The Spanish Bride

Author’s Note

Since a complete list of the authorities for a book dealing with the Peninsular War would make tedious reading, I have published no bibliography to The Spanish Bride, preferring to add a note for those of my readers who may wish to know which were my main works of reference.

Obviously, the most important authority for Harry’s and Juana Smith’s story is Harry Smith’s own Autobiography. Obviously again, it would have been impossible to have written a tale of the Peninsular War without studying Napier’s work, and Sir Charles Oman’s monumental History of the Peninsular War. I must acknowledge, as well, my indebtedness to Sir Charles Oman’s smaller work, Wellington’s Army; and I should like to thank both Sir Charles Oman, and Colonel Jourdain, for their kindness in searching for an obscure reference on my behalf.

I have not, to my knowledge, left any of the Diarists of the Light Division unread. Of them all, I found Kincaid and George Simmons the most useful for my particular purpose; but the details of the rank-and-file of the 95th Rifles were culled largely from Edward Costello’s Adventures of a Soldier. But Rifleman Harris was useful too; and so was Quartermaster Surtees, in spite of his unfortunate habit of covering all too many pages with moral reflections.

Outside the Light Division, Larpent’s Journals provided endless details. And there are grand bits to be found in Grattan’s Adventures with the Connaught Rangers; in Sir James McGrigor’s Autobiography; in Gleig’s Subaltern; in Gomm’s Recollections of a Staff-officer; and in Tomkinson’s Diary of a Cavalry Officer. There is a book of Peninsular Sketches, too, compiled by W. H. Maxwell; and all sorts of information to be gathered from the Lives of various commanders, not to mention the regimental histories. And last, but certainly not least, there are the Dispatches, and the Supplementary Dispatches, of Wellington himself.

— Georgette Heyer