Scinde War Medal 1843, Hyderabad 1843 reverse, original silver clip and straight bar suspension (officially named, engraved in serifed block capitals: CAPTn. T. EYRE. 3RD. Lt. CAVy.).
Attractively toned, Good Very Fine to Almost Extremely Fine, with a length of original silk ribbon, the medal accompanied by Thomas Eyre's pair of Bombay Light Cavalry silver plated shoulder scales, the silver plating on high points on these rubbed, otherwise in good condition.
Medal also accompanied by biographical details, 10 pages of copied documents and records from Eyre's Bombay Presidency service papers, giving a detailed account of Eyre's services with the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry, East India Company and British Army Lists of the period, extracts from Burke's Irish Landed Gentry and Burke's Irish Family Records, along with extracts from Allen Stewart Hartigan's "The Eyres of Eyrecourt" and Tim Fanning's "Paisanos, The Forgotten Irish Who Changed the Face of Latin America", and various other copied research.
Thomas Eyre was a member of the Eyre family of Eyrecourt Castle, Co. Galway, Ireland. Born Bombay, India, 10/7/1809, he was the son of Brigadier General Thomas Eyre (1774-1819). After seeing service with the Hibernia Regiment in South America Eyre returned to Ireland and was subsequently appointed to a Cadetship in the East India Company's Bombay Presidency in 1825, having been recommended for a commission by John Morris on the recommendation of Eyre's grandmother, Mrs Page. Eyre was commissioned Ensign, 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry, 11/3/1826, and served exclusively with that unit until his retirement from the Bombay Army, being promoted Lieutenant 1/1/1833, Captain, 28/8/1842, Major, 20/6/1854 and retiring with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel on 29/11/1858. Eyre died at Parsonstown, Westmeath, Ireland, 24/7/1888, leaving a personal estate in England valued at £100.
At the battle of Hyderabad the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry, together with the Scinde Horse, took part in a decisive charge that turned the left flank of the Baluchi line, after which the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry pursued the retreating enemy forces for several miles.
Eyre's father, also Thomas Eyre (1774-1819), initially saw service in the British Army as a Lieutenant in the 51st Foot prior to seeing service as a General in the South American wars of independence under Simon Bolivar. He had two sons by the name of Thomas, an illegitimate son born 1801, who died young, and Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Eyre, born 1809.
At the time that he raised the Hibernia Regiment, Thomas Eyre senior, then a Lieutenant on the retired list, and no doubt in an attempt to impress potential recruits to his new regiment, claimed that he had previously seen service as a Captain in the 34th Foot. Army lists of the period, however, confirm that he never rose above the rank of Lieutenant, being commissioned Ensign in the 34th Foot on 7/4/1813, promoted Lieutenant, 21/11/1816 and placed on half pay, with the rank of Lieutenant, on 25/3/1817, having seen active service with the 34th Foot during the Peninsular War, and being present at the battles of Orthes and Toulouse.
The Eyres of Eyrecourt Castle trace their descent from Giles Eyre of Brickworth, Wiltshire, Sheriff of Brickworth, 1640, who together with his three sons was a member of the council established by Oliver Cromwell during the Civil War in England. Disaffected with the Commonwealth, the Eyre family supported the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and subsequently Giles Eyre's fifth son accompanied General Ludlow to Ireland and acquired large estates in counties Galway, Tipperary and King's County, and was granted the Manor of Eyrecourt, to empark (enclose), 1662, and subsequently built Eyrecourt Castle. Lieutenant-Colonel Eyre was a descendant of Edward Eyre, who in 1710, whilst serving as Mayor of Galway city, donated land to the city on which Eyre Square was built (now renamed John F. Kennedy Memorial Park).
Eyrecourt Castle was one of only two important mid-17th century Irish country houses to survive intact into the 20th century. Built during the 1660s, it was abandoned in the 1920s, left to decay, and is today a total ruin. Prior to its demise, the house contained a spectacular oak staircase, consisting of two lower ramps and a single central return leading up to a gallery with elaborately carved oak pillars. It is the only surviving example of a staircase of its type to have survived, and is today housed in the Detroit Institute of Arts, having been removed from Eyrecourt Castle after it was abandoned.
Medal also accompanied by a brief inventory of Eyre family military artefacts drawn up by a member of the Eyre family then resident at "Allatrim", Moneygall, Co. Tipperary circa 1960, the inventory including Thomas Eyre's Scinde Medal and shoulder scales (described as epaulettes in the inventory).
