Orders, Decorations and Medals

Military General Service 1793-1814, 3 clasps, Fuentes D’Onor, Salamanca, Toulouse (J. Bremner, Serjeant 79th Foot) edge bruising, otherwise very fine £1400-1600

Joseph Bremner was born in the Parish of Istme on the Line (sic) [probably Ashton-under Lyme], in the county of Lancaster, in about 1779. He served with the Inverness Fencible Highlanders from March 1796 until July 1800, when he volunteered to the 79th Regiment as a Private. He served with the 79th in Egypt from December 1800 to September 1801, and was wounded on 13 March 1801, in the attack on Mandora. He served in Portugal and Spain, 1808-09, and subsequently at Cadiz and Isla, before landing at Lisbon in September 1810. He was taken prisoner at Fuentes D’Onor, 5 May 1811, and held until 12 October. He fought at the battles of Salamanca and Toulouse, where he was again wounded, and at the battle of Waterloo where he was severely wounded and lost his right arm. He was discharged on 24 April 1816, in consequence of ‘the loss of his right arm from a wound at the Battle of Waterloo, 16 June 1815’, his discharge papers further annotated by the regimental surgeon, ‘N.B. before this he received two wounds in the Regt., in Egypt, 13 March 1801, & at Toulouse, 10 April 1815 (sic)’.

According to a statement made by Bremner in July 1847, to the Board of the Royal Victoria Pensoners, Ashton Barracks, he was also wounded when taken prisoner at Fuentes D’Onor, and again at the Fort of Burgap in 1812, though these were presumably not serious injuries. He also claimed to have taken part in the general engagements at Corunna, Busaco, Vittoria, Pampeluna, and Orceas. He ends his letter by stating that he was ‘Discharged 3rd May 1816 from the Light Company, Capt. Marshall. This is the last Company I was in, but I have been transferred into every Company except the Grenadiers belonging to the 79th Regiment of Foot, or Cameron Highlanders.’ Sold with typescript copy of this letter which is headed ‘Copy of a letter recounting the battles of a former Mossley veteran’, together with copy discharge papers and full muster details.