Victoria's Cross (33 page)

50
.
The Times
, 29 December 1854, p. 5.

51
.
Mawson, op. cit., p. 88. Raglan died from disease in the Crimea. Queen Victoria insisted that Raglan's widow be voted by Parliament a pension of £1,000 a year, with a further £2,000 a year for his eldest son and successor in the title.

52
.
Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper
, 11 February 1855, p. 7.

53
.
Orlando Figes,
Crimea: The Last Crusade
(Allen Lane, 2010), p. 147.

54
.
Punch
, 14 April 1855.

55
.
Trevor Royle,
The Great Crimean War, 1854–1856
(Macmillan, 2004), p. 179.

56
.
Figes, op. cit., p. 468.

57
.
‘As one of those who went out to the Crimea in the first winter, when things were at their worst, when the Army was rotting away through the mismanagement of the war by the authorities at home, I can say from my own personal observation and knowledge that it was the letters of the
Times
correspondent and others, but chiefly the
Times
, that brought about a change for the better.' Douglas Reid,
Memories of The Crimean War
(St Catharine Press, 1911), p. 152.

58
.
Aberdeen Journal
, 11 March 1857.

59
.
‘Every officer, for the discharge of his duty, holds a Royal Sign Manual [i.e. a document signed by the reigning monarch] commission under the counter-sign of a Secretary of State.' Charles M. Clode,
The Military Forces of the Crown: Their Administration and Government
(London, 1869), vol. ii, p. 65.

60
.
Before the Crimean War the
Morning Advertiser
accused Albert of treason and, absurdly enough, called for his execution. Victoria threatened to abdicate and was only slightly mollified by government ministers
promising to admonish leading editors, who (naturally) refused to change their ways.

61
.
Reid, op. cit. On this occasion
Punch
was pithier. It published a cartoon on 24 March 1885, depicting Raglan snoozing in his hut, through the window of which can be seen soldiers and horses dying in the snow. The caption was: ‘The General Fast (Asleep). Humiliating – Very.'

62
.
Sir George Douglas and Sir George Dalhousie Ramsay (eds),
The Panmure Papers
, (Hodder and Stoughton, 1908), vol. i, p. 253.

63
.
The MGSM owed its existence to Charles Gordon-Lennox, 5th Duke of Richmond, who fought in the Peninsular Wars and promoted the idea of a campaign medal in Parliament. The Army (or Peninsular) Gold Medal was distributed only to officers who had been in command of a battalion or of higher rank. This latter medal came in three styles: a large and a small medal, and the third a pattée-style cross – precisely the same style later adopted for the VC. When the military Order of the Bath was created, the Army Gold Medal was discontinued.

64
.
After the Battle of Dunbar on 3 September 1650, when an army led by Oliver Cromwell defeated Scottish royalist forces under General David Leslie, the House of Commons granted medals to all those who fought. Officers got small gold medals, ordinary troopers a slightly bigger silver medal. Generals occasionally distributed their own medals. After the Battle of the Nile (1 August 1798), Alexander Davidson, Nelson's prize agent, organized at his own expense the creation and distribution of medals for all those who had fought but been given nothing – gold medals for senior officers, silver for more junior, bronze-gilt for petty officers, and bronze for ordinary seamen and marines.

65
.
Christopher Hibbert,
George
IV
: Regent and King, 1811–1830
(Prentice Hall Press, 1972), p. 310.

66
.
The Times
, 7 February 1856, p. 6.

67
.
Figes, op. cit., p. 352.

68
.
In the Crimean War, Hugh Drummond of the Scots Guards wrote to his mother that he had for her a large silver cross: ‘it came off a Russian Colonel's neck we killed, and, poor fellow, it was next to his skin';
Letters from the Crimea
(London, 1855), p. 50. Stealing from the slain is
always with us. John Geddes, a British paratrooper who fought in the 1982 Falklands War, mentions a ‘battlefield raven from our own ranks picking over the corpses of the Argy dead'; he used secateurs to snip off fingers to steal gold rings (
Spearhead Assault
, p. 247). After Waterloo everything was stripped from the thousands of corpses littering the field, including dentures which for many years afterwards were known as ‘Waterloo teeth'.

