Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/443

  The Anti-Jacobin (Edmonds's edit.), 1890; Burke's Letter to a Noble Lord, 1796; Recollections of the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers, ed. Maltby, 1887; Parliamentary History; G. E. C.'s Peerage of England; Lysons's Bedfordshire, 1813; Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill; Wiffen's Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell, 1833; Times; Gent. Mag.; Clarke's Agriculture and the House of Russell, 1891 (reprinted from Journal of Royal Agricultural Society, II. 3rd ser. pt. i.); information kindly furnished by the present Duke of Bedford and the Dowager Duchess.] 

RUSSELL, GEORGE WILLIAM (1790–1846), major-general, was second son of John, sixth duke of Bedford, by Georgiana Elizabeth Byng, second daughter of the fourth viscount Torrington. Lord John Russell (afterwards Earl Russell) [q. v.] was his younger brother. He was born in Harley Street, London, on 8 May 1790, and was educated with Lord John successively at a private school at Sunbury, at Westminster for rather more than a year, and at Woodnesborough, near Sandwich. To his brother Lord John he was through life warmly attached. He entered the army as cornet in the 1st dragoons on 5 Feb. 1806, and became lieutenant on 11 Sept. He took part in the expedition to Copenhagen in 1807 as aide-de-camp to Sir G. Ludlow.

On 25 March 1808 he became captain in the 23rd dragoons, and went with that regiment to Portugal in 1809. In the charge on Villette's column at Talavera, which cost the regiment so much loss, he was wounded and nearly taken prisoner. He returned to England with the regiment at the end of the year. In 1810 he went back to the Peninsula as aide-de-camp to General Graham at Cadiz, and was present at the battle of Barrosa (5 March 1811). In 1812 he became aide-de-camp to Wellington, and was on his staff at Vittoria, Orthes, and Toulouse. He was sent home with despatches after Toulouse, and received a brevet lieutenant-colonelcy and medal for that battle (12 April 1814). He had become major in the 102nd foot on 4 Feb. 1813.

Soon after his marriage in 1817 he went to Paris as aide-de-camp to Wellington, who was then ambassador. He had been M.P. for Bedford while serving in the Peninsula, and was again returned in 1818. He was a staunch adherent of the whigs, afterwards giving his brother Lord John much private encouragement in his opposition to the corn laws. In 1826 he urged his brother to master the Irish question and identify himself with it.

On 28 Oct. 1824 he obtained the command of the 8th (Royal Irish) hussars, and held it till November 1828, when he retired on half pay. During this time he strongly advocated a revision of the cavalry regulations, which were those drawn up by Saldern, and translated by Dundas in the latter part of the eighteenth century. He wrote several times to Wellington on the subject, and sent him a paper in favour of formation in rank entire, resting his argument partly on his own experience in the Peninsula. The duke replied (31 July 1826): ‘I cannot tell you with what satisfaction I have read it, and how entirely I agree in every word of it. … I considered our cavalry so inferior to that of the French from want of order, although I consider one squadron a match for two French squadrons, that I should not have liked to see four British squadrons opposed to four French’ (Wellington Despatches, Supplementary, xiv. 714, 723, and 3rd ser. iii. 353).

Russell became colonel in the army on 22 July 1830 and major-general on 23 Nov. 1841, but had no further military employment. The whigs having come into office in 1830, a diplomatic career opened for him. He was attached to the mission of Sir Robert Adair to Belgium in July 1831. Thence he was sent on a special mission to Portugal, where the struggle between Don Miguel and Donna Maria was in progress; and when the British government recognised Donna Maria as queen, he became British minister (7 Aug. 1833). In November he was transferred to Würtemberg, and on 24 Nov. 1835 he succeeded Lord Minto as ambassador at Berlin. He remained there till September 1841, when Sir Robert Peel returned to power, and he resigned. He received the G.C.B. (civil) on 19 July 1838, and the order of Leopold (first class) in 1841.

He died at Genoa on 16 July 1846, and was buried in the Bedford Chapel at Chenies church, Buckinghamshire, on 29 July. He married, on 21 June 1817, Elizabeth Anne, only child of the Hon. John Theophilus Rawdon, brother of the first marquis of Hastings. It is to this lady that Byron alluded in ‘Beppo’ as the only one he had ever seen ‘whose bloom could, after dancing, dare the dawn.’ Her beauty was equalled by her charm of manner and conversation. He left three sons, of whom the youngest was Odo William Russell, baron Ampthill [q. v.]

The eldest son,, ninth (1819–1891), born in Curzon Street on 16 Oct. 1819, entered the Scots fusilier guards in 1838, but retired upon his marriage after six years' service. In 1847 he entered