William Siborne, Sibourne or Siborn (15 October 1797 – 9 January 1849) was a British

officer An officer is a person who has a position of authority in a hierarchical organization. The term derives from Old French ''oficier'' "officer, official" (early 14c., Modern French ''officier''), from Medieval Latin ''officiarius'' "an officer," fro ...

and

military historian Military history is the study of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, cultures and economies thereof, as well as the resulting changes to local and international relationships. Professional historians norma ...

whose most notable work was a history of the

Waterloo Campaign The Waterloo campaign (15 June – 8 July 1815) was fought between the French Army of the North (France), Army of the North and two Seventh Coalition armies, an Anglo-allied army and a Prussian army. Initially the French army was commanded by ...

Early life

William Siborne was the son of Benjamin Siborne, a captain in the 9th (East Norfolk) regiment, born in

Greenwich Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...

circa 1771. His father had been wounded at the

Battle of Nivelle The Battle of Nivelle (10 November 1813) took place in front of the river Nivelle near the end of the Peninsular War (1808–1814). After the Allied siege of San Sebastian, Wellington's 80,000 British, Portuguese and Spanish troops (20,0 ...

in the

Peninsular War The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain ...

. William Siborne graduated from the

Royal Military College, Sandhurst The Royal Military College (RMC), founded in 1801 and established in 1802 at Great Marlow and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, but moved in October 1812 to Sandhurst, Berkshire, was a British Army military academy for training infantry a ...

in 1814, having been commissioned as an ensign in the same regiment (renamed the

9th Regiment of Foot 9 (nine) is the natural number following and preceding . Evolution of the Arabic digit In the beginning, various Indians wrote a digit 9 similar in shape to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshatrapa, Andhra and ...

in 1782) on 9 September 1813, before it joined the 2nd battalion at

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, then

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, and finally

Sheerness Sheerness () is a town and civil parish beside the mouth of the River Medway on the north-west corner of the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, England. With a population of 11,938, it is the second largest town on the island after the nearby town ...

in 1815.

Military career

In August 1815, he was sent to France to join the

Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of ...

's army of occupation, doing duty in the Camp of Boulogne, near Paris. He obtained the rank of lieutenant in November 1815, but was put on half pay from March 1817, when his regiment was reduced to one battalion. In September 1820, he undertook a secret mission in Germany on behalf of the Treasury. Two years later, he published his first book, ''Instructions for Civil and Military Surveyors in Topographical Plan-drawing.'' In July 1824, he married Helen Aitken, daughter of a Scottish banker and colonel of the militia. They subsequently had a son and daughter. On 11 November 1824, he was gazetted to the 47th (Lancashire) regiment, this being backdated to November 1815, and went on leave in Europe. In March 1826, he was appointed as Assistant Military Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief, Ireland (first Lieutenant-General Sir George Murray, followed by Sir

John Byng Admiral John Byng (baptised 29 October 1704 – 14 March 1757) was a British Royal Navy officer who was court-martialled and executed by firing squad. After joining the navy at the age of thirteen, he participated at the Battle of Cape Passa ...

, then Sir

Richard Hussey Vivian Lieutenant General Richard Hussey Vivian, 1st Baron Vivian (28 July 177520 August 1842), known as Sir Hussey Vivian from 1815 to 1828 and Sir Hussey Vivian, Bt, from 1828 to 1841, was a British cavalry leader from the Vivian family. Early caree ...

and finally Sir

Edward Blakeney Field Marshal Sir Edward Blakeney (26 March 1778 – 2 August 1868) was a British Army officer. After serving as a junior officer with the expedition to Dutch Guiana and being taken prisoner by privateers three times suffering great hardship, ...

), holding this post until 1843. In 1827, he published his second book, ''A Practical Treatise on Topographical Surveying and Drawing'', which was dedicated to his commander-in-chief Sir George Murray.

History of Waterloo

Early in 1830,

Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill General Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill, (11 August 1772 – 10 December 1842) was a British Army officer who served in the Napoleonic Wars as a brigade, division and corps commander. He became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in 1828. ...

, then Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, commissioned Siborne to construct a model of the

Battle of Waterloo The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo, Belgium, Waterloo (at that time in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, now in Belgium). A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two of the armie ...