69
.
The Cruisers and Convoys Act of 1708 formalized the practice of looting captured enemy naval vessels by decreeing a structured distribution of prize money, a practice that lasted until 1918.

70
.
Calculated via the website
http://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk/

71
.
The Battle of Waterloo
, printed for John Booth (bookseller) and T. Egerton (Military Library, Whitehall, 1817), p. 163, no author.

72
.
Waterloo Medals are surprisingly cheap compared to VCs. The latest to be auctioned, in March 2013, went for a mere £7,500 (
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-21878827
).

73
.
Hew Strachan,
The Politics of the British Army
(Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 27.

74
.
Theodore Martin,
The Life of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort
(London, 1875–6), vol. ii, p. 262.

75
.
Clode, op. cit., vol. i, p. 97. Hardinge was speaking in Parliament in 1834.

76
.
Clode, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 36.

77
.
Sidney Lee,
Queen Victoria
(Smith, Elder & Co., rev. edn, 1904), p. 17.

78
.
Douglas and Ramsay (eds),
The Panmure Papers
, op. cit., p. 200.

79
.
The Times
, 27 June 1857.

80
.
Hull Packet and East Riding Times
, Friday, 3 July 1857.

81
.
New York Times
, 7 March 1856.

82
.
Reynolds's Newspaper
, Sunday, 10 February 1856. The Simpson was General Sir James; the Dundas was Admiral Sir James.

83
.
Tinsley's Magazine
, 3 August 1879.

84
.
Cheshire Observer
, 23 May 1857.

85
.
The paintings were a popular hit but a commercial flop. In 1900 they were presented to Wantage Town Council by Brigadier General Robert Loyd-Lindsay, who won his own VC at the Battle of the Alma. Lord
Wantage, as he became, a seminal person in the establishment of the British Red Cross, paid around £1,000 for forty-six of the collection of fifty-six paintings; some had already been sold. The collection was then open to the public until 1941 in the community room of the Wantage Corn Exchange. The Ministry of Food requisitioned the hall in 1941 and the paintings were put into storage. In 1951 they were rediscovered and some were found to be in very poor condition. Those that survived were then dispersed among many regimental museums.

86
.
Michael De-la-Noy,
The Honours System
(Allison & Busby, 1986), p. 78.

87
.
Sir O'Moore Creagh and E. M. Humphris (eds),
The Victoria Cross, 1856–1920
(J. B. Hayward & Son, Polstead, Suffolk, 1985), p. 20.

88
.
The Times
, 6 March 1857, p. 3.

89
.
Victoria laid the foundation stone of the Royal Victoria Hospital on 19 May 1856, beneath which was laid the first Victoria Cross, now in the hands of the Army Services Museum at Aldershot. Victoria arrived at the hospital by the royal yacht. Artillery fired a royal salute; unfortunately one gun fired prematurely, killing two soldiers and injuring several others.

90
.
James Lees-Milne,
The Enigmatic Edward
(Sidgwick and Jackson, 1986), pp. 116–17; from Reginald Brett's journal, 16 May 1898.

91
.
Senior officers were now naturally eligible for the Order of the Bath as well as the VC. Commissioned officers pressed for their own, officers-only, medal, which led to the introduction of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1886. The word ‘order' was seen as elevating this award, as it echoed the ‘order' in Order of the Bath.

CHAPTER
3 Small Wars

  
1
.
Lieutenant General H. J. Stannus,
Curiosities of the Victoria Cross
(William Ridgway, 1881).

  
2
.
Quoted in C. I. Hamilton, ‘Naval Hagiography and the Victorian Hero',
Historical Journal
, vol. 23, no. 2, June 1980, pp. 381–98.

