The Autobiography of Sergeant William pdf

CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER I.
1
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Autobiography of Sergeant William
by William Lawrence
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Lawrence, by William Lawrence This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no
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Title: The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns
Author: William Lawrence

Editor: George Nugent Bankes
Release Date: June 28, 2009 [EBook #29263]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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The Autobiography of Sergeant William by William Lawrence 2

[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected. Hyphenation and accentuation have been
standardised, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been maintained.]
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
SERGEANT WILLIAM LAWRENCE,
A HERO OF THE PENINSULAR AND WATERLOO CAMPAIGNS;
EDITED BY
GEORGE NUGENT BANKES,
AUTHOR OF "A DAY OF MY LIFE AT ETON," ETC., ETC.
London SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET
STREET 1886
[All rights reserved]
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Square 16mo, cloth extra, 2s. 6d. each.
A DAY OF MY LIFE AT ETON.
ABOUT SOME FELLOWS; or, Odds and Ends from My Note-book.
CAMBRIDGE TRIFLES; or, Splutterings from an Undergraduate's Pen.
A CAMBRIDGE STAIRCASE.
Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.
WRITTEN TO ORDER: being some Account of the Journeyings of an Irresponsible Egotist, and of How he
enjoyed himself thereon.
LONDON: SAMPSON LOW & CO., 188, FLEET STREET, E.C.

PREFACE.
Sergeant William Lawrence died at Studland in Dorsetshire in the year 1867, bequeathing the manuscript of
the accompanying autobiography to the family one of whose members now submits it to the notice of the
public. Circumstances, which perhaps may be too often interpreted as really meaning an unfortunate tendency
to procrastination, have hitherto prevented it being put into shape with a view to publication: one thing after
another has intervened, and the work has been passed on from hand to hand, until after these long years a final
effort has been made, and the self-imposed task completed.
The Autobiography of Sergeant William by William Lawrence 3
The book is simply sent forth on its own merits in the hope that there are yet some, if not indeed many whose
hearts are never weary of the tales of England's glory in the past, and seek to find in them reason why that
glory should be perpetuated. Many an account have we already had of the victories of the Peninsula and
Waterloo, and this but adds one more to the list: though perhaps it may be regarded in somewhat of a
supplementary light, as treating of the campaigns neither from an entirely outside and soi-disant unprejudiced
standpoint, nor with the advantages possessed by one who may have had access to the councils of the
authorities, but as they were seen by one who came and went and did as he was told, and was as it were
nothing more than a single factor in the great military machine that won our country those battles of which she
has so much right to be proud. What criticisms of the conduct of the war our veteran occasionally does
indulge in are of course chiefly founded on the camp gossip current at the time, and in reading them it must
always be borne in mind that events at the moment of their happening often do not present the same
appearance as when viewed from the calmer security of after years, and they must be judged accordingly.
As to the style. Lawrence, though he never betrayed the fact to the authorities during his whole military
career, being possessed of a wonderful aptitude for mental calculation, and always contriving to get some
assistance in concealing his deficiency when his official duties necessitated his doing so, and though he has
carefully avoided all direct allusion to it in this work itself, never learnt to write, and the first form in which
his history was committed to paper was from dictation. The person who took down the words as he spoke
them, one of his fellow-servants, was but imperfectly educated himself, so that it may be imagined that the
result of the narrative of one illiterate person being written down by another was that the style was not likely
to aspire to any very high degree of literary merit. Still, to preserve the peculiar character of the book, it has
been thought better to leave it as far as possible in its original shape: some emendations have perforce had to
be made to render it actually intelligible for instance, in the original manuscript there is scarcely any

