Charles Dalton
Life and career
Charles Dalton was a historical compiler whose publications gathered military careers, army lists, and biographical records. The Waterloo Roll Call first appeared in 1890 and was enlarged in 1904. In the later preface, he explains that relatives supplied additional information and that he used an annotated copy containing research by J. W. O'Brien of the British Museum Library. The work thus grew through both printed records and contributions from other researchers. Rather than offering a continuous battle narrative, it connects names and ranks with individual lives. Readers can consider what this arrangement makes recoverable and which experiences remain difficult to see through an officer-centred record.
A battle approached through names
Dalton’s register resists the scale of a continuous battlefield narrative by turning attention toward individual careers. Yet the arrangement remains selective: rank and available documentation affect who can be described fully. Contributions from relatives and researchers enlarge the record while bringing their own emphases. Compilation is an active historical practice, joining scattered particulars into an enduring form of commemoration.
The enlarged roll call
Charles Dalton approaches Waterloo through the people who served there, organizing names, ranks, and dates into annotated military lists. Biographical notes and anecdotes connect the entries with careers before and after the battle, turning a register into a collection of compressed life stories. Staff officers, regiments, medical personnel, and reserve units receive attention, while a separate muster roll records the Scots Greys. This revised edition adds material supplied by relatives and earlier researchers, including a section on noncommissioned officers and men who subsequently gained commissions. The book is most naturally consulted by name or unit, though browsing reveals striking variations in military experience. Its commemorative British perspective and emphasis on identifiable careers shape the history that emerges from the accumulated details. English text of the revised and enlarged second edition, 1904.
Read across the entries
Compare an extensively annotated career with a short record. What kinds of information are available in each? An absence of detail need not mean an absence of significance. Use unit and rank to orient yourself, while asking whose experience the structure makes difficult to recover. The revised edition’s additions reveal the book as a developing research enterprise rather than an untouched original list.