Life and Career of Major-General Thomas Dundas
Thomas Dundas was a career soldier from a minor, but ancient, Scottish gentry family that could trace their lineage to the fourteenth–century Dundases of Fingask. His father, also Thomas, was a lawyer and held the family seat, Carron Hall in Stirlingshire, which was supported by tenant farmers and a colliery. The Dundas family had suffered for their support for the Stuart monarchy in the early eighteenth century, but the fortunes of one branch of the family were turned around by Thomas Dundas’s uncle, Sir Lawrence Dundas MP, who became an army contractor to the ‘Butcher’ Duke of Cumberland and became very wealthy, titled, and influential. Thomas Dundas’s brother Charles Dundas, mentioned above, later became Baron Amesbury.
Whilst he was completing his education in Edinburgh in 1766, Thomas Dundas joined the army, after his uncle exerted influence to buy him a cornetcy in the 1st Dragoon Guards. Thomas was allowed to immediately claim leave of absence to complete his education. In 1769 he purchased a captaincy in the 63rd Foot, and in 1771 his uncle inserted him as MP for Orkney and Shetland. He retained his seat until 1780, and voted in his uncle’s interests in the Lord North Tory ministry. The 63rd served in Ireland until 1775, when Dundas and his troops were despatched for Boston to reinforce the ailing British armies in the fight to retain America.
In 1776 he took over the 65th Foot in Nova Scotia, and in 1778 he became Lieutenant–Colonel of the 80th Foot, a regiment that he raised from Edinburgh volunteers at his uncle’s behest. In May 1779 the 80th travelled to New York.
Early Army Career
The 80th Foot served with Sir Henry Clinton at the capture of Charlestown in South Carolina in May 1780. A letter from Dundas to his brother at that time shows him a very respectful and enthusiastic soldier, praising his superiors and his 500 men, and professing himself too deep in soldiering and too fond of it to consider ever leaving to help run the family estate. At the same time, he was under no illusions that the America campaign was going to be successful, saying that although he wished his infantry could end the war through their actions, he believed ‘you at home must do that now’ (Dundas 1891, pp.63 – 4). His men seem to have returned the respect that he showed them, if a contemporary letter from one mother to a recruit, James Seton, is anything to go by:
Always take Colonel Dundas’s advice. He has seen much of the world and if you repose confidence in him it will make him like you, and be of infinite advantage to you. Everybody speaks well of him, and whatever character he gives of the officers in his Regt. will be believed before anybody.
(ibid., p.64)
Over the following year he served under Marquis Cornwallis, with whom he forged a close bond (‘the pleasure which I have had in serving under your command, and the many marks which I have received of your friendship, will ever remain strongly impressed in my mind’ (ibid., p.82). Under Cornwallis he commanded a force at Green Spring in July. Colonel Tarleton later paid tribute to Dundas’s ‘superior skill and cool behaviour’ at that battle, in which he won a ‘decided victory’ against the forces of General Anthony Wayne (ibid., p.161). Dundas served with Tarleton at the Siege of Yorktown, and had to help arrange the British surrender in October 1781. Dundas was promoted to Colonel in November 1782, and the 80th Foot returned to Edinburgh, where it was disbanded on 5th April 1784. He and his officers were put upon the half–pay list, and Dundas returned to Carron Hall, where he again became the local MP, and on 9th May married Lady Eleanora Elizabeth, daughter of the Earl of Home.
In July 1783 Dundas was appointed to a Board of Commissioners set up to consider claims for compensation for Americans who had remained loyal to Britain in the War and had suffered dispossession as a result. Searching for an officer who had served in the Americas and was of high standing in the military, the government appealed to Dundas. Although he was hoping to get some time to devote to his family affairs and business he responded, ‘I shall with great pleasure, give up still more of my time to the service of my country’ (ibid., pp.65 – 6), and he and his wife moved to London. The claims were extensive and the work painstaking, and the commission eventually decided that two members of the board, one of whom should be Dundas, needed to travel to Canada to assess many of these claims in person.
