Orders, Decorations and Medals

An original Crimea War letter from Lieutenant Clement Heneage, 8th Hussars, who survived the Charge of the Light Brigade and went on to win the V.C. in the Indian Mutiny, ink, four sides on a single folded sheet of blue paper, dated at ‘Balaklava Sept. 9th’, with related envelope addressed to ‘Mrs. Heneage, Compton Basset, Calne, Wiltshire’, this with notation ‘England via Marseilles’ and three official stamps to reverse, including British Army Post Office ‘SP 11 1855’. The contents discussing the fall of Sebastopol and the Redans:

‘I went all over the Malakoff, Redan and Little Redan to-day, & also into Sebastopol. The French were hard at work burying their men, but had not done much with the dead Russians, who are lying in hundreds in a very small space just between Malakoff & the town. The Russian dead are very different looking men to those we saw at Alma & other places last year, poor wretched fellows, clothed anyhow, & very few in regular uniform. Sebastopol is still burning fiercely, & it is rather dangerous riding about it, as there are so many explosions constantly taking place, both from the magazines & from the mines the Russians left for our benefit. The inside of the Malakoff & Redan is really a wonderful sight, & I hope our Engineers will take a lesson by them - such immense height of embankments, such thickness of parapet, & depth of ditches it is impossible to conceive till one sees it. All their men appear to have to have been lodged in the works, as the whole of the great embankments are honeycombed with strongly made subterraneous rooms - the amount of guns taken appears fabulous, till one sees them lying about literally in hundreds, in the Russian works. I believe the Allies have taken altogether about 1500 - & none of them were spiked by the owners when they bolted. All the remaining men-of-war, with the exception of a few small steamers, were burnt or sunk the night they went away across the harbour, so the Russia fleet at Sebastopol is now extinct ... ’

in good overall condition £250-300

Clement Walker Heneage was born at Compton Basset, Wiltshire, in March 1831, the son of George Walker Heneage, the M.P. for Devizes.

Appointed a Cornet in the 8th Hussars in August 1851, he was advanced to Lieutenant in September 1854, and rode in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, in addition to being present at Alma, Inkermann and the operations before Sebastopol (Medal & 4 clasps; Turkish Medal).

Having then returned to England, the 8th Hussars were embarked for India in October 1857, and it was June of the following year that Heneage, now a Captain, won the V.C. for his part in an action at Gwalior, three other members of the regiment sharing the same distinction on the same occasion:

‘Selected for the Victoria Cross by their companions. In the gallant charge made by a squadron of the regiment at Gwalior on 17 June 1858, when, supported by a division of the Bombay Horse Artillery, and H.M’s 95th Regiment, they routed the enemy, who were advancing against Brigadier Smith’s position, charged through the rebel camp into two batteries, capturing and bringing into their camp two of the enemy’s guns, under a heavy and converging fire from the fort of the town’ (London Gazette 26 January 1859, refers).

Also given the Brevet of Major, and awarded the Indian Mutiny Medal with ‘Central India’ clasp, Heneage attained the substantive rank of Major in November 1860, and retired in 1868. A High Sheriff for Wiltshire, he died at Compton House, Compton Basset, in December 1901.