A Peer Among Princes: The Life of Thomas Graham, Victor of Barrosa, Hero of the Peninsular War

By Philip Grant

This authoritative biography chronicles the life and achievements of the Victorian era politician and hero of the Napoleonic Wars.
 
Sir Thomas Graham, Lord Lynedoch, is best known for his exceptional military career during the Napoleonic Wars. In the struggle for the Iberian Peninsula, he won a major victory at the Battle of Barrosa, conducted the siege of San Sebastian, and acted as the Duke of Wellington’s second in command. But Graham was much more than a soldier. An innovative Scottish landowner, politician, sportsman, and traveler, he was a remarkable man of his age. In A Peer Among Princes, Philip Grant does justice to his life and reputation.
 
Lord Lynedoch only took up his military career in 1792 when he was outraged by the violation of his wife’s coffin by French revolutionaries. Determined to fight them, he raised his own regiment and soon establishing himself as an outstanding leader and field commander. He saw action at Toulon, made a daring escape from the siege of Mantua, served in Malta and Egypt and with Sir John Moore during the Corunna campaign. With quotes from Graham’s vivid letters and diaries, Grant weaves an absorbing and detailed narrative of his long and varied life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781526745422

Book preview

Introduction

The death of a spouse is one of life’s great tragedies. If she is young and beautiful as well, it seems an even greater tragedy. For Thomas Graham the death of his lovely Mary was a turning point, the importance of which he would not realise for many years. It was sufficient, that summer day, that she had eventually succumbed to the disease which had ravished her for so much of her life. Was it unexpected? Yes and no. Should he have left her that morning, even for a short time? Who’s to know: it would make no difference; his grief was the same.

Thomas and Mary had been sailing off the south coast of France. His immediate need now was to get her home to Scotland for a decent burial, somewhere he could erect a suitable monument to the love of his life. It would have been a long and difficult journey at the best of times, and these were not. The year was 1792 and France was in the grip of a revolution which was to turn the country inside out for many years to come. The shortest route was therefore the best. From Hyères they would keep to the inland waterways as much as possible and cut the corner for Bordeaux rather than take the long route across via Paris. From Bordeaux they could sail for British waters.

Their route on the Canal-du-Midi took them by Agde and Carcassonne. It was at Toulouse, on Saturday, 14 July, that an event occurred which was to change Graham’s life. That night some minor customs officials boarded their barge and demanded to inspect all items of baggage on board. One such was Mary’s coffin. Whether it was night or day mattered little, it was clear that, in the Scots expression, they had ‘drink taken’. Thus emboldened, they demanded that the coffin be opened and then it is said they proceeded to search the cadaver for gold on her fingers or in her teeth. No doubt white with impotent fury, Graham, outraged beyond measure, from that moment vowed vengeance on the Revolutionaries. Little could he or anyone else guess that it would take twenty years before his revenge was complete. Both of their names would enter the history books as a result.

Graham then set about his mission. By now Britain was at war with the French. Despite his 44 years, he was still a fine and fit figure. He resolved to find out whether he also had the mettle to be a soldier. This required first the testing of his own courage. Later he was to raise his own regiment, and later still he was to become a famed commander, second-in-command to Wellington in the Peninsula, honoured by the king and country he served with such distinction.

Many talk of a turning point in their lives. Few would have such a momentous one as Graham. The death of his beloved Mary did not just change his life: the turn was dramatic, three-dimensional. He would never again marry. At a time in his life when most men would be thinking of taking their ease, Graham embarked on a life of such vigour and activity that even at age 85 he was being sought out once again as a potential army commander. And even after that he had quite a few years of active life ahead of him.

This then is the story of that remarkable man: his youth in Scotland, married life with Mary in London’s gilded halls, soldiering on the continent and eventually retirement to the hunting fields and to foreign spas. His handsome face stares back at us across the years, his gaze as steady as it ever was. His journey was an epic one, and we are fortunate that he left enough evidence behind for us to enjoy it.

