Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/214

478 chosen band whom history will recognize as the "heroes of the peninsular war." The sense of the value of his services was also shown in his appointment to tho rank of major-general in 1812, to the command of a regiment in 1813, and to the honorary title of knight of the bath in the same year. With the exile of Napoleon to Elba, when it was thought that every chance of further war had ended, Sir George Murray was not to retire, like so many of his companions in arms, into peaceful obscurity; on the contrary, his talents for civil occupation having been fully experienced, he was appointed to the difficult charge of the government of the Canadas. He had scarcely fully entered, however, upon the duties of this new appointment, when he was advertised by the secretary of state of Bonaparte's escape from Elba and landing in France, accompanied with the choice of remaining in his government of the Canadas, or returning to Europe, and resuming his military occupations. Sir George at once decided upon the latter; but though he made the utmost haste to rejoin the army, such delays occurred that he did not reach it until the battle of Waterloo had been fought, and Paris occupied by the allies. In the French capital he remained three years with the army of occupation, holding the rank of lieutenant-general, and honoured with seven different orders of foreign knighthood, independently of those he had received from his own court, in attestation of his services and worth. At his return home, also, when Paris was resigned by the allies to its own government, he was appointed governor of the castle of Edinburgh, afterwards of the royal military college, and finally, lieutenant-general of the ordnance. Literary distinctions, moreover, were not wanting; for in 1820 he received from the university of Oxford the degree of doctor of common laws, and in 1824 he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society.

Such is a very scanty outline of the history of Sir George Murray; and it gives but a faint idea of his long military career. "Very few men," says one of his biographers, "even among our distinguished veterans, have seen such severe and active service as Sir G. Murray. Sharp fighting and military hardships seemed to be his lot, from the first moment at which he carried the colours of his regiment, till the last cannon resounded on the field of Waterloo. With the single exception of India, he was absent neither from the disasters nor the triumphs of the British army. France, Ireland, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, the West Indies, Denmark, and Egypt, have witnessed the services of this able and experienced commander It has often been remarked of the Duke of Wellington, as of all great men, that he is singularly prompt in discerning the particular individual who happens to be the man above all others best fitted for the particular duties which he requires to have discharged. His great general of division was Lord Hill, and his great cavalry officer Lord Anglesey; his great organizer of raw levies, Lord Beresford, and his best of all quartermasters, General Sir G. Murray."

Sir George was now to astonish the world by equal excellence in a very different department. He had left the university of Edinburgh for the army at the early age of seventeen, and from that period to the close of his military career his life had been one of incessant action and change, so that it was evident he could have had very little time for study and self-improvement. And yet he was distinguished throughout as an accomplished scholar, eloquent orator, and able writer, and was now to bring all these qualities to bear upon his new vocation as a statesman. Men who wondered how or at what time he could have acquired those excellencies, which are generally the result of a life of