Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/247

Rh buckhounds, and governor of Kinsale in 1739. A plan for the defence of Cork, drawn up by him in 1740, is in the British Museum Add. MS. 33119, f. 824. Ligonier went to the Low Countries with Lord Stair in 1742, and commanded the second division of the army in the march across the Rhine (for the order of march see Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. i. 206), and at the battle of Dettingen, 16 June (O.S.) 1743. For his distinguished conduct he was made a K.B. by George II in person, under the royal standard on the field of battle. He became a lieutenant-general in the same year. Ligonier's regiment, led by his brother Francis, was also greatly distinguished in the encounter, but, owing to the failure of another regiment of horse, it was surrounded, and had to cut its way back through the élite of the French cuirassiers, with the loss of one-third of its numbers (see Hist. Rec. 7th Dragoon Guards). It was remarked of Ligonier's regiment that during its five years' campaigning in Flanders (1742–7) it never lost a man by desertion, never had an officer or man tried by general court-martial, never had a man or horse taken by the enemy; it lost but six men by sickness, and had no less than thirty-seven of its non-commissioned officers and troopers promoted to commissions for distinguished conduct. At Fontenoy on 11 May 1745 Ligonier commanded the British foot, and appears to have acted as military adviser to the young Duke of Cumberland. To Ligonier was assigned the credit of the skilful withdrawal of the army from the field of battle, although Ligonier generously gave all the praise to Lord Crawford [see, 1702–1749], who returned the compliment, declaring Ligonier ‘an extreme good officer.’ Ligonier commanded the troops sent home on the news of the rising in Scotland, and held command in Lancashire during the campaign in the north. On 22 Jan. 1746 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the British troops and troops in British pay in the Austrian Netherlands (see Home Office Mil. Entry Book, xx. 250–62, for his commission and warrants in full). In this capacity he was engaged in the bloody battle at Roucoux, near Liège, on 11 Oct. 1746, when Prince Charles of Lorraine, commanding the allied armies, was beaten by Marshal Saxe. In his despatch to Lord Sandwich, English ambassador at Breda, Ligonier describes the French attack on the left of the allies, ‘where the Dutch, after a long resistance, and behaving very well, were at last compelled to give way before numbers. But the English horse repulsed the enemy continually. I think the affair, to give it its right name, cannot be called a battle, for I question if a third of the army was engaged. The cannonading was terrible on both sides. I believe our loss to be between four thousand and five thousand men, and that of the French double. The army retreated in very fine order.’

When the Duke of Cumberland assumed command in the spring of 1747 Ligonier took the rank of general of horse, to which he had been promoted on 30 Dec. 1746. At the battle of Val, otherwise Laffeldt or Kisselt, on 1 July 1747, he led a brilliant cavalry charge of the Scots Greys, Inniskillings, and two other regiments, which saved Cumberland and his retreating infantry from the French horse. In the charge Ligonier's horse was killed, and himself, like his aides-de-camp, Keppel and Campbell, was made prisoner. Marshal Saxe presented Ligonier to the French king, saying, ‘Sire, I present to your majesty a man who by one glorious action has disconcerted all my projects.’ Louis XV, who had witnessed the charge from a distance, complimented Ligonier, and, after his exchange a few days later, employed him as an intermediary in the negotiations that ended in the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. Val was Ligonier's last battle. He was then in his sixty-seventh year. On his return home the electors of Bath returned him to parliament (25 March 1748), without his having offered himself to them as a candidate. He was made lieutenant-general of the ordnance; in 1749 he was transferred to the colonelcy of the 2nd dragoon guards, or queen's bays; in 1750 he was made governor of Guernsey, and in 1752 of Plymouth; in 1753 he was appointed colonel of the blues. In 1756 Ligonier was deprived of his post at the ordnance by a political intrigue in favour of Charles Spencer, second duke of Marlborough, who was made master-general. The Duke of Cumberland is credited with a share in the shabby transaction. George II always consulted Ligonier on military questions in preference to the commander-in-chief (Cumberland), and the latter is said to have consequently countenanced Ligonier's removal (, Hist. George II, ii. 139). But when Cumberland fell into disgrace after the convention of Closterseven Ligonier succeeded him as commander-in-chief (without the rank of captain-general held by Cumberland) from 24 Oct. 1757, and as colonel of the 1st foot-guards (now grenadier guards) from 30 Nov. 1757. On 21 Dec. the same year he was raised by letters patent to an Irish viscountcy, as Viscount Ligonier of Enniskillen, co. Fermanagh. On 1 July 1759 he was appointed master-general of the ordnance, a post he held until 1762, the office