Heros von Borcke: Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence

In one of the most exhilarating of war memoirs, Heros von Borcke gives a stirring account of his service in the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The story begins in the spring of 1862, when the twenty-six year old Prussian soldier boarded a Confederate blockade runner in Bermuda …

In one of the most exhilarating of war memoirs, Heros von Borcke gives a stirring account of his service in the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The story begins in the spring of 1862, when the twenty-six year old Prussian soldier boarded a Confederate blockade runner in Bermuda bound for South Carolina. Narrowly escaping capture in Charleston Harbor, he quickly earned a commission in General J.E.B. Stuarts cavalry command in Virginia. He rode with Stuart's men in the battles of Seven Pines, the Seven Days, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Brandy Station before being wounded in the early part of the Gettysburg campaign.

Von Borcke's memoirs were first published in Edinburg in 1866. They are set apart from other such documents by their author's unabashed enthusiasm for the art of civilized warfare, and by his uniquely European, and aristocratic, outlook on the American Civil War.