Last updated: 3 June 2011
A grandson of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth I’s principal minister, Edward Cecil entered military service in about 1596.
Robert Parker is chiefly remembered for his absorbing ‘Memoirs’, published in Dublin in 1746, which recount his long military career through the wars of King William III and the Duke of Marlborough.
The Battle of Malplaquet in September 1709 was the bloodiest engagement of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13). Malplaquet lies close to the French border, about nine miles (15km) from the Belgian town of Mons. It was here, on 11...
Listed in 1762 as a major-general (he later became a lieutenant-general), Monckton is wearing a general officer’s frock coat: the single-spaced buttons and loops were later to be used to denote full generals. Still in his thirties, Monckton was a...
The 25th Regiment of Foot was stationed in Minorca from 6 June 1769 until 1775, one of several regiments garrisoned there to maintain British control of this important Mediterranean base.
During the Third Mysore War (1790-92), a British force under Lieutenant-General Lord Cornwallis (1738-1805), Governor-General of India, besieged Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore, in his fortified island capital of Seringapatam. Tipu eventually made...
In a tavern interior, a soldier holds forth to an audience of four fellow customers and a barmaid. The subject of his tale, which he imparts to an apparently sceptical audience, is indicated by clues in the painting. Since he points with his left...
While little is known about ‘Sir Briggs’ beyond the evidence of this painting, it is certain that he was a survivor of the famous Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854. His owner, Captain the Honourable Godfrey...
Soldiers disembark from a troopship at Gravesend, on their return from the Indian Mutiny (1857-59). About 40,000 British troops were sent to India, more than had been mobilized for the Crimea, to suppress the mutiny among the Indian troops of the...
This painting was almost certainly intended as a continuation of O’Neil’s famous pair of narrative paintings, showing troops leaving for and returning from the Indian Mutiny (1857-59), ‘’Eastward Ho!’ August 1857’ and...