Romney Portrait
Before he left, Dundas sat to the portrait painter George Romney, who was also engaged to paint portraits of the new Mrs Dundas, and Dundas’ father. This seems to be the only portrait made of Dundas, and shows him in uniform, with epaulettes, cravat, and powdered hair. Half–length, with his head turned to his left, the 35-year-old exhibits a dimpled chin, a gentle look, and boyish, open features, despite the heroic posture (Fig. 9).
Fig. 9: George Romney, Major-General Thomas Dundas of Carron Hall, 1783, engraver ‘A. W. Sinclair’?), private collection.
The work was engraved after Dundas’s death and published by the printseller Robert Cribb on 1 June 1800, with words extracted from Henry Dundas’s eulogium printed at the bottom: ‘to sum up his character, he was wise yet unassuming, brave, mild and generous’ (impressions in National Army Museum, NAM.1984–10–42, and Royal Collection RCIN 653943). Other versions of the print, without the text, were also circulated. On the visual evidence, Romney’s portrait is likely to be the basis of John Bacon Jr’s bust of Dundas on the monument in St Paul’s, albeit a heavily classicised version (Figs 10 and 11). The pose is reversed, but the large, rounded eyebrows, the waves of the hair, the long nose and the dimpled chin are recognisably similar. The bust also has incised pupils, going some way to reproducing the sparkly character present in the Romney portrait.
Figs 10 and 11: Comparison of the engraved portrait of Thomas Dundas after George Romney (flipped), with the bust in St Paul’s Cathedral.
Nova Scotia
In September 1785 Dundas travelled to Nova Scotia, sending the first of numerous gushing love letters to his wife (‘My Love is all goodness; and I call heaven to witness that I feel more joy, more happiness, and more comfort in the possession of that valuable heart than all this world can give’ ibid., p.68). Dundas, in what became a frequent refrain, felt a duty to go abroad for the good of his reputation and his prospects, but resented having to leave his new wife, child and family. The death of his father in 1786 meant he also needed to manage the precarious finances of Carron Hall and the family estate from abroad, as well as the relationships with the tenant farmers and colliers on the land.
His private notebooks of 1786 show him assiduously travelling across settlements in Canada, settling over a thousand claims. He travelled to Montreal, St John, New Brunswick and Quebec, visited Niagara Falls and the Great Lakes, and kept detailed accounts of the conditions, the quality of the lands, the development projects, and the growth of trade. Dundas wrote to Cornwallis that Canada had ‘surprised me very much’ and the Canadians and new settlers were a ‘happy, flourishing people’ and he held out hopes for continued loyalty to the British, and mutually beneficial trading arrangements (ibid., p.81). The new inhabitants of Canada expressed their reciprocal thanks and respect to Dundas, who had, they said, nobly shown the ‘uncommon generosity’ of the British nation (ibid., p.90).
Lady Eleanora and their daughter went out to Nova Scotia in 1786 – 7, and in 1787 they had a second child. After hosting the future William IV on a visit to Montreal, Dundas returned to Scotland, and the business of the committee was wound up. Compensation claims had cost the nation almost £2 million.
Return to England
Upon his return in 1788 Dundas made gentle overtures to Cornwallis suggesting that he would be happy to serve in India, where he could also settle with his family. He did not relish a return to Parliament (‘a business I do not much like,’ p.82) and was probably relieved when he lost his family seat on 6th August 1790. He also declined a potential position as confidential secretary to the Duke of York. His heart, it seems, was still very much in soldiery and he wrote a long letter in 1789 giving advice to a young friend who was entering the army, which expressed values that Dundas seems to have followed in his own personal conduct: to always follow the advice and behaviour of his officer, and to be guarded in entering into friendships with others in the regiment; to be polite, attentive, and studious in the profession. To always be neat in your uniform, to always eat in the best regimental mess, and to never be drunk. To never play cards or gamble, to be careful in your attentions to young ladies so as not to give false impressions, to not trust a servant too much, to rise early, to study arithmetic and history, and to be a regular letter–writer. To be correct in your money–matters, not lavish nor mean. Avoid giving or attracting an affront, and always attend divine service, because religious duties are ‘proper, necessary, and becoming in every man’ (ibid., p.98).
