THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF NORTHESK, G.C.B. 341

Lord Northesk lost no time in reaching the Admiralty, and soon after, attended by Earl Spencer, then First Lord, waited upon His Majesty. The insolent demands contained in the communication were instantly rejected; and Capt. Knight, (the late Admiral Sir John,*) who had obtained leave from Parker to come on shore from the Montagu, whose surgeon had been tarred and feathered and then rowed on shore, carried to the misguided and deluded men the refusal of the Board of Admiralty.

The submission of the fleet began on the 9th of June, in consequence of the extensive preparations which were ready to commence against the ships, and the Repulse and Leopard made their escape, the former up the river Thames; the latter unfortunately got aground, and was fired on by the Monmouth and Director, when Lieut. Delanoe lost his leg, and one seaman was wounded.

The seamen having returned to their duty, and Parker having been executed, Lord Northesk resigned the command of the Monmouth, and remained unemployed until 1800, when his Lordship was appointed to the Prince, 98 guns, in the Channel Fleet, under the command of his illustrious relative the Earl of St. Vincent, in which ship he continued till the peace in 1802, when he again returned from active service.

On the renewal of hostilities with the French Republic in 1803, his Lordship was amongst the foremost to offer his services, and was immediately appointed to the Britannia of 100 guns. In her he served in the Channel under the command of the Hon. Admiral Cornwallis till May 1804, when he was promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral of the White. In the following month, he hoisted his flag in the same ship, and continued to serve in her on her former station in the arduous blockade of Brest during the trying and tempestuous winter of 1804; and till August in the following year, when he was detached with the squadron under the orders of Sir Robert Calder, to reinforce Vice-Admiral Collingwood, off Cadiz.

In the glorious and decisive battle of Trafalgar, on the ever memorable 21st of October, the Britannia bore his Lordship's flag; and took a distinguished share in achieving the victory. On that memorable day the Britannia, Capt. Charles Bullen, broke through the enemy's line, astern of the fourteenth ship, in the most gallant and masterly style; and soon after completely dismasted a French 80-gun ship, on board of which a white handkerchief was soon displayed in token of submission. The Britannia afterwards singly engaged and kept at bay three of the enemy's van ships. In this conflict the Britannia had 10 killed and 42 wounded.

During the continuance of this long and sanguinary engagement, Lord Northesk zealously emulated the example of his heroic Commander-in-Chief; and when the order was given for destroying such prizes as could not be secured from the heavy gale that followed the action, his Lordship would on no account allow L'Intrepide, the nearest to the Britannia, to be scuttled until his boats had rescued all the wounded men and the whole of the surviving crew.

Lord Northesk, for his brilliant services on this occasion, was created a Knight of the Bath on the 29th January 1806; receiving the thanks

Admiral Sir John Knight, K.C.B. died on the 16th of June; his services will be recorded in the obituary of the present month.

342 THE LATE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF NORTHESK. G.C.B.

of both Houses of Parliament; the freedom of the City of London, and of the Goldsmiths' Company, with a sword of the value of one hundred guineas from the City of London, an Admiral's medal from His Majesty to be worn round the neck, and a vase of the value of three hundred pounds from the Patriotic Fund at Lloyd's.

Lord Northesk, in consequence of ill health, resigned his command, and returned to England in the Dreadnought, accompanied by the Britannia, and three of the prizes, and reached Portsmouth 16th May 1806.

A promotion taking place 28th April 1808, Lord Northesk became a Vice-Admiral; and on the 4th June 1814, an Admiral.

In 1815 the Order of the Bath was remodelled and divided into three classes, when the Earl of Northesk was placed in the first, and became G.C.B.

In consequence of the death of Admiral Sir William Young, Admiral Sir James Saumarez was appointed Vice-Admiral of Great Britain; and at the same time, 21st Nov. 1821, the Earl of Northesk was appointed Rear-Admiral of Great Britain in the room of Sir James Saumarez.

In May 1827, Lord Northesk was appointed Commander-in-Chief at Plymouth, where his Lordship remained until 1830, when the period allowed for the command expired, and which was the last he held.

Lord Northesk had been for some years afflicted with asthma, but no serious apprehensions of his sudden dissolution were entertained. This event, by which the Navy has lost a bright ornament, the nation one of its brave defenders, and the family one of the best of parents,took place on the 28th of May, at his Lordship's residence in Albemarle-street, after an illness of three days, which was considered so slight by his Lordship, that he had intended to have been present at the drawing-room of Her Majesty, to celebrate His Majesty's birthday on the morning of which he became a corpse.

