Book Description

Field-Marshal Gomm’s letters and journals provide a first-rate account of the numerous actions, battles and events that he was involved in during the Napoleonic wars. A seasoned officer from a military family, he was an acute observer of all that went on around him, and the notes and letters he wrote, edited by his son, provide a capital trove of information. This collection of his diary entries and letters focuses on the Napoleonic Wars, although he would rise to the highest rank in the British Army and C-in-C of India. Engaged in the early campaigns of the British Army against the French forces from 1799, he was one of the few officers that fought in the Peninsular War and the Waterloo campaign that actually had some staff training, having passed through Staff College. Many of his contemporaries were somewhat amateur in their outlook to soldiering, but Gomm was a thoughtful and assiduously thorough officer. After the campaign in Portugal and Spain, first under Wellington and then under Sir John Moore, he managed to survive the Walcheren expedition and was then posted back to Spain, where he would serve out the Peninsular war. Present at the battles of Busaco, Fuentes d’Oñoro, Salamanca, Vittoria, the Pyrenees, the Nive, the Nivelle and St Pierre, as well as the sieges of Cuidad Rodrigo and Badajoz, he was a lieutenant-colonel by the time he left for England. This was a fairly rapid ascent for the time, a signal confirmation of his abilities as a staff and regimental officer, and some influence at home, no doubt. Appointed to the post of Quartermaster General of Picton’s fifth division, he was to see the furious combat of Quatre Bras and the “hard pounding” of Waterloo two days later. His position as an unattached staff officer gave him a view of the fields of battle from a position on horseback, and with freedom of movement around the field that few could match. His contemporaneous notes and letters of Waterloo are annotated with his more considered thoughts and views, particularly regarding the “crisis” of Waterloo, the repulse of the last columns of the Garde Impèriale. Author – Field-Marshal Sir William Maynard Gomm, G.C.B (1784-1875) Editor – Francis Culling Carr-Gomm (1834-1919) Introduction - Francis Culling Carr-Gomm (1834-1919)