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Granby Thomas Calcraft
Major General Sir Granby Thomas Calcraft (1770–1820) was a British soldier and politician. He was a cavalry officer, and commanded the 3rd Dragoon Guards and the Heavy Brigade in the Peninsular War. He was MP for Wareham in the years 1807–1808. Early life He was the younger son of John Calcraft of Rempston Hall in the Isle of Purbeck, and brother of John Calcraft the younger (1765–1831). Like his brother, he was illegitimate, the son of the actress Elizabeth Bride.''History of Parliament Online'' ''Calcraft, Sir Granby Thomas (?1767–1820).''/ref> Calcraft entered the army as a cornet in the 15th Light Dragoons in March 1788, and was promoted lieutenant in 1793; in that year his regiment was ordered to join the force under the Duke of York and Albany in Flanders. With it he served at the Battle of Famars, the siege of Valenciennes, and the Battle of Villers-en-Cauchies, where a small force of the 15th Light Dragoons and Austrian hussars defeated a French corps. All th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
3rd Dragoon Guards
The 3rd (Prince of Wales's) Dragoon Guards was a cavalry regiment in the British Army, first raised in 1685 as the Earl of Plymouth's Regiment of Horse. It was renamed as the 3rd Regiment of Dragoon Guards in 1751 and the 3rd (Prince of Wales's) Dragoon Guards in 1765. It saw service for two centuries, including the First World War, before being amalgamated into the 3rd/6th Dragoon Guards in 1922. History The regiment was first raised by Thomas Hickman-Windsor, 1st Earl of Plymouth as the Earl of Plymouth's Regiment of Horse in 1685 as part of the response to the Monmouth Rebellion, by the regimenting of various independent troops, and was ranked as the 4th Regiment of Horse. The regiment saw action at the Battle of Schellenberg in July 1704, the Battle of Blenheim in August 1704, the Battle of Ramillies in May 1706, the Battle of Oudenarde in July 1708 and the Battle of Malplaquet in September 1709 during the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1746 it was ranked as the 3rd ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
25th Light Dragoons
The 25th Dragoons was a cavalry regiment of the British Army from 1941 to 1947. Previous regiments bearing the number have been: * De La Bouchetiere's Regiment of Dragoons was re-formed in 1716 as the 25th Dragoons and disbanded in 1718. * 25th Regiment of (Light) Dragoons was raised for service in India by Colonel Francis Edward Gwyn on 9 March 1794 and renumbered the 22nd Regiment of (Light) Dragoons later that year. The 1941 regiment was raised in Sialkot, India, in February 1941 from a cadre of personnel taken from the 3rd Carabiniers along with volunteers from infantry regiments. It was initially assigned to the 4th Indian Armoured Brigade (which later became 254th Indian Armoured Brigade and, still later, the 254th Indian Tank Brigade). In 1943, it was reassigned to the Indian XV Corps and transported in great secrecy to Arakan prior to taking part in the Battle of the Admin Box, in which its M3 Lee tanks proved decisive. The 25th Dragoons was the home of British com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Siege Of Badajoz (1812)
In the siege of Badajoz (16 March – 6 April 1812), also called the third siege of Badajoz, an Anglo-Portuguese Army under the Earl of Wellington (later the Duke of Wellington) besieged Badajoz, Spain, and forced the surrender of the French garrison. The siege was one of the bloodiest in the Napoleonic Wars and was considered a costly victory by the British, with some 4,800 Allied soldiers killed or wounded in a few short hours of intense fighting during the storming of the breaches as the siege drew to an end. Enraged at the huge number of casualties they suffered in seizing the city, the troops broke into houses and stores consuming vast quantities of alcohol with many of them then going on a rampage, threatening their officers and ignoring their commands to desist, and even killing several. It took three days before the men were brought back into order. When order was restored, an estimated 200-300 civilians had been killed or injured. Background The allied campaign ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Siege Of Ciudad Rodrigo (1812)
In the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain, (7–20 January 1812) the Viscount Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese Army besieged the city's French garrison under General of Brigade Jean Léonard Barrié. After two breaches were blasted in the walls by British heavy artillery, the fortress was successfully stormed on the evening of 19 January 1812. After breaking into the city, British troops went on a rampage for several hours before order was restored. Wellington's army suffered casualties of about 1,700 men including two generals killed. Strategically, the fall of the fortress opened the northern gateway into French-dominated Spain from British-held Portugal. An earlier siege of Ciudad Rodrigo occurred in 1810 when the French captured the city from Spanish forces. Background The allied campaign in Spain started with the Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. Preliminary operations As part of his strategy in Spain, Napoleon ordered Marshal Auguste Marmont to send 10,000 troops to help Mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Lumley
General Sir William Lumley, (28 August 1769 – 15 December 1850) was a British Army officer and courtier during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The son of the Earl of Scarborough, Lumley enjoyed a rapid rise through the ranks aided by a reputation for bravery and professionalism established on campaign in Ireland, Egypt, South Africa, South America, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Following his retirement from the army due to ill health in 1811, Lumley served as Governor of Bermuda and later gained a position as a courtier to the Royal Household. Lumley is especially noted for his actions at the Battle of Antrim where he saved the lives of several magistrates and was seriously wounded fighting when leading a cavalry charge against the United Irishmen rebels in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Early career Lumley was born the seventh son of Richard Lumley, 4th Earl of Scarborough and his wife Barbara ''née'' Savile. He was educated at Eton College and at 18 in 1787 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Albuera
