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Memoirs of Peter Henry Bruce, Esq. a military officer, in the services of Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain. Containing an account of his travels in Germany, Russia, Tartary, Turkey, the West Indies etc. As also, several very interesting private anecdotes of the Czar, Peter I, of Russia.

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Dublin edition (first London 1782) of the entertaining memoirs of the German-Scottish military adventurer Peter Henry Bruce (1692–1757), ‘pleasantly written’ and displaying ‘very close and intelligent observation’ (DNB). Bruce joined the Prussian army in 1706 as an engineer, taking part in numerous battles and sieges and suffering a gunshot wound to his leg. In 1711 he entered Russian service undertaking several missions for Peter the Great, finally extricating himself from the Tsar and escaping to Scotland in 1724. The 1740s saw him in the Bahamas. Upon his return to Scotland, Bruce compiled his memoirs in his native German, translating them into English in 1755, but they remained unpublished until 1782. There are numerous excellent passages: his description of Constantinople and its people and customs; his circumnavigation of the Caspian Sea (‘the most pleasant jaunt I ever had in my whole life’); and his account of Nassau – ‘a fascinating, if one-sided, account of the history of the colony in the mid-eighteenth century, and an important source for later historians of the Bahamas’ (ODNB). Bruce’s account also ‘contains adventures among the Creek and Cherokee Indians, in Georgia, etc.’ (Sabin).

ESTC N10153; Sabin 8726.

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