Thomas Campbell (July 27, 1777 - June 15, 1844) was a Scottish poet chiefly remembered for his sentimental poetry dealing specially with human affairs. He was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became the University of London. In 1799, he wrote 'The Pleasures of Hope' a traditional 18th century survey in heroic couplets. He also produced several stirring patriotic war songs- Ye Mariners of England, The Soldier's Dream, Hohenlinden and in 1801, The Battle of Baltic.[1]


He crossed over to Hamburg, where his fame had already preceded him, so that he received an enthusiastic welcome from the British residents of that mercantile city. He soon found, however, that he had stumbled unexpectedly upon the outposts of a great and momentous war, so that he was obliged to direct his course according to its movements. But such was the rapidity of the French armies, that even an unencumbered traveller could scarcely avoid them; and on his arriving at Ratisbon, war was raging round its suburbs, and, finally, the French within its gates. Thus Campbell found himself in a situation that falls to the lot of few poets; he was likely to be the witness, as well as the eulogist and recorder, of great military achievements. "It was a sudden transition," he thus writes to a friend, "from the beauties of an interesting journey to the horrors of war and confusion that prevailed at Ratisbon. The richest fields of Europe desolated by contending troops; peasants driven from their homes, to starve and beg in the streets; horses dying of hunger and men dying of their wounds, were the dreadful novelties at this time." From the ramparts close to the Scotch monastery, he also witnessed the conflict that gave to the French the possession of Ratisbon, and thus describes the spectacle in a letter to his brother: "Never shall time efface from my memory the recollection of that hour of astonishment and expended breath, when I stood, with the good monks of St. James, to overlook a charge of Klenau’s cavalry upon the French under Grenier. We saw the fire given and returned, and heard distinctly the sound of the French pas-de-charge collecting the lines to attack in close column. After three hours, awaiting the issue of a severe action, a park of artillery was opened just beneath the walls of the monastery, and several drivers that were stationed there to convey the wounded in spring-waggons were killed in our sight." In a subsequent account of the event, he adds:—"This formed the most important epoch in my life, in point of impressions; but those impressions at seeing numbers of men strewn dead on the field, or, what was worse, seeing them in the act of dying, are so horrible to my memory that I study to banish them. At times, when I have been fevered and ill, I have awoke from nightmare dreams about these dreadful images."