War Medals and Their HistorySteward, William Augustus
History
War Medals and Their History
Steward, William Augustus
Great Britain. Army -- Medals, badges, decorations, etc.; Great Britain. Royal Navy -- Medals, badges, decorations, etc.
Twenty-eight bars were authorised. Twenty-one for the Peninsular, three
for North America, two for services in the West Indies, one for Italy,
and one for Egypt, 1801, "to those who were still alive." The bars, it
should be noted, vary in their arrangement, some being farther apart
than others, those awarded to the cavalry being very close together,
and those to the infantry ³⁄₄₀ in. apart. If more than six are attached
they are placed quite close like those for the cavalry. The bars are
attached in sets of three, so that no rivets were used in the fixing of
two or three bars to a medal, the set being struck in one piece; six,
nine, or more bars were riveted together with very neat, small-headed
rivets.
=The India Medal, 1799-1826.=--The European veterans of the Indian
wars had been as badly treated in the way of war decorations as the
heroes of the Peninsular, but an effort to reward the survivors was
made public by the announcement on April 14th, 1851--forty-eight years
after the first battle, for which a bar was issued, was fought--that
the Queen had assented to the measure proposed by the Court of
Directors of the East India Company to grant a medal at their expense
to the surviving officers and soldiers of the Crown who were engaged
in the services in India from 1799 to 1826. On the obverse is the
diademed head of Queen Victoria with VICTORIA REGINA similar to that
on the obverse of the medals already described, and on the reverse a
seated figure of Victory, holding in her left hand, which falls by
her side, a chaplet of laurel, and in her right hand an olive branch.
In the background is a palm tree, and in front a trophy of oriental
arms. Above all is inscribed TO THE ARMY OF INDIA, and in the exergue
~1790-1826~ and W.W., the initials of the medallist, in small capitals.
The medal is 1⅖ in. in diameter, attached to a scroll suspender as
used with the Punjab and Sutlej medals; the bars are also of the same
design. The ribbon of pale-blue corded silk is 1¼ in. wide. The names,
etc., of the European recipients were impressed in capital Roman
letters, but most of those awarded to native officers and soldiers
were officially engraved in a light, slanting script.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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