Historical Record of the Twelfth, or the Prince of Wales's Royal Regiment of Lancers Containing an Account of the Formation of the Regiment in 1715, and of Its Subsequent — A Reader’s Guide

Two Registers of Record

The volume juxtaposes two documentary impulses. The first is the official regimental history, mandated by the Adjutant-General to 'hold forth these bright examples to the imitation of the youthful soldier.' This section lists stations, engagements, and casualties in a detached, summary style. The second register is the personal testimony of an officer wounded at Waterloo, which occupies a long, uninterrupted block of text. Here the prose becomes immediate and physical: the narrator describes a tirailleur who 'knelt and fired over me, loading and firing many times, and conversing with great gaiety all the while,' then ran off saying, 'Vous serez bien aise d'entendre que nous allons nous retirer; bon jour, mon ami.' The contrast between the general's command to 'display noble deeds' and the soldier's account of being plundered, left in 'a very uneasy posture,' and later having a dying man 'lying across my legs' creates a tension between official commemoration and lived experience.

Sensory Geography of the Battlefield

The Waterloo narrative is organized not by chronology but by proximity and sound. The wounded officer's world shrinks to the ground around him: he notes the 'cries and groans of the wounded all around me, became every instant more and more audible, succeeding to the shouts, imprecations, outcries of 'Vive l'Empereur!' the discharges of musquetry and cannon.' Intervals of 'perfect silence' are described as 'worse than the noise.' Movement is registered through touch and vibration—Prussian cavalry 'passed over me in full trot, lifting me from the ground, and tumbling me about cruelly.' The officer's position is fixed; he cannot see the battle's progress, only infer it from sounds and the behavior of soldiers who stop to plunder or aid him. This restricted perspective transforms the field into a landscape of voices, footsteps, and the 'air issuing through a wound in his side.'

Acts of Mercy Amid Plunder

Throughout the account, the wounded officer encounters a series of strangers—enemy and ally—whose actions oscillate between threat and compassion. A tirailleur threatens to kill him but accepts three dollars and leaves; an officer in a blue greatcoat gives him brandy and 'directed one of his men to lay me straight on my side, and place a knapsack under my head.' Another tirailleur fires over him 'with great gaiety' before departing. After the battle, Prussian soldiers wander 'to plunder,' and one pulls him 'about roughly.' Finally, a soldier from the 40th regiment agrees to stay by him in exchange for a reward, standing guard with a sword 'pacing backwards and forwards.' These encounters form a moral spectrum: the narrator is dependent on the unpredictable choices of men who might kill, rob, or save him. He never learns the name of the officer who helped him, noting 'I shall never know to whose generosity I was indebted.'

Literary Echoes in the Field

The narrator explicitly connects his experience to a literary precedent: 'the scene in Ferdinand, Count Fathom, came into my mind, though no women, I believe, were there.' This reference to Tobias Smollett's picaresque novel—which includes a famous scene of a protagonist wandering a battlefield at night—signals that the officer is filtering his trauma through a known narrative. The allusion also underscores the theatricality of the scene: the 'cries and groans,' the 'shouts, imprecations, outcries,' and the 'intervals of perfect silence' are described with a novelist's attention to pacing. Yet the account remains grounded in physical detail: the weight of the dying soldier, the 'convulsive motions,' the 'noises.' The literary reference does not diminish the reality but rather frames it as a scene that feels already written, as if the officer is both experiencing and observing his own story.

Readers should attend to the structural disjunction between the regimental record and the personal narrative, as it reveals how official military history can contain—but not fully absorb—individual testimony. The Waterloo passage rewards close attention to its sensory details and moral ambiguities: the enemy who gives water, the ally who plunders, the literary allusion that surfaces in extremity. This is not a conventional battle history but a document that lets a single voice, pinned to the ground, register the war from a fixed and vulnerable point.

The rain kept the room dim, and I sat with the 12th Lancers, held by that wounded officer’s voice amid the smoke of Waterloo. His physical immediacy lingered. Later, my hand drifted to the shelf, pulling down the Historical record of the 71st Regiment Highland Light Infantry — Reading Companion, curious how another soldier might recall his own thunder. The afternoon dissolved into their separate, shared silences.