Victorian 1845 Sutlej Campaign Medal To Corporal C Bond 16th Lancers

 

This Sutlej Campaign Medal is engraved on the rim “C.Bond Corporal 16th Lancers”.

 

Chas Bond was born in 1804 in Newport. Chas served with the 16th lancers at the rank of Corporal. 

 

About the 16th lancers at the battle of Sutlej:

 

The 40,000 Sikh infantry massed against Smith’s 10,000 men at Aliwal covered a frontage of about two miles connecting the villages of Aliwal and Bundri. They were supported by 37 pieces of artillery and flanked by cavalry. In the initial stages of the battle Smith’s forces advanced and took Aliwal. The capture of Aliwal meant the loss of the Sikhs’ best ford across the Sutlej, they therefore had to recapture it and attempted to do so with a body of 1000 cavalry. Smith saw this threat and immediately dispatched a squadron of 16th Lancers and a squadron of the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry. The 3rd failed to charge while the squadron of the 16th under Captain Bere did so, and routed 1000 Sikh cavalry (over ten times their number). Aliwal was not lost but the cost to the 16th was the loss of 42 of the 100 who charged. Smith’s main body continued to be harried by the Sikh guns; he therefore ordered the main body of the 16th under their Commanding Officer, Major Rowland Smyth, to take the guns. Smyth led his two squadrons in a headlong charge against the guns that continued to fire until the moment they were overrun. The momentum of the Regiment was so great that they charged past the guns and were faced by the massed squares of the Sikh infantry. Smyth realised that to pull up and retire would enable the Sikh infantry to lay a withering fire in his rear, he therefore spurred his horse, jumping into the centre of the first square and charging on through. Naturally the 16th followed their Commanding Officer and charged head on into the square. “We had to charge a square of infantry – at them we went, the bullets flying round like a hailstorm.” (Sergeant Gould).

 

This would suggest that Chas Bond was one of the 58 survivors of the push for Aliwal. As 42 of the 100 who charged from the 16th lancers were killed in action. 

 

The Sutlej Medal was a campaign medal approved in 1846, for issue to officers and men of the British Army and Honourable East India Company who served in the Sutlej campaign of 1845–46 (also known as the First Anglo-Sikh War). This medal was the first to use clasps to denote soldiers who fought in the major battles of the campaign.

 

Accompanying this medal is 3 scans of his service records. Upon payment please let me know if you would prefer digital scans or printed copies. There is still plenty of research to be done on this medal! 

 

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