The funeral of this brave and distinguished nobleman took place in St. Paul's Cathedral, 8th of June, in which sacred edifice repose the ashes of Nelson and Collingwood, who shared with Lord Northesk the laurels won at Trafalgar. The funeral was strictly private, and attended by the relatives and friends of his Lordship. In room of the pall which usually covers the coffin on similar occasions, was substituted the English flag supported, as pall-bearers, by Vice-Admiral Sir Richard King, Bart. K.C.B., Vice-Admiral Sir William Hotham, K.C.B., Rear-Admiral Walker, C.B., Rear-Admiral Rodd, C.B., RearAdmiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, Bart.K.C.B., and Rear-Admiral William Parker, C.B.

The late Earl of Northesk married 1789, Mary, daughter of William H. Ricketts, Esq. by Mary, sister of the late Earl, and mother of the present Viscount St. Vincent, by whom he had issue George Lord Rosehill, who was lost on board the Blenheim, where he was Midshipman, in 1807, when that ship foundered in the East Indies, having on board the flag of Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge; and William Hopetoun, now the Earl of Northesk, and several other children, one of whom is Midshipman on board the St. Vincent, with Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Hotham, in the Mediterranean.

The late Earl of Northesk sat in several Parliaments as one of the Sixteen Representative Peers of Scotland, in which part of the United Kingdom is situated one of the family residences, Ethie House, Forfarshire; the other residence is Rosehill House, near Winchester.

REMARKS ON THE COMPARATIVE SERVICES AND REWARDS OF THE SEVERAL BRANCHES OF THE ARMY.

If the maxim be a sound and a just one, (which I believe few will be found bold enough to deny) "that he who toils the hardest, and performs the most arduous work, should receive the highest wages," it may very reasonably be inquired, why the same principle should not apply equally to the military profession as elsewhere. I have served long enough in the field to know, that an army cannot be complete without a due portion of cavalry, infantry, artillery, engineers, sappers, and miners, ponton train, &c. and am fully aware therefore of the merits and utility of each respective branch; and I well know also that in most cases, they are so far dependant on each other, as to be literally helpless when separate. The infantry may, indeed, be in some measure excepted; for it is the only arm that can move, act, and fight on emergency ALONE, in every description of country, unaided and unsupported by the other branches. I am always happy to hear that any accession of good fortune has fallen to the lot of my fellow-soldiers, be they of the ordnance, infantry, or cavalry; and having said thus much, I trust I shall be acquitted of entertaining any thing like feelings of jealousy, if I confess that I have been puzzled and put to my wits' end to know, in the first place, why and with what show of justice, the pay of the infantry should be inferior to that of the cavalry, engineers, and artillery; and secondly, why both cavalry and infantry should not enjoy the same boon which has been granted to the two ordnance corps? I allude to the rank of Major having been discontinued. In short, when a captain either of cavalry or infantry is promoted, why he should not jump over the rank of Major, and become a Lieutenant-Colonel, as is the case in the engineers and artillery? It is almost needless to observe, that many a good and experienced old soldier holds on by the rank of Major, (in the infantry particularly) perhaps eight, ten, or a dozen years, from not having funds to purchase a Lieutenant Colonelcy, or not possessing interest sufficiently strong to push him forward to that rank. In the interim, many Captains of the two ordnance corps are promoted; and in ONE DAY they spring from the rank of Captain to that of Lieutenant Colonel, thereby distancing the Majors of cavalry and infantry by many years. I would ask, is this fair play? Now, as the infantry labour under the first and second of these disadvantages, and the cavalry under the second, I propose giving a sketch (and it shall be an impartial one) of the comparative services and employment of each branch in the colonies and in the field, whereby the candid and unprejudiced will be able to judge on whom most of the hard blows generally fall, and by whom the drudgery of the service is chiefly performed.

First then as to service in the colonies. It is not the fashion to send the artillery or engineers to our East India possessions; but, with that exception, they are liable, I presume, to serve in any part of the globe. West India service, happily for the cavalry, does not fall to their lot, nor indeed, except when an army takes the field in Europe, or a small force of dismounted dragoons accompanies an expedition to a distant

part of the world, (Egypt, or Buenos Ayres for instance,) are our cavalry regiments ever stationed out of the United Kingdom. Four regiments of light dragoons do duty in the East Indies; but, as I have already said, our cavalry know the West Indies, (that grave of myriads,) only by name, or by a glance of the eye at a map of those pestilential islands. The British infantry is dispersed over every part of the globe, being exempt from no one station whatever, good, bad, or indifferent; and it has so few reliefs at home, that a regiment which has been grilled and roasted upwards of twenty years in Madras, Bombay, or Bengal, must, as a matter of course, at the expiration of three or four years spent in Ireland, between recruiting and still hunting, prepare to cross the Atlantic, and either freeze for a dozen years in the inhospitable regions of Canada, or broil the remnant of their livers in some rascally, obscure, sugar island.

