Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/99

Mansfield a very high opinion of him (frontier medal and clasp).

At this period Mansfield is said to have had a taste for journalism, and desired to become a bank director. To the end of his life he believed himself better fitted to conduct grand financial operations than anything else. On 28 Nov. 1864 he became colonel by brevet. At the outbreak of the Russian war he addressed a letter to Lord Panmure, then secretary of war, which was afterwards published as a pamphlet, advocating greater facilities for enabling militiamen with their company officers of all ranks to volunteer into the line. In April 1855 he exchanged to the unattached list, and was appointed deputy adjutant-general in Dublin, and in June the same year was sent to Constantinople, with the local rank of brigadier-general in Turkey, to act as responsible military adviser to the British ambassador, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe [see {sc|Canning, Sir Stratford, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe}}, 1786-1880].

He arrived in Constantinople when the plan for relieving Kars with the Turkish contingent was under consideration. Mansfield was in constant communication with the Turkish authorities on the subject (see, Life of Stratford de Redcliffe, ii. 352). He afterwards accompanied the ambassador to the Crimea, and is said to have rendered valuable services, which from their very nature have remained unknown to the public. At the close of the war in 1856 he received the quasi-military appointment of consul-general at Warsaw, with the rank of brigadier-general in Poland. With the summer of 1857 came the tidings of the outbreak of the mutiny, and the appointment of Sir Colin Campbell (Lord Clyde) to the chief command in India. In an entry in his diary on II July 1857, Colin Campbell wrote : 'Before going to the Duke of Cambridge I had settled in my mind that my dear friend Mansfield should have the offer made to him of chief of the staff. His lordship (Panmure) proposed the situation of military secretary, but that I told his lordship was not worth his acceptance, and I pressed for the appointment of chief of the staff being offered to him, with the rank of major-general and the pay and allowances of that office in India' (, Life of Clyde, i. 405). Mansfield was appointed chief of the staff in India, with the local rank of major-general, 7 Aug. 1857. Clyde's biographer states that when passing through London to take up his appointment Mansfield was consulted by the government, and submitted a plan of operations based on the same principles as that communicated in confidence by Clyde to the Madras government on his way to Calcutta (ib. ii. 411). Mansfield was Clyde's right hand, his strategetical mentor, it was said, throughout the eventful period that followed. He was in the advance on Lucknow and the second relief in October 1857 (for which he was made K.C.B.), and at the rout of the Gwalior contingent at Cawnpore on 6 Nov. following. On the afternoon of the battle he was sent by Clyde to occupy the Soubahdar's Tank, a position on the line of retreat of the enemy's right wing. Mansfield halted rather than push through about a mile of ruined buildings, in which the mutineers were still posted, after dark, by which the enemy were enabled to get off with all their guns. His conduct on this occasion has been sharply criticised (, iv. 192; cf., ii. 41). With Clyde, Mansfield was in the advance on Futtehgur and the affair at Kalee Nuddee, at the siege of Lucknow (promoted to major-general for distinguished service in the field), m the hot-weather campaign in Rohilcund, the battle of Bareilly and the affairs at Shahjehanpore, the campaign in Oude in 1858-9, and the operations in the Trans-Gogra (medal and clasp). When the peril was past, on Mansfield fell the chief burden of reorganising the shattered fragments of the Bengal native army, dealing with the European troops of the defunct company, and conducting the overwhelming mass of official correspondence connected therewith. Some of his minutes at this period are models of lucidity. In December 1859 he was offered the command of the North China expedition, which he refused, and Sir James Hope Grant [q. v.] was appointed. He remained chief of the staff in India until 23 April 1860. He held the command of the Bombay presidency, with the local rank of lieutenant-general, from 18 May 1860 to 14 March 1865. During this period he was appointed colonel 38th foot in 1862, and became lieutenant-general in 1864. He also published a pamphlet 'On the Introduction of a Gold Currency in India,' London, 1864, 8vo. On 14 March 1865 he was appointed commander-in-chief in India and military member of council, a position he held up to 8 April 1870. In the supreme council he was a warm supporter of John, lord Lawrence [q. v.] (cf Mansfield's Calcutta speech reported in the Times, 9 Feb. 1869).

Mansfield's independent military commands in India cannot be said to have been successful. He was unpopular, and sometimes wanting in temper and judgment. He had painful and discreditable quarrels, the most damaging of which was the court-martial on a member of his personal staff, against whom he brought a string of charges of peculation and