INTRODUCTION
Marshal William Carr Beresford
‘The ablest man I have yet seen with the army’
Wellington’s strong right arm
Ireland in the mid-eighteenth century was an island of many different components. The governing body represented some, but not all, of those who had fought in Ireland on the victorious side in the war of the two kings, a war which had pitted not just Catholic James II against Protestant William and Mary in the British Isles (sometimes with cavalier disregard for Mary’s position as a daughter of James), but which was part of a wider conflict which had brought together other powers wishing to resist the domination of Louis XIV’s France on the European continent (the War of the League of Augsburg).
The defeat of James II and his supporters at the battles of the Boyne (1690) and Aughrim (1691) followed by the Treaty of Limerick led to the establishment of the Ascendancy in Ireland, made up of those who belonged to the Church of Ireland or its sister Church, the Church of England. Not only did this exclude the majority Roman Catholic population but also Presbyterians, Quakers and other non-conformists. While the process had commenced earlier, the victory of William and Mary over James completed the means whereby the Ascendancy secured political, economic and social control of the island of Ireland through a transfer of landownership and the introduction of restrictions on their opponents brought about primarily by the penal laws. Outwardly, Ireland remained at peace in the hundred years prior to the French revolution, with no substantial unrest taking place in support of the Jacobite risings in Scotland of 1708, 1715 or 1745, but underneath the surface those displaced not unnaturally resented the situation. This manifested itself in agrarian discontent and ultimately the explosion that was the rebellion of 1798.
One family that benefitted substantially from the conclusion of the war of the two kings was that of the Beresfords. Tristram Beresford had arrived in Ireland at the time of James I. His great grandson, Sir Tristram Beresford (1669–1701), supported William and Mary and as such was attainted in May 1689 by the Jacobite parliament in Dublin and forfeited his lands. Recovering these on the Williamite victory, he did not live long to enjoy them, dying in 1701 at the age of just thirty-two. His son, Sir Marcus, was just seven years old but it was this man that was to bring the family to the fore in Irish and for a time in British politics. Sir Marcus was one of a number of members of the family who made astute marriages by which they acquired not just wealth but political power. In his case, in 1717 he married Catherine, Baroness La Poer, the only daughter and heiress of James, 3rd Earl of Tyrone, a supporter of James II who after the collapse of the Jacobite cause in Ireland had submitted to William and Mary and who finished his days as Governor of Waterford.1
Following this marriage, Sir Marcus and his successors held substantial lands in Counties Derry and Waterford (where they settled and subsequently extended the family home of Curraghmore) and soon acquired further lands in the city of Dublin, and counties Dublin and Wicklow.2 Their parliamentary power was based on the control of boroughs in these counties, combined with family alliances elsewhere. Sir Marcus was created Viscount Tyrone in 1722 and the Earl of Tyrone in 1746. His three surviving sons and six daughters made advantageous marriages and advanced the family politically. Marcus’s eldest son, George, the 2nd Earl, married Elizabeth Monck, a granddaughter of the 1st Duke of Portland.3 Marcus’s second son, John, married first Anne de Ligondes and subsequently Barbara Montgomery. From his power base of Revenue Commissioner in Ireland, John became a major parliamentary figure and firm friend of William Pitt the Younger; and is reputed to have been referred to as ‘virtually King of Ireland’ by Earl Fitzwilliam.4 The third son, William, took holy orders in the Church of Ireland, ultimately becoming Archbiship of Tuam and Lord Decies. He married Elizabeth FitzGibbon, sister of John, Earl of Clare and Lord Chancellor of Ireland. It was into this family that William Carr Beresford (‘Beresford’) was born on 2 October 1768, the younger of two sons (the other being John Poo) fathered by the second Earl prior to his marriage and acknowledged by him as his own.5 Apart from his own siblings, the children and grandchildren of John (the Commissioner) and William (the Archbishop) were to be involved closely with the life of William Carr Beresford.6
While he would not inherit titles or wealth, William Carr was more fortunate than many. A lack of certainty exists as to the identity of his mother, but notwithstanding Thomas Creevey’s suggestion late in William’s life (1827) that it was rumoured to be Elizabeth Monck prior to her marriage to William’s father, there is a strong family tradition that it was a local lady by the name of Carr; a tradition which is supported by both the fact that there was no family background to the name Carr, William being addressed as such by family members, and the existence then and today of families with the name Carr in the area adjacent to Curraghmore.7 Creevey’s suggestion was that it was rumoured both John Poo and William Carr were the children of Elizabeth. He referred to the affection in which they were held by her, and there certainly was a considerable bond, with John Poo and William Carr continuing to visit Elizabeth who lived much of her life in England after her husband’s death in 1800.
Great Britain and France had fought four major wars in the eighteenth century prior to the French Revolution in 1789. Those wars had seen Britain emerge as the pre-eminent world naval power, but had left France as the dominant land power in western Europe. Between 1793 and 1814 the two nations were engaged in continuous conflict, with the exception of one short period of peace brought about by the Treaty of Amiens in 1802–3.
The distrust engendered by James II’s attempt to build a royalist standing army meant that historically in the eighteenth century the British army had rarely exceeded an establishment of 40,000, falling on occasions to less than half that size. By 1814 there were some 250,000 men in the army. This required the securing of huge additional manpower, some of which was found in central Europe in German speaking lands, but the vast majority of which was sourced in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. In addition, substantial militia and fencible regiments were raised to perform duties at home and to guard against potential invasion. Unlike the continental powers, Britain did not introduce conscription to meet its military requirements relying instead on volunteers.
The simultaneous industrialisation of England in particular, with the rural population moving to urban centres, meant a lack of manpower was available for the army. Further, quite apart from the dangers of serving abroad, where disease killed many more than enemy forces, industrial wages reduced the attraction of a soldier’s life. Britain found a substantial part of the resources it needed in the agrarian societies of Ireland and Scotland, often in circumstances where landholdings were of an insufficient size to support large families. To these soldiers of the British army were added the rejuvenated army of Portugal, aided by the various Spanish armies and the irregulars of both Iberian nations, without which it is doubtful Britain could have driven the French out of the Peninsula and successfully invaded the south of France, thus contributing substantially to Napoleon’s downfall.
At the commencement of the wars with France in 1793, the British army was disorganised and suffering from the loss of morale caused by defeat in 1783 in America. Two men in particular were responsible for its resuscitation and emergence as a major fighting force over the next twenty years. The Duke of York, whatever his limitations as a battlefield general, proved to be an able administrator, while Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington emerged as one of the most successful and effective campaign generals Britain has ever produced.
Britain’s participation in the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars has been the subject of many excellent works. Wellington’s campaigns and battles have been written about exhaustively. The generals who fought alongside and indeed against Wellington have in most cases been the subject of one or more biographies, yet Marshal William Carr Beresford is noticeable for the absence of any biography of his life, which is curious given that he was Wellington’s right-hand man in the Peninsula, moreover, the man who was responsible for the rebuilding and reform of the Portuguese army. For some time it was thought that his papers might even have been destroyed, meaning that it was necessary to look for his letters in the