boase); The Story of the Wiltshire Regiment (Kenrick); The Times - 28 July 1883; Forty-One Years In India (Roberts); The Great Mutiny (Hibbert).