Voices from the Napoleonic Wars reveals in telling detail the harsh
lives of soldiers at the turn of the eighteenth century and in the early
years of the nineteenth - the poor food and brutal discipline they
endured, along with the forced marches and bloody, hand-to-hand combat.
Contemporaries were mesmerised by Napoleon, and with good reason: in
1812, he had an unprecedented million men and more under arms. His new
model army of volunteers and conscripts at epic battles such as
Austerlitz, Salamanca, Borodino, Jena and, of course, Waterloo marked
the beginning of modern warfare, the road to the Sommes and Stalingrad.
The citizen-in-arms of Napoleon's Grande Armée and other armies of the
time gave rise to a distinct body of soldiers' personal memoirs. The
personal accounts that Jon E. Lewis has selected from these memoirs, as
well as from letters and diaries, include those of Rifleman Harris
fighting in the Peninsular Wars, and Captain Alexander Cavalie Mercer of
the Royal Horse Artillery at Waterloo. They cover the land campaigns of
the French Revolutionary Wars (1739-1802), the Napoleonic Wars
(1803-1815) and the War of 1812 (1812-1815), in North America. This was
the age of cavalry charges, of horse-drawn artillery, of muskets and
hand-to-hand combat with sabres and bayonets. It was an era in which
inspirational leadership and patriotic common cause counted for much at
close quarters on chaotic and bloody battlefields.
The men who wrote these accounts were directly involved in the sweeping
campaigns and climactic battles that set Europe and America alight at
the turn of the eighteenth century and in the years that followed.
Alongside recollections of the ferocity of hard-fought battles are the
equally telling details of the common soldier's daily life - short
rations, forced marches in the searing heat of the Iberian summer and
the bitter cold of the Russian winter, debilitating illnesses and
crippling wounds, looting and the lash, but also the compensations of
hard-won comradeship in the face of ever-present death.
Collectively, these personal accounts give us the most vivid picture of
warfare 200 and more years ago, in the evocative language of those who
knew it at first hand - the men and officers of the British, French and
American armies. They let us know exactly what it was like to be an
infantryman, a cavalryman, an artilleryman of the time.
