There's a lot of Napoleonic medals, how do I identify mine?

Up front let me say that I am more than happy to try to identify your medal for you. If at all possible send me clear scans of both sides and describe any edge markings you observe. For those who want to do this themselves or are interested in the process here's the basic approach I use:

Think of this as a mystery. To solve a mystery, or any problem for that matter, break it down into its component parts.

   Your medal has several parts to it. Don't worry if the one you've got doesn't have all of these, it doesn't need them to be genuine. Take a look at these pictures and be sure to refer back to them if you get confused.

   The "heads" of a coin or medal is called the "obverse". Sometimes it's obvious as with this beautiful medal of Napoleon. Other times it will not be as obvious, such as with this piece, or this. In each case someone made a decision as to which side was the obverse and which the reverse. If you read all the way through you probably noticed that in both the examples given another authority decided just the opposite way!

   The head is called the bust and catalogers usually refer to the direction it is facing and if there is any decoration in the hair or visible clothing. Thus our example might be described: "Bust of Napoleon, laureated, right." The laureated refers to the crown of laurel leaves in his hair. This was a symbol of victory and is a common element. Notice the lettering on the shoulder under the bust. This is usually the engraver's name followed by the letter F; hence "ANDRIEU F." in our example. The "F" stood for "Fecit", Latin essentially for "I made it."

   The legend is critical for identifying most medals but usually the obverse legend is just a standard one, such as this one. NAPOLEON EMP. ET ROI., stands for Napoleon, Emperor and King, and some variation of this legend is on virtually all French Napoleonic medals. It's a good first clue.

   The "tails" of the medal is logically enough called the "reverse". It usually contains the story or reason for the medal. Like the obverse there will be legends and engravers names. These are important of course but usually there's a large picture in the middle that was the whole point of the medal. To either side of it there may be smaller images or "supporters" if you will. Here's where we will start.

   First, identify the country your medal comes from. This is easier than you might at first think. There were only a few countries actually producing medals at this time, they just produced tons (literally) of them! This is because the combination of expensive mint equipment, talented engravers and government or private enterprise willing to finance all of the above was not all that common.

   The one word legend to the right is the French word for February. If you didn't know that you could still guess it was probably French from the fact that the obverse has Napoleon on it. That's not a "rule of thumb" though, Napoleon shows up on both Italian and German medals as well! A good online translation site and you're in business. Remember some languages have accents over or under letters so if the first translation doesn't make sense take a closer look and then type it in with the accents; AltaVista has a little keyboard to do it with.

   The legends were usually engraved in the country's language; French, English, German, Italian, Russian. If it's not one of these five languages it's probably not from the period. That's a pretty broad statement and two big exceptions that immediately come to mind are the French Mint visitation medals of Napoleon's sisters and wives that had largely Greek inscriptions. The second of the two exceptions are medals with Latin legends. Prior to the wars most medals had Latin inscriptions. Napoleon was one leader who felt that they should be in a modern language and other countries slowly followed suit.

   Next, date the medal as best as you can. The dates are of two styles, the familiar 1808 or 1810 or the less familiar MDCCCXIV for 1814 as in the example at right. More difficult is when the medal is undated as in this example. In any case a familiarity with the timeline of Napoleonic history can help.

   In brief:

