Voices From the Napoleonic Wars

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 Arm¿/I> 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 Cavali