W?rttemberg Campaign Medals for 1793-1815

[Guest Rick Research]

The Kingdom of W?rttemberg had a novel approach to campaign medals, issuing different reverses (which rather defeated the whole purpose ) for 1 to 11 "Campaigns" defined by calendar years in the field. Created in 1840, there were two different obverses and reverses, with the second types marked with the die maker's initials "A D" for August Dietelbach.

Here courtesy of the heavily laden Traveling Museum's most recent Epsonization visit is, on the left, a Type 1 obverse and on the right a Type 2 obverse--

The easy way to remember these is that the Type 1 had 30 rows of small laurel leaves in the wreath, while the Type 2 had 20 larger rows.

[Guest Rick Research]

The die cutter's initials are discreetly placed at the bottom of the wreath on the loop of riband from upper left to lower right

Would never even have noticed these were it not for Our Heroes von Hessenthal and Schreiber.

[Guest Rick Research]

Logically these reverses should have been worn as obverses. On the left, Type 1 with its much smaller design--here for "1 Campaign." Type 2 on right with "7 Campaigns."

Although there were campaigns in 14 years--

1793, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1799, 1800, 1805, 1806, 1807, 1809, 1812, 1813, 1814, and 1815

no W?rttemberger took part in more than 11, which was thus the highest number issued on a medal.

The upcoming statistical study of Prussian and other Imperial German awards by the late Eric Ludvigsen (saw proofs of final cover yesterday) includes numbers who qualified during each of these years as well as the total number of medals issued for each of the 1 through 11 annual campaigns reverses.

10,905 medals were issued "for one campaign."

and

62 were issued "for seven campaigns."

There were also individual medals for particularly successful battles-- but that's ANOTHER thread. :ninja: