The Siege of Badajoz: The Blomfield Letters

Author:

Thomas Valentine Blomfield

Report:

50

Page:

79

Year:

2023

Excerpt:

Thomas Valentine Blomfield was a British soldier during the Peninsular War. These two letters home, one from near Badajoz and the other from Portugal, give a graphic account of what it was like to be a soldier at that time and of the horrors of the Siege of Badajoz. Blomfield was born on St. Valentine’s Day, 1793 in Suffolk. He enlisted as an ensign in the 2nd Battalion of the 48th (Northamptonshire) Regiment in 1809. During the Peninsular War he fought in many of the major battles between 1810 and 1814. In 1817 his regiment was sent to New South Wales, where he met Christiana Brooks. They married in 1820. In 1824 Blomfield sold out his commission and a year later was granted 2000 acres in the Hunter Valley. He died in 1857. There is a display about him in the Australian War Museum in Canberra. Both husband and wife were prolific writers of letters. These were published in 1926 as Memoirs of the Blomfield family: being letters written by the Late Captain T. V. Blomfield and his wife to relatives in England, from which the two letters below come.

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