Although there are many accounts of the Peninsular War by fighting men, this book is justly famed because it is a rarity: a memoir dictated by a ranker in Sir John Moore’s army. At a time when many members of his class were illiterate, Benjamin Harris, a ‘Dorsetshire sheep-boy’ serving in the 95th Regiment of Foot from 1803 conveys the hard life of an old sweat fighting both the French and the Iberian climate in lively and vivid prose. Harris records the sicknesses and medicines suffered by ordinary soldiers; recounts the savage punishment of a fellow Rifleman, and the cut and thrust of military life from a distinctly worm’s eye view, giving invaluable insights into the life of an ordinary soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. The book’s editor, Henry Curling, persuaded Harris to recount his memoirs when he met him while Harris was working as a London cobbler in the 1830s. First published in 1848, this memoir remains one of the most valuable documents to have come down to us from the early Peninsular War.

About the Author

BENJAMIN HARRIS was a young shepherd from Dorset who joined the army in 1802 and later joined the 95th Rifles. He told his story to Henry Curling, an officer on the half-pay of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, who came across him long after the war was over when Harris, discharged through ill health in 1814, was working as a cobbler in Soho. CHRISTOPHER HIBBERT served as an infantry officer during the war, was twice wounded and was awarded the Military Cross in 1945. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Hon. D. Litt of Leicester University.

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