Object of the Month – Carrying the Colours in the Crimea
1st November 2024-
The historic group of four awards to Ensign and Lieutenant (later Colonel) Charles Napier Sturt who was severely wounded carrying the Colours of the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards at the Battle of Inkermann: Crimea Medal 1854-56, 4 clasps: Alma, Balaklava, Inkermann, Sebastopol (ENSIGN & LIEUT. NAPIER STURT 3D BATN GRENR. GDS.)
“Sebastapol lay shrouded in thick November's gloom, And through the midnight silence the guns had ceas’d to boom;”
One hundred and seventy years ago, on 5th November 1854, the Battle of Inkermann was fought over seven hours near Sebastopol while shrouded in dense fog. Known as the ‘Soldier’s Battle’, an allied force comprising 8,000 British and French soldiers held off a coordinated attack by almost 40,000 Russian troops in foggy isolation and across a hostile terrain of ridges, valleys and ravines. Rather than being directed by generals, soldiers were often compelled to fight in vicious, localised encounters and on their own initiative, due to poor visibility. For this reason, the battle was given its colloquial name. Twenty Victoria crosses were awarded for actions of valour conducted that morning. Over 15,000 men lost their lives, 12,000 of them Russians.
This historic group of four awards to Ensign and Lieutenant (later Colonel) Charles Napier Sturt, who was severely wounded carrying the Colours of the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards at the Battle of Inkermann, leads our Medals & Coins, Arms & Armour sale on 27th November 2024.
Sturt was also present at the Battle of Alma and at Balaklava and in the siege lines before Sebastopol. At the momentous Battle of Inkermann, the 3rd Grenadier Guards were renowned for having been the only battalion which carried its colours into battle, and it was Ensign and Lieutenant Charles Napier Sturt who bore the regimental colour.
The battle was famously hard fought, and Sturt stood courageously in the midst of intense close quarters fighting, in an advanced position, until he was shot through the body by a Russian musket. Although severely wounded he did not drop the colour, handing it heroically to a Guardsman before he fell. After being carried to the rear he spent several weeks in the notoriously insanitary hospital at Scutari, surviving to return to the war after a period of convalescence in England. He later became Colonel Commandant of the Hampshire Regiment and served as Conservative MP for Dorchester.
The Medals & Coins, Arms & Armour sale takes place on Wednesday 27th And Thursday 28th November 2024, Lot 68
