Orders, Decorations and Medals

Military General Service 1793-1814, 5 clasps, Busaco, Albuhera, Pyrenees, Orthes, Toulouse (John Perring, Corpl., 28th Foot) edge bruising, otherwise better than very fine £1000-1200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Fine Series of Peninsular War Medals.

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Ex Glendining’s, October 1952; just 35 Military General Service 1793-1814 Medals with the “Albuhera” clasp to the 28th Foot are known to have survived.

John Perring (or Perrin) was born in Kingsbridge, Devon and enlisted in the 28th Foot from the Army Reserve in the rank of Corporal in October 1805, and remained employed in the same rank throughout his 13 years with the Colours.

Posted to the 2nd Battalion, but hospitalized in the Peninsula from December 1809 to May 1810, Perring first went into action at Busaco later that year, and, in May 1811, at Albuhera, where, as part of Abercrombie’s Brigade, and in common with the rest of the British infantry, the 2/28th suffered heavy casualties, losing 164 killed and wounded from a strength of 519 men.

After the disaster to Colborne’s Brigade at the hands of the Polish Lancers, when only one battalion (the 2/31st) of the four was left standing, the main infantry fight was sustained by Abercrombie’s and Hoghton’s men and this is when the bulk of the casualties occurred. Seven British battalions, about 3,700 men in a two deep line, were left facing the survivors of two French divisions, at least 7,800 men. A close range firefight developed, perhaps without equal in the annals of military history. The stalemate was broken by a gallant charge of the Fusilier Brigade and the French were eventually forced from the field.

Following further actions in the Pyrenees and the crowning battles of Orthes and Toulouse 1813-14, the 2nd Battalion was disbanded, and Perrin transferred to the 1st Battalion, which was shortly thereafter embarked for the Waterloo campaign. At Quatre Bras, the 1/28th were harrassed by the French cavalry and lost 45 men, while at Waterloo itself the Battalion’s casualties totalled 177 men out of a strength of 557 - his name appears on a regimental list of men present at the great battle and consequently entitled to extra pay.

Perring was discharged at Corfu in February 1819, aged 41 years, in consequence of a ‘Reduction in the establishment of the Regiment’. Listed in the 1851 census as a 72 year old Chelsea-out-Pensioner resident with his wife in Halwell Village, Harberton, Devon, he died in September 1852.