When Graham married Mary, her father Lord Cathcart wrote: ‘Mary has married Thomas Graham of Balgowan, the man of her heart and a peer among princes.’

Chapter 1

His Early Life (1748–1774)

As winter gave way to spring, as the days grew longer and the northern skies lightened, William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, King George’s fat 25-year-old son, led a government army from Aberdeen across the broad and fertile lands bounding the Moray Firth and headed for a decisive encounter with the army of Prince Charles Edward. It was April 1746 and they were about to stage the last major battle on British soil. The aim of Butcher Cumberland was to ensure that this would be the last ever Jacobite rising. Bonnie Prince Charlie’s aim was survival. The clash at Culloden ended the movement which had begun in 1689 with the arrival and accession of King William and Queen Mary, and the din of the battle was to reverberate for many years. Late in life the old Lord Lynedoch would recount that among his earliest recollections was of being taken by his nurse to see the passing of a regiment of dragoons. One suspects that it was because they were en route south and east and not north and west, and hence a matter for comment, observation and perhaps for relief.

Not satisfied with inflicting an overwhelming defeat, Cumberland slaughtered the wounded left on the field and pursued the walking wounded, the sick, the hungry, the defeated and the dejected to the far reaches of their clan lands, and there proceeded to burn their houses, destroy their crops and scatter their cattle. Never again would the Highland clans threaten the government. It was a turning point in Scottish history. It would be many years before kilts would be seen again, even in the Highlands, and seventy-six years before another king, George IV, would appear in Edinburgh – in Highland dress. By then tartan, as we know it now, had been invented and a new confidence and national identity had begun to assert itself. And Lord Lynedoch would be there to witness the events himself.

Culloden was also the last battle of a civil war (or wars) which had been going on for over a century. At different times it pitted government against royalist, English and Lowland Scot against Highlander, south against north, town against country, clan and family loyalty against centralised force, Protestant against Catholic. Although only about 5,000 Highlanders stood beside their romantic prince at Culloden, and only a minority of clans took part at all, the battle’s repercussions would have a lasting effect. Scotland would never be the same again. The country was already changing: with the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 power had shifted inexorably from Edinburgh to London, and some felt that Scotland had lost a measure of its independent and individual character.

Of the years 1748 to 1789 a Scots historian has written:

The eighteenth century is an age of contrasts, where delicate grace and a dignified restraint go side by side with coarse and brutal squalor, and brocade has a lining of rough calico. The contrast is not peculiar to our country. It has long been customary to compare the Scotland of Dumbiedykes and of the Vennel [very poor areas of old Edinburgh] with the England of Gainsborough or Lord Chesterfield: but that England was also the England of Squire Western, of Hogarth’s Gin Lane and Marriage à la Mode, and the contrast was equally marked in other countries. In the middle and later part of the century, a tearful sensibility was the fashion: it was also an age of corruption in politics and a taken-for-granted brutality to the helpless that make the worst aspects of the Middle Ages seem comparatively decent and humane. The conjunction of these opposite qualities made it also a time that formulated, and sometime acted on, very noble ideals for the welfare of the oppressed.

For a generation after the Forty-five, Scotland passed through a period of unwonted peace. There were indeed almost continuous wars abroad, in which Scots soldier played a distinguished part, but none of these directly impinged on the country. There were a few disturbances at home, but threatening rather than serious in result. The religious storms had died down. Political matters, most of the time, were tranquil. What had caused that tranquillity was no advantage. One cannot lop essential factors from a nation’s life without effect: but the ill effects took some time to show themselves, and for a while the absence of national politics seemed merely to give more scope to those other interests, material and intellectual alike, the fruit of whose re-birth showed more and more.¹

It was into the immediate post-Culloden Scotland that Thomas Graeme, Sixth Laird of Balgowan, and his wife were delivered of their third child, another son, also to be called Thomas and the subject of this book. He was born in Perthshire on 19 October 1748. His two elder brothers did not survive to maturity. One died in infancy; the other in 1756 aged 12. Thomas was to grow into a strapping young man and even in old age was considered a fine figure. And what an old age it was. He was to live from the era of George II, through the immensely long reign of George III, his successors George IV and William IV, and eventually into that of the young Queen Victoria. He would live long enough to read even of her journey by steam train in 1842, before he died in London at the end of 1843, in his 96th year.

