Sergeant Pell in London
P.R. Adair introduces the experiences of a rustic recruit to the Grenadier Guards.
‘Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules... but of all the world’s great Heroes, there’s none that can compare with a tow-row-row to the British Grenadiers.’
To this stirring tune, and others in the same vein, British soldiers fought and died during the eighteenth century in campaigns throughout the known world, ranging from Europe to India and from Canada to the Caribbean Sea.
Most of these struggles are recorded in the letters, diaries, and memoirs which tell of the bravery, and of the privations that had to be endured by the long suffering soldiery.
Unfortunately, it is not until the Napoleonic Wars that we get many accounts that are not written by officers, thus we have little way of knowing what the life of the lower ranks was like, and whether history’s judgement that it was based on brutality and the lash is correct.
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