I came across this piece earlier today, and it stopped me. We talk about the Napoleonic Wars like they were fought by one kind of soldier in one kind of uniform, but history is rarely that clean. This post digs into the lives of Black soldiers who served in that era — men like George Rose and Thomas James — whose stories sit in the margins instead of the main text.

I’m reblogging it because it reminds us how easily entire lives can disappear from the record, not by accident, but by habit. And sometimes the most important thing we can do is shine a light where the page went quiet.