The Battle of Albuera (16 May 1811) was a battle during the Peninsular War. A mixed British, Spanish and Portuguese corps engaged elements of the French Armée du Midi (Army of the South) at the small Spanish village of Albuera, about south of the frontier fortress-town of Badajoz, Spain. From October 1810, Marshal Masséna's French Army of Portugal had been tied down in an increasingly hopeless stand-off against Wellington's Allied forces, safely entrenched in and behind the Lines of Torres Vedras. Acting on Napoleon's orders, in early 1811 Marshal Soult led a French expedition from Andalusia into in a bid to draw Allied forces away from the Lines and ease Masséna's plight. Napoleon's information was outdated and Soult's intervention came too late; starving and understrength, Masséna's army was already withdrawing to Spain. Soult was able to capture the strategically important fortress at Badajoz on the border between Spain and Portugal from the Spanish, but was forced t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Campo Maior
In the Battle of Campo Maior, or Campo Mayor (an older spelling most often used in English language accounts), on 25 March 1811, Brigadier General Robert Ballard Long with a force of Anglo-Portuguese cavalry, the advance-guard of the army commanded by William Beresford, clashed with a French force commanded by General of Division Marie Victor de Fay, marquis de Latour-Maubourg. Initially successful, some of the Allied horsemen indulged in a reckless pursuit of the French. An erroneous report was given that they had been captured wholesale. In consequence, Beresford halted his forces and the French were able to escape and recover a convoy of artillery pieces. Background During the winter of 1810–1811, the French army of Marshal André Masséna maintained its futile siege of Lord Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese Army, which was sheltered behind the Lines of Torres Vedras near Lisbon. Masséna finally ran out of supplies and withdrew toward Almeida in March. Meanwhile, farther ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford
General William Carr Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford, 1st Marquis of Campo Maior, (; 2 October 1768 – 8 January 1854) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and politician. A general in the British Army and a Marshal in the Portuguese Army, he fought alongside The Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular War and held the office of Master-General of the Ordnance in 1828 in Wellington's first ministry. He led the 1806 failed British invasion of Buenos Aires. Background Beresford was the illegitimate son of the 1st Marquess of Waterford. He was the brother of Admiral Sir John Beresford, 1st Baronet (who was also illegitimate), and the half-brother of the 2nd Marquess of Waterford, Archbishop Lord John Beresford and General Lord George Beresford. Peninsular War Commander in Chief of the Portuguese Army In that same year Beresford was sent to Madeira, which he occupied in name of the Queen of Portugal, remaining there for six months as Governor and Commander in Chief. The exiled Portu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tagus
The Tagus ( ; es, Tajo ; pt, Tejo ; see #Name, below) is the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula. The river rises in the Montes Universales near Teruel, in mid-eastern Spain, flows , generally west with two main south-westward sections, to empty into the Atlantic Ocean in Lisbon. Its Tagus Basin, drainage basin covers – exceeded in the peninsula only by the Douro. The river is highly used. Several dams and diversions supply drinking water to key population centres of central Spain and Portugal; dozens of hydroelectric stations create power. Between dams it follows a very constricted course, but after Castle of Almourol, Almourol, Portugal it has a wide alluvium, alluvial valley, floodplain, prone to flooding. Its mouth is a large estuary culminating at the major Port of Lisbon, port, and Portuguese capital, Lisbon. The source is specifically: in political geography, at the Fuente de García in the Frías de Albarracín municipality; in physical geography, within ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Masséna
André Masséna, Prince of Essling, Duke of Rivoli (born Andrea Massena; 6 May 1758 – 4 April 1817) was a French military commander during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.Donald D. Horward, ed., trans, annotated, The French Campaign in Portugal, An Account by Jean Jacques Pelet, 1810-1811 (Minneapolis, MN, 1973), 501. He was one of the original 18 Marshals of the Empire created by Napoleon I, with the nickname (the Dear Child of Victory). Many of Napoleon's generals were trained at the finest French and European military academies, however Masséna was among those who achieved greatness without the benefit of formal education. While those of noble rank acquired their education and promotions as a matter of privilege, Masséna rose from humble origins to such prominence that Napoleon referred to him as "the greatest name of my military empire". His military career is equaled by few commanders in European history. In addition to his battlefield successes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lines Of Torres Vedras
The Lines of Torres Vedras were lines of forts and other military defences built in secrecy to defend Lisbon during the Peninsular War. Named after the nearby town of Torres Vedras, they were ordered by Arthur Wellesley, Viscount Wellington, constructed by Sir Richard Fletcher, 1st Baronet, and his Portuguese workers between November 1809 and September 1810, and used to stop Marshal Masséna's 1810 offensive. The Lines were declared a National Heritage by the Portuguese Government in March 2019. Development At the beginning of the Peninsular War (1807–14) France and Spain signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau in October 1807. This provided for the invasion and subsequent division of Portuguese territory into three kingdoms. Subsequently, French troops under the command of General Junot entered Portugal, which requested support from the British. In July 1808 troops commanded by Sir Arthur Wellesley, the later Duke of Wellington, landed in Portugal and defeated French tro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Talavera
The Battle of Talavera (27–28 July 1809) was fought just outside the town of Talavera de la Reina, Spain some southwest of Madrid, during the Peninsular War. At Talavera, a British army under Sir Arthur Wellesley combined with a Spanish army under General Cuesta in operations against French-occupied Madrid. The French army withdrew at night after several of its attacks had been repulsed. After Marshal Soult's French army had retreated from Portugal, General Wellesley's 20,000 British troops advanced into Spain to join 33,000 Spanish troops under General Cuesta. They marched up the Tagus valley to Talavera, some southwest of Madrid. There they encountered 46,000 French under Marshal Claude Victor and Major-General Horace Sébastiani, with the French king of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte in nominal command. The French crossed the Alberche in the middle of the afternoon on 27July. A few hours later, the French attacked the right of the Spaniards and the British left. A strate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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