Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Military General Service 1793-1814, 1 clasp, Egypt (J. Swanswick, Queen’s German Regt.) minor edge nicks, otherwise about extremely fine and unique to this Regiment £2,000-£2,400

Provenance: Lord Cheylesmore Collection, Glendining’s, July 1930; Glendining’s, May 1957; H. Y. Usher Collection, Glendining’s, July 1975; R. W. Gould Collection, Dix Noonan Webb, June 2012.

Joseph Swanswick was born in Germany in c.1777 and was taken into British pay and service with the Minorca Regiment in November 1798, giving his trade as labourer. He served until March 1809 when he was discharged in the rank of Sergeant in consequence of being blind due to ophthalmia. Admitted to an Out Pension on 13 April 1809, he died in Cork on 21 March 1854.

In November 1798, when Charles Stuart captured Minorca the Spanish garrison included a ‘Swiss’ regiment, over 1,000 strong. These men, who were not Swiss at all but mainly Germans and Tyrolese, with a dusting of Hungarians, had been part of an Austrian army defeated in Italy and taken prisoners by the French in 1796. They were taken into British pay and service as the Minorca Regiment, which was included in the contingent that Abercromby took to Egypt in 1801. On 21 March 1801, at the battle of Aboukir, Private Antione Lutz of the Minorca Regiment captured the standard of the enemy 21st Demi-Brigade, known as the ‘Invincibles’. At the end of the campaign, during which the regiment had suffered more than 200 casualties, including its lieutenant-colonel who had been killed, the regiment’s title was changed to the Queen’s German Infantry in recognition of its fighting qualities. In 1802 the corps was taken to England and in January 1805 it was brought into the Line as the British 97th Foot.

Just one officer and five men of the original Queen’s Germans claimed M.G.S. medals in 1848, but only Swanswick had the single clasp for Egypt, having seen no subsequent service in the Peninsula. His medal was consequently the only one to be named to the Queen’s German Regiment.