The Military Memoir and Romantic Literary Culture, 1780–1835
The Military Memoir and Romantic Literary Culture, 1780–1835

Author: Neil Ramsey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1351885677

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Examining the memoirs and autobiographies of British soldiers during the Romantic period, Neil Ramsey explores the effect of these as cultural forms mediating warfare to the reading public during and immediately after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Forming a distinct and commercially successful genre that in turn inspired the military and nautical novels that flourished in the 1830s, military memoirs profoundly shaped nineteenth-century British culture's understanding of war as Romantic adventure, establishing images of the nation's middle-class soldier heroes that would be of enduring significance through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As Ramsey shows, the military memoir achieved widespread acclaim and commercial success among the reading public of the late Romantic era. Ramsey assesses their influence in relation to Romantic culture's wider understanding of war writing, autobiography, and authorship and to the shifting relationships between the individual, the soldier, and the nation. The memoirs, Ramsey argues, participated in a sentimental response to the period's wars by transforming earlier, impersonal traditions of military memoirs into stories of the soldier's personal suffering. While the focus on suffering established in part a lasting strand of anti-war writing in memoirs by private soldiers, such stories also helped to foster a sympathetic bond between the soldier and the civilian that played an important role in developing ideas of a national war and functioned as a central component in a national commemoration of war.

History Of The King’s German Legion
History Of The King’s German Legion

Author: N. Ludlow Beamish

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2014-06-13

Total Pages: 493

ISBN-13: 1782891498

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“Ludlow Beamish’s famous history of the K.G.L. is undoubtedly one of the rarest and most sought-after contemporary studies of the Napoleonic Wars. Much praised by Sir Charles Oman as ‘a valuable and conscientious’ history, it was largely compiled from eye-witness accounts of serving soldiers. The Legion played a major part in the British Army in the Peninsula and this special edition is a vital addition to the library of all serious students of the Napoleonic Wars. One of the most unusual, as well as the most heroic and distinguished Allied units in the Napoleonic Wars was the King’s German Legion (KGL). Originally composed of German volunteers from King George III’s Hanoverian domain, and founded out of Royal outrage at France’s occupation of Hanover in 1803, the KGL, according to David Chandler, doyen of Napoleonic military historians ‘was without a doubt amongst the very best troops commanded by Wellington in the Peninsula and at Waterloo’. The KGL was a mini-army in its own right, comprising infantry, cavalry and artillery... Volume 1 begins with the bungled loss of Hanover and the raising of the KGL, and its first foreign expedition - to Denmark under Lord Rosslyn. The KGL was next deployed in the Mediterranean theatre, and had its first taste of Spain under Sir John Moore and Sir Arthur Wellesley (Wellington) where the German hussars covered the disastrous retreat to Corunna. The Legion returned to Portugal and Spain with Wellington and lost heavily at the Battle of Talavera. Other KGL units took part in Sir Eyre Coote’s expedition to Flushing and Walcheren. In the Peninsula War, the Legion fought under General Craufurd, helping to defeat the French at Busaco and before the lines of Torres Vedras, and later participating in Wellington’s victory over Marshal Massena at Fuentes d’Oñoro. The volume ends with Soult’s defeat at Albuera and the siege of Badajoz.”-N&M Print version