Introduction
Joseph Boruwlaski knew how it felt to be ever on the edge of bankruptcy. Barely thirty-nine inches in stature, he had relied for over seventy years on the generosity (and curiosity) of noble and royal patrons, and on fees earned from the violin concerts he gave across Europe. The following events, which occurred some time after the Battle of Salamanca in 1812, therefore touched him deeply.
AN officer and his wife came from Newcastle, on a visit to their friend in Durham: the officer being a gentleman of considerable information, and possessing great wit, had the power of making himself agreeable to company with very little trouble. One evening, at a party, he was amusing his auditors with serious and jocose conversation, when his lady interrupted him in rather an unpleasant way, describing to her neighbour the new fashions, which had come out that year.
Those two ladies now engrossed the conversation so completely to themselves, and entered into such a detailed account of fashionable dresses, that every one had given up all hopes of getting in a single word, when at last the Captain, without ceremony, cut short the dialogue, by begging his wife not to exhaust herself, for fear she should get a brain fever, but to let him give an account of the battle of Salamanca, which he accordingly began.* If this narration may be relied on, his company displayed such gallantry in this engagement, that they destroyed 300 French, in killed, wounded, and missing; and that the French standard was taken by his lieutenant.
* The Battle of Salamanca took place on July 22nd, 1812, during the Peninsular War (1808-1814), which was in turn just one theatre of the Napoleonic Wars that shook all Europe from 1804 until the The Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Even as Napoleon was putting into action the plans that would lead to his Retreat from Moscow, Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, defeated the French Emperor’s forces at Salamanca in Spain, and went on to inflict more misery upon him at Vitoria on June 21st, 1813. Boruwlaski published this final edition of his memoirs in 1820. He had been circulating them in French and English for many years as a way of raising funds.
Précis
Joseph Boruwlaski recalled an evening party in Durham in which a veteran of the Peninsular campaign, nettled by his wife’s abrupt attempt to shift the topic of conversation onto ladies’ fashions, responded pointedly by launching into a blow-by-blow account of the Battle of Salamanca in 1812 in which he highlighted the courage of his lieutenant. (55 / 60 words)
Joseph Boruwlaski recalled an evening party in Durham in which a veteran of the Peninsular campaign, nettled by his wife’s abrupt attempt to shift the topic of conversation onto ladies’ fashions, responded pointedly by launching into a blow-by-blow account of the Battle of Salamanca in 1812 in which he highlighted the courage of his lieutenant.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, because, besides, just, since, until, whereas, whether.
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