Chapter I: Preface

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As it is the fashion now-a-days for every one to become an author, I see no reason why I should not try my hand at it also, and let my book run the same risk of being criticised, lashed, and abused by the literati (if, indeed, they deign to peruse it), as is every day the case with some production or other, and to which every one, who is bold enough to make similar experiments, must make up his mind.

Such as mine is, forth it goes to the world; and it must be taken for better for worse.

During many years of active service, I kept a daily journal, in which I inserted matters and things as they appeared to me at the instant; and from which journals, aided by a tolerably fair memory, and some old notes and memoranda, the following pages were put together in a rough state many years ago, and may therefore, with great propriety, be styled “Rough Sketches.”

I pretend not to any thing resembling a history of the Peninsular War. A very old Light Division comrade of mine, Colonel NAPIER, has already done it in so masterly a style, as to throw every other work on the same subject comparatively into the shade.

The operations of the Light Division of the Peninsular army I have detailed more minutely than those of any other. That division was, during a succession of campaigns, much detached from the mass of the army, having ample employment at the outposts. But I have not omitted to mention, also, the movements of other divisions, whenever an opportunity offered for my becoming acquainted with them.

It is unnecessary to remind my military readers, that as I never, for one hour in my whole life, held a staff appointment, but always did duty with my regiment, it was impossible that I could be acquainted, on every occasion, with the general combined movements of so large an army.

Those, however, who may have patience to wade through my “Rough Sketches,” will find in them a little about voyages, storms, shipwrecks, yellow fevers, musquitos, sangaree and sangarorum, sharks, dolphins, and flying-fish; night marches and day marches, camps and bivouacs, advances and retreats, skirmishes, battles, and sieges; signoras, waltzes, boleros, and fandangos; bull-fights, wild boar shooting, wolves, and red deer; British soldiers, and French, Spanish, and Portuguese,—all of which I have endeavoured to depict in their true colours.

If I have failed in my attempt, I am sorry for it; but my regret will be infinitely greater, if any of my brother-soldiers, whether of the cavalry, infantry, artillery, or engineers, either of the Peninsular army, or of that which fought at Waterloo, should accuse me of not having rendered due praise to the conduct of their respective divisions, brigades, or regiments, on particular occasions. Let me again remind them, that I was always regimentally employed; and that if any such omissions exist in my book, they are quite unintentional.

That they will be viewed in that light, by the liberal-minded, I entertain neither fear nor doubt.

Forty-nine out of every fifty of the scenes which I have here endeavoured to describe, I was an eye-witness of; and, on one or two occasions, when agues and fevers placed me for a short period on the sick list, the events which took place in the interim I became acquainted with, by being allowed to have access to the log-books of some one or other of my brother-officers. The thread of the narrative is therefore unbroken.

CONTENTS.