A rare medal awarded to a Maltese soldier in 1848 has made its way back into Maltese hands after it fetched £2,200 at an auction in London last week.
The medal, awarded to Lorenzo Camilleri who served with the British Expeditionary Force against Napoleon in Egypt, was bought by Tony Gauci, who is half-Maltese and an army man living in the UK.
“This medal interested me because the soldier was Maltese and also because it is so rare, with only 44 having been awarded to Maltese pioneers. More had served but only those were still alive to receive the medals about 50 years later,” Major Gauci said, adding this was also true of the British people who had served in that campaign.
Maj. Gauci has been collecting medals since he was a schoolboy and, along with those he bought over the years, has himself been awarded seven medals, having served in Iraq, Northern Ireland, Bosnia and the Falklands throughout his 30-year military career.
Only three of the rare medals were sold over the past 20 years, according to Maj. Gauci and, in the end, the medal sold for £200 over the maximum estimate of £2,000 at Sotheby’s. The auction was held by Morton & Eden Ltd, an auctioneering firm specialised in numismatics.
Lorenzo Camilleri was among about 500 members of the Maltese Pioneers, an army raised in December 1800 and disbanded shortly after in 1802. He served with the British Expeditionary Force in Egypt against Napoleon at Alexandria.
Only six Maltese Pioneers are listed in the Military General Service Medal Roll 1793-1814 by A.L.T. Mullen, Mr Camilleri not being among them. However, the total number of medals issued with the Egypt clasp was 41, of which three were to officers and the auctioneers specified the medal was correctly named.
Incidentally, a Francesco Camilleri was assistant surgeon with the Pioneers in Egypt in 1801.
The recruitment of Maltese men to serve in a British regiment started in April 1800, with the Maltese Light Infantry serving in Malta against the French, and again abroad, at the evacuation of Elba in 1801.
The Pioneers served with Sir Ralph Abercrombie’s army at the Battle of Alexandria and the subsequent siege of the city and in other parts of Egypt before the corps was disbanded early in 1802.
The medal is decorated with the head of the young Queen Victoria on the obverse and the queen presenting a laurel wreath to the kneeling Duke of Wellington on the reverse.