punctuation from beginning to end, with the exception of at those places where the amanuensis evidently left
off his day's work; but the language, with its occasional half-flights into a poetry of about the standard of an
Eton boy's verses, its crude moralizings, and imperfect applications of old proverbs and fables, has not been
altered, nor, so far as there can be said to be one, has the method. It is trusted, therefore, that, remembering
that the main object in the editor's mind has been to let the venerable hero tell his story in exactly his own
words so far as his meaning can be thereby made out, no one will take any unnecessary pains to count up how
often the words "likewise" and "proceed" are repeated in these pages, or to point out that the general style of
the book combines those of Tacitus, Caesar's Commentaries, and the Journeyings of the Israelites. Nor, it is to
be hoped, will any one be too severe in his comments on the fact that to the mind of a man in Lawrence's
position the obtaining of a pair of boots was apparently quite as important an event as the storming of
Badajoz, or the finding of a sack with a ham and a couple of fowls in it as the winning of the battle of
Waterloo.
Interesting perhaps the book will prove as giving some of the details of what our soldiers had to undergo in
those old times of war. Hardships they now have to endure, and endure them they do well, but all must be
thankful to know that they are far better off than their forefathers; who, unsuitably clad, half starved, and with
their commissariat such even as it was disgracefully mismanaged, and yet forbidden very often under pain of
death to pick up what they could for themselves, submitted on the shortest notice to punishments which would
nowadays call forth the indignant protests of hosts of newspaper correspondents; and still in spite of all fought
stubbornly through every obstacle till they had gained the objects for which they had been sent out. What
wonder can there be that under all these circumstances we should find our hero somewhat hardened in his
estimate of human sympathies, and not altogether disinclined to view everything, whether it concerned life or
death, or marriage, or parting or meeting, all in one phlegmatic way, as occurring as a matter of course? What
ought to strike us as more curious is that he was only reduced to that level of intellect where he thought even
that much of anything at all besides his actual eating, drinking, and sleeping.
But to go on further would be to depart from the original intention of letting the book speak for itself. To
conclude therefore: there is much to wade through, though it is all more or less relevant to the progress of the
story: some readers may like one part and some may prefer another; and if the pruning-hook had once been
The Autobiography of Sergeant William by William Lawrence 4
introduced it would have been difficult to decide what to leave and what to take, or whether it would not be
better to publish another volume of the things pruned, since it had been determined to publish at all. But if the

reader will accomplish the wading to the end, there will he find summed up in one simple paragraph the
autobiographer's own ideas about the merits of his work. May it be received in the same spirit as it is sent
forth!
CONTENTS.
The Autobiography of Sergeant William by William Lawrence 5
CHAPTER I.
Page
Starting in Life 1
CHAPTER I. 6
CHAPTER II.
Enlisted and ordered Abroad 9
CHAPTER II. 7
CHAPTER III.
The River Plate Expedition Monte Video 16
CHAPTER III. 8
CHAPTER IV.
The River Plate Expedition, continued Colonia 26
CHAPTER IV. 9
CHAPTER V.
The River Plate Expedition, concluded Buenos Ayres 35
CHAPTER V. 10
CHAPTER VI.
The Peninsula, 1809 Vimeira Lisbon 42
CHAPTER VI. 11
CHAPTER VII.
Talavera 51
CHAPTER VII. 12
CHAPTER VIII.
1810 Busaco 59
CHAPTER VIII. 13

CHAPTER IX.
Torres Vedras 67
CHAPTER IX. 14
CHAPTER X.
1811 Pombal, Redinha, &c. 77
CHAPTER X. 15
CHAPTER XI.
Siege of Badajoz Albuera 87
CHAPTER XI. 16
CHAPTER XII.
1812 Ciudad Rodrigo 95
CHAPTER XII. 17
CHAPTER XIII.
Badajoz 107
CHAPTER XIII. 18
CHAPTER XIV.
Invalided Promotion 120
CHAPTER XIV. 19
CHAPTER XV.
1813 Vittoria 131
CHAPTER XV. 20
CHAPTER XVI.
The Pyrenees Villebar 143
CHAPTER XVI. 21
CHAPTER XVII.
The Nive Further Promotion 154
CHAPTER XVII. 22
CHAPTER XVIII.
San Sebastian Nivelle 167
CHAPTER XVIII. 23

CHAPTER XIX.
1814 Orthes The Adour Toulouse 175
CHAPTER XIX. 24
CHAPTER XX.
End of the War 185
CHAPTER XX. 25