A Guards Officer in the Peninsula: Peninsular War Letters of John Rous, Coldstream Guards, 1812-14 (Spellmount/Nutshell military list). This item is unavailable.A Guards Officer in the Peninsula: Peninsular War Letters of John Rous, Coldstream Guards, 1812-14 (Spellmount/Nutshell military list)

he Hon. John Edward Cornwallis Rous, later to become the 2nd Earl of Stradbroke, was commissioned as an ensign in the 2nd (Coldstream) Foot Guards on June 28th 1810 at the age of sixteen and travelled to Portugal in the summer of 1812 to join his regiment which was fighting in the Peninsula under Wellington. During the next two years Rous saw action at Salamanca, Burgos, Vittoria, San Sebastian, at the crossing of the Bidassoa, at the Nivelle and Nive, the crossing of the Adour, and at Bayonne where almost one thousand British soldiers became unnecessary casualties when the French made a sortie two days after peace had been declared. Unlike many of the memoirs of Wellington's soldiers which were written years afterwards when the memory had dimmed somewhat or had been influenced by the profusion of similar writings that appeared at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Rous' letters were written in camp and were not `tidied up' for popular consumption at a later date. The letters also reflect the manner in which only the officers of the Foot Guards could afford to live, their private incomes enabling them to procure from England all manner of luxuries otherwise unobtainable and to sustain a relatively affluent lifestyle. Rous gives his opinions of Wellington and his officers, of the Portuguese and Spaniards, and as his last letters were written as his regiment awaited embarkation to England he describes the relationship between the British and the defeated French. Previously unpublished, Rous' letters give us a further insight into life in Wellington's army.