Badge of the Order of Medjidie, awarded to Col. Lawrence Fyler between 1855 and 1861
Image["Order of Medjidie, 1855-1861"]Obverse, Sultan Abdul Mejid's royal cipher with inscription around on a gold-bordered circle of red enamel; the whole on a star of seven triple quills with small crescents and five-pointed stars between them, suspended from a red enamelled crescent and star suspender with green enamelled edges
Image["Order of Medjidie, 1855-1861"]Reverse, inscription and marginal engraving on a convex silver disc secured to the back of the star with pins
Badge of the Order of Medjidie, awarded between 1855 and 1861
The Order of the Medjidie was founded by Sultan Abdul Mejid of the Ottoman Empire in 1852, as a reward for distinguished services. When the
Crimean War began in 1854, therefore, and British and French officers came to the aid of the Empire against Russia, a number of British soldiers, mostly officers but also a few private soldiers whose deeds had particularly distinguished them, were admitted to the order over the course of hostilities and their immediate aftermath.
This Badge was awarded to Colonel Lawrence Fyler of the 12th Lancers, whose service in the Crimea earned him
two
other medals and whose medal group has come entire into the Watson Collection and shows a
career spent in
India and the East
fighting
for the Crown from the
1830s to the 1850s.
Fyler's medals are not, for the most part, physically attached to each other, although the catalogue of the Watson Collection considers them as
Group
8, so the opportunity has been taken to treat them separately here. Nonetheless, it was as a group that Lester Watson bought them, from the London dealers Seaby, in 1929.