During the South American wars of liberation, Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) authorised the recruitment of a number of battalions of foreign volunteers by retired army officers in Britain and Ireland. Among these recruiting agents was the soldier, military adventurer and confidence trickster General George MacGregor (1785-1845), who authorised Thomas Eyre to raise the Hibernian Regiment and another Irishman, John Devereux, a veteran of the 1798 Rising, to raise the grandly titled Irish Legion. Both Eyre and Devereux became wealthy men as a result of the sale of commissions in their regiments, Eyre allegedly raking in £13,000, of which only £7,000 was spent on equipping the expedition to South America. Given the amount of money to be made, there was inevitably competition between Eyre and Devereux for recruits, leading to fistfights on the streets of Dublin between the various recruiting parties, and at one point Eyre challenged Devereux to a duel, Devereux declining to take part in the encounter.
There was considerable popular support in Ireland for MacGregor, Eyre and Devereux's recruitment campaign. One of the campaign's most influential backers was Daniel O'Connell, who organised and attended a much publicised dinner in honour of the founder of the Irish Legion, John Devereux, at Morrison's Hotel, Nassau Street, Dublin. O'Connell spoke in glowing terms of Devereux's enterprise and purchased commissions for his fifteen year old son, Morgan O'Connell, who became a member of Devereux's staff, and a nephew, Maurice.
Eyre and the Hibernia Regiment, some 600 strong, along with MacGregor, eventually set sail from Ireland, but instead of making for South America, without having been ordered to do so by Bolivar, charted a course for Haiti, where it landed in 1819. In Haiti the expedition eventually descended into farce. Leaving most of the Hibernian Regiment in Haiti, MacGregor, again ignoring his instructions from Bolivar, sailed instead for Central America and captured Portobello in present day Panama. When Spanish forces arrived to re-take the town, MacGregor slipped away by jumping out of a window into the sea, swam to one of his ships, and abandoned his officers and men. MacGregor then made for Haiti and rejoined Eyre and the Hibernian Regiment, at which point MacGregor, with Eyre and the Hibernian Regiment, finally set sail for the South American coast, some 450 miles away, many of the officers, including Eyre, being accompanied by their wives and children. Within three days many of the officers and men, three women and two children, including one of Eyre’s daughters, had died of fever. The expedition landed at the town of Rio Hacha on 5/10/1819, where Eyre was promoted General by MacGregor. Eyre and the Hibernia Regiment soon found themselves besieged at Rio Hacha, the siege ending disastrously when a stray bullet hit a box of cartridges, the subsequent explosion killing Eyre and many of his men. Of the 66 officers, 169 enlisted men, 15 women and 4 children who had sailed from Haiti to Rio Hacha, only 23 officers, 47 enlisted men, 1 woman (Eyre’s wife), and 2 children survived (the latter including the future Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Eyre), the young Thomas Eyre and his mother being the only two members of the Eyre family to survive the expedition, his siblings succumbing to fever either during the campaign or on the voyage home.
The following more detailed account of the services of the Hibernia Regiment in South America has been extracted from Tim Fanning's "Paisanos, The Forgotten Irish Who Changed The Face of Latin America" (Dublin, 2016):
About 600 men had sailed under MacGregor's command, arriving in Haiti in the early part of 1819. Bolivar never authorised MacGregor's actions in the West Indies, and his expedition descended into farce. Having successfully dislodged the Spanish from their garrison in the small town of Portobello in present-day Panama, MacGregor fell idle. His officers got drunk on looted liquor, fraternised with the townspeople and failed to impose the slightest military discipline. When a royalist force, under the orders of the Dublin-born Spanish general Alexander Hore, who had arrived in South America with General Morillo's expedition in 1815, arrived to retake the town, MacGregor slipped away by jumping out of a window into the sea and swimming to one of his ships, abandoning his officers and men. MacGregor made for Haiti to join Eyre and the 500 men of the Hibernian Regiment. He now decided to restore his reputation by launching an attack on Riohacha on the New Granadan coast. In September 1819 McGregor's ships the Amelia, the Alerta and the Lovely Ann set sail from the port of Les Cayes on the south-west coast of Haiti for the South American mainland, some 450 miles away. There were 235 men, 15 women and four children on the ships. Eyre, his wife and children and the rest of the Hibernian Regiment sailed on the Amelia. Within a few days at sea three officers, seven enlisted men, three women and two children had died from