author
William Lawrence
1791–1867
A British soldier whose vivid memoir brings the Napoleonic Wars down to ground level, telling the story of campaign life, punishment, survival, and Waterloo from the ranks. His voice is plain, direct, and unusually memorable.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in 1791, William Lawrence served as a sergeant in the 40th Regiment of Foot and took part in the Peninsular War and the Waterloo campaign. His life story survived in The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence, a memoir valued for its firsthand view of ordinary military life rather than grand strategy.
Accounts connected with the book describe him as an illiterate or barely literate soldier whose memories were written down with help and later prepared for publication after his death. That gives the narrative a rough, immediate quality that makes it stand out from more polished memoirs of the period.
Lawrence spent his later years in Studland, Dorset, where he died in 1867. Today he is remembered mainly for leaving behind one of the most striking rank-and-file accounts of the Napoleonic wars.