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Feel free to post your suggestions on books about the period here. I'll start with two books dealing with the GNW:

-Peter Englund: Poltava (The English edition seems to be called "The Battle That Shook Europe: Poltava and the Birth of the Russian Empire"). This is a classic. Englund is a wonderful author with an engaging style, and the book deals with the battle and its aftermath in detail.
-THGC Publishing (ed.): Great Northern War Compendium. A massive two book set dealing with the whole war in detail. The books contain multiple articles written by different authors with varying subjects. All the participants are dealt with in at least some way. The books aren't cheap, but based on what I've read so far, I can heartily recommend buying the set!

Hi All,

For anyone interested in the experiences of ordinary soldiers and sailors in this period, I recommend the Life and Adventures of Matthew Bishop (free on archive.org). He served as a tar in the English navy and participated in the descent on Cadiz. Later, he switched to the infantry, and fought in battles like Malplaquet.

There are a handful of other works like his in English, but does anybody know of memoirs or accounts by ordinary soldiers or sailors in French, German, Dutch, Spanish, or other languages?

All the Best,
Blas

This site contains scanned diaries of Swedish soldiers of varying ranks: http://runeberg.org/karolikrig/. Sadly they are only available in Swedish, I think.

Another interesting memoir is by an Irish officer, Captain Peter Drake, who soldiered for both the Grand Alliance and the Bourbons, in the Nine Year's War and the WoS. He gives eyewitness accounts of the battles of Ramillies, Malplaquet, and others:

https://books.google.com/books/about/Th ... 9DAAAAYAAJ

https://books.google.com/books/about/Am ... 41AQAAIAAJ