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 saw foreign service again in the campaign of Waterloo. After the peace, he was placed upon half-pay. In 1824 he was ordered to Canada, having the brevet rank of major (I should have noticed that at Waterloo he only held the rank of second captain, although commanding a troop—Sir Alex. Dickson, whose troop it was, being otherwise employed). In 1837, being then a lieutenant-colonel, he was again sent to North America, and commanded the artillery in Nova Scotia at the time when the Maine boundary-line threatened to terminate in a war between this country and the United States. He subsequently commanded the garrison at Dover, after which he retired from active service, although, being colonel-commandant of the 9th Brigade of Royal Artillery, he was never placed on the retired list. From that time to the period of his death, at the advanced age of eighty-five, he continued to reside at Cowley Cottage, near Exeter.
Another addition to the numerous books which have been published about Waterloo will hardly seem out of place at a time when the subject has been revived both here and in France. It would seem that men’s interest in this great “World Battle” is as strong now as fifty years ago; and although this little contribution will not elucidate any of the questions that are agitated, still (as far as memory serves) it is the first account of the campaign given to the world by an artillery officer, and may add another stone to the cairn raised to the glory of the British army and its immortal chief. At any rate, the surviving veterans of this stirring epoch will rejoice to go again over the scenes of their younger days; while the lovers of peace will congratulate themselves on the cessation of such strife between two noble nations, whose last (and may it continue to be the last) hostile rencontre took place upon the plain of Waterloo.
CAVALIÉ A. MERCER.
Tripoli, Syria.