It is not known for certain where Thomas was born but evidence and anecdote are sufficient to surmise that it was probably at Balgowan, the main family residence.² The Graemes had extensive lands and a number of houses. In the Scottish fashion, the head of such a family was known as ‘of Balgowan’, that being their principal home. Locally he would have been known simply as Balgowan, not least to differentiate him from all the other Graemes and Grahams. Although Balgowan had no title, his was an aristocratic family which married into other aristocratic families. He could trace his descent from King Robert III of Scotland – this royal line is evidenced in the coat of arms of his grandfather – and number the Dukes of Montrose among his kinsmen.³ This was to have an effect when young Thomas was eventually ennobled. His obvious title would have been Lord Graham but this would have suggested that he was a son of the Duke (of Montrose), which is why he declined it and chose Lynedoch instead, but that part of his story lies far into the future. The Balgowans’ chief claim to fame was that they were significant landowners in one of the most productive – and most beautiful – parts of Scotland.

Perthshire is not easy to place although many people have a rough idea where it is. It is almost in the centre of mainland Scotland; it is neither west coast nor east, neither north nor south, indeed it is hard to say whether it is Highland or Lowland. It is a bit of all of these. Some say that in a beautiful country it is the most beautiful county. On its northwest border begin the foothills of the Grampian Mountains and to the southwest the gentler Ochil Hills. Running through its centre is the broad strath of the river Earn, giving the name Strathearn to the region wherein Balgowan lies. Balgowan lies just to the south and about midway on the road between Perth and Crieff. The house had its back to the northerly winds and its face to the southwest. The skies are big and the summer evenings long in this heartland of Scotland. The illustration on p. 7 shows Balgowan house in its last, Victorian, guise. The picture windows enjoy the long view southwest down towards Strathallan in the direction of Stirling. Thus it enjoyed both the best of the views and the worst of the prevailing wind.

The family home at Balgowan had been bought by John Graeme in 1584 so the lands had been in the ownership of the Graemes, and had been farmed and tended by them, for 164 years before our Thomas made his appearance. The Graemes were originally from Garvock near Dunning, a few miles to the south of Balgowan. Thomas Graeme (senior, 6th of Balgowan) married Lady Christian Hope, daughter of the 1st Earl of Hopetoun in 1743. Balgowan’s brother-in-law, John, 2nd Earl (1704–1781), was a noted agricultural reformer. In this regard he must have had an influence on his young nephew who himself became a noted innovator. The Hope family lands lay mainly to the west of Edinburgh, where the family seat is the magnificent Hopetoun House. It looks east down the Firth of Forth from its vantage point a little to the west of the Queen’s Ferry (and nowadays the triple Forth bridges). Lady Christian’s parents were Charles the 1st Earl and Lady Henrietta Johnstone, daughter of the 1st Marquis of Annandale. Considerable wealth would trickle down to Thomas from the Annandale family trust. The Hopes were a large family and many cousins make appearances throughout Thomas’s life.

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This indistinct print shows Balgowan House in the eighteenth century.

Of Thomas’s father, John Murray Graham⁴ says: ‘A country gentleman of good education and business habits, he resided almost constantly at home, occupying himself with the management of his estate and seldom, if ever, crossing the English border.’ This memoir is worth noting and will be quoted further and is referred to even more later on. In his preface he writes:

Having lived occasionally with Lord Lynedoch during the later years of his life, and possessing original letters, the dates of which extend over almost the whole of it, the author has had some advantages in putting together the following notices … To those friends in the county of Perth who have furnished him [the author] with certain anecdotes of Lord Lynedoch’s early life, the author takes this opportunity of tendering his best thanks. In drawing upon such traditional information, as well as in some particulars which he has given from personal knowledge, authenticity of the narrative has been carefully attended to.

