John Colborne

John Colborne, later Lord Seaton, was a soldier throughout the Peninsular War (1808-14), is famed for his exploits during Wellington’s campaigns and subsequently on the field of Waterloo. In his later career he was an effective colonial governor and educational reformer. He is one of four Old Wykehamists chosen to be depicted on the face of Musa, built to commemorate 500 years of Winchester College.

Colborne’s long association with Winchester College began in 1787 when his mother remarried the Revd Thomas Bargus, himself an Old Wykehamist and living in Winchester. John was born in February 1778 and his father died in 1785. Soon after the death of Samuel Colborne, John was sent to Christ’s Hospital, where he remained until 1789. Early that year, he entered Winchester as a Commoner (Long Roll shows him in the Senior Part of Fourth Book) before being elected to a scholarship. When the widowed Mrs Colborne married Revd  Bargus, he was living in St Michael’s parish in Winchester, probably in Witham Close, a house on Kingsgate Street that is currently the residence of the Headmaster. Bargus took in ‘town commoners’, otherwise known as ‘oppidani’ or ‘commensalis extra Collegium’. Nowadays they would be called day boys and Colborne would have been one of these during Long Half 1789, before entering College.

HC Adams in his 1878 Wykehamica writes of the breakdown in relations between the Warden (George Huntingford) and rebel scholars during the 1793 Rebellion in College:

‘No doubt they would have done better to submit; but there were some very determined spirits among them – a fact to which some of the sternest of the Peninsular battle-fields afterwards bore witness – and they resolved to force the Warden to do them justice.’

With varying degrees of accuracy, Adams then goes on to state

‘Lord Seaton and Sir Lionel Smith were among the College-boys expelled. Sir R Wilson, Sir A Barnard, Sir C Dalbiac, Sir A Woodford, and Sir W Myers, were all in Commoners at the time. But the extent to which Commoners took part in this outbreak is not very clearly stated.’

Colborne was not expelled and Smith did not serve in the Peninsula, but in later life, Colborne would tell of the part he had played in the rebellion, how he stood against the masters and hurled down stones from the battlements. Perhaps he was lucky to escape expulsion, but il he remained at the school until July 1794 when, perhaps buoyed by his martial exploits as a pupil, he joined the 20th (East Devonshire) Regiment as an Ensign.

By the turn of the century, he was gazetted Captain just before his 22nd birthday. In 1801 he was at the landing at Aboukir Bay and the subsequent Battle of Alexandria, which removed the French army from Egypt. Here he first came to the notice of Colonel John Moore, who had previously been developing the Light Infantry (rapid-firing, fast-moving riflemen in dark green) from the Experimental Corps of Riflemen.

Moore was then in command of the 52nd (Oxfordshire) Regiment. Colborne admired him enormously and stayed with him for the next eight years, through Moore's command of the Mediterranean, when Colborne distinguished himself in Sicily and Southern Italy, particularly at the Battle of Maida in 1806 (which ultimately lent its name to Maida Vale in London).

Sir John Moore promoted Colborne to Major in 1806 and appointed him his Military Secretary. They were together through the campaign in northern Spain and Portugal in 1808 and on the long, hazardous retreat to Corunna in 1809, where Moore was mortally wounded in the battle, knowing that victory over Soult's French force had been achieved and that the Royal Navy would be able to evacuate his 24,000 men.

Moore's last request to one of his senior staff officers, was that he should ask the Commander-in-Chief (the Duke of York) that Colborne be promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel, 'he has been long with me and I know him to be worthy of it’.

Moore's dying request was granted and John Colborne was promoted on 2nd February 1809, two weeks after Moore's death. He was nearly thirty-one. In 1811 he transferred from the 20th to the 52nd Regiment, no doubt out of his admiration for Moore, and commanded them in action in Spain, most famously at the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo in January 1812, where he was hit in the arm by a spent shot. He was sent home for convalescence, but never fully recovered the use of his arm.

