Samuel Bagshawe, the orphaned son of a Derbyshire gentleman, enlisted in the Army as a private soldier in 1731. When he died in 1762, at the height of the Seven Years’ War, he was a colonel of a regiment of foot soldiers, raised in Ireland at his own expense, and also an MP. This selection of Bagshawe’s letters and papers offers a rich account of regimental soldiering as it was carried on by a cast of characters who would not be out of place in the pages of Henry Fielding or, in our own time, Evelyn Waugh. As an illuminating record of the military condition during what is still a relatively unknown period of the Army's history, together with its often hilarious accounts of daily life on the battlefield, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the England of the eighteenth century.