MS 289 Order book of the Adjutant General of the allied army in Europe

Volume containing copies of general orders issued by Sir Edward Barnes, the Adjutant General of the army in Europe, 10 May 1815 to 18 January 1816, covering the period of the battle of Waterloo and the allied occupation of France. The volume also contains within the general orders the records of courts martial and official correspondence for circulation to the army. The book is incomplete at the beginning. The orders were copied in manuscript each day by an adjutant for each regiment and this volume is a regimental copy. To ensure consistency and for ease of reference, annual volumes of general orders were prepared and printed by the military press at the headquarters of the army. Orders from this manuscript volume therefore appear in the 1815 and 1816 volumes of General Orders (printed in Paris or at Headquarters, by Sergeant Buchan of the Third Regiment of Foot Guards). These printed volumes, however, are not complete sets of the orders, as everything that was deemed of short-term currency was omitted.

For the process of copying and distributing orders in the Peninsula, which continued under Wellington's command in northern Europe in 1815, S.Petty, 'Wellington's General Orders, 1808-1814' in Wellington Studies I ed. C.M.Woolgar (Southampton, 1996) pp. 141-4. Some of the orders were republished in Gurwood's edition of the General Orders (London, 1832) and in part in his 1844-8 edition of the Dispatches, subsequent editions and selections. Analogous material for the Peninsular War is in MS 61, Wellington Papers 9/1/2/1-8. Letter books for Sir Edward Barnes as Adjutant General in Germany, the Low Countries and France, 1813-16, form Wellington Papers 9/5/1-2. The volume was bought as lot 139 at Christie's London sale of 23 November 1998.

Date range:

1815-16

Former references:

A998

Size:

1 volume