Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/324

 sparely built, very active, and an excellent horseman. He possessed a special aptitude for inspecting troops of all arms, particularly his own, having an intimate knowledge of details, and never allowing ‘smartness’ to serve as a cloak for deficiencies. Splendid in dress—his uniform and horse trappings were declared to be worth 500 guineas ransom—and ever foremost in danger, he was known as the ‘Lion d'Or,’ but not in any case was betrayed into exposing his men or fatiguing his horses unnecessarily; and Wellington, who recognised the imperative need of husbanding his inadequate force of cavalry, was wont to declare that in entrusting an order to Cotton he knew it would be carried out with discretion as well as zeal. On rejoining the army in the summer of 1810 Cotton was appointed to the command of the 1st division, and afterwards to that of the whole of the allied cavalry, with the local rank of lieutenant-general. He attained the same rank in the British army 1 Jan. 1812. Among his more important services at the head of the cavalry—which constituted a separate division after May 1811, the divisional cavalry and other duties being detached therefrom as needed—may be mentioned the covering of the long retreat from Almeida to Torres Vedras, lasting from July to September 1810, in which not a single baggage-wagon was left behind; the brilliant affair at Llerena, on 11 April 1812, during a cavalry demonstration towards Seville, when, by judicious measures concerted amid all the difficulties of a night march, he attacked and overthrew a superior force of Soult's rearguard; his foresight at Castrejon, near Salamanca, on 18 July 1812, when with Anson's brigade of cavalry and the 4th and light divisions he held Marmont's entire army at bay and baffled plans that would have jeopardised the whole British army; and his services at the battle of Salamanca, where he was second in command under Lord Wellington, and led the famous charge of Le Marchant's and Anson's heavy brigades. A chance volley from a Portuguese picket after the battle severely wounded Cotton in the right arm, and it was feared would have necessitated amputation. His arm was saved, and he went home, Lord Wellington writing to Colonel Torrens, the military secretary: ‘Sir Stapleton Cotton is gone home. He commands our cavalry very well—indeed much better than some that might be sent to us and might be supposed cleverer than he is.’ Wellington appears to have objected to Lord Bathurst's idea of conferring a peerage on Cotton, for fear of giving umbrage to Marshal Beresford, who was Cotton's senior in the army (Suppl. Desp. vii. 484). While at home Cotton became engaged to his second wife, Caroline, second daughter of Captain W. Fulke Greville, royal navy. A passage out of twenty-eight days made him three days late for the battle of Vittoria, but he commanded the allied cavalry throughout the ensuing campaigns in Spain and the south of France up to the peace, including the actions in the Pyrenees, at Orthez, and at Toulouse. On his return home Cotton, who had already received the red ribbon of the Bath, was raised to the peerage as Baron Combermere of Combermere Abbey, with a pension of 2,000l. a year for his own and two succeeding lives. His second marriage (18 June 1814) took place at Lambeth Palace, at eleven o'clock on the night of the grand entertainment to the allied sovereigns at the Guildhall, where the new peer was one of the guests. The lady was twenty years his junior, but the marriage promised to be in all respects a happy one. Among other points in common were their musical tastes, Combermere having some vocal and musical pretensions and his wife being an accomplished musician. Napoleon's return from Elba brought Combermere to the front again, but to the Duke of Wellington's annoyance the command of the cavalry in Belgium was given to Lord Uxbridge, afterwards Marquis of Anglesey. The appointment was known to have been made at the instance of the Prince Regent, and Combermere's biographers assume that the latter credited Combermere with a share in some gossip set afloat in Brighton years before concerning the prince's relations with Mrs. Fitzherbert. On the very day after Waterloo the duke wrote: ‘We must have Lord Combermere, if he will come.’ He came at his old leader's call, arriving in Paris on 18 July 1815, and commanded the whole of the allied cavalry in France until the following year, when the reduction of the army of occupation deprived him of his post. In 1817 he was appointed governor of Barbadoes and commander-in-chief in the Leeward Islands, which he held until June 1820. During his West Indian command Combermere's tact and sound sense did good service on several occasions, notably in restoring friendly relations with the French West India islands, which had been disturbed by a supposed discourtesy to the French flag on the part of an English man-of-war. A grievous shock befell him soon after his return in the death of his eldest son, who died, quite unexpectedly, of a neglected cold and sore throat in 1821. From 1822 to 1825 Combermere was commander-in-chief in Ireland. A successor to Sir Edward Paget, as commander-in-chief in India, being then needed, and an expedition against the fortress