fever, including one of Eyre's daughters, who, in the words of one of the officers on board, Colonel Michael Rafter, was "an amiable young creature, whose gentle manners and delicate frame, were but ill calculated to encounter the dangers, fatigues and privations, of such an enterprise, and whose melancholy fate excited a considerable degree of sympathy" Rafter was highly critical of MacGregor, and with good reason. Mac Gregor had deserted Rafter's brother in Portobello, Rafter's brother was subsequently executed by the Spanish. In his memoir of the expedition, Rafter was scathing of MacGregor's behaviour, not least on board the Amelia. “The weather side of the quarter deck was always held sacred for the perambulations of His Excellency, while twenty officers and three ladies, huddled together on the lee side, gazed on the mighty man, whose thoughts were supposed to be pregnant with the destruction of armies and the fate of empires; and in the contemplation of his greatness, they lost all sense of the privations they suffered for his exultation. The cabin of the vessel, which was large enough to give shelter to all the officers, was occupied by General M'Gregor and the ladies; while the rest, forced to 'bide the pelting of the pitiless storm, upon deck, bore, without a murmur, the constant drenching they received from the torrents of rain, that fell daily, and almost hourly, during the passage.!” The landing at Riohacha took place in the early hours of 5 October 1819. Lieutenant-Colonel Norcott led the attack; MacGregor and his staff officers remained on board to finish their night's sleep, as did Eyre, who was ill. About 210 men landed on the beach near Riohacha, including the men of the Hibernia Regiment, led by Major Atkinson. The Royalists were forewarned, however, having found in Portobello MacGregor's correspondence with the patriot leaders in Riohacha. Skirmishes took place throughout the night while the patriots awaited the arrival of their commanding officer. After he was attacked by a small royalist force, Norcott ordered an advance through the thick jungle that surrounded the town. Atkinson was killed, but after five hours of fighting the patriots drove the royalists out of Riohacha. MacGregor and his staff officers had attempted a landing just before dawn but, coming under fire, had retreated to the ship. It was not until MacGregor saw that the town was in the possession of his troops that he made another landing and took command. The patriots had by now broken into the town's stores and liberated every bottle of wine and spirits they could find. As MacGregor and his staff officers marched through the town, his own troops abused him for what they regarded as his cowardice. The tropical heat, disease, the fear of a Spanish attack and plentiful amounts of alcohol caused madness and confusion to reign in Riohacha. MacGregor was incapable of enforcing discipline and, paranoid that he would be ousted by his own officers, sought to scheme with the criollo and indigenous townspeople. He began to call himself the Inca of New Granada and insisted on being referred to as His Majesty the Inca. He attempted to raise a cavalry regiment comprising indigenous troops to protect him from his own men, who were busy looting every household object of value they could find in Riohacha. The fearful officer corps resorted to desperate measures. One officer hacked off an unfortunate soldier's hand with a sabre; another officer, incensed at the reply he received from an Irish soldier of the Hibernian Regiment, drew his pistol and shot him dead. Adding to the hysteria was the fact that the hostile Riohacha citizenry laid siege to the town. Rafter recalled: “M’Gregor was entreated frequently to come to some certain resolution, but in vain; he appeared to be in the situation of a man under the operation of the nightmare, who beholds indistinctly the most horrible sights, but is rendered incapable by some invisible power of flying from them." Some of the others, now convinced that remaining in Riohacha spelt certain death, decided to flee. MacGregor concocted a plan of escape, summoning the remaining officers in Riohacha to a council of war and informing them that an attack was imminent. Having promoted Byre to general, he advised him that, for their safety, he should send his wife and children onto one of the ships at anchor off the coast, and volunteered to escort them. Once on board the ship with Eyres wife and children, MacGregor gave the order to put to sea, once again abandoning his officers and men. The Spanish forces, supplemented by criollo and indigenous soldiers, launched an attack, slaughtering what remained of the patriot garrison. Eyre and the remaining officers retreated to Riohacha's fort, but their resistance was ended when a stray bullet hit a box of cartridges. Eyre and his comrades were killed in the explosion. Of the 66 officers, 169 enlisted men, 15 women and four children who had sailed from Haiti to Riohacha, Rafter estimated that only 23 officers, 47 enlisted men, one woman and two children had survived.
