Letters and Journals of Field-Marshal Sir William Maynard Gomm... from 1799 to Waterloo, 1815

PREFACE.

THE PAPERS of Field-Marshal Sir William Gomm were in some measure arranged by himself; but Lady Gomm, during her brief widowhood, set herself most religiously to collect them, and in some way prepare them for publication. Her will bequeathed all the manuscripts to General Lord Mark Kerr, the Hon. Edward Douglas, and Miss Augusta Howard Vyse, to be retained or published as they should think fit. They confided the papers to my care, and requested me to examine and edit them. I have at present only been able to take the earlier portion of these letters; but they to a great extent form so independent and complete a chapter-not only of his life, but of public history-that it has been decided to publish them separately, leaving to some future opportunity the project of preparing for the public the later voluminous and more general papers.

Although these letters relate to days long gone by, yet even now such a genuine, truthful, and intelligent record as they present of the desperate struggle with which the nineteenth century opened in Europe, has both its value and interest, not only for the sons and grandsons of those who took part in it, but for all lovers of their country. Every page displays the well-read scholar and man of refined feelings and high character. No one can peruse without emotion the simple and unpretending account of the soldier-boy's first coming

under fire, a few weeks after joining his regiment, in the bloody engagement with the French among the sand dunes of Holland. The same coolness and courage carried him through every campaign, almost every battle of the war, from the Helder, Walcheren, and Corunna, to Torres Vedras, Bayonne, and Waterloo, all of which are more or less fully described in these pages.

My own part in this compilation as editor has been but small. My chief difficulty has been selection. I have introduced words of my own only when I feared the continuity of the narrative might be spoilt without a few connecting links. The history of the great war is so well written by historians, and so intimately known to every intelligent Englishman, and especially to every soldier, that little more than a few touches seem necessary to recall the whole subject to the reader, so as to obviate the necessity of refreshing the memory by taking down the history from the shelf.

I am indebted for these letters, and the excellent preservation in which I find them, to two loving women who took complete charge of them at the earlier and later part of the honoured writer's life. First to her to whom most of them were originally addressed, and who preserved, copied, and docketed them with all a sister's pride and love; and secondly to her to whom those old yellow bundles, well known and often talked about during forty-five years of wedded life, seemed the most sacred and precious of manuscripts, since they told how he had won his spurs in the years before they met. From her they have now passed to other hands, in which they are esteemed a sacred trust, and are valued for their own intrinsic merit. I hope and believe they will be similarly valued by the public.

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