Years	France	England (Great Britain)	Italian States	Prussia & German States	Austria
1789 - 1795	Revolutionary period in France. Napoleon is a nobody, anything dated prior to 1796 with Napoleon on it would be a remarkable find! ;)	All through this time George III reigns in England, periodically being replaced by his son the Prince Regent.	Nominally allied against France.		Leopold II is crowned but soon dies. He is replaced by Francis II (I).
1796 - 1798	The Directory in France, characterized by chaos everywhere and wars no one seemed able to consistently win except a General Bonaparte. Napoleon goes to Egypt.	The Regency is permanent after 1811 though George III appears on medals throughout.	The age of Napoleon's brilliant victories. He loots Italy, establishes Republics and defeats Austria. From this period through nearly the end of the Wars Italian medal production falls under the influence of France. Early pieces continue to have Latin inscriptions but later switch to Italian.		The Italian campaign is a nearly unrelieved episode of disaster.
1799 - 1804	The Consulate period. Napoleon is referred to as the Premier or First Consul, and is virtual dictator of France. France does not care as he has the Army behind him and has stabilized the monetary system for the first time a decade, resulting in the virtual disappearance of paper money in France. This period is characterized by two major events for Napoleon, the Battle of Marengo, which consolidates his hold on the government at a critical moment. The second event is peace; dictated by the sword and mutual exhaustion but peace nevertheless. The names of the major treaties were the Peace of Luneville and the Peace of Amiens. It falls apart shortly before Napoleon is elected Emperor.		Napoleon reconquers the Italian States, re-establishes Republics, finally ending in the Kingdom of Italy (or Napoleon).		With Napoleon gone in Egypt the Russians and Austrians strike at Italy through Switzerland. Massena stops them at Zurich and the later campaign that ends with Marengo leaves Italy to Napoleon's will.
1804 - 1814	The Empire. There are ups and downs throughout this period but it begins to decline after 1808; first in Spain where Napoleon underestimates the patriotic effort that that ramshackle country would make to resist. But it really disintegrates when he shakes the dice with the Russian winter, starting too late in the year and counting on a single victory to bring Alexander I to the bargaining table. The end result is defeat, glory, betrayal and Elba.	Trafalgar happens in 1805 and Nelson's death. The Peninsular War begins in 1808 and continues until the end. Wellington becomes a significant player from this point forward.	Eugene commands as Regent in Italy; Joesph and Murat in Naples, the sisters in various Italian States.	The ill-advised 1806 Campaign (Jena — Auerstadt) is redeemed after the Russian disaster by the 1813 War of Liberation.	Ulm and Austerlitz continue the string but the 1809 Campaign at least shows that the Austrian Army will fight. Ultimately Austria is the largest and most consistent of France's continental enemies. Without her it's doubtful Napoleon would have fallen.
1815	The Hundred Days. An amazing amount of stuff got produced in a short period of time.		Murat dies trying to be a king. Napoleon inadvertently has begun Italian unification. Marie Louise retains Parma.	German unification also results from the organizing efforts of Napoleon.	Reactionary on a scale equal to the worst of our own times, the Austrian Empire held most of eastern Europe in stasis for nearly a century.
1815 - present	The Napoleonic legend begins, and endures. Napoleon was the first major ruler who truly understood the use of propaganda and he encouraged its use after his exile to create an even larger-than-life legacy than would have already been true.

   The result of this effort is to help us identify our medal. What do we know? We know it's probably French, dates from 1814 which is late in the Empire, nearing the end in fact. We can speculate that no one makes a serious medal to celebrate their own defeat, so Napoleon must have had a good month in February, 1814. Besides the large eagle, a Napoleonic symbol of honor and victory, there is a tiny cherub being flying up to the eagle with another of those laurel crowns. That cherub is often referred to as "Victory" but I think it looks like a child. Finally, if we studied a bit we would find that two fish are the symbol of Pisces, whose month begins in February.

   Without references this is about as good as we can do. In this hobby your references are everything. After I've done the preliminary identification described above I go to the books. The primary reference for Napoleonic Medals is Bramsen. While it's not strictly true that if it's not in Bramsen it's not real, it's a pretty good rule of thumb. Next I look in the Prince d'Essling's 1927 sale catalog. This collection was so large it's practically the only affordable reference that rivals Bramsen in scale. Since it comes after Bramsen most of its pieces are referenced although some were missed. There are pieces that Bramsen didn't reference which makes this a good cross-reference. There is an early reference in English of 141 medals being sold by the Paris Mint written by a Captain Laskey and another rare reference, Edwards' 1837 sort-of translation of the Trésor de numismatique published the year before in Paris. If it is a French piece prior to 1800 I go to Hennin instead of Bramsen. Finally, if it is British I go to Dalton & Hamer for tokens, and British Historical Medals for, well medals... Beginning in 2003 I acquired through gift a copy of R. Martini's Catalogo delle Medaglie delle Civiche Raccolte Numismatiche. V. Secoli XVIII-XIX. For obvious reasons I've shortened that to Milan in the descriptions! It is a wonderful reference with pictures associated with nearly every medal described. Last, but not least, come here! One purpose in putting the sites of napoleonicmedals.com online was to provide a sort of ready reference for these beautiful medals for the world at large.

   Here's how I categorized our example.

The exercise is one that you have to modify based on the information you have at hand. For instance without references the best I could probably have done with this example, linked to before, is that it dates after 1804. That's because Napoleon is referred to as the Emperor of course. Experience would have dated it early in the Empire as later production of German jetons switched over to anti-Napoleon themes. But the real help in establishing the date is Bramsen, who definitely dates it 1804. So, you can see if you are interested in taking this up as a hobby that investing in the standard references is as important (or more!) than getting the next great medal. I have passed up many fine deals in preference to spending my money on references. In the long run I enjoy myself much more and I have found several rarities as result that others assume must be post-period junk! The example above was one, unidentified clearly by the the dealer, rare enough that neither Bramsen nor d'Essling owned a copy, and it fell into my hands for less than $10. Of course some days are better than others...