Thomas Picton

Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Picton GCB (24 August 1758 – 18 June 1815) was a British Army officer who fought in a number of campaigns for Britain, and rose to the rank of lieutenant general. According to the historian Alessandro Barbero, Picton was "respected for his courage and feared for his irascible temperament." He is chiefly remembered for his exploits under the Duke of Wellington in the Iberian Peninsular War and at the Battle of Waterloo, where he was mortally wounded while his division stopped d'Erlon's corps attack against the allied centre left, and as a result became the most senior officer to die at Waterloo.

Early life
Thomas Picton was the seventh of twelve children of Thomas Picton (1723–1790) of Poyston, Pembrokeshire, Wales, and his wife, Cecil née Powell (1728–1806). He was born in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire on (probably) 24 August 1758. In 1771 he obtained an ensign's commission in the 12th Regiment of Foot, but he did not join until two years later. The regiment was then stationed at Gibraltar, where he remained until he was made captain in the 75th in January 1778, at which point he then returned to Britain.

The regiment was disbanded five years later, and Picton quelled a mutiny amongst the men by his prompt personal action and courage, and was promised the rank of major as a reward. He did not receive it, and after living in retirement on his father's estate for nearly twelve years, he went out to the West Indies in 1794 on the strength of a slight acquaintance with Sir John Vaughan, the commander-in-chief, who made him his aide-de-camp and gave him a captaincy in the 17th foot. Shortly afterwards he was promoted major in the 58th foot.

Career in the New World
Under Sir Ralph Abercromby, who succeeded Vaughan in 1795, he was present at the capture of St Lucia (after which he was promoted to lieutenant colonel of the 56th Foot) and then that of St Vincent.

After the reduction of Trinidad in 1797, Abercromby made Picton governor of the island. For the next 5 years he held the island with a garrison he considered inadequate against the threats of internal unrest and of reconquest by the Spanish. He ensured order by vigorous action, viewed variously as rough-and-ready justice or as arbitrary brutality. In October 1801 he was gazetted brigadier-general. During the negotiations leading to the Peace of Amiens of 1802, many of the British inhabitants petitioned against the return of the island to Spain; this together with Picton's and Abercromby's representations, ensured the retention of Trinidad as a British possession.

By then, reports of arbitrariness and brutality associated with his governorship had led to a demand at home for his removal. (Picton was also making money from speculation in land and slaves and his mulatto mistress was believed to be corruptly influencing his decisions.) Furthermore, Trinidad no longer faced any external threat, the Pitt ministry had fallen and the new Addington administration did not want Trinidad to develop the plantation economy Picton favoured. In 1802, William Fullarton (1754–1808) was appointed as the Senior Member of a commission to govern the island, Samuel Hood became the second member, and Picton himself the junior.

Fullarton had a very different background from Picton. He came from a wealthy and long-established Scots land-owning family and was a Whig MP, a Fellow of the Royal Society, an improving landlord, and a patron of Robert Burns. He had been a junior diplomat, before in the course of the American War of Independence raising a regiment of which he naturally became the Colonel. He ended that war in India commanding an army of 14,000 men in operations against Tippu Sultan. following which he had written an influential pamphlet arguing that the East India Company had brought trouble on itself by its unprincipled treatment of native princes and native subjects and that a more humane policy than "let them hate so long as they fear" would be more effective in securing its position. The new Secretary of State for the Colonies (Lord Hobart) had served as Governor of Madras soon after the pamphlet came out, knew Fullarton, and had been influenced by his views. Picton's policy with respect to various sections of the island population had effectively been "let them hate so long as they fear" and he and Fullarton rapidly fell out. (This, of itself, further worsened the rift: Fullarton's Indian pamphlet had also reported adversely on conflicts of interest and dissension between the English having weakened their ability to govern well, to negotiate effectively, and to effectively defend their possessions.) Fullarton commenced a series of open enquiries on allegations against Picton and reported his unfavourable views on Picton's past actions at length to meetings of the commission. Picton thereupon tendered his resignation and was soon followed by Hood (1803).