Dundas spent several years at Carron Hall, greatly expanding his own family with Eleanora, but the declaration of war with France brought him back into public life, and in May 1793 he was appointed Governor of Guernsey. A few weeks later, in Summer 1793, however, he was given command of a brigade in Grey and St Vincent’s mission to capture French West Indian islands.
Martinique
Dundas was promoted to Major–General in October, and sailed from Madeira to Barbados in the Boyne in a six–week journey from December 1793. His letters present a curious, dutiful, and upbeat officer, describing the country and the fruit, and referring his wife to drawings and maps that he had left her of the islands, which he had not previously visited. He praised his commanders, and described meetings he had had with relatives and friends who were also on the mission. At the same time he noted the extensive outbreaks of yellow fever, which hospitalised over 1000 men before the mission started (Dundas casually blamed the outbreak on neglectful Irish officers exposing their men to dirty conditions).
Dundas’s role was to use his experience in the Americas to form effective battalions of light infantry who were to play a crucial role in the seizure of the three French islands. The first task was to take Martinique, where the British allied with French émigré royalists to take control of the island from Governor Rochambeau. The Frenchman had been sent by the French Revolutionary Assembly to impose the new French constitution and extend French citizenship to all gens de coleur (‘people of colour,’ designated by the British as ‘mulattos,’ after the Spanish term for mixed–race) on Martinique. Dundas travelled with an émigré royalist, Ms de Boullie, who was 15 years old and owned an enormous plantation which the Frenchman was keen to seize back from the new Revolutionary government. Dundas seemed in earnest when he spoke to his wife in one letter about trying to marry one of their infant daughters to the Frenchman.
Dundas landed at Gallion Bay near St Pierre, Martinique on 5 February 1794 with a force of 2000 men. They faced a French army of white and mixed–race soldiers at Gallion Neck and le Brun, which was overwhelmed in a couple of hours (‘I had surrounded and taken all their fortress, posts, etc., which they had hitherto considered impregnable’). He identifies the mulatto leader as a man called ‘Belgrade,’ who he quotes as saying that Dundas’s men fought ‘like ten thousand devils.’ The pious Dundas retorted that Belgrade was mistaken, as ‘God Almighty and his angels watched over our steps and guided us.’ Dundas also ascribed superstitious success to the miniature of his wife, ‘my guardian angel,’ that he wore at his neck in the battle. Dundas pressed on with Grenadiers and Light Infantry to Gros Morne which was taken without loss by the end of the day. Valuing the ‘effect of panic’ Dundas immediately marched on through the night to Fort Bourbon across deeply unfamiliar terrain, and hemmed the opposing army in. Dundas was annoyed not to be permitted to press on to a third attack (ibid., pp.109–110).
Dundas’s struggle with Belgrade continued, however, as on the night of the 10th the man he called the ’yellow rascal’ but for whom he had clearly formed a foe’s respect, made the ‘garrison of Port Royal drunk’:
He inspired his people with courage, which he does not want, and he led them to the attack on Post Mathilde, where I had four companies of British Grenadiers… The night was dark, the ground covered with brush. They crept close to the post, killed the sentries, and were upon our Grenadiers before they could fire. The attack was rapid, and we might have lost many men, but that young Campbell of the 9th Grenadiers dashed at the enemy with his bayonets and drove them with great slaughter.
(ibid., pp.110–111)
With reinforcements, and three further engagements, Dundas and his forces marched into St Pierre on 17 February, the ‘first town in the West Indies.’ Sir Charles Grey, in his despatch of March 16, singled out General Dundas for particular praise in the successes of the Martinique campaign, adding that the General’s ‘ability, good conduct, and activity, first in penetrating though so difficult a country from La Trinite to Bruneau, and afterwards to the capture of St. Pierre, do him the highest honours, and merit His Majesty’s notice in an eminent degree’ (ibid., p.119).
Once established in St Pierre Dundas, a conservative man, was appalled by the French revolutionary leaders, especially after he saw their guillotine, still stained with blood, after the siege. Many of the defeated opponents were shipped to France, where Dundas was sceptical that the gens de couleur would retain their liberty:
200 sad murderers are shipped for France, their deluded followers of colour, calling themselves free, are on board to enjoy freedom there until landed in Africa.
