Historical Record of the First, or Royal Regiment of Foot

Cannon, Richard, 1779-1865Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
586K words
Chapters
59

Tags

English Originals Military Military HistoryInstitutional ChangeRegiment ArchiveUnit LineageBritish ArmyDocumentary NarrativeHistorical CriticismArchival DocumentsEuropean WarfareModern Military

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Historical Record of the First, or Royal Regiment of Foot by Richard CannonAuthor: Cannon, Richard, 1779-1865,Language: English, Class: UA: Military science: Armies: Organization, distribution, military situation, Release Date: Aug 1, 2015

Editor's review

Compiled by Richard Cannon, this regimental history of the Royal Regiment of Foot is a typical example of nineteenth-century British military historical chronicles. Following the conventions of regimental history writing, it traces the First (Royal) Regiment of Foot section by section—its organizational evolution since formation, its participation in campaigns, and its personnel changes—offering researchers primary material framed within an official narrative. Its value lies not in literary style but in its documentary character: readers can observe how Victorian military history writing organized timelines and embedded regimental honor within an imperial narrative. Cannon worked for years in military history compilation, and this book reflects his diligence in organizing archival materials. The public-domain electronic edition facilitates full-text searching and quotation verification, making it suitable as supplementary reading for the study of military institutional history, British Army history, or colonial warfare. It should be read with a questioning awareness—as historical source material rather than popular history; for general readers, the narrative pace is slow and the terminology and archaic spellings are abundant, requiring patience.

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and chapter subheadings to establish the chronological framework, then read specific campaigns or personnel sections according to interest.
  2. Prepare a glossary of British Army organization and ranks to consult while reading, reducing the difficulty of archaic expressions.
  3. Read this book alongside other regimental or campaign histories of the same period, noting the selectivity and omissions of the official narrative.
  4. When taking notes, record page numbers and original text so that citations can later be checked against the accuracy of the public-domain electronic text.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59

FAQ

Is this book suitable for readers with no background in military history? Not very. This is a nineteenth-century regimental chronicle that records organization, campaigns, and personnel in annalistic fashion, lacking narrative setup and background explanation and assuming the reader has a basic framework of British Army history. Readers without that foundation can easily be overwhelmed by names, unit numbers, and archaic spellings. It is advisable to read an introductory general history of British military history first, then return to this book.
What background knowledge should one prepare before reading? At minimum, one should understand the British Army's regimental tradition, its principal ranks, and the rough timeline of several nineteenth-century foreign wars. In addition, the book retains archaic spellings and long sentences, so a dictionary and glossary are recommended. For research purposes, one should also be familiar with the conventions of military historical chronicle writing in order to judge the selection and stance of the material.
Can this public-domain e-book be used for academic citation? Yes, but with caution. It is an electronic version of a public-domain document whose content can be verified, making it suitable for citation as primary or secondary historical material; however, the electronic text may contain typesetting conversion errors, so before formal citation one should check the original page numbers or an authoritative edition. One should also distinguish Cannon's compiled narrative from historical fact itself, avoiding treating the chronicle's stance as a neutral record.

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About the author

Cannon, Richard, 1779-1865 Author

Richard Cannon (1779–1865) was a British military historian. Public information about him is limited, and few details of his life are systematically recorded. The library holds twenty-eight of his works, almost all of them historical records of British Army regiments, including the Historical Record of the Seventeenth, or the Leicestershire Regiment of Foot; the Historical Record of the Seventh, or the Queen's Own Regiment of Hussars; the Historical Record of the Fourth, or the King's Own Regiment of Foot; the Historical Record of the First, or Royal Regiment of Foot; the Historical Record of the Sixth, or Royal First Warwickshire Regiment of Foot; the Historical Record of the Sixth, or Inniskilling Regiment of Dragoons; the Historical record of the Seventh Regiment, or the Royal Fusiliers; and the Historical Record of the Twelfth, or the Prince of Wales's Royal Regiment. These works trace regimental lineage, campaigns and organizational change in a well-ordered format with substantial documentation, typical of nineteenth-century British military histories, and remain useful references for the study of British Army regimental history.