BY ANDERSON & BRYCE.
MDCCCXXXIII.
Address.
The Work now submitted to the Public, contains an account of the Author's Campaigns during the most memorable period of the late French wars. It pretends to no eminence as a literary composition; but the Author trusts, that it will not be found wanting in accuracy of detail, as to facts falling under his own notice. He trusts that no one who opens it in hope of being amused, will shut it disappointed; and he sincerely hopes that the junior members of his own profession will find in it something which may prove useful to them when they are called upon to suffer hardships—to encounter dangers—and to perform duties similar to those recorded in the following pages.
Perth, 20th March, 1833.
MILITARY MEMOIRS
OF AN
INFANTRY OFFICER.
CHAPTER I.
In the beginning of the summer of 1809, the whole European commonwealth—Austria, Spain, Portugal, and Sicily excepted, were arrayed in arms against the British Isles; and ere the autumnal sun had cheered the heart of the Austrian husbandman, that powerful empire, after a series of sanguinary conflicts, was compelled to sue for peace, and join the ranks of the enemy. The latter unfortunate event reduced the number of our allies from forty to sixteen millions; and consequently gave to our haughty antagonist a numerical superiority of one hundred and fourteen millions—France and her allies forming a body of one hundred and fifty millions, while Britain, and her little band of faithful friends amounted to thirty-six millions of souls only! Such was the unequal division of power in Europe in July 1809, when the grand expedition under the present Earl of Chatham quitted the British shores, to assail the enemy in a quarter then looked upon as the most vulnerable point of his widely extended dominions.