General Auchmuty: A Soldier Overseas
‘If Napoleon had conducted the campaign of Java exactly as did Auchmuty, whole libraries would have been written in laudation of it. Yet this brilliant and sterling soldier has been forgotten.’ So wrote Sir John Fortescue in his History of the British Army. A loyalist, born in New York, Auchmuty served the British Crown in India, Egypt, Latin America and Java. By Bernard Pool.
If Napolean had conducted the campaign of Java exactly as did Auchmuty, whole libraries would have been written in laudation of it. Yet this brilliant and sterling soldier has been forgotten.' So wrote Sir John Fortescue in his History of the British Army.
Born in 1756, Samuel Auchmuty came from a distinguished family of American Loyalists, his grandfather, a Scots lawyer, having gone to Boston towards the end of the seventeenth century.
Auchmuty served with the British forces in the War of Independence, first as a volunteer, and then with a regular commission in the 45th Regiment. There could clearly be no prospect of a successful career in America after the Peace, and he went to Europe with his regiment.
Conditions were difficult for a young officer with no ‘interest’, and no patron, and dependent on his pay. He therefore exchanged into a regiment under orders for India, where he saw further active service in the Mysore wars against Tippoo Sultan.
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