author
chevalier de James Johnstone Johnstone
b. 1719
A Scottish Jacobite soldier turned memoirist, he left one of the best-known firsthand accounts of the 1745 rising and its aftermath. His writings mix adventure, exile, and sharp observation from a life shaped by war and political defeat.
2 Audiobooks
A Dialogue in Hades A Parallel of Military Errors, of Which the French and English Armies Were Guilty, During the Campaign of 1759, in Canada
by chevalier de James Johnstone Johnstone
The Campaign of 1760 in Canada A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone
by chevalier de James Johnstone Johnstone
About the author
Born in Edinburgh on July 25, 1719, James Johnstone became known as the Chevalier de Johnstone, and sometimes signed himself Johnstone de Moffatt. He joined the Jacobite rising of 1745, and after its failure fled to France, where he built a military career in French service.
He later served in the Seven Years' War and spent time in North America, experiences that widened the scope of the memoirs for which he is now remembered. His Memoirs of the Rebellion in 1745 and 1746, published after his lifetime, helped preserve a vivid, personal view of the Jacobite cause and the world around it.
Johnstone is valued less as a literary stylist than as an eyewitness with a strong sense of character and incident. For readers interested in rebellion, exile, and 18th-century military life, his work offers a direct and memorable voice from the period.