(ibid., p.112)
Eventually, too, the fugitive leader Belgrade and his crew were found, and they surrendered. They were allowed to pass to Boston on the promise of Belgrade that they would not return:
If he keeps his word, these islands have got free of a 2nd Wilberforce, a desperate rogue!
(ibid., p.115)
Dundas would no doubt have been a little surprised that the real William Wilberforce would later vote for a monument to Dundas in St Paul’s. Dundas served at the protracted sieges of Fort Royal and Fort Bourbon, during which he claimed to have become tanned and fat, trusting in the wearing of flannel for the health of his men, who had so far escaped the ravages of fever that were affecting other troops. He was also, however, trying hard to secure his and his family’s financial future. He wrote again to Cornwallis, explicitly offering his services in India, and he also appealed to his superiors for a full Army commission, hoping his successes would compel them to give him a full appointment. At one point he even asked to be recalled if he was not to be given a full commission, arguing with Grey that he did not wish to be risking his life if it was of no future value to his wife and children. He continued to talk to the French plantation owner about marriage to his daughter, and he hoped for prize–money when they took Fort Bourbon.
Eventually the siege of Fort Royal was brought to an end, largely due to the heroics of Captain Faulknor, who had gone from a court martial for murder to a naval hero in the space of a few days. Dundas described the affair:
A sailor did not obey his [Faulknor’s] orders on the batteries, and he struck him with his sword; rashly and in a passion. The stroke was mortal, and the sailor died on the spot. The Admiral [sic] had been tried, he was acquitted, and this occasion was given to him to distinguish himself, which he did in a style to regain the aftections of the navy and army, who were before much exasperated against him, but seeing his gallantry exclaimed to a man ‘ We forgive him! We forgive him!’ It was passion and he has suffered enough. Indeed I never saw any creature more dejected. The poor sailor left a wife and family, these will be taken care of.
(ibid., p.125)
Dundas’s land troops, about 1800 in number, also participated in the end of the siege of Fort Royal, and he was elated at the capture of an island that he knew was strategically vital for the West Indies, and for the protection of the plantations run on slave labour: ‘I cannot tell you what an acquisition this island is to Great Britain, where millions of French money has been expended in the defence of it. A fleet can ride here the hurricane months, it is to windward of our possessions, and if the inhabitants can be brought to agree, the island is as fine as anything in the West Indies can be.’ More boldly he stated ‘if we are to remain mistress of the sea and to have West India plantations, this port and fortress is invaluable.’ Again Grey dangled the certainty before Dundas that he would get a regiment, stating that it was Dundas’ exertions that ‘won him this island,’ and the ministers back home would now surely recognise him (ibid., pp.127–8).
The island of St Lucia was taken next, without British losses, in three days. Dundas was unimpressed with the new possession, calling it ‘an uncleared swamp, with high hills and fine harbours.’ No doubt via those swamps Dundas suffered his first bout of fever and violent sickness (which was ‘perfectly distressing),’ and hoped very much that he would be allowed to return home with Grey after Guadeloupe (ibid., p.131). However, whilst recovering in St Pierre, Dundas was told by Grey that he wanted Dundas to take over the governance of all of the captured islands. Grey impressed upon him the view that Martinique had been on the cusp of an exterminatory race war that could threaten the whole region. The present governor, Colonel Prescott, was being much too lenient on the mixed–race combatants, and acting like an English Justice of the Peace, giving too much liberty to:
Rascally banditti who for years have been engaged in murder, robbery etc and if we had not arrived would very soon have extirpated the whites, the consequence of which would have been certain death to all the whites in the West Indian Islands, where the negroes would have followed the same course.
Dundas shares the view that ‘the thinking part of the Creation therefore agree that we have saved the lives of our fellow–creatures.’ In another jibe at Wilberforce, Dundas recounted to his wife how the MP had contrived to have a parson appointed to their mission who intended to ‘preach liberty and religion to the negroes.’ When the soldiers informed the parson that their mission was, rather, to ‘relieve the oppressed white Christians’ and that ‘anarchy was not our principle’ the parson was staggered and attempted to buy his way out, before eventually deserting at Land’s End (ibid., p.134).