As was usual, the young Thomas was educated at home, first by the local minister, the Reverend Frazer, for many years minister of the parish of Moneidie (which bestrode the main Perth to Crieff road). More importantly, from the age of about 12 years and for about four years he was tutored by one James Macpherson, who was himself to achieve sufficient fame (or notoriety) that his wish to be buried in Westminster Abbey was granted. Macpherson was born in 1736, which made him just twelve years older than his pupil. In 1753 he went to King’s College Aberdeen and from 1759 he became Thomas’s tutor. It was at this time that he ‘discovered’ the epic poems of the ancient bard Ossian. Such was their renown that Macpherson himself was to become world famous. How did all of this come about?

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Balgowan house in Victorian times.

Young Thomas spent his childhood and youth in and around the house of Balgowan and the farms and cottages of the people who tilled the land and minded the cattle, horses and other domesticated animals. He played in the woods and by the streams. He fished the rivers and he rode not just as a means of getting about but for pleasure too. By the time Macpherson appears he was already riding to hounds with his father and uncles. It is said that he was

… early initiated in outdoor exercises, particularly riding. On one occasion he was allowed to go on his pony to a fox-hunt; the meeting being at Dupplin⁵ and his uncle, John Earl of Hopetoun, being of the party. A fox was found at Dupplin woods which made for the [river] Tay and took the water below Perth, followed by the pack. The juvenile fox-hunter allowed his zeal so far to get the better of him that he overrode the hounds in the river and caught the fox before it could reach the other side. Thinking he had done a clever feat he carried the fox to the George Inn at Perth where Lord Hopetoun, who was standing with the other fox-hunters, angry at the sport being spoiled, gave him a slight stroke with his hunting whip. Thomas Graeme, incensed at this treatment when he expected commendation, rode home in great dudgeon to Balgowan and was with some difficulty prevailed upon by his mother, Lady Christian, to make peace with her brother.⁶

It was to this country lad that Macpherson came to continue Thomas’s education. Much of the time would have been spent in the school room and some no doubt in the extensive library which Balgowan boasted. We know it was a good one as the catalogue of 1740 still exists and some 900 volumes appear there.⁷ These range from the classics to reference books, books in French, Mercator’s Atlas based on his 1569 projection, Ptolemy’s Maps and a variety of books on medical issues. This shows that it was a cultured and educated family: a home where the children would be well taught.⁸

But this was not enough for an energetic youth or for his ambitious tutor. Their first foray was to the southwest, to Moffat. Macpherson had connections in this area and presumably visits to them were part of his plan. Later it became their habit to ride west into the wilds of the Highlands and to venture far beyond the confines of peaceful, tranquil and productive Perthshire to the lands peopled by Macpherson’s own kith and kin. It is hard to over-emphasise how different these far lands were. The effects of the Jacobite rebellions, and their repercussions, were to be seen and felt everywhere. One could almost smell the smoke of the burned-out houses and crofts and a simmering resentment, often hatred, lay just below the surface. The English and Lowlanders, or anybody not one of the local clansmen, would be greeted with suspicion and wariness if not with downright hostility. One could understand why: Cumberland and his army had wreaked havoc and terrible revenge on the clans which had come out for Prince Charles Edward. The kilt was banned, as were tartans (though it should be noted in passing that these bore no resemblance to the highly coloured ones we see today: they were more likely to be family or estate tweeds woven to the taste of the landowner or clan chieftain). This was an occupied and subdued land, sparsely inhabited though majestic and beautiful. The west coast, which Thomas would never have seen before, with its sea lochs and wild mountains, would have stirred the heart of anyone, especially if his imagination was fired by a young and energetic tutor. Each summer for three years they were to roam the Highlands together, savouring the pleasures of a new country where the natives even spoke a different language.