The following alternative account of the services of General Eyre and the Hibernia Regiment in South America, including the entirely unfounded suggestion that General Eyre was captured at the battle of Rio Hacha and subsequently executed, have been extracted from an essay by P.L. Baldo on www.geni.com and originally published 26/4/2019, on the 200th anniversary (Bicentennial) of the British and Irish Legions:
"Brigadier General Thomas Eyre (1774-1819) met with General Gregor MacGregor at the end of 1818, and volunteered his Hibernia Regiment for service with the army of recruits that MacGregor was taking back with him to fight in the Hispano-American Colonies. The Hibernia Regiment arrived in Rio Hacha, near Santa Marta de Colombia, in modern-day Colombia, on October 5th, 1819. On MacGregor's arrival, following his failed attempt to capture Porto Bello (Panama), he found waiting for him at Aux Cayes (Les Cayes, Dominican Republic) 500 officers and enlisted men, courtesy of recruiters in Ireland and London. Initially he had no ships for transportation and little in the way of equipment. This was remedied during July and August 1819, firstly by the arrival of his Irish recruiter Colonel Thomas Eyre with 400 men and two ships. MacGregor appointed Eyre General and awarded him the Order of the Green Cross; and secondly, by the appearance of war materiel from London, sent by Thomas Newte (London financier, an old friend of Mac Gregor' s) on a schooner named Amelia. The next year (1819) he was involved in the expedition that sailed with a small force of officials and soldiers to land in Cartagena, but they were repelled by heavy artillery, having to land to the west, in Rio Hacha. The party was led by Lieutenant Colonel Michael Rafter, who had bought a commission to join this force to look for his brother, Colonel William Rafter who had been abandoned by MacGregor at Porto Bello, Panama. They made landfall on September 29th, 1819. After defeating the Spanish colonial troops defending the beach on which they landed, they were able to move inland. Lieutenant Colonel William Norcott led the attack, supported by his second in command, Rafter, while Mac Gregor watched on from one of the ships. Once they had taken control of the garrison defending the port, they signalled Mac Gregor to move in, but he cautiously stayed in his ship, refusing to believe the invasion had been successful. Finally, two hours later, he decided to move in. The soldiers were hectic, and extremely annoyed at his cowardice, hauling insults and spitting at him. After ten (10) days at the place seized, the Spanish military moved in the area and the invaders grew wearisome. Norcott and Rafter managed to leave on a captured Spanish schooner on 10/10/1819 taking along other officers and soldiers. Mac Gregor pompously escorted General. Thomas Eyre's wife and children to the safety of a frigate about to sail off from the scene. General Eyre himself was swept off his feet with amazement, as Mac Gregor boarded another vessel and left, leaving behind a number of recruits and Thomas Eyre himself. Thomas Eyre was captured by the Spanish, and together with all his men (about 110 strong), were executed sometime after this day."
Baldo's suggestion that General Eyre was captured at the battle of Rio Hacha and subsequently executed is entirely unsupported by numerous contemporary accounts, including that of Michael Rafter, who took part in the battle, and subsequently published an account of the services of the Hibernia Regiment in South America in his "Memoirs of Gregor M'Gregor" (London 1820), Rafter including an Appendix in that life of M’Gregor a roll of the casualties suffered by the Hibernia Regiment during the South American expedition, General Eyre being recorded as having been killed in action on 11/10/1819 at the battle of Rio Hacha.
Gregor MacGregor (1786-1845), Scottish soldier, military adventurer and confidence trickster. In addition to his military adventures, was over the years engaged in a number of large-scale fraudulent enterprises. In 1817, under orders from Bolivar, he also invaded the Spanish colony of Florida and declared a short-lived "Republic of the Floridas" , which ended disastrously for the men under his command. Afterwards, in 1819, he oversaw two calamitous operations in Spanish New Grenada, both or which ended in his abandoning the British volunteer troops under his command. After returning to Britain in 1821 MacGregor claimed that "King George Frederick Augustus" of the Mosquito Coast at the Gulf of Honduras had appointed him head of state of Poyais, which he described as being a developed colony with a community of British settlers. MacGregor enriched himself at the expense of a gullible public, hundreds of people investing in bogus Poyaisian government bonds, and some 250 would-be colonists emigrating to MacGregors invented country in 1822-23, only to find virgin jungle. More than half of them died, and MacGregor's deception was only revealed when a number of surviving colonists returned home in 1823. The collapse of MacGregor's Poyais scheme eventually became one of the contributory factors in the economic "panic" of 1825. MacGregor went on to attempt several lesser Poyais schemes in London during the next decade, enriching himself further but devastating the finances of those who invested in his scams. On the run from his creditors, MacGregor eventually returned to Venezuela in 1838, where he was welcomed back as a hero, and died in Caracas in 1845.
As part of his Poyais fraud, M'Gregor commissioned and distributed an ornate order "The Green Cross of Poyais", a bogus Order of Chivalry for a country which never existed. An example of this order was sold in Spink's auction 23002 (lot 145).
For further details of the Hibernia Regiment, see Tim Fanning’s “Paisanos, the Forgotten Irish Who Changed the Face of Latin America” (Gill Books, Dublin, Ireland, 2016).
For Allan Stewart Hartigan's online history "The Eyres of Eyrecourt" go to www.lookbackandhanker.com/eyrecourt-slaters-directory-of-ireland-1846/the-eyres-of-eyrecourt.