Dundas repeatedly expresses his belief that the mission was intended to do good, that his forces were ‘saviours’ and ‘nice doctors.’ His belief that they had saved the white population from slaughter, however, was contradicted by the depositions of fellow officers in the subsequent parliamentary papers, where they attested that it was the white French population that had ‘uniformly’ resisted the British, whilst the black population were pressed into action by the French, rather than being poised to rise against white overlords. In fact, the soldiers testified that a considerable number of black inhabitants were very helpful to the British in their actions, and were consistently less violent than the French blancs, who were almost all republican (Parliamentary Register, 2 June 1795, p.483 and passim). This point was, as we have seen, pressed home by Wilberforce in the debate over Dundas’s monument.
Guadeloupe
Dundas was not, ultimately, called upon to replace Prescott and impose harsher racial order in Martinique. Rather Dundas was given a command in the invasion of Guadeloupe, where he was to stay on as Governor, and where he hoped to give an example of ‘firm, good government.’ Dundas, despite knowing the risks of sickness in the rainy season of May, agreed to ‘obey and do my best.. and we must endeavour to do what is right. Yet it is hard to be banished from all I love, and here my dearest wife would never be happy’ (Dundas 1891, p.134). On 13 April he commanded a force of 900 Light Infantry and sailors in an attack on Grand Terre, advancing quietly and fighting only with bayonets, before storming the fort of Fleure d’Epee. Their losses were extensive but he was ‘happy in the affections of my officers and men’ and pleased to find that most of Guadeloupe’s inhabitants seemed disposed to befriend them (ibid., pp.137–8). On 17 April he sailed around to Vieux Habitant commanding the third battalion of grenadiers, and the second and third battalions of Light Infantry, and easily took Morne Magdaline,and a number of other posts. The British forces surrounded Palmiste, the main stronghold, and offered terms to the Governor, Ms Collot, by which he and the French force of nearly 6000 men were to return to France. Grey wrote in his dispatch of 22 April that Martinique was now taken and in the hands of Colonel Prescott (who he privately called an ‘old woman,’ (ibid., pp.132–3), ditto St Lucia which was in the hands of Colonel Gordon (who subsequently had to leave the army over allegations of corruption), and now Guadeloupe:
The conquest of Guadeloupe and its dependencies being now also completely accomplished, I have placed Major–General Dundas in the command of this island, with a proper garrison; and his Majesty may place the firmest reliance on the ability, experience and zeal for the good of his service and their country, of these officers.
(Reading Mercury, 26 May 1794)
In his letters home Dundas confessed that he obeyed Grey’s orders to stay with ‘a sore heart,’ and seemed sceptical of Grey’s promises that the position would be lucrative, and he would certainly now get a regiment (Dundas 1891, p.138). Dundas was installed in a large old dilapidated mansion, with a secretary, servants, and a garrison consisting of two battalions of Light Infantry. He was not given ‘powers of life or death,’ but was expected to manage the island, a task that became increasingly tricky, not only as Dundas began to comprehend the realities of an island built upon slavery, but also as the British forces started to plunder the richest island in the West Indies and gradually eke away the support white inhabitants had given them. Dundas had always spoken against plunder, but was starting to feel his lack of any other emolument justified it:
This island is rich, and for the W Indies it is as fine as anything can be; the inhabitants certainly are divided into two classes, which division requires management, and certainly the people whom we have conquered are not over and above pleased with us, particularly as we have seized every store of produce of value, indeed we have been most ravenous in our seizures. You well know my sentiments as to prize–money, they continue the same, but if I get £1000 for each of our dear girls I shall think my labours well spent.
(ibid., pp.140–1)
In his first month he saw the whole of Guadeloupe and was hopeful that the island was now calm, and any forces of opposition quietened. As usual he praised his men, hoped that he was doing good works, and gave thanks for his good health. However, he did not trust ministers to confirm his appointment, and he was becoming critical of Grey and especially Earl St Vincent who, he said, ‘has been led off his legs by prize money.’ In a heated exchange in May he told St Vincent that all the looting would:
do us more hurt than good, for you will hear sad stories of us – indeed our soldiers began to follow our example, and in this island we plundered shamefully.
