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KNIGHT (Corporal [Thomas])
The British Battalion at Oporto: With Adventures, Anecdotes, & Exploits in Holland; At Waterloo: & in The Expedition to Portugal.
1st Ed., xi+126pp., 2 plates, map (The Environs of Oporto). Published by Effingham Wilson, London, Waugh & Innes, Edinburgh & Thomas Murray, Glasgow.
1834
#65055
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![[HLMainPic]](booksThumbs/65055.jpg "Click on the left or right of the image for more images")
Thomas Knight served with the 95th Rifle Brigade & in the Portuguese service. He describes his early life (the son of a cabinet-maker at Frome): after a brief period at sea he worked for a grocer at Tilbury. Tiring of this he enlisted with the 3rd Bn. of the 95th in 1812, served in Flanders & at Waterloo. He was discharged & returned to Frome, but in 1831 volunteered for service in the cause of Queen Donna Maria's unsuccessful claim for the Portuguese crown (the Miguelite War). That is not to say he was particularly moved by this noble cause, he was a mercenary. In the publishers' Preface they state that they had been advised to "exclude the greater part, if not all, of the Corporal's descriptions of eating & drinking, & getting drunk, &c." However, apart from reorganising Knight's "confused mass of anecdotes & details" into a "continuous narrative" they claim to have kept the ms. intact: "In conclusion we beg, in justice to the Corporal, that, although he confesses to many iniquities, the reader will be so good as to refer to the certificates from his officers, & thereby convince himself that, notwithstanding all his plundering, drinking, &c., he deserves that character, which it seems to be his sole ambition to possess - Knowing his duty as a Soldier." Library Hub (formerly COPAC) records 10 copies at various institutions, but the book seems to be remarkably scarce for that: neither Victor Sutcliffe (Sandler) nor Brett-James record it. Fine modern qtr. green morocco, gilt, green cloth boards, the two plates bear ink stamps of Edinburgh Subscription Library, o/w internally clean throughout. See illustration on our website.
£500
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