Wellington's Men: Some Soldier Autobiographies

Mercer could hardly tell when and how Waterloo began, and he can almost as little tell when and how it ended! So wild is the confusion, so overwhelming the excitement of a great...

Mercer's account of Waterloo has much less of literary art and skill in it than other parts of his book. He plunges the reader, without warning and without explanation, into the...

Kincaid shared in all the bloody fights of the Peninsula, from Sabugal to Toulouse. His descriptions of these fights are hasty and planless; they give no hint of the strategy be...

The campaign of 1811-12 is not the least memorable of the immortal campaigns in the Peninsula. It saw Fuentes, Albuera, and Salamanca fought; it includes the great sieges of Ciu...

Mercer's battery formed part of the British rearguard in the retreat from Quatre Bras to Waterloo, and his gunners had some very breathless and exciting experiences on the road,...

Of the three great and memorable sieges of the Peninsula--Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajos, and San Sebastian--Kincaid took part in the first two, and has left a curiously interesting ac...

Harris's Peninsular experiences began in 1808. The Rifles formed part of a modest force of less than 10,000 men about to sail for a raid on the Spanish colonies in South America...

Anton's own adventures in the Peninsula were brief, but of a stern and exciting quality. His regiment embarked on August 17, 1813, and thus reached Spain when the war had come t...

Harris's descriptions of his comrades are always kindly, but they are keen. There is a touch of barrack freedom about them, and they have a Dutch realism which sometimes makes t...

Harris found a new commander-in-chief in Sir John Moore, and it was his fortune to share in the sufferings and glory of the immortal retreat to Corunna. Moore has never yet come...

Anton's officers were quick to discover his steadiness, his frugality, his methodical loyalty to every duty of a soldier. He was first put on recruiting service, and then had hi...

Mercer held the rank of second captain only in troop G, but Sir Alexander Dickson, whose troop it was, being employed on other duties, Mercer was in actual command. It was a fin...

The sufferings of the retreat steadily increased. The weather grew more bitter, the country more difficult, the supply of food scantier. Under the strain of incessant marching,...

Nothing in Kincaid's "adventures" is finer than his account of Waterloo. He tells, it is true, only that which took place about himself, and, as the grey and strangling battle-s...

Napoleon's plan for what was to prove the last campaign in his own wonderful career was daring and subtle. He had to face two armies, each almost equal in strength to his own; a...

Harris's "Recollections" abound in what may be called thumb-nail sketches of his comrades and his officers. He had a quick eye for character as well as for incident; and his des...

"I joined the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade (then the 95th), at Hythe Barracks, in the spring of 1809, and, in a month after, we proceeded to form a part of the expedition to Holl...

The great battles and sieges, of course, arrest the attention of the historian, and their tale has been told over and over again. But what may be called the unrecorded marches a...

Anton attempts a more ambitious account of the battle of Toulouse than of any other fight in which he was engaged; and there is some reason for this. It was a cluster of Scottis...

Napoleon escaped from Elba on January 26, 1815; on March 19 he reached Fontainebleau, and Louis XVIII. fled from Paris. Instantly the flames of war were rekindled throughout Eur...

The return of Napoleon from Elba found the 42nd on duty in Ireland. But when Great Britain was pouring her choicest troops into the Netherlands, in readiness for the last great...

Anton's account of the retreat from Quatre Bras to Waterloo, of the camp on the historic ridge through the falling rains and blackness of the night before the great battle, and...

"My father was a shepherd, and I was a sheep-boy from my earliest youth. Indeed, as soon almost as I could run I began helping my father to look after the sheep on the downs of...

Mercer's description of his march across the Low Countries is full of keen observation, and rich in pictures of peasant life. At Ghent the troop halted for seven days. Here the...

Harris sees with characteristic clearness of vision, and describes, with almost appalling _vraisemblance_, the grim scenes of the battle-field after the fiery tide of battle has...