The casualty rolls are instructive, and may be compared with advantage with those of the Italian army which was cut to pieces in Abyssinia thirty years later:

Casualties in Abyssinia, 1867-68.

Regiments.Officers.Men.
K.W.K.W.
Roy. Engineers-1-3
4th King's Own-1-6
33rd West Riding---5
33rd Q.O. Light Cavalry---1
23rd Punjab Pioneers---12

Ashantee, 1873.

This distinction has been conferred on the

23rd (Royal Welsh Fusiliers).
Black Watch.
Rifle Brigade.
West India Regiment.

It commemorates the services of a force, under the command of Major-General Garnet Wolseley (now Field-Marshal Viscount Wolseley), which was organized for the purpose of putting a stop to the intolerable cruelties and depredations of the Ashantee monarch on the West Coast of Africa. In February, 1873, King Coffee Kalkali, not content with ravaging the territories of our allies, actually invaded our own territories in the neighbourhood of Cape Coast Castle. He was beaten off by Colonel Harley, then in command of the troops, and a second invasion was also repulsed by Colonel Festing, of the Royal Marine Artillery. Our relations with the Ashantees had been clouded by the memory of a severe defeat we suffered at their hands when Sir Charles Macartney, the Governor of the Colony, had been killed, and his head carried in triumph to Coomassie, the capital. It was now deemed imperative to teach the Ashantees that the English arm was longer than they imagined, and Sir Garnet Wolseley, who had only recently carried through a most successful little expedition in the North-West Territory of Canada, was selected for the command of the Ashantee Expeditionary Force. With him were associated a number of special-service officers, whose duty it was to raise regiments from the tribes which had suffered at the hands of King Coffee Kalkali, and to act in co-operation with our own advancing troops.

The expedition was perfectly successful. After penetrating to the capital, the force returned to the coast, and re-embarked for England. There were several sharp skirmishes during the advance, in which the 42nd (Royal Highlanders) particularly distinguished themselves, and in which they suffered severely. The expedition, however, is more noticeable in that it produced a school of officers for long known as "the Wolseley Gang," to whom the army and the nation owe a deep debt of gratitude for the institution of many of the most valuable military reforms.

At the conclusion of the war a medal was granted to the officers and men who took part in the expedition, with a special clasp—"Coomassie"—to those who were fortunate enough to have been present at the final advance on the capital.