. Siborne carried out extensive research, writing to officers in the Allied forces present at the battle to obtain information on the positions of the troops at the crisis of the battle at 7 p.m. His attempts to get the same information from the Ministry of War in Paris were politely ignored, while the

Prince of Orange Prince of Orange (or Princess of Orange if the holder is female) is a title originally associated with the sovereign Principality of Orange, in what is now southern France and subsequently held by sovereigns in the Netherlands. The title ...

supplied him with information on the Netherlands forces. The replies to the circular he sent out and the subsequent correspondence amount to the largest single collection of primary source material on the subject ever assembled. The

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

purchased the collection after his death and it is now in the

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. He spent eight months at the farm of

La Haye-Sainte La Haye Sainte (named either after Jesus Christ's crown of thorns or a bramble hedge round a field nearby) is a walled farmhouse compound at the foot of an escarpment on the Charleroi-Brussels road in Belgium. It has changed very little since it ...

surveying the entire battlefield. The actual model took until 1838 to complete, partly because Siborne still had his main military duties to fulfill. Progress was interrupted in 1833, by the new ministry's refusal to allocate new funds. Siborne financed the model himself from then onwards. Military historian Peter Hofschröer claimed in his controversial book that during the construction of the Large Model, Siborne earned the enmity of the

, as Siborne's research called into question parts of the Duke's version of events at Waterloo. This, claims Hofschröer, led to Siborne's attempts to get the government to honour its obligation to him being thwarted, his attempts to obtain his captaincy being obstructed and a

smear campaign A smear campaign, also referred to as a smear tactic or simply a smear, is an effort to damage or call into question someone's reputation, by propounding negative propaganda. It makes use of discrediting tactics. It can be applied to individual ...

being undertaken against him. The final total cost was around £3,000, which Siborne had considerable difficulty in recovering, as the exhibitor of its first public display in London cheated him of much of his share of the revenues. Siborne also built a smaller model of a portion of the battlefield on a larger scale. The main model was purchased by the

Royal United Service Institution The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI, Rusi), registered as Royal United Service Institute for Defence and Security Studies and formerly the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, is a British defence and security think tank. ...

after his death, and is now in the ''Battle'' gallery at the

National Army Museum The National Army Museum is the British Army's central museum. It is located in the Chelsea district of central London, adjacent to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the home of the "Chelsea Pensioners". The museum is a non-departmental public body. ...

, London. The smaller model is on display at the

Royal Armouries Museum The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, is a national museum which displays the National Collection of Arms and Armour. It is part of the Royal Armouries family of museums, with other sites at the Royal Armouries' traditio ...

. Siborne made use of the considerable amount of material he assembled to write his third book, a history of the Waterloo Campaign. It was first published in 1844 and remains in print . Its alleged lack of objectivity was and still is a source of debate.See for example the articles on Lieutenant-General

Willem Jan Knoop Willem Jan Knoop (2 May 1811 in Deventer – 24 January 1894 in The Hague) was a Dutch lieutenant-general, military historian, and politician. As a young captain of the Dutch General Staff he wrote a rebuttal of the British military historian Wil ...

and General Francois de Bas On 31 January 1840, he purchased an unattached captaincy, although this was on half-pay. Now exhausted by his efforts, his friends in the army obtained a

sinecure A sinecure ( or ; from the Latin , 'without', and , 'care') is an office, carrying a salary or otherwise generating income, that requires or involves little or no responsibility, labour, or active service. The term originated in the medieval chu ...

for him as Secretary and Adjutant of the

Royal Military Asylum The Duke of York's Royal Military School, more commonly called the Duke of York's, is a co-educational academy (for students aged 11 to 18) with military traditions in Guston, Kent. Since becoming an academy in 2010, the school is now sponsor ...

at Chelsea, a post which he took up in November 1843 and remained in until his death. He is buried at

Brompton Cemetery Brompton Cemetery (originally the West of London and Westminster Cemetery) is a London cemetery, managed by The Royal Parks, in West Brompton in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries. Estab ...

. His second son, Henry Taylor Siborne, later published a selection of the letters in his collection.

Bibliography

*1822: ''Instructions for Civil and Military Surveyors in Topographical Plan-Drawing'' *1827: ''A Practical Treatise on Topographical Surveying and Drawing'', dedicated to his c-in-c George Murray *1840s: ''Guide to Captain Siborne's New Waterloo Model'' *1844: two-volume ''History of the War in France and Belgium in 1815'' (with folio atlas), still in print in the 4th edition

Notes

References