Auction Catalogue

23 September 2005

Starting at 11:00 AM

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part III)

Grand Connaught Rooms  61 - 65 Great Queen St  London  WC2B 5DA

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Lot

№ 55

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23 September 2005

Hammer Price:
£1,000

The Punjab campaign medal to Major C. F. Bruère, 13th Bengal N.I., an original defender who was wounded at Chinhut and subsequently killed in action at Lucknow

Punjab 1848-49, 1 clasp, Goojerat (Captn. C. F. Bruere, 13th Bengal N.I.) very fine £1000-1200

Charles Fleming Bruère, the son of Captain James Bruère of Bedfont, Middlesex, was born on 7 November 1812. He was nominated for a Cadetship in the Bengal infantry by Henry St. G. Tucker on the recommendation of a relation, Alexander Bruère Tod, and arrived in India aboard the Neptune on 6 October 1829, having been appointed Ensign on 5 June. A period of local leave was almost immediately followed by furlough to Europe on account of his health and he did not return to India until 1833 when he joined the 13th Bengal Native Infantry at Bareilly. Promoted Lieutenant in June 1838, he was appointed Adjutant of his corps in May 1839, but was found deficient in his knowledge of Hindustani early the following year, when Brigadier Kennedy assessed him as ‘young but appears smart and active, and no doubt in time will be qualified’. Bruère resigned as Adjutant in December 1841. He served again in that appointment in 1846 and on 22 July of the same year he was advanced to the rank of Captain. Bruère served with his regiment in the Punjab campaign of 1848-49, being present at the passage of the Chenab and battle of Goojerat. On 5 July 1847, he married Jane Lucy Holt, daughter of John Holt White, at Fategarh, and in March 1855, he was promoted to Major.

May 1857 found the 13th Bengal N.I. at Lucknow, where on the 30th disaffected members of the regiment joined the Oudh Irregulars in mutiny. The majority of the 13th N.I., however, remained loyal. Indeed Julia Inglis recorded in her journal that several of them rescued Mrs. Bruère by pulling her through a hole in the back of her bungalow in the officer’s lines, while others at the front threatened to murder her. About three hundred men of the 13th fell in on their parade ground under Major Bruère, and were marched off to take post alongside the 32nd Foot, complete with arms, colours and treasure chest. The following day fifty more came in from the lines, claiming they had protected the regiment’s magazine from the mutineers.

On 30 June, Bruère and his regiment were caught up in the disastrous shambles at Chinhut. “The sepoys on our side, though retreating, did so in order. They behaved for the greater part in the kindest manner to the wounded Europeans, taking up great numbers of them, and leaving their own wounded uncared for on the battle-field. They had been suspected of being also tainted with the general disaffection, and were therefore anxious to regain the esteem and confidence of their European officers. They gave indeed the most striking proofs of their fidelity and loyalty on that day, showering volleys of musketry, and, native-like, of abuse, on their assailants, and calling them all the most injurious epithets in their vocabulary. Major Bruère, who was wounded, was assisted by them to a place of comparative safety, and reached the Residency, only, however, to meet his death some months later.”

The 13th Native Infantry, initially under the command of Major Bruère, went on to further distinguish themselves in the defence of the Residency at Lucknow. The Sikh element of the regiment, some fifty men, begged to be allowed to form their own ‘single class’ company, and so it was. Bruère served in the defence until the afternoon of 4 September, when he was shot through the chest on the roof of the Brigade Mess while trying to pick off an enemy sniper. He died almost at once. That night a handful of his Native Officers and Sepoys demonstrated their loyalty by insisting on carrying his body to the graveyard. This, wrote Julia Inglis was ‘the greatest mark of respect and affection they could show him, as it is against their caste to touch a dead body’. Mrs. Bruère was so shocked at the death of her ‘portly, elderly husband’ that she went ‘right out of her senses’.

Refs: Officers of the Bengal Army, 1758-1834; IOL L/MIL/10/29 & 64; IOL L/MIL/10/40; IOL L/MIL/10/42; IOL L/MIL/5/515; The Seventh Rajput in the Indian Mutiny of 1857 (Tindall); The Great Mutiny (Hibbert); Ordeal at Lucknow (Joyce).