Carl Conrad Best

Carl Conrad Best (also Charles Best ; * February 1765 in Hanover ; † December 5, 1836 in Verden ) was a royal Hanoverian major general as well as the bearer of the Guelph Order and, most recently, chief of the 7th Hanoverian Infantry Regiment.

origin

His father was Captain Conrad Heinrich Best , his uncles Wilhelm and Georg worked at the embassy in London, where they procured books for the university library in Göttingen, among other things.

Life

He joined the army and became a cadet there. In 1781 two regiments for India were put together in Hanover, which Carl Conrad joined together with his older brother Georg († 1791). He joined Regiment No. 14 and in 1781 became an ensign in the service of the British East India Company .

Battle of Cuddalore (1783)

The regiments came to Madras and initially formed a detachment under Lieutenant Colonel Christoph August von Wangenheim , who joined the army of Major General James Stuart († 1793) in June 1783 . On June 13, 1783, Best was badly wounded in the Battle of Cuddalore . He was brought back to Madras together with other wounded and sick people. He recovered and was made lieutenant on July 24, 1783 .

He spent the following peaceful years in various garrisons until 1791 the contracts expired. The 13th regiment was sent home and dismissed as early as 1791. The 14th regiment was dismissed in 1792 and taken over into the Electorate of Hanover . In 1793 he joined the Light Infantry as Premier Lieutenant . On July 24, 1794, he became a captain in Regiment No. 12.

In the First Coalition War he was in Flanders with the army of the Duke of York. He fought on April 25, 1794 in the Battle of Moucron ; on the retreat he was almost captured in Courtray. He took part in the battles of May 18 and 22, and on July 24, 1794 in the battle of Rouselaer and Hooglede .

Best was promoted to captain, took part in the battles on the Dommel and the Aa; on the retreat to the Meusel he fought in the skirmishes at Fort St. Andree. In October 1794 he took part in the fighting near Nijmegen . The Allies withdrew from the city behind the Waal , and in December Best found himself in the battle at Raudwyk. On June 10, 1795, the French were able to cross the Waal in the battle of Donawert, and the Allies went behind the Rhine. Best came to skirmishes at Velp near Arnhem. The retreat continued via Zutphen to Munster . In February 1795 he was still fighting at Gronde. The English army withdrew to England via Bremen. After the separate peace between the Prussians and the French in April 1795, the Hanoverians also withdrew. They initially stayed in Münster and Osnabrück and arrived in Hanover in December. The Prussians and Hanoverians formed an observation corps , which also included Best, which was supposed to observe the French.

After the defeat in the Second Coalition War , the army capitulated in 1803 with the Artlenburg Convention . Like many other officers, Best then switched to the King's German Legion to continue fighting against Napoleon . On October 1st, 1803, Best Major in the 2nd Light Infantry Regiment.

He landed with an expeditionary force in November 1805 under Major General Don on the Elbe. After the battle of Austerlitz the corps withdrew via Cuxhaven, from where it came to Ireland. In May 1807, Best came to England with the 2nd Light Battalion. There he was appointed commander of the battalion. In June 1807 British troops landed in the Baltic Sea and the battalion came to the Swedish island of Rügen . In August the troops were transferred to Zealand, where they landed in the Bay of Kioge. As part of the siege of Copenhagen , Best led a detachment into the suburbs of the city on August 26th. For this he and Major Hugh Halkett received a commendation and thanks from Parliament. He returned to England in November 1807 and stayed in Ramsgate until the end of April 1808 under the command of Lieutenant General John Moore . In May, Best was again on the Baltic Sea, but was then relocated to Spain together with Moore. In July 1809 the troops were sent to Holland.

As part of the Walcheren expedition , the troops landed under Chatham in the mouth of the Scheldt ; there they took part in the siege of Flushing, the place surrendered on August 15th. Best then came to southern Beveland and at the beginning of September back to Walcheren . On January 1, 1812, he became a lieutenant colonel with the rank of brevet . On May 19, 1812, he became a real lieutenant colonel in the 8th line regiment of the KGL, his time in Sicily. On March 16, 1814, he was sent to Hanover with a contingent. He became the commander of a brigade that was formed from four battalions of the Hanoverian Landwehr . In August 1814 he marched through Brabant and Flanders. The troops were in Bruges when Napoleon returned. Best was ordered to Ypres , in May 1815 he handed over the command to a new governor. He came to Brussels, where the brigade came to the 6th Division under the Duke of Wellington .

On June 15, Best was sent with the Scottish Brigade against Marshal Ney's corps in the battle of Quatre-Bras . The command found the Marshal on the afternoon of the 16th. A battalion of the Best Brigade (Landwehr Battalion Lüneburg under Ludwig Heinrich Philipp von Ramdohr ) was able to repel an attack by French cuirassiers . On June 18, the brigade was able to distinguish itself again. The division commander, Major General Sir James Kempt (successor to the fallen General Thomas Picton ), commended the brigade. In December 1815 the unit returned to Hanover.

On his return, Best became the commander of the Guelph Order. On September 14, 1816 he was promoted to colonel in the Hanoverian army and owner of the Hanoverian Infantry Regiment Celle. On April 16, 1818, he was transferred to the 7th Hanoverian Infantry Regiment as a major general and on May 9, 1820 as chief. He retired on May 27, 1828 and moved to Verden, where he died on December 5, 1836.

family

In 1789 he married Elisabeth Ward , daughter of the painter and Colonel Francis Swain Ward . His son was Colonel Wilhelm Best (born November 16, 1799 - February 23, 1886), who married Ida Sertürner (* June 26, 1827 - March 1, 1892), a daughter of the pharmacist Friedrich Sertürner .

In 1823 he married Louisa von Robertson , daughter of Captain Ernest von Robertson (fallen at Belam on November 28, 1811).

Works

• Letters About East India, the Promontory of Good Hope and the Island of St. Helena , Leipzig 1807 ( digitized version )

literature

• Chen Tzoref-Ashkenazi, German Soldiers in Colonial India , 2014, Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Ltd, ISBN 978-1-84893-367-5
• Hülsemann, Bernhard (1863), History of the Royal Hanover Fourth Infantry Regiment , digitized
• Hanoverian and Electoral-Brunswick-Lüneburg State Calendar 1819, p.171
• New necrology of the Germans 1836, p.1270 No. 1420
• North Ludlow Beamish, History of the King's German Legion , Volume 2, p. 602 History of the King's German Legion , p.113 No. 695
• John Philippart, The Royal military calendar, or Army service and commission book. Containing the services and progress of promotion of the generals, lieutenant-generals, major-generals, colonels, lieutenant-colonels, and majors of the army, according to seniority: with details of the principal military events of the last century , p.386ff
• Bernhard von Poten , The Generals of the Royal Hanoverian Army and their regular troops , Ernst Siegfried Mittler and Son, Berlin 1903, from: Supplement to the military weekly paper. 1903, 6th and 7th issue, p. 297, no.312

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hanoverian and Electoral-Braunschweigisch-Lüneburg State Calendar, p.6
2. ↑ Hülsemann, 1863, p. 105
3. ↑ www.garnisonkirche-hameln.de/141_Best.htm ( Memento from October 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
4. ^ Wedding announcement in London Magazine, Volume 7
5. ↑ North Ludlow Beamish, History of the King's German Legion , Volume 2, p. 645 , No. 1083