(ibid., p.145)
According to a later report in the Gentleman’s Magazine, Dundas had begun to intervene to prevent looting, on one occasion hanging a drummer–boy who was caught attempting it. After his initial praise for the civil inhabitants of the island, he also started to dislike all classes and races on Guadeloupe:
I must first say that I would not for the universe that you or our darlings were here. No woman looks herself, no child looks healthy, yet this is the most healthy of the islands. The negroes are better looked after than in our islands, yet their indelicacy, their manners are horrid; and the women no more mind a negro than we do a horse.
(ibid., p.146)
Dundas’s letters in the last month of his life record his distress as his ‘fine soldiers, full of spirit and strong constitution, sink under fever, and I cannot save them’ (ibid., p.146). As his men, doctors and servants fell ill, Dundas continued to worry for his chances of going to India, and for his finances, no doubt now also fearing for his family in the event of his death. ‘We shall all rejoice at leaving the West Indies’ (ibid., p.152) he wrote two weeks before his death. In his last letter he was uncharacteristically sarcastic about senior officers and ministers:
let me now abuse ministers for not thinking of those who labour for them—with clean hands. Sir Charles says they will give you a regiment,—that as it may be. Let us laugh a little.
(ibid., p.157)
Dundas’s wife, Eleanor, was about to go into labour with their seventh child when news arrived of her husband’s death. Friends who were caring for her chose not to tell her until after the delivery, and sat uncomfortably in the nights before as Lady Dundas proposed a toast to her husband’s health and the success of his mission. In the event neither were secured.
Reaction in Britain
On 16 August the British papers published Sir Charles Grey’s despatch of 11 June announcing the death of Major–General Dundas in Guadeloupe. In him, he wrote ‘His Majesty and his country lose one of their bravest and best officers, and a most worthy man. I, too, feel severely the loss of so able an assistant on this arduous service, and a valuable friend ever to be lamented’ (House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1795–6, p.49). Grey had to return hastily to Guadeloupe to resist Victor Hugues’ force, before losing the final stronghold of Fort Mathilde on 10th December. It seems likely that the retreating forces took with them the original monument to Dundas in Fort Mathilde, as it was subsequently unearthed in Trinidad (where it was installed in the Protestant Chapel several decades later).
As the scale of the disaster in the West Indies became gradually known the Whigs took the opportunity to blame the ministers in the Tory government for a series of blunders that could have averted the extensive losses. As they did so the Tory government seems to have rested more and more heavily on the narrative that it was only the unfortunate death of Dundas that left the island of Guadeloupe vulnerable to a new invasion by the French. Had Dundas not died on the day of the French return, they opined, he would surely have rallied a resistance with his customary efficiency. In the house on 28 May 1794 the Whig Richard Brinsley Sheridan noted the habit of Henry Dundas that, whenever he was in a vulnerable position ‘he immediately sallied forth to claim merit and challenge applause,’ which was precisely what he had done over the West Indies, in which the government claimed to have successfully reduced the size of the French West Indies, when it was in fact a governmental disaster. The government, rather than sending a reinforcement of twenty, ten, or five thousand men hadn’t even sent one man ‘to retain possession of the islands which he conquered,’ the ministers had denied the reports about the ‘sickly condition’ of the troops on the transports, and:
As to the assertion, that Guadeloupe would not have been lost, had it not been for the death of General Dundas, he knew very little about it, not more than the Right Honourable Gentleman by whom it was made. If the unfortunate consequences of the neglect shown with respect to the West Indies, should extend to our own possessions in that quarter, the crime and the blame would rest entirely with ministers.
(Morning Chronicle, 18 June 1795)
The Tories seem, indeed, to have forged a myth around Major–General Dundas that protected the integrity of their prosecution of the war, and illustrated the evil of the French opposition from which they sought to protect Britain. The Telegraph seemed to be under the impression, too, that Major–General Dundas was actually related to the Secretary of War, suggesting an even deeper level of questionability to the proposal for a monument. Nonetheless, given the high respect in which Dundas was held across the house, and the horrific treatment of his body by the French governor, the Whigs were in no position to oppose the vote for a monument.