Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The Peninsula and Waterloo pair awarded to Lieutenant Lewes Geismann, 5th Line Battalion, King’s German Legion

Military General Service 1793-1814, 3 clasps, Fuentes D’Onor, Salamanca, Vittoria (Louis de Giesmann, Lt. 5th Line B. K.G.L.); Waterloo 1815 (Lieut. Lewes Geismann, 5th Line Batt. K.G.L.) fitted with original steel clip and later ring suspension, edge bruising and contact marks, otherwise good very fine and better (2) £4000-5000

From the Collection of Napoleonic War Medals formed by the late R. W. Gould, M.B.E.

Previously sold at auction in 1921, by Baldwin in 1935 and by D.N.W. in April 2003.

Lewes Geismann joined the King’s German Legion in August 1812 and served in the Peninsula in 1812-13; in Southern France 1813-14; in the Netherlands 1814; the campaign of 1815 and the battle of Waterloo where the 5th Line Battalion suffered 162 officers and men killed wounded or missing out of a strength of 379.

The Wheatley Diary – A Journal and Sketchbook kept during The Peninsular War and the Waterloo Campaign, written by Lieutenant Edmund Wheatley, gives an excellent account of the exploits of the 5th Line Battalion in Southern France in 1813 and 1814, as well as at Waterloo. An anecdote in Wheatley’s diary for the campaigning near Bayonne in 1814 briefly mentions Ensign Geismann:

‘On getting into the heat of the fight I found the warfare an unpleasant one, as not a soul could be seen. Now and then a voice in the hedge would say ‘Français ou Anglais?’ and a thrust through the bush was an answer. Our Brigade Major, Dreschel, lost his life that way. The same question was put to him and instead of jumping into it, he proudly answered, ‘A German,’ when a ball in his groin convinced him how much the snake in the bush respected his nativity. Giesmann and Buhse seized the Frenchman and sent him in the rere, an honorable prisoner. Lord Ellenborough would have acted otherwise. What incongruity!’

At Waterloo, the 5th Line Battalion suffered most of their casualties defending the rear of La Haye Sainte. At first the 1st Light, 5th Line and 8th Line Battalions were attacked by a body of cuirassiers. The 1st Light and 5th Line, protected by British cavalry, were enabled to form square but the cuirassiers made repeated attacks on the square of the 5th Line Battalion, retiring after each unsuccessful charge into a hollow where they were protected from the fire of the square.

A little later, as the 5th Line Battalion stood in square behind the hollow road, a column of French infantry having debouched from La Haye Sainte, Sir Charles Alten sent Colonel Ompteda directions to deploy the 5th Line Battalion and attack the column. Ompteda represented that such a movement could not be made without a useless sacrifice of men, more particularly as a body of the enemy’s cavalry lay in wait on the other side of the ravine. At this moment the Prince of Orange rode up and ordered Ompteda to deploy; on the same reparations being made to his royal highness, he impatiently repeated the order, upon which Ompteda instantly mounted his horse, gave the fatal word of command, and led forward the battalion. His gallant men jumped cheerfully over the ravine in their front, and fell upon the French column with a loud hurrah! The column gave way and fled but, just at the same moment, the enemy’s horsemen rushing from their ambuscade, came thundering down upon the flank and rear of the German battalion. The consequence may be imagined; the battalion was literally ridden over, and the slaughter was tremendous. Lieutenant Wheatley later wrote:

‘On recovering my senses, I looked up and found myself, bareheaded, in a clay ditch with a violent head-ache. Close by me lay Colonel Ompteda on his back, his head stretched back with his mouth open, and a hole in his throat.’

The brave Colonel Ompteda was dead along with his adjutant, with eight other officers wounded and about 130 men struck down. Lieutenant Colonel von Linsingen and about eighteen men (including Geismann) were all of the battalion that remained together after this fatal charge.

Lieutenant Geismann, along with other officers of the King’s German Legion, was placed on Half Pay in February 1816.