OR, SERVICE IN THE GUARDS AND THE LINE DURING ENGLAND'S LONG PEACE AND LITTLE WARS. BY COLONEL ELERS NAPIER, AUTHOR OF "REMARKS ON THE TROAD," SCENES AND SPORTS IN FOREIGN LANDS, "The world, thou know'st, affects, with giddy joy, Drinks health and life, and blooms and smiles again." IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: GEORGE W. HYDE, PUBLISHER, 13 PATERNOSTER ROW. 1856. 249. W. 332, DEDICATION ΤΟ COL. ALEXANDER MURRAY TULLOCH. IT is whilst on the couch of sickness caused by the honest and fearless performance of a great public duty,-it is whilst still prostrate from the effects of over-exertion and mental exhaustion, that I inscribe this work to him, whom I feel proud to call my friend of upwards of thirty years." During this long period, I have been duly able to appreciate those private virtues and great public qualities, the latter of which have been so fully developed and made known to the world. I could have wished,-ere "paraded" under the sanction of his name, that it had been in the power of my friend personally to review the "Linesman," and to inspect his "kit;" such, however, under existing circumstances, being impossible, Colonel Tulloch can in nowise be considered responsible for what, he is thus, not cognisant of; and I have only to hope-when sufficiently recovered, to glance over a work, which he has kindly allowed to appear before the public, under his auspices that he will approve of this first attempt at a "military novel," from the pen of his old friend and comrade, "THE AUTHOR." Southsea, May 1856. PREFACE. THE following volumes (whose publication is attributable to the appearance, some months since, of the "Memorial of the Guards") have no other pretension than that which can be claimed by a work purely fictitious, traced moreover by a hand quite inexperienced in that branch of literature. It has been justly remarked that no work of fiction can equal in point of interest, one composed of incidents derived from the common occurrences of every-day life. In the following pages I have endeavoured, with the aid of imaginary characters, to illustrate this position, by portraying a few ordinary events in the career of an Officer of the Line, -at least as was the case at the period to which the ensuing narrative refers. If some scenes of the Barrack-room, the Camp, and the Bivouac, be considered too freely sketched with a soldier's pen, to accord with the refinement of |