author
Cavalié Mercer
1783–1868
Best known for his vivid firsthand account of Waterloo, this British artillery officer wrote with the eye of a soldier and the timing of a storyteller. His journal brings one of history’s most famous battles close enough to hear the guns.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in 1783, Alexander Cavalié Mercer was a British Army officer in the Royal Horse Artillery. He is most closely associated with the Battle of Waterloo, where he commanded G Troop and later became known to many readers through his memoir of the 1815 campaign.
His lasting literary reputation rests on Journal of the Waterloo Campaign, drawn from notes he kept during the campaign itself. Readers value it for its direct, lively sense of experience: it is military history from someone who was there, written with detail, movement, and a strong personal voice.
Mercer rose to the rank of general and lived until 1868. Though he was a career soldier, his place in many libraries comes from the way his writing preserves the confusion, danger, and drama of war at close range.