The author of this unusual memoir of some of the less familiar campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars, Major Francis Maule, served with the 2nd (Queen''s) Regiment in Egypt and was on the staff of the brief and disastrous Walcheren expedition of 1809. His book - published in 1816, the year after Waterloo - is one of the earliest accounts by a British officer who took part in these campaigns. The Walcheren expedition was ambitious and expensive and involved landing some 40,000 British troops in Holland in an effort to support Britain''s continental allies against France. However, the expedition was decimated by disease before really coming to grips with the enemy, and was swiftly aborted. Earlier, Maule had served with the ill-fated Generals Sir John Moore and Sir Ralph Abercrombie in the campaign against the French armies that the young Napoleon had abandoned in Egypt. His book vividly describes the fighting around Alexandria, Rosetta and Cairo; the killing of the French commander, General Kleber, and the final surrender of his successor General Belliard. Maule''s memoir concludes with descriptions of his other Mediterranean postings including Minorca, Gibraltar and the Spanish town of Ronda.
