His disagreement in 1840 with Lord Cardigan, his commanding officer, (the notorious "black bottle affair") made him famous, and a popular cause célèbre in London.
[2] On 18 September 1835, Reynolds was commissioned as a cornet in the British Army,[3] taking a passage to India to join the 11th Light Dragoons, a "society" regiment then stationed at Meerut.
[7] On 18 May 1840, while stationed at Canterbury Barracks, Kent, the officers of the 11th Hussars (the renamed 11th Light Dragoons) held a formal mess dinner in honour of a visit from General James Sleigh, the Inspector-General of Cavalry.
Lord Cardigan mistook the beverage for porter (a form of beer also sold in black bottles) and sent Reynolds a reprimand for ungentlemanly behaviour.
After three days of this detention, the conditions were relaxed to "open arrest", while Cardigan travelled to Horse Guards, London, (the headquarters of the British army) to complain of Reynolds's behaviour.
[8] Fearing scandal, not least because a large proportion of the Army's commanders had served in India, Lord Somerset, the military secretary, persuaded Reynolds to stay, with a promise of six months' leave, a two-year senior command course at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst (RMC) and an intimation that he would never again have to serve under Cardigan.
[12] In April 1850, Reynolds published a paper in which he reported the identification of a new hydrocarbon: while analysing the products formed when fusel oil was heated he found that a component in the original mixture, amyl alcohol, yielded an unknown gas.
[17] At a formal dinner of the 11th Hussars in 1865, some senior officers of the regiment persuaded Cardigan to meet Reynolds, and the two men entered the dining room together, hand-in-hand.