Given that the impressionable Thomas was in the hands of the imaginative Macpherson, it is worth pausing to consider what else the latter was up to. His great achievement was not just to educate his pupil and point him towards university but to develop his character as well. All the while he was planning to put himself on the map and into the pages of history – or folklore at least – by bringing to publication the works of a long-lost heroic bard called Ossian. During the course of their travels in the West Highlands Macpherson was to ‘discover’ long-lost manuscripts with epic tales of a bygone era … except that those manuscripts were known only to Macpherson and transcribed by him, and him alone, from their original Gaelic into melodious verse in the sort of English which would make Sir Walter Scott so famous forty years or so later.

The first of these poems, ‘Fingal’, dates from 1761, the same year that the tutor and his pupil first went to the West Highlands. The epic’s lasting legacy is that it gave its name to Fingal’s Cave, that magnificent, mysterious and magically beautiful feature on the south coast of the Isle of Staffa. This in turn inspired the music of Mendelssohn and ensured its everlasting and worldwide fame. It was an era when romanticism was in the air; one might say it had almost got into the water. Those said to have been influenced by Ossian ranged from Goethe in Germany and Napoleon Bonaparte in France to Walter Scott himself. Before one is carried away on this swell-tide of lyricism perhaps it is best to go straight to the Dictionary of National Biography for a dose of realism. Of Macpherson it says:

… (1736–1796), the alleged translator of the Ossianic poems, studied at Aberdeen and Edinburgh universities; said to have composed over 4,000 verses while at college; published The Highlander (1758) and Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands (1760); issued two epic poems, Fingal (1762) and Temora (1763), which he alleged to be translated from the Gaelic of a poet called Ossian; was generally believed to have wholly invented the poems; never seriously rebutted the charge of forgery; attacked by Dr Johnson in his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775); secretary to the governor of Pensacola, West Florida, 1764–66; published Original Papers containing the Secret History of Great Britain from the Restoration till the Accession of George I (1775); employed by North’s ministry to defend their American policy, from 1776; MP, Camelford, 1780–96; London agent to Mohammed Ali, Nabob of Arcot, 1781. After Macpherson’s death a committee was appointed by the Highland Society of Scotland to investigate the Ossianic poems, 1797. They reported that while a great legend of Fingal and Ossian existed in Scotland, Macpherson had liberally edited his originals and inserted passages of his own.

Subsequent investigation has confirmed the committee’s conclusions.⁹

If nothing else James Macpherson was clearly a man of imagination and some considerable ability and energy, even if it seems to have been waywardly employed at times. The effect on Thomas Graham must have been profound: that of a 24-year-old dreamer on a 12-year-old youth. That said, Thomas Graham the man was no dreamer. Indeed his practicality and common sense were lifelong characteristics. So too were his interest in languages and his willingness to add to his learning not just at university but during many years of foreign travel. Were some at least of these traits developed by proximity to Macpherson? One does not know but the mere fact of that proximity lends colour to what would otherwise have been a rather parochial upbringing in rural Perthshire.

* * *

In 1766 Thomas went up to Oxford where he became a Gentleman Commoner. The entry in the Christ Church records shows that ‘Thomas Grome’ (Graeme) arrived on 11 November. Why did he choose Oxford as opposed to one of the Scottish universities? He had, after all, had plenty of time to absorb background about Aberdeen (Macpherson had studied at both of its ancient colleges), and any one of the three other ancient seats could have provided a stimulating and worthwhile path to learning. He must have known friends who had gone to St Andrews – he may even have visited them there, it was not so very far after all – or at Glasgow or Edinburgh. St Andrews, the oldest of Scotland’s then four universities, would have been an obvious choice for another reason: its chancellor was Lord Kinnoull¹⁰, a close neighbour, friend of the family and Thomas’s nominative guardian. Perhaps his family thought that he would meet a more cosmopolitan mix of students; maybe it would open doors which they felt were not available to him in Scotland. Maybe the wanderlust which was such a part of his character and which influenced much of his life was already taking hold. On the other hand, his days coincided with the peak of the Scottish Enlightenment when men of worldwide eminence held sway in Edinburgh. There he could have rubbed shoulders, not necessarily metaphorically, with the likes of Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson or Thomas Reid, to name but a tenth of the talent. As has been said: ‘An English visitor to Edinburgh during the heyday of the Scottish Enlightenment remarked: ‘‘Here I stand at what is called the Cross of Edinburgh [the Mercat Cross] and can in a few minutes take fifty men of genius and learning by the hand’’.’

