Commanding Wellington's Horse Artillery

The galloping guns in the Peninsular War and the Waterloo campaign

Based on the experiences of Wellington’s commander of horse artillery, Augustus Simon Frazer, these highly informative letters were written while he was on campaign against Napoleon’s forces during the Peninsular War in Spain and the Waterloo Campaign in 1815. Born the son of an officer of engineers in Dunkirk in 1776, Frazer was gazetted as a second lieutenant into the Royal Artillery in 1793. By early 1794 he was campaigning in Flanders under the Duke of York where he was promoted and took part in several engagements including Tournai and Boxtel. By 1799 he had joined the Royal Horse Artillery and promoted again was once more back in the Low Countries. In 1807, then a captain, Frazer joined the ill-fated expedition to Buenos Aires. Although his military service had been thus far in poorly performing campaigns, Frazer had become a skilful commander of artillery and so in 1811, he joined the army under Wellington in the Iberian peninsula. He served with distinction at Salamanca, Osma, Burgos, Vitoria, San Sebastian, during the Pyrenees engagements and at Bayonne where he was wounded. At the end of the Peninsular War he returned to England a Lieutenant-Colonel. Napoleon’s last great gamble for power in 1815 brought Frazer back to the battlefield in Belgium commanding the Royal Horse Artillery. Attached to Wellington’s headquarters he saw action at Quatre Bras. During the Battle of Waterloo the horse artillery performed brilliantly in the vicinity of Hougoumont. Frazer’s letters offer the reader the immediacy of reportage from a military eyewitness and are an essential component of every library of the warfare of the Napoleonic period. This special Leonaur edition contains illustrations and maps not present in original versions of the text.

Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.