Henry Hardinge, 1st Viscount Hardinge

Henry Hardinge, 1st Viscount Hardinge

Lord Hardinge (on the white horse) and Prince Waldemar of Prussia with hats visit the battlefield of Ferozeshah

Henry Hardinge, 1st Viscount Hardinge , GCB , PC (born March 30, 1785 in Wrotham , Kent , †  September 24, 1856 at the Southpark estate in Kent) was a British field marshal and statesman .

Life

Hardinge joined the Army on July 23, 1799 as an officer candidate with the Queen's Rangers . In February 1806 he was sent to Staff College Camberley . From 1808 he took part as a captain in the Napoleonic Wars on the Iberian Peninsula . He was wounded in the Battle of Vimeiro . On April 13, 1809 he was promoted to major and deputy quartermaster of the newly formed Portuguese army. During the war on the Iberian Peninsula, he was able to distinguish himself, especially in the battle of La Albuera . He was wounded again in the Battle of Vitoria . In the battle of Orthez he commanded the Portuguese brigade . In January 1815 he was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath . In the 1815 campaign, Hardinge was assigned to Field Marshal Blüchers' army and lost his left arm in the Battle of Ligny .

In 1820 Hardinge was elected to Durham 's House of Commons , where he joined the Tories and in 1823 received the post of clerk at the Clerk of Ordnance. When Wellington became Prime Minister in 1828 , he appointed Hardinge Secretary at War (Head of the War Office ) and in 1830 Chief Secretary for Ireland . Hardinge became a major general that same year . The dissolution of the Wellington Ministry caused Hardinge to resign. But he was under Peel from December 1834 to April 1835 for the second time and in 1841 for the third time Secretary at War.

In 1842 Hardinge was appointed lieutenant general . After Baron Ellenborough's recall , Hardinge was appointed Governor General of India , where he arrived shortly before the First Sikh War . He was present on the battlefields of Mudki , Ferozeshah (December 21-22, 1845) and Sobraon (February 10, 1846), and although he left the command to Sir Hugh Gough as a senior general, he was credited with the happy success to a large extent too. After the ratification of the Peace Treaty of Lahore , he was in 1846 for Viscount Hardinge of Lahore and Kings Newton in Derbyshire collected.

Hardinge returned to England after 1848 and then took his seat in the House of Lords . In 1852 he was appointed Generalfeldzeugmeister (Master-general of the Ordnance) and Commander-in-Chief of the British Army . During the 25 years in command of Wellington there had been a stagnation in the development of the British Army. This became clear in the Crimean War . Therefore, Hardinge was asked by Prince Albert to improve the training of the British Army. This is how the Aldershot camp ( The Home of the British Army ) was established. In Victorian England, Aldershot was synonymous with the training of the British Army. In 1855 Hardinge was finally promoted to field marshal.

He retired in July 1856 and died on September 24, 1856 at his Southpark estate in Kent.

literature

• Henry Hardinge, Viscount Hardinge , entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica 1911 (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
William Wilberforce Bird	Governor General of India 1844–1848	The Earl of Dalhousie
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington	Commander in Chief of the British Army 1852-1856	George, 2nd Duke of Cambridge
New title created	Viscount Hardinge 1846-1856	Charles Hardinge