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Graham’s enrolment into Christ Church, Oxford, 11 November 1766. (Christ Church, Oxford)

Oxford, and Christ Church in particular, must have held a particular attraction. Having decided on Oxford, he might very well have settled on Balliol College which traditionally had strong links with Scotland. It may be that he even applied to go there. Whatever the reasons, it was to Christ Church that he went in the autumn of 1766. He was 18 years of age, rather older than many who chose a university education at a time when it was not unusual for men to go up at 16 years. It was of course many years before women were admitted at all, so it must have been purely on the social scene that he would have hoped to meet potential marriage partners, if that was on his mind. It seems as likely, however, that he was swayed by the thought that his academic studies would not necessarily stand in the way of his sporting pursuits. There was plenty of excellent fox hunting within reach and no doubt there would be plenty of invitations to shooting parties too. It was not as if he felt that a formal qualification was necessary for someone whose future would be managing the family estates back in Perthshire when the time came for that. Between now and then he would also expect to broaden his education and polish his languages with an extensive Grand Tour.

There were many grades of student at Oxford at this time and many of the differences were as much social as academic. A Gentleman Commoner is defined as someone who has won neither a scholarship nor an exhibition and who has paid all of his own fees in advance. His fellow Commoners were: George Amyard (from 5 April), James Mapp (7 May), George Stuart (9 July), Jocelyn Deane (23 July) and William Cunningham (6 December). Amyard became a Member of Parliament roughly at the same time as Thomas,¹¹ but of the others nothing can be traced and it is not known if they reappeared in Graham’s life. What we do know is that when he had been but two years at Oxford he left to go on his Grand Tour. His father died in 1767 and Thomas, now the sole inheritor of considerable lands and means, decided that he would learn more and probably enjoy himself more if he travelled. One can speculate about whether the father had been keener than the son that he spend time on serious study, though if that were the case it might be that Thomas would have been sent to Edinburgh instead to shake hands with some of the famous men there. This would not have been the case at Oxford.

In his introduction to The Grand Tour¹² Christopher Hibbert writes:

Shortly before his fifteenth birthday in 1752, Edward Gibbon arrived at Magdalen College, Oxford and was flattered to be given the velvet cap and silk gown which distinguished a gentleman commoner from plebeian students and which enabled him ‘to command amongst the tradesmen of Oxford an indefinite and dangerous credit’. His status also allowed him to join the Fellows at high table as the port went round and the possession of a key to the ‘numerous and learned library’ … His fourteen months at the university were ‘the most idle and unprofitable’ of his whole life.

Hibbert later makes the important point that there were no facilities for teaching modern languages at either Oxford or Cambridge. Was that because there was no demand; because it was expected that anyone wishing to avail himself of such learning would travel abroad to acquire the necessary skills?

Or was it perhaps the case that the learning of a language was simply a means to an end and incidental to the broader aim of the Grand Tour which was to learn of other cultures, politics, history and art? What is clear is that Thomas made the most of his time abroad. He welcomed the opportunities which came his way and his facility with languages, whether or not he had a natural bent and a good ear, were to stand him in good stead his whole long life. Either way, Macpherson’s grounding of him in the classics was to serve him well. As we shall see he was fluent in German and Italian when seconded to the Austrian Army in 1796. He was fluent enough in Italian to spend a lot of his later years wintering there where the climate better suited him. There is no doubt that his French was good as well, as he freely made his way about that country and he and his wife Mary