Lieutenant General
Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the battlefield, who was norma ...
Andrew Thomas Blayney, 11th Baron Blayney (30 November 1770 – 8 April 1834), was an
Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish people () denotes an ethnic, social and religious grouping who are mostly the descendants and successors of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They mostly belong to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the State rel ...
peer. He ruled the Blayney estate at
Castleblayney,
County Monaghan
County Monaghan ( ; ) is a Counties of Ireland, county in Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster and is part of Border Region, Border strategic planning area of the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town ...
, for fifty years from 1784 to 1834.
As commanding officer of the
89th Regiment of Foot, "Blayney's Bloodhounds" as they were called, he fought with distinction in the
Napoleonic Wars
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Napoleonic Wars
, partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
, image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg
, caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...
. He was taken prisoner at the
battle of Fuengirola, when making a raid from Gibraltar into Spain against a small group of Polish soldiers a tenth his number, and was kept prisoner for four years by the French government. His
sabre
A sabre or saber ( ) is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the Early Modern warfare, early modern and Napoleonic period, Napoleonic periods. Originally associated with Central European cavalry such a ...
is currently on exhibition in the
Czartoryski Museum, in
Kraków
, officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...
.
He wrote a two-volume account of his experiences in the Napoleonic Wars - ''Narrative of a Forced Journey through Spain and France as a Prisoner of War in the Years 1810 to 1814, by Major-General Lord Blayney (London, 1814)''.
He was captured by one of the O'Callaghans of
Cullaville, a colonel in the French army and a prominent United Irishman who escaped after 1798. It is said he insisted on Blayney being held to ransom for some of the
United Irishmen
The Society of United Irishmen was a sworn association, formed in the wake of the French Revolution, to secure Representative democracy, representative government in Ireland. Despairing of constitutional reform, and in defiance both of British ...
who were in British prisons.
During Blayney's long incarceration, the
2nd Earl of Caledon looked after his financial, domestic, and political affairs, and on his return, Blayney was given a seat in parliament for Caledon's infamous "
rotten borough
A rotten or pocket borough, also known as a nomination borough or proprietorial borough, was a parliamentary borough or Electoral district, constituency in Kingdom of England, England, Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain, or the United Kin ...
" of
Old Sarum
Old Sarum, in Wiltshire, South West England, is the ruined and deserted site of the earliest settlement of Salisbury. Situated on a hill about north of modern Salisbury near the A345 road, the settlement appears in some of the earliest recor ...
, Wiltshire.
Lord Blayney died on 8 April 1834 and was succeeded by his son Cadwallader, the 12th and last lord.
See also
*
Baron Blayney
References
External links
The Blayney of Castleblayney Papers - Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blayney, Andrew Blayney, 11th Baron
1770 births
1834 deaths
Military personnel from County Monaghan
Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies
Barons Blayney
British Army lieutenant generals
British Army personnel of the Napoleonic Wars
UK MPs 1806–1807
UK MPs who inherited peerages
Napoleonic Wars prisoners of war held by France
Royal Irish Fusiliers officers
British prisoners of war in the Napoleonic Wars
People from Castleblayney