Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/408

  Crauford, William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Guy Carleton under him, and when Desaguliers arrived at Belleisle on 12 April with the temporary rank of brigadier-general, one unsuccessful attempt had already been made to disembark. Desaguliers at once volunteered to reconnoitre, and, by putting some of his heavy guns into ship's boats, managed to cover the landing of the army. The island soon submitted, and General Hodgson directed Desaguliers to form the siege of the citadel. The manuscript journal which he kept during the siege of all his operations is still preserved in the Royal Artillery Institution's Library at Woolwich, and forms the basis of the interesting account given of the siege by Colonel Duncan in his ‘History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery’ (vol. i. chap. xxi. pp. 227–41). Desaguliers got thirty guns and thirty mortars into battery, fired seventeen thousand shot and twelve thousand shells into the citadel, had great difficulties to contend with owing to the flooding of the trenches, and was wounded five days before the capitulation of the fortress on 7 June. On his return to England he was promoted colonel on 19 Feb. 1762, and made colonel commandant of the royal regiment of artillery on 19 Feb. 1762, and devoted himself for the rest of his life to his work at Woolwich. His work there was most valuable; he invented a method of firing small shot from mortars, and made the earliest experiments with rockets, and Desaguliers' instrument is still in use at the royal gun factories for examining and verifying the bores of cannon. In recognition of his scientific work he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1763, being the first officer of royal artillery who won that distinction. He was promoted major-general on 25 May 1772, and lieutenant-general on 29 Sept. 1777, and died at Woolwich on 1 March 1780. Colonel Duncan, in speaking of the early artillery officers, says justly: ‘The early history of the regiment is marked by the presence in its ranks of men eminent in their own way and perfectly distinct in character, yet whose talents all worked in the same direction, the welfare of their corps. Who could be more unlike than Borgard and his successor, Colonel Belford? and yet a greater difference is found between the scientific Desaguliers and the statesmanlike Pattison. These four men are the milestones along the road of the regiment's story from 1716 to 1783’ (, i. 152).

[Duncan's History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery; Kane's List of Officers of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, revised edition, 1869.]  DE SAUMAREZ. [See .]

DESBARRES, JOSEPH FREDERICK WALSH or WALLET (1722–1824), military engineer, born in 1722, was descended from a Huguenot family, which fled to England on the revocation of the edict of Nantes. He was educated at Basle under the Bernouillis, and subsequently entered the Royal Military College at Woolwich. In March 1756 he embarked as a lieutenant in the 60th regiment for America, where he raised a corps of field artillery numbering three hundred men, of which for a time he held command. In 1757 he led an expedition against the Indians, who had attacked Schenectacdy, surprised and captured their chiefs, and induced them to become allies of the English. He was aide-de-camp to General Wolfe at Quebec (1759), and is said to have been making a report to that distinguished soldier when he fell mortally wounded (, Biog. Dict.) Knox (Campaigns in North America, ii. 79) mentions that an artillery officer, whose name he forgets, helped to carry Wolfe to the rear. Desbarres conducted the subsequent engineering operations, and by the reduction of Fort Jacques, with other strong places, helped to complete the conquest of Canada. Captain Cook was then master on board the Mercury in Wolfe's expedition, and he was instructed by Desbarres in the art of making maritime surveys. Desbarres received public thanks for his services as quartermaster-general in the expedition for retaking Newfoundland (1762). From 1763 to 1773 he was engaged in surveying the coast of Nova Scotia, and on his return to England was complimented by the king on the way in which he had performed this duty. He was selected by Earl Howe to make surveys and prepare charts of the North American coast. The work occupied sixteen years of his life, two years of which were spent on the survey of the Isle of Sable alone. Two bars here, over which the surf broke often mast high, for seven leagues were strewn with wrecks, and could not be approached without the greatest risk. Desbarres completed the survey of the island and the soundings around it at the hazard of his life (Preface to Atlantic Neptune). In 1784 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Cape Breton, with the military command of that place and Prince Edward's Island. In Cape Breton he founded the town of Sydney, and opened and worked valuable coalfields at the mouth of the river. In 1805, when far advanced in years, he succeeded Fanning as lieutenant-governor and commander-in-chief of the last named dependency, and conducted the administration for