TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of the book, in front of the catalog. The tables in this book are best viewed using a monospace font. Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book. JOURNAL OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN JOURNAL OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN KEPT THROUGHOUT THE CAMPAIGN OF 1815 BY THE LATE GENERAL CAVALIÉ MERCER COMMANDING THE 9TH BRIGADE ROYAL ARTILLERY IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXX _The Right of Translation is reserved_ PREFACE. This work--the ‘Journal of the Campaign of 1815’--was written by my father in its present form about forty years ago, from rough notes jotted down every evening after the scenes and events of the day were over. It has no pretension to be an account of the military operations of the war, but merely a diary of the writer’s own impressions--what he saw and felt while with the army, from the first landing in Belgium to the final embarkation for England. Of the great battle, no other description than that of the part taken in it by his own troop of Horse-Artillery, or those corps in his immediate vicinity, is given; but from its very nature as a diary, the tedium of out-quarters, the fatigues of the march, and the hardships of the bivouac, are made present, as it were, to the reader. My father having been a very good amateur artist, was much struck, of course, by new and picturesque scenes, consequently has described them _con amore_, and in considerable detail. The author himself belonged to a military race; all his family were either in the army or navy. He was the second son of General Mercer of the Royal Engineers, who, after serving on Sir H. Clinton’s staff during the American War of Independence, was more than twenty years commanding engineer in the West of England, where his honourable character procured him many friends. My father (also a general officer at the time of his death) was born in 1783, and passing as usual through the Military Academy at Woolwich, obtained a commission in the Royal Artillery at sixteen, and was sent to Ireland at the time of the Rebellion. In 1808 he went to the river Plate to join Whitelock’s unfortunate expedition, and covered the retreat from Buenos Ayres. This proved a most unhappy affair for him; for having been in South America, he was prevented from partaking in the glorious campaigns of the Peninsula, and only