Adventures In The Rifle Brigade

Adventures in the Rifle Brigade is probably the most well-known and most popular of the many memoirs written by the men who served under Wellington in the Peninsular and Waterloo campaigns. The author, Captain John Kincaid, served in the 95th Rifles, the most famous of Wellington's regiments, a regiment which ‘was first in the field and last out'. Kincaid fought in most of the great campaigns in the Peninsula between 1809 and 1814 and at Waterloo, in 1815, where he served as adjutant to the 1st Battalion of the Regiment. The beauty of this memoir is the way in which Kincaid paints a picture, and a very humourous and entertaining too, of life on campaign in Wellington's army. The book also has its serious nature, of course, for Kincaid witnessed some of the bloodiest episodes of the war, none more than Badajoz, where the 95th, part of the famous Light Division, was hurled at the massive forbidding walls more than forty times in a vain attempt to pass the breaches. Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, the 1835 first edition of which is reproduced in facsimile here, is history at its very best; informative, enlightening and perceptive, hard fact mixed with humour, a vivid portrayal of life on campaign in one of the most famous regiments in the British army, and most importantly, enjoyable and vastly entertaining.