ANNALS OF THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGNS BY THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ. LATE OF THE 29TH REGIMENT A NEW EDITION-REVISED AND AUGMENTED BY FREDERICK HARDMAN, ESQ. AUTHOR OF "PENINSULAR SCENES AND SKETCHES," ETC. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS MDCCCXLIX EDITOR'S PREFACE. IN the Original Edition of the following " ANNALS OF THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGNS," the events immediately preceding the war, the first intrusion of the French armies, the Spanish successes in 1808, the campaign of Vimiero in the same year, and Sir John Moore's less fortunate one in the ensuing winter, were all given with abundant detail and minuteness for a work intended to be popular rather than professional, and addressed less to the military student than to the general reader. But, as the narrative proceeded, the war increasing in importance, the battles in magnitude and severity-the contest, too, acquiring peculiar interest for the English reader, because mainly sustained by a British general and a handful of British soldiers, against the flower of Napoleon's armies and the ablest of his lieutenants-it was observable that the interest of the book, instead of rising, rather declined, in consequence of rigorous compression, of a paucity of detail, and of the absence of illustrative anecdote. Of this change of style it is unimportant to seek the cause. Many writers are unconsciously less patient and felicitous towards the close than at the commencement of their labours; and it is not unnatural that a soldier should dwell most 1526 .18 92 2 11813 |