Military history - medals

[Davran]

Whilst on holiday in Austria we visited a museum which contained an Iron Cross medal dated 1813. My husband was convinced that this was probably one of the first ever military medals issued. Being a curious person, I thought I'd try and find out and came across this website, which may be of interest to those with military ancestors http://www.northeastmedals.co.uk. It is a commercial site selling medals, but the snippets of info about the different regiments are interesting.

It looks to me as if the first military medal was the British Military General Service Medal issued during the Peninsular wars of 1793-1814 ........ unless anyone can tell me otherwise????

[neil1821]

Hi there,
It really depends what type of medal you mean. For British medals at least the first campaign medal that was awarded to all ranks without exception was the Waterloo Medal 1815.

The MGS for the Peninsular Wars and others certainly covers earlier campaigns but was awarded more than 30 years later in 1847, and then only to surviving veterans.

Also if you include medals that were issued only to senior officers for example, are just to selected recipients, then there are earlier ones: Army Gold Medal (1810), Army Gold Cross (1813) for example.

I don't know too much about non-British medals, but the Iron Cross was a decoration rather than a campaign medal. It was though available to all ranks so in that context you may well be right.