The Military General Service Medal - a rarity of service

Artefact
Military General Service medal awarded for service during 1793 to 1814
Military General Service medal awarded for service during 1793 to 1814

This is a Military General Service medal awarded for service during 1793 to 1814, including the Napoleonic Wars.

The medal was only introduced in 1847 and then awarded retrospectively. The individual regiments and the War Office had the records of who was entitled to the medal and the number of clasps for the various battles. However, the soldiers had to apply and claim their own medals. In practical terms this meant that 34 years after the last applicable battle the soldier had to be still alive, able to read the newspaper articles about the medal and then able to write to claim the medal. There were just over 25,000 awarded. The next of kin of the dead veteran, unless they had lodged a claim prior to his death, were not eligible to claim the medal.

The casualty rate in these wars was very high, ranging from being killed in battle, dying from wounds due to the inability at the time to cope with infection, to dying from the many diseases that existed in the early 1800s. Thus a medal for a soldier who had survived all the battles represented by the clasps on this medal's ribbon is very rare.