As far then as regards our colonies, it appears that the cavalry do not serve in the West Indies, nor the engineers and artillery in the East, and that the infantry are dispatched, per villainously bad and leaky transports, to every hole, creek and corner, where John Bull has possessions.

Let us now take the field, and see how the different arms are there employed. Perhaps the campaigns of 1808, 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 in the Peninsula and the South of France, and that of 1815 in the Netherlands, will be admitted as a tolerably fair criterion by which to judge of the duties that each separate branch of an army in the field is likely to be called on to perform.

Sieges shall first be considered. Here the engineer department comes particularly into play, and it has no sinecure either. From the very commencement of operations against a fortress until it is about to be stormed by the breaches or escaladed, the engineer has ample employment; he is much exposed to the enemy's fire, and has his full share of the constant fatigues and dangers inseparable from all sieges; and, to this may be added, a great responsibility and anxiety.

Until the trenches are tolerably well completed, and the period has arrived for constructing the batteries, and bringing up the battering train, the artillery (having no positive business in the trenches, that I am aware of,) is unmolested by the unceasing discharge of shot and shells from the besieged; of which the covering and working parties of infantry, and the engineers, have the exclusive benefit. But, from the moment the process of constructing batteries commences, and of bringing the heavy guns into the trenches, the artillery is especially pounded with shot and shells; inasmuch as the besieged rarely fail to concentrate as heavy a fire as they possibly can, on the besiegers' batteries. The walls once breached, and every thing ready for the assault, the labours of the artillery and engineers may be considered as nearly concluded; for it is unnecessary to observe that the work of penetrating the deadly breach is not allotted to them; except indeed that an officer of engineers sometimes accompanies the storming party to point out the breaches.

Next then, as to the duties and employment of cavalry in sieges. As they neither dig the trenches, assist to construct batteries, nor are employed in storming, they do not share in the labours, fatigues, and dangers attendant on such operations. A few squadrons, perhaps, re

main encamped, out of reach of the fire from the walls, ready to succour the covering and working parties, in the event of their being pressed back by sorties, wherein the enemy's cavalry sometimes accompany their infantry. They post a few videttes, and patrole occasionally in different directions; but their proper and more usual post is with that part of the army which covers the besieging force; and, unless that covering army is attacked, the broken heads amongst the cavalry will necessarily be but few:-in such sieges at least as those in which I had the honour to serve, viz. Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz.

I may observe also that neither at Burgos nor San Sebastian did our cavalry sustain any loss worth mentioning. It is true, that in covering the retreat of the army from Burgos to Salamanca, the cavalry had no idle time of it; yet, that must not be confounded with the operations of the siege of Burgos. Infantry may be termed the sheet anchor in sieges. They break ground under the fire of the place, they dig the trenches, assist at constructing the batteries, and in carrying ammunition into them when completed, and they lend a hand at placing the heavy guns in battery.

On them devolves not only the various duties of working parties, but they furnish also numerous advanced parties in front of the trenches; ay, even to the foot of the walls, where, exposed hour after hour to an unremitting fire of musketry, grape, shells, &c. they are the first to grapple with sorties, which may constantly be reckoned on both by day and night. Lastly, when the walls are breached, to the infantry alone is confided the honourable but bloody duty of taking the bull by the horns, and of forcing an entrance into the works, through a murderous fire of musketry, grape, and hand-grenades.

During the campaigns of 1808, 1809, and 1810, in the Peninsula, the British army carried on no sieges; our first essay of the kind being against Badajoz in 1811. I state this, solely with the view of showing (as I set out by declaring I would endeavour to do with strict impartiality,) the degree of hard work which may be generally considered as likely to fall to the lot of each separate branch, taking one campaign with another. Impartial persons must admit, that, as previously to the fourth campaign in the Peninsula no siege was undertaken by us, the engineers were not, as a matter of course, called much into action. Their zeal and activity, and the ability displayed by them in directing the construction of those works in the lines of Torres Vedras, which our consummate chief first projected, are too well known to need any eulogy from so humble a pen as mine. Their perseverance, gallantry, and unremitting zeal, in all the sieges in Spain, have, moreover, been the theme of admiration.

Having compared notes between the duties and services of all parties, both in the colonies and at sieges, let us next see how they each fare when an army either advances or retreats, when the many harassing duties of the outposts are to be performed; and, finally, when the business is wound up with a general engagement. I commence with the cavalry.

Whenever the features of the country will admit of their acting, the most advanced posts are entrusted to them. They form the advance guards in forward movements, and rear guards in retrograde ones; and when at length the army is drawn out to give or accept battle, the