While engaged during the last ten years in the task of mastering the original authorities of the history of the Napoleonic wars, I have had to peruse many scores of diaries, autobiographies, and reminiscences of the British military and naval officers who were engaged in the great struggle. They vary, of course, in interest and importance, in literary value, and in the power of vivid presentation of events. But they have this in common, that they are almost all very difficult to procure. Very few of them have been reprinted; indeed, I believe that the books of Lord Dundonald, Sir John Kincaid, Gleig, John Shipp, and Colonel Mercer are wellnigh the only ones which have passed through a second edition. Yet there are many others which contain matter of the highest interest, not only for the historical student but for every intelligent reader. From these I have made a selection of ten or a dozen which seem to me well worth republishing.
