Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Military General Service 1793-1814, 1 clasp, Corunna (J. W. Armstrong, Lieut., 14th Foot) good very fine £1200-1400

Ex Spink, April 1993; Warwick & Warwick, June 2005.

John Armstrong served as an officer in the Somerset Militia and King’s County Militia, 1794-1801 and was severely wounded in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, when at the head of his company, ‘in the unfortunate affair under Colonel Walpole’. He was appointed an Ensign in the 66th Regiment in 1806 and then as a Lieutenant in the 14th Regiment in 1807. As such, he served at the battle of Corunna, 16 January 1809. In June 1809 he applied to transfer to the Garrison Battalion, being ‘lately returned from serving in Spain, and I have brought with me a rheumatism that afflicts me sorely, if I walk a mile I am in agony’. He in recorded as being a Lieutenant in the 4th Garrison Battalion in the 1810 Army List but is not shown in the following years, presumably having retired.

With copied National Archive material.