author
Cavalié Mercer
1783–1868
Best remembered for commanding G Troop of the Royal Horse Artillery at Waterloo, he left behind one of the most vivid firsthand accounts of the 1815 campaign. His writing brings the confusion, danger, and daily life of war into sharp focus.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in 1783, Alexander Cavalié Mercer was a British Army officer in the Royal Horse Artillery. He is chiefly remembered for his service at the Battle of Waterloo, where he commanded G Troop, and for the journal he kept during the 1815 campaign.
That journal was later published as Journal of the Waterloo Campaign and became an important eyewitness account of the battle and the days around it. Mercer wrote with unusual immediacy, which helps explain why historians and general readers alike have continued to value his work.
He rose to the rank of general and died in 1868. Beyond his military career, surviving portraits and biographical records also show him as a figure whose reputation rests not only on battlefield service, but on his ability to record it memorably.