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Alexander Cavalié Mercer (28 March 1783 – 9 November 1868) was a British artillery officer. Although he rose to the rank of general, his fame is as commander of G Troop Royal Horse Artillery in the thick of the fighting at the Battle of Waterloo, and as author of ''Journal of the Waterloo Campaign''.〔''Journal of the Waterloo Campaign kept throughout the campaign of 1815'', Cavalié Mercer, first published 1870〕 Mercer's six-gun horse artillery troop arrived too late for the Battle of Quatre Bras, but it fought with the cavalry rearguard covering the army's retreat to Waterloo. The troop fought on the extreme right wing of Wellington's army at Waterloo, before being moved into the thick of the fighting nearer the centre of the line. There it beat off repeated charges by French heavy cavalry, disobeying orders to abandon the guns and retire inside nearby infantry squares as the enemy closed. The location of this action is marked by a memorial on the Waterloo battlefield. After the battle, Mercer's troop marched on Paris with the Allied armies, and formed part of the army of occupation. Mercer's ''Journal'' is an important source for historians of the Waterloo campaign, as well as a detailed description of the landscape and people of Belgium and France in the early 19th century. It is one of the few accounts of the period written by an artillery officer. Mercer remained in the peacetime army, twice serving in Canada. He was a painter of some merit, and a number of his watercolours of Canadian landscapes were purchased by the National Gallery of Canada in the 1980s.〔(Artist Gallery: Alexander Cavalié Mercer )〕 == Before 1815 == Mercer was born in 1783 at Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, into a military family: his father was General Alexander Mercer of the Royal Engineers.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Mercer, Alexander Cavalié )〕 He went to the Military Academy at Woolwich and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of Artillery in 1799 at the age of 16.〔Cavalié A. Mercer (Mercer's son) in the preface to Mercer's ''Journal'', p xix〕 He served in Ireland in the aftermath of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. He was promoted to second captain (a rank unique to the Ordnance) in 1806. Promotion in the Royal Artillery was very slow, especially in peacetime, as it relied solely on seniority. Unlike in the rest of the British Army of the time there was no opportunity for purchase of commissions in the Ordnance.〔Holmes, Richard, ''Redcoat—The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket'', HarperCollins, 2001, p176〕 Mercer was not breveted as a major until 1 March 1824, though this was then backdated to 12 August 1819. Mercer was posted to G Troop Royal Horse Artillery around 1806〔Mercer's ''Journal'', p 277〕 and joined Whitelocke's ill-fated Buenos Aires expedition〔 in 1807. He did not serve in the Peninsular War and next saw war service in the Waterloo Campaign. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cavalié Mercer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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