Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The M.G.S. and Waterloo pair awarded to Lieutenant William Crawley Yonge, 52nd Foot, related by marriage to Sir John Colborne (later 1st Baron Seaton) and father of Charlotte Mary Yonge, the noted Victorian novelist

Military General Service 1793-1814, 4 clasps, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, Toulouse (W. C. Yonge, Lieut. 52nd Foot); Waterloo 1815 (Lieut. W. Crawley Yonge, 1st Batt. 52nd Reg. Foot.) third letter of Crawley corrected from ‘o’, fitted with replacement silver bar suspension, both medals fitted with silver ribbon buckles, light contact marks, otherwise very fine or better (2) £5,000-£7,000

Sotheby’s, June 1971, with other family medals.

William Crawley Yonge was born on 26 June 1795, the eighth of nine children of the Reverend Duke Yonge and Catherine (née Crawley) of Flaxley Abbey, Gloucestershire. He grew up in Cornwood, Devon, on the edge of Dartmoor, where his father was the rector from 1793 to 1823, and was educated at Ottery St Mary, where the head was George Coleridge, of the poet's family, and then on to Eton College. He was gazetted by purchase as an ensign in the 52nd Regiment in May 1812 and joined the regiment outside San Sebastian in September the following year, having been promoted to Lieutenant the previous April. He was present at the crossing of the Bidassoa and at the battles of Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, Tarbes, Toulouse and Waterloo. William was placed on half pay for an Ensign following the reduction of the regiment after its return from France early in 1818. Although he rejoined the 52nd on full pay in the following November, it was marriage that led him to resign his active commission in February 1823, having served for a time with the 17th Regiment in Ireland.

William married Fanny Bargus on 25 October 1822, at Otterbourne Old Church, Hampshire. Fanny was a stepsister of Sir John Colborne, and William was the brother of Sir John’s brother-in-law the Reverend Duke Yonge. John Colborne and Sophia Leeke, sister of Ensign Leeke of the 52nd, were witnesses. William was father to Charlotte Mary Yonge, born in August 1823 and destined to become a famous and successful novelist who dedicated her talents as a writer to the service of the church. In her autobiography she makes many mentions of her father and several interesting comments on his military service:

‘He joined in the midst of the siege of St Sebastian and his first experience of war was crossing a bridge on which the enemy’s guns were firing. He hesitated to bend his head below the shelter of the parapet and old soldiers had to advise him not to expose himself to danger unnecessarily. He kept a journal [since lost] dutifully at that time but in dreadful schoolboy writing and with wonderfully little in it, though the sight of it served in after life to assist his recollections.’

Charlotte also recounts what happened to William in the hours and days following the battle of Waterloo:

‘That night of victory was spent in the open field, in the clothes the officers and men had fought in, all the officer’s luggage was plundered by the Belgium’s during the battle. The only thing ever recovered was William Yonge’s box empty of all save his bible and prayer book, which was found in a loft in Brussels. His friend Mr Griffith’s found a pony tied to a post, with a saddle bag containing two coarse women’s shifts and this was the only change of linen anyone had as they marched straight on for Paris. In preparation for entering the City they halted at St Cloud and there all the officers got into one pond and passed the single razor in their possession from chin to chin.’

In his account of Lord Seaton and the 52nd, William Leeke, a junior ensign and nephew of Mr Bargus, gives the following account:

‘Our servants made a bed of straw on the wet ploughed field and all four of us. Yonge and I lay down, and being covered in our boat cloaks tried to go to sleep. It was very hot and there was heavy rain I think it was a little after four, we were ordered to fall in again. We piled arms and remained for the night... My friend Yonge shared my boat cloak and straw with me and we consequently both of us got very wet.’

Many commentators at the time and subsequently have written about the retreat of the French Guard and what caused it, but it is instructive to see what one junior officer who was there felt. In his privately published Memoir of the Services of Field Marshal Lord Seaton, William Yonge wrote:

‘Then too, was invented the story of “Up Guards and at them.” It was a piece of gossip picked up in the Camp by Sir Walter Scott, on his visit to Paris, first appearing in his “Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk” and from then adopted by Alison as a historical fact, in truth they never came in contact at all with the Imperial Guards, and were in no way instrumental in their repulse.’

Leeke quotes from a letter written by William Yonge to Colonel Bentham in November 1853:

‘He [Colborne, later 1st Baron Seaton] kept watching the heavy column advancing saw no attempt at preparation to meet it. He said there is nothing else to do but to endeavour to stop them by a flank attack and that if something of sort not done our line would be penetrated. How is it possible that this fanfaronade of Guards charging the head of this column can have the smallest foundation in truth. As to Lord Seaton I think there was never a man so ill used.’

William's daughter Charlotte also wrote of this issue in her autobiography:

‘He [Colborne] thought the final exchange would have been fully explained and the honour awarded to the 52nd... Gossip has picked up and invented “up Guards and at them”… But the crisis of Waterloo has become a vexed question.’

Of this injustice William wrote many letters to the Secretary of War. In one letter he wrote:

‘While the ensigns of the Guards were made lieutenants on the pretence of the 1st Guards having repulsed the Imperial Guard, the lieutenants of the regiment that actually did the work were made ensigns.’ This, of course, had a financial consequence for William, for an ensign’s pay was lower than that of a lieutenant’s.

Retiring to the Hampshire village of Otterborne, he was a J.P. for many years and a Cornet in the North Hants Yeomanry from 1836 to 1840. On the death of the Duke of Wellington in 1852, William was among an elite group of old Waterloo veterans who were in the funeral procession, as was also his son Julian, who was in the Rifles. He clearly remained vexed by Waterloo and the injustice to the 52nd and to Lord Seaton himself. William Crawley Yonge died at Otterborne on 26 February 1854; among those attending his funeral was Lord Seaton.

His daughter Charlotte was also clearly influenced by her father’s interest in matters military. In March 1896, 81 years after Waterloo and 41 years after her father died, she wrote to an American admirer: ‘My father fought at Waterloo and I grew up with many army traditions from him and his colonel Lord Seaton.’ In her novel Clever Woman of the Family, published in 1865, perhaps reflecting her father’s attitude to life, she wrote: ‘It is the discipline and Constant Duty that make the soldier and are far more valuable than exceptional doings.’

From the beginning to the end of her life, Waterloo remained a topic of key importance for Charlotte. It figured in her very first book published in 1839, Le Chateau de Melville. Several other of her books also had a military theme.

With acknowledgement to Ian Yonge and his excellent biographical work available online: https://yongefamily.info/184806876/184806900