The Waterloo Archive: Volume III: British Sources

The British archives of the Napoleonic wars are unique, brimming with personal letters to family and friends or journals that record their innermost thoughts. The human aspect of war comes to the fore, the humor and exhilaration; the fears and miseries; the starvation and exhaustion; the horror and the joy.

It is usually accepted that very few common soldiers of this period could read or write and that the few letters and journals that do exist emanate from more senior officers, who were req...