  
3
.
Colonel Charles Edward Callwell,
Small Wars: The Principles and Practice
(HMSO, 1906), p. 21.

  
4
.
From 1858 to 1881 the VC could also be won for acts of bravery not in the presence of the enemy. Despite the creation of the Albert Medal on 7 March 1866, awarded for the saving of life, six such VCs were granted: Private Timothy O'Hea, Rifle Brigade, for suppressing a fire in a railway truck containing ammunition in Quebec on 19 June 1866; and Assistant-Surgeon Campbell Millis Douglas, Private Thomas Murphy, Private James Cooper, Private David Bell and Private William Griffiths, all of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment, for saving the lives of comrades in a storm at sea at the Andaman Islands on 7 May 1867. It was also the period when both the youngest and the oldest VC winners were gazetted: Thomas Flinn was believed to be fifteen when he received his VC as a drummer boy with the 64th Regiment during the Indian Mutiny of 1857; William Raynor was sixty-two when, as a lieutenant with the Bengal army during the Indian Mutiny, he gained the VC for being one of nine who defended the arsenal during the siege of Delhi. Two others survived – John Buckley and George Forrest – and they too gained the VC.

  
5
.
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1859/feb/03/the-queens-speech
.

  
6
.
Walter L. Arnstein, ‘The Warrior Queen',
Albion
, vol. xxx, no. 1 (spring 1998), pp. 1–28.

  
7
.
NA WO/32/7317.

  
8
.
The Times
, 8 January 1859, p. 12.

  
9
.
In a letter to the
Daily News
published on 22 November 1858, ‘One of the Defenders of Lucknow' crossly wrote: ‘The Victoria Cross has not been awarded to any member of the Lucknow garrison because it is said that their numbers were large, and that they all behaved equally nobly. But how is that a reason why they should remain unrewarded and undistinguished?'

10
.
During the Mutiny, Outram led a volunteer force of cavalry, which voted to recommend him for the Victoria Cross, but he declined on the basis that he did not deserve it more than they did.

11
.
The Times
, 11 July 1859.

12
.
He was right. His VC helped Wood's own career and he ultimately held
the highest rank in the British army, that of field marshal, from which position he wielded considerable power over the careers of future senior officers, such as Sir Douglas Haig.

13
.
NA WO 32/7307.

14
.
NA WO 98/2.

15
.
Pennington transferred to the War Office from the Colonial Office as Clerk on 5 December 1854. He was one of those obscure but key civil servants who oiled the wheels of empire, exercising considerable power by providing policy advice and recommendations. His main job when he first arrived at the War Office was to monitor recommendations for the Order of the Bath, but after 1856 his desk quickly became the sole conduit for VC recommendations.

16
.
Brigadier Stuart Ryder, ‘The British Gallantry System',
R
US
I Journal
(August 2000). According to Ryder, finding Spence's relatives almost five decades after he died was a major task. It was known that Spence was born in the parish of Dumfries, Scotland. The Black Watch could not provide further information regarding next of kin and the Under Secretary for Scotland was asked for help, along with local police and newspapers. Months later a Mr Richard Lynn of Hawick claimed the VC and finally the Provost of Hawick produced a family tree proving that Lynn's father's mother was Isabelle Ogilvie, Spence's nearest relative. Mr Lynn received Spence's medal, which is now in the Regimental Museum of the Black Watch in Balhousie Castle, Perth.

17
.
Crook, op. cit., p. 89.

18
.
Saturday Review
, 15 October 1859.

19
.
Glasgow Herald
, Friday, 24 August 1860.

20
.
George Macdonald Fraser,
Flashman in the Great Game
(HarperCollins, 2006, paperback edn), pp. 286–7. Of course Flashman gets his VC by the end of the novel.

21
.
Thomas Henry Kavanagh,
How I Won the Victoria
Cross (Ward & Lock, 1860), pp. vi–vii.

22
.
£2,000 was then a substantial sum, equivalent to some £170,000 in 2014 values.