Born at Spa on 28 July 1790, Henry-Guillaume Schwaiger was drafted into the 51st Infantry Regiment. It was with this unit that he soon received his baptism of fire in Zeeland in August 1809. Although he escaped this first encounter with the English unscathed, he paid a heavy price for his exposure to Walcheren fever before joining the 51st Regiment on the march to Spain and the Peninsular War. It was on the road to Burgos, several months later, that a fortuitous circumstance brought him to the attention of a cavalry colonel from Charleville, who transferred Schwaiger to his regiment of dragoons, namely the 5th Regiment. Henry, a tailor by trade, was better educated than most of the conscripts of his day. His style is straightforward; he recounts events as he saw them, but they are accurate, and the facts he relates can easily be verified in historical works. He certainly kept notes during his service of all the places he passed through, because he visited many of them, from the banks of the Scheldt to the Guadalquivir, that it would have been impossible for him to remember all the names, especially during the exhausting marches and counter-marches throughout the campaign for France in 1814. Five years after leaving Spa, he finally made it back home. Three years later, after a stay in London, where he had perfected the art of tailoring fine clothing, he married an eighteen-year-old Breton woman who bore him seven children. He settled in Liège, where he passed away on 4 July 1849 at the age of fifty-eight. This booklet is his story.