Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/125

 Malvern, 4 Nov. 1790, aged 76, and was buried at St. Anne's, Soho. 

JACOB, JOHN (1765–1840), topographer. [See under .]

JACOB, JOHN (1812–1858), brigadier-general, fifth son of Stephen Long Jacob, vicar of Woolavington-cum-Puriton, Somerset, by his wife Eliza Susanna, eldest daughter of James Bond, vicar of Ashford, Kent, was born at Woolavington on 11 Jan. 1812. William Stephen Jacob [q. v.] was his brother, and Sir George le Grand Jacob [q. v.] his cousin. He was educated at home by his father until 1826, when he was sent to Addiscombe College. Having obtained a commission as second lieutenant in the Bombay artillery of the East India Company's service on 11 Jan. 1828, he went to India, and passed the first seven years of his service with his regiment. He was then entrusted with a small detached command, and later was employed for a short time in the provincial administration of Guzerat. He was promoted lieutenant on 14 May 1836.

On the outbreak of the Afghan war in 1838, Jacob went to Sind with the Bombay column of the army of the Indus under the command of Sir John Keane, and in 1839 commanded the artillery in the expedition under Major Billamore into the hill country north of Cutchee. This was the first expedition ever undertaken against the hill tribes of that deadly climate, and the interesting details were only made known by Jacob in 1845, when the publication of Sir William Napier's ‘History of the Conquest of Sind’ provoked the ‘surviving subaltern of Billamore's’ to correct the inaccuracies of the historian. Soon after the close of the expedition Jacob made a reconnaissance of the route from Hyderabad to Nuggar Parkur in a very hot season and at considerable risk. For this service he received the official commendation of the Bombay government.

In 1839, when all North-west India was in a ferment, it was determined to raise some squadrons of irregular horse for service on the frontier, and in 1841 some six hundred men stood enrolled as the Sind irregular horse. At the end of 1841 it was decided to augment the regiment. Outram, the political agent in Sind and Baluchistan, selected Jacob for the command, and also for the political charge of Eastern Cutchee, and in an official letter to Jacob of 9 Nov. 1842 was able to record that for the first time within the memory of man Cutch and Upper Sind had been for a whole year entirely free from the devastating irruption of the hill tribes. This result he ascribed entirely to the extraordinary vigilance of Jacob and the strict discipline enforced by him.

At the end of 1842 Sir Charles Napier arrived in Sind. On the fields of Meanee, Dubba or Hyderabad, and Shah-dad-poor, Jacob's irregular horse won great fame. Napier called him ‘one of the best officers he had ever met in his life,’ and in his despatch after the battle of Meanee (fought 17 Feb. 1843) said that the crisis of the action was decided by the charge of Jacob's horse and the 9th Bengal cavalry. Jacob, he said, had rendered ‘the most active services long previous to and during the combat. He won the enemy's camp, from which he drove a body of 3,000 or 4,000 cavalry.’ To Sir William Napier he called Jacob ‘the Seidlitz of the Sind army.’ At Shah-dad-poor Jacob, with a force of eight hundred men of all arms, attacked the army of Shere Mahomed, eight thousand strong, and utterly defeated and dispersed it. Jacob also served at the capture of Oomercote. Although Jacob was recommended for promotion and honours, neither came, and he wrote to his father that he wished he had died at Meanee, but that he had the consolation of knowing that in the eyes of his superiors and comrades he had merited the distinction which had fallen to others, and he found distraction in incessant work.

The publication of Sir William Napier's ‘History of the Conquest of Sind,’ with its studied depreciation of Outram, roused Jacob to enter the lists for his friend and to publish a rejoinder, which led to a complete estrangement from Sir Charles Napier. When Napier left Sind in 1847 Jacob, who had been made a brevet captain on 11 Jan. 1843 and honorary aide-de-camp to the governor-general on 8 March the same year, was appointed political superintendent and commandant of the frontier of Upper Sind. On 10 Sept. 1850 he was made a C.B. for his services in 1843; he had already received medals for Meanee and Hyderabad. In 1847 Jacob achieved a success against the Boogtees at Shahpore, and in 1852 was given the command of the troops at Koree for service in Upper Sind. From a few troops the Sind horse had expanded until it included a second regiment, the Silidar, raised by Jacob, and the whole force mustered 1,600 of the best horsemen in India. Jacob trained his men to act always on the offensive. His detachments were posted in the open plain without any defensive works. Patrols scoured the country in every direction on the look-out for the enemy, which was no sooner discovered than it was attacked by the nearest