Moyle Sherer - Recolletions of the Peninsula

Born in Southhampton in 1789, Sherer received education at Winchester College and entered the army as an ensign in the 34th Regiment of Foot in 1807. he was soon on his way to the Iberian Peninsula, landing in Lisbon (Portugal) shortly after its liberation from the French.  He spent four years campaigning with his regiment in Portugal and Spain until he was captured by the French in 1813. After the Napoleonic Wars, Sherer continued to served as an office and eventually rose to the rank of captain in the 96th Regiment in 1831 before retiring in 1836. He produced a number of interesting travels accounts and his memoir Recollections of the Peninsula came out in 1823.


The news of this battle of Salamanca [fought on 22 July 1812] made me anxious to join my regiment, still under General Hill, with as much expedition as possible, for it was natural to suppose that this event, and Lord Wellington's advance into the very heart of Spain, would either compel Soult to raise the siege of Cadiz, and retire from Andalusia, or would lead to some offensive movements on our part to free the south from the presence of the enemy.

I left Lisbon for Estremadura, happily unincumbered by any detachment. At Abrantes I met a column of three thousand of the [French] prisoners taken at Salamanca. They were in a very exhausted state, from the length of their march, the heat of the weather, and the want of shoes and other necessaries; and, unlike my friends at Arroyo-de-Molinos, they had neither a word or a laugh to disguise their mortification. I never saw Frenchmen more thoroughly cut down; and, what appeared not a little to increase their vexation, they were escorted by four hundred awkward-looking, ill-appointed Portuguese militia-men, whose air of pride and importance, as they regulated the motions of these " vainqueurs d'Austerlitz," was truly entertaining. It is not generous to exult over fallen foes, but it is difficult to pity them, when your eyes have rested on scenes of desolation and ruin caused by many, perhaps, whose appearance would otherwise interest you in their favour. Not a town or a village had I passed, on my route from Lisbon, but affecting traces of the invasion of this smiling country were every where to be seen. Cottages all roofless and untenanted, the unpruned vine, growing in rank luxuriance over their ruined walls, neglected gardens, the shells of fine houses, half destroyed by fire, convents and churches, too solid to be demolished, standing open and neglected, with the ornametal wood or stone work, which once adorned them, broken down and defaced; all proclaimed silently, but forcibly, that I was travelling through a country which had been the theatre of war, and exposed to the ravages of contending armies. Such are the scenes which, not only in Portugal, but throughout Spain, arrest the eye at every step, and make the Briton, while he sighs over the miseries of the peaceful citizens, and laborious peasants, whose towns and villages have been thus visited by violence and rapine, offer up many a grateful prayer for the secure and heaven-defended position of his happier countrymen.