Z Pyrenejí až k Waterloo - Vzpomínky kapitána Wellingtonových ostrostřelců na účast v napoleonských válkách – Leach Jonathan (2020)

In the spring of 1808, Spain was shaken by a dynastic struggle between father and son, namely King Charles IV and Prince Ferdinand of Asturias. Napoleon was to decide who had a greater right to the crown, and he resolved the dispute by deposing both of them. He then gave Spain to his brother Joseph. Everything initially looked great, but soon an anti-French uprising broke out in Madrid, and the flames of resistance swept across the entire country. A guerrilla war, an unyielding partisan conflict, began to rage in the Pyrenees, and no Frenchman felt safe for his life. Then the British intervened in the war on the peninsula. Unlike the memoirs of French soldiers and officers from the Napoleonic Wars, there is only one title of English memoirs available in Czech translation (Waterloo – A Campaign Diary). This translation of the memoirs of Captain Jonathan Leach of the 95th Regiment of English Rifles from the war on the Iberian Peninsula, which also describes the subsequent campaign into southern France and ends with the account of the Battle of Waterloo, partially fills that gap. The author of the memoirs, Jonathan Leach, can somewhat humorously be called the 'real Sharpe' – he and his men were the prototype of the fictional and later television hero Richard Sharpe. Captain Leach recounts his military experiences in the uniform of the renowned...