Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry

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Viscount Castlereagh, portrait by Thomas Lawrence (around 1810)

Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (born June 18, 1769 in Dublin , † August 12, 1822 in London ), was a British statesman . From 1796 to 1821 he carried the courtesy title Viscount Castlereagh .

Life

Stewart was the eldest son of the Irish landowner and MP Robert Stewart (later 1st Marquess of Londonderry) and his first wife, Lady Sarah Frances Seymour, daughter of the 1st Marquess of Hertford , a former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland . His mother died in childbed the year after he was born. One half-brother was Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry .

Stewart attended the Royal School in Armagh and then studied at St John's College of Cambridge University . In 1790 he entered the Irish Parliament as an independent , but a few years later he joined the Tory party because he was able to move into the British House of Commons with it in 1795 . A year later he was given the courtesy title of Viscount Castlereagh after his father was elevated to Earl of Londonderry in the Peerage of Ireland . He joined the militia led by Thomas Conolly in 1793 and married his niece, Lady Amelia Anne Hobart , daughter of the 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire in 1794 . The marriage remained childless.

After the appointment of his uncle, the 2nd Earl of Camden (brother of his father's second wife), as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Castlereagh served this as an advisor and practically acted as a representative of the often absent Chief Secretary for Ireland . He finally took this post in 1798 under Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis and played an important role in suppressing the Irish Rebellion that year.

The following year he supported the attempt by Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder. J. , Ireland and the UK to combine in a kingdom. Castlereagh, who still sat in the Irish parliament, helped the Act of Union drafted by Pitt to the necessary majority in 1800 at the second attempt. After the Act of Union came into force, he resigned on January 1, 1801, as he was with the political course of King George III. was not satisfied. The king was vehemently against the Catholic Emancipation Act , the law for the emancipation of Catholics in the Protestant Anglican kingdom. Pitt and Castlereagh had promised the Irish Catholics that they would be represented in the future united parliament in order to obtain their approval of the Act of Union. However, they could not prevail against the king, who invoked his coronation oath, and consequently resigned.

From 1801 until his death in 1822 Castlereagh was a member of the House of Commons in what was now the United Kingdom Parliament . In 1802 he joined the Addington government as President of the Board of Control . After Pitt's return to the government, he also took over the post of Secretary of State for War and the Colonies for almost a year in 1805 . He did not participate in the government of all talents formed after Pitt's death in early 1806 . Under the Duke of Portland , he served again as Minister of War and Colonial Affairs from 1807 to 1809 and was thus instrumental in planning the British campaigns against Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte . After a duel between Castlereagh and Foreign Minister George Canning, triggered by the disastrous course of the Walcheren expedition , in 1809 both had to resign from their ministerial offices.

After the resignation of Marquess Wellesley in February 1812, Castlereagh took over his office as foreign minister in the government of Spencer Perceval . When he was murdered a little later, Castlereagh also became leader of the Tories faction in the House of Commons . He held both offices under the government of Lord Liverpool until his death in 1822 and thus assumed a leading role in British politics during the decisive phase of the coalition wars and in shaping the post-war order.

As foreign minister, it was thanks to him that he held the alliance together during the decisive phase of the war in 1813 and 1814. He also represented his country at the Congress of Vienna , but was recalled to England in February 1815 and replaced by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, as chief representative. Nevertheless, he managed to restore the balance of power and the pentarchy in Europe. At the Aachen Congress of 1818 Castlereagh showed his enormous political skill for the last time when he managed to resist the attempts of the Russian Tsar Alexander I to integrate Great Britain into the Holy Alliance .

The Death of Castlereagh by George Cruikshank

Despite his diplomatic successes, unpopular with the people, Stewart's political influence eventually declined. As Speaker of the House of Commons, it was his job to defend government unpopular actions. During an audience with George IV on August 9, 1822, he surprised the king by saying that he was being accused of "the same crime as the Bishop of Clogher " - he was caught in a pub with a young man and his pants down. On August 12, 1822, Castlereagh took his own life by cutting his throat using a letter opener .

After his father's death in 1821, Castlereagh inherited the latter's title of 2nd Marquess of Londonderry , but was not elected as the Irish representative peer in the House of Lords . After Castlereagh's death, the title passed to his younger half-brother Charles , who had served under him from 1807 to 1809 as undersecretary of state and later became ambassador to Vienna .

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predecessor Office successor
Robert Stewart Marquess of Londonderry
1821-1822 		Charles Stewart
personal data
SURNAME Stewart, Robert, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lord Castlereagh; Stewart, Robert, Viscount Castlereagh
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English politician, member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1769
PLACE OF BIRTH Dublin
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1822
Place of death London