William Lockhart (General)

Sir William Lockhart

Sir William Stephen Alexander Lockhart GCB , KCSI (born September 2, 1841 in Lanarkshire , Scotland , † March 18, 1900 in Calcutta , British India ) was a British general and Commander-in-Chief in India from 1898 until his death .

Life

Lockhart was born in Lanarkshire to clergyman Laurence Lockhart, his uncle being the writer and biographer Walter Scott , John Gibson Lockhart . Lockhart joined the British Indian Army in 1858 and served in the ranks of the Bengal Native Infantry in the Great Indian Revolt of 1857-58. From 1864 to 1866 he served in Bhutan and in 1867/68 in the Ethiopia expedition , where he was mentioned in dispatches . This was followed by a deployment in the Hazara expedition on the north-western border of British India in 1868/69 , where Lockhart was again mentioned in dispatches.

Lockhart spent the following ten years up to 1879 on quartermaster posts in Bengal , interrupted by an activity as attaché with the Dutch colonial army KNIL in Aceh in 1877. Lockhart was also used in the Second Anglo-Afghan War , for which he was accepted as a companion in the Bath Order . From 1880 to 1885 he was deputy quartermaster of the Intelligence Branch at the headquarters of the British-Indian Army. From 1885 to 1886 he led a mission to the Hindu Kush .

While working against the resistance movement in Burma , which was annexed in 1885 , Lockhart commanded a brigade from 1886 to 1887 and received the KCB and CSI as well as a note of thanks from the British-Indian government. He spent some time in England due to illness in the late 1880s, where he served as Assistant Military Secretary for Indian Affairs . In 1890 he returned to India, where he was given command of the Punjab Frontier Force . With this he was involved in several of the military campaigns in the north-west of British India for the next five years . After the success of the Waziristan Field Force under his command in 1894/95, Lockhart was awarded the KCSI. In 1896 he received the substantial rank of general and successfully led the campaigns against the Afridi and Orakzai of 1897 and 1898 with great skill. For this he received the GCB and at the end of 1898 succeeded Sir Charles Edward Nairne as Commander in Chief in India. After only a little more than a year at this post, he succumbed to malaria in March 1900 at the age of 58 .

literature

• Martin Smith: General Sir William Stephen Alexander Lockhart: Soldier of the Queen Empress. [Without location] 2011, ISBN 978-0-9570154-0-1 .

Web links

Commons : William Lockhart  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

• Lockhart, Sir William Stephen Alexander . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 16 : L - Lord Advocate . London 1911, p. 854 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

predecessor	Office	successor
Sir Charles Edward Nairne	Commander in Chief in India 1898–1900	Sir Arthur Power Palmer