While back in England he met and married Elizabeth Yonge, a daughter of the Rev. James Yonge of Newton Ferrers in Devon. She was a relation of Charlotte Yonge, the novelist, who wrote an appreciation of John Colborne for The Wykehamist in 1896. It was, reputedly, the first article written by a woman for the magazine and, in it, she recalled her memories of him, which included an occasion when they went together for a Sunday evening service in College Chapel, a place he loved. The Colbornes had many children and two of their sons followed their father into the army and attained the rank of General.

Colborne was then back in the Peninsula and in command of the 52nd as Wellington's army swept northward, through the western end of the Pyrenees and into France.

He was present at the final battles of the campaign at the Nivelle in November 1813, the Nive (Bayonne) the following month, Orthez in February and Toulouse in April 1814.

In 1815 he was knighted and was briefly Military Secretary to the Prince of Orange during the period when Napoleon was confined to the island of Elba, from where he escaped in March and returned to Paris.

During the Battle of Waterloo, Colborne's 52nd was on the Allied right flank, under General Hill, and kept in reserve for most of the day. After initial French artillery bombardments, infantry and cavalry attacks, Napoleon thought he was breaking through at 6 o'clock when La Haye-Sainte was taken. He then threw in his last reserve troops, seven battalions of the Imperial Guard, against the allied right flank.

But Hill's force was ready for them, hidden behind the reverse slope of the ridge. As the Imperial Guard advanced, Colborne swung his regiment 90 degrees to attack the French from the side. It worked. Firing volley after volley with devastating effect, they advanced with bayonets to break up the enemy ranks, while Wellington, knowing by then that Blücher had arrived and secured his left flank, called out

'That's right, Colborne, go on, go on. Don't give them time to rally.’

It was the end. Wellington ordered his troops to advance and the French were cleared from the field.

In 1821 Sir John Colborne was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Guernsey, where he did much for education believing that, having left school early, his own education had never been completed. He had, nevertheless, become a good linguist, mastering French, Italian and Spanish and becoming a late convert to Latin. He was particularly instrumental in the development of Elizabeth College into a public school, so that Channel Islanders might be prepared for British universities.

He became a Major-General in 1825 and, three years later, began his long appointment as Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, which was roughly the English-speaking province of Ontario, divided from the mainly French-speaking Lower Canada, comprising Quebec and mainland Newfoundland. During his ten years in Canada he was again active in the field of education, helping to found the University of Toronto and develop Trinity College. He was about to embark for home, in 1838, when there was a sudden uprising by French Canadians. General Colborne was not a man to depart during such a situation. He delayed his sailing, took command of the troops and quickly suppressed the rebellion.

Back home he was honoured, in December 1839, with a peerage, taking the title of Lord Seaton. But retirement, if indeed he sought it, was still a long way off. In 1843 he was appointed Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, in the rank of Lieutenant-General with a base at Corfu. He was in the post for six years, returning home in 1849 to be honoured with a GCMG.

He was 71 years old, but not too old for further service and further promotion. In 1854 he was promoted to General, accompanied Prince Albert on a visit to Napoleon III and, the following year, was made Commander-in-Chief in Ireland. On his retirement in 1860, he was promoted Field Marshal and became Honorary Colonel of the Rifle Brigade and the 2nd Life Guards among other regiments.

It had been a long journey from Ensign J. Colborne to Field Marshal Lord Seaton. A friend once remarked how proud he must be to have taken part in such important events. 'Proud?’, he retorted, 'humble rather'. He was a deeply religious man, grateful for the opportunity of taking Holy Communion before battle, and he was never known to swear or use coarse language. Charlotte Yonge recalled him in age, ‘as splendid looking a fine, clear, fair face which ......... had that particular beauty which a pure and noble life imparts.’

He spent the last three years of his life at his house in Devon. He was eighty-five when he died in 1863.