A SWEDISH SOLDIER IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS
Translated by Erik Faithfull Helion & Company (2024) £25.00 202 pages (softback) ISBN:9781804514344 www.helion.co.uk
Number 128 in Helion’s From Reason to Revolution 1721-1815 series is an English translation by a descendant of the memoirs of Carl Magnus Hultin (1789-1883), written late in life and first published in Sweden in 1872, covering the period 1807-1814. This edition includes a short introductory scenesetting paragraph at the start of each chapter, extensive explanatory footnotes, six modern maps and numerous illustrations to support the narrative.
Hultin was aged eighteen and a student when he enlisted as a junior officer in the militia in 1807 and later transferred to the regular army as an ensign in the Jonkoping Regiment. He took part in an expedition against the Russians on Swedish soli in 1809 and witnessed the coup d’etat to remove King Gustav IV Adolf that same year. In 1813-1814 he served in Mecklenburg, Holstein and Belgium against Denmark and France, under the command of Sweden’s Crown Prince, the former Marshal Bernadotte. He also participated in the 1814 Norwegian campaign and remained in the army until he retired with the rank of captain in 1842.
Hultin’s narrative is full of amusing anecdotes, such as his recollections of “a large golden bitch that we named Bataljona…That she had originally belonged to the enemy might be deduced from the fact that she was mostly on bad terms with regimental and senior officers – a bicorne hat was an abomination to her… and growled at them when they met.”
Other stories reflect the grim reality of war; for example, a description of a reconnaissance patrol during the siege of Gluckstadt Fortress in 1813:
“One night a squad set off from the Kalmar Regiment. On the footbridge, which was narrow, they had to proceed in single file and they were in the middle of it when a cannon was fired from the fortress. The officer, small in stature, was leading and the ball went over him without causing injury; the corporal, who was second in line, had his hat knocked off; the next man lost half his head and the following man was completely decapitated; the shot then proceeded to strike the neck, chest, abdomen, thighs and legs of those behind, so that eight men were killed by the same ball…”
Five full-page maps at the start of the book show Scandinavia an North-West Europe, upon which are superimposed rectangles showing the areas covered by the other maps; Eastern Sweden; Holstein and Mecklenburg, with an insert of Swedish Pomerania; The Road to Brussels, and The Norwegian Campaign, August 1814, showing the principal engagements and approximate movements of Hultin’s jager battalion. A half-page diagram in Chapter 11, Mecklenburg (August-December 1813), shows the positions after the initial cavalry action in the Battle of Retschow on 28 August 1813.
Illustrations, distributed throughout the text, consist of monochrome reproductions of contemporary portraits, maps, scenes of military life, troops and battles, and pictures of places, together with photographs of surviving items of uniform.
The translator provides brief notes on Hultin’s later life above the author’s Epilogue in which the veteran describes the pleasure he has gained from writing his memoirs, recalling old comrades and reliving “those happy days of my youth.”
A short Bibliography, listing printed and online sources, concludes the book.
A skilful translation into English makes Hultin’s reminiscences both entertaining and informative on the Swedish Army and its campaigns.
Arthur Harman