The Troops Speak

The series Unpublished Memoirs is a recent compilation of British memoirs from the Peninsular War. In this volume, the focus is on the 43^rd Light Regiment of Wellington’s famous Light Division. As one might expect most of the papers, letters, diaries, and memoirs are from officers of the regiment: three Lieutenant Colonels, three Captains, six Lieutenants, an Ensign, and a single private.

Several of the accounts are from contemporary letters written by the soldiers back home, so they have the advantage of being contemporary sources, and less effected by the passage of time and faulty memories. With these accounts, one gets a good sense of the day-to-day life of the regiment and the concerns of the soldiers for news back home, especially about their families. There is the usual complaints about food, harsh conditions, comments about the Spaniards and Portuguese locals encountered and of course about the French enemy. Glover himself has written Marching, Fighting, and Dying, an excellent overview of memoir-writing by Peninsular War soldiers that is a good companion book to Memoirs of the 43^rd.

These particular accounts do not focus on the battles of the 43^rd, except for one account of the Battle of the Nivelle late in the Peninsular War. The famous encounters at Bussaco, Fuentes de Oñoro and Salamanca, are largely mentioned in passing, without any detailed descriptions by the soldiers. The most commented-upon battle is the Battle of the Coa, where the division was at risk of being defeated by the French. More attention is given to the smaller skirmishes fought by the 43^rd, as one might expect from a light infantry regiment that spent most of its time conducting le petit guerre of the Napoleonic Wars. It’s a book for the grognard, especially those interested in the Light Division.

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Our Reviewer: Dr. Stavropoulos received his Ph.D. in History from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2013. Currently an Adjunct Professor at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY, his previous reviews include Prelude to Waterloo: Quatre Bras: The French Perspective, Braddock's Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution, Italy 1636: Cemetery of Armies, In the Name of Lykourgos, The Other Face of Battle, The Bulgarian Contract, Napoleon’s Stolen Army, In the Words of Wellington’s Fighting Cocks, Chasing the Great Retreat, Athens, City of Wisdom: A History, Commanding Petty Despots, Writing Battles: New Perspectives on Warfare and Memory in Medieval Europe, SOG Kontum, Simply Murder, Soldiers from Experience, July 22: The Civil War Battle of Atlanta, New York’s War of 1812, The Philadelphia Campaign, 1777, The Spear, the Scroll, and the Pebble, The Killing Ground, The Hill: The Brutal Fight for Hill 107 in the Battle of Crete, The Lion at Dawn: Forging British Strategy in the Age of the French Revolution, Stalin's Revenge: Operation Bagration and the Annihilation of Army Group Centre and The Men of Wellington’s Light Division: Unpublished Memoirs from the 43rd Light Infantry.

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Note: The Men of Wellington’s Light Division is also available in e-editions.

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