Picton joined Hood in military operations in St Lucia and Tobago, before returning to Britain to face charges brought by Fullarton. In December 1803 he was arrested by order of the Privy Council and promptly released on bail set at £40,000 (Picton was able to give surety for half of this; two West Indies plantation-owners covered the remainder).

The Privy Council dealt with the majority of the charges against Picton. Those charges related principally to excessive cruelty in the detection and punishment of practitioners of obeah, severity to slaves, and of execution of suspects out of hand without due process. Only the latter class of charge seems to have seriously worried the Privy Council, and here Picton's argument that either the laws of Trinidad (then still the laws of the former Spanish colonial power) or "the state of the garrison" justified the immediate execution in the cases specified eventually carried the day.

Picton was, however, tried in the court of King's Bench before Lord Ellenborough in 1806 on a single charge; the misdemeanor of having in 1801 caused torture to be unlawfully inflicted to extract a confession from Luisa Calderon, a young free mulatto girl suspected of assisting one of her lovers to burgle the house of the man with whom she was living, making off with about £500. Torture (but not the specific form) had been requested in writing by a local magistrate and approved in writing by Picton. The torture applied ("picketing") was a version of a British military punishment and consisted in principle of compelling the trussed up suspect to stand on one toe on a flat-headed peg for one hour on many occasions within a span of a few days. In fact Luisa was subjected to one session of 55 minutes, and a second of 25 minutes the following day.

The period between Picton's return and the trial had seen a pamphlet war between the rival camps, and the widespread sale of engravings showing a curious British public what a personable 14-year-old mulatto girl being trussed up and tortured in a state of semi-undress might look like. The legal arguments, however, revolved on whether Spanish law permitted torture of suspects: on the evidence given, the jury decided that it did not and found Picton guilty.

Picton promptly sought a retrial, which he got in 1808. At this, Picton's supporters brought forward other credible witnesses to testify to the (Spanish) legality of torture, its application in the recent past, and that Luisa Calderon had been old enough to be legally tortured. The jury reversed the verdict of the earlier trial but asked for the full court to consider the further argument of the prosecution that torture of a free person was so repugnant to the laws of England that Picton must have known he could not permit it, whatever Spanish law authorised. (The full court never reached a decision on this; there were legal precedents to this general effect from the British occupation of Minorca — and a practical precedent from the British seizure of the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch, but it remained to demonstrate that Picton should have known this, and by now Fullarton was dead and Picton a war hero.)

Friends of Picton in the military and among slave owners subscribed towards his legal expenses. Picton contributed the same sum to a relief fund after a widespread fire in Port of Spain. He had meanwhile been promoted major-general, and in 1809 he had been governor of Flushing in the Netherlands during the Walcheren expedition.

Europe service
In 1810, at Wellington's request, he was appointed to command a division in Spain. For the remaining years of the Peninsular War, Picton was one of Wellington's principal subordinates. The commander-in-chief, it is true, never reposed in him the confidence that he gave to Beresford, Hill and Robert Craufurd. But in the resolute, thorough and punctual execution of a well-defined task Picton had no superior in the army. His debut, owing partly to his naturally stern and now embittered temper, and partly to the difficult position in which he was placed, was unfortunate. On the River Coa in July 1810 Craufurd's division became involved in an action, and Picton, his nearest neighbour, refused to support him, as Wellington's direct orders were to avoid an engagement. Shortly after this, however, at Busaco, Picton found and used his first great opportunity for distinction. Here he had a plain duty, that of repulsing the French attack, and he performed that duty with a skill and resolution, which indicated his great powers as a troop-leader.

After the winter in the lines of Torres Vedras, he added to his reputation and to that of his division, the 'Fighting' 3rd, at the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro. In September he was given the local rank of lieutenant-general, and in the same month the division won great glory by its rapid and orderly retirement under severe pressure from the French cavalry at the engagement at El Bodon. In October Picton was appointed to the colonelcy of the 77th Regiment of Foot.

In the first operations of 1812 Picton and Craufurd, side by side for the last time, stormed the two breaches of Ciudad Rodrigo, Craufurd and Picton's second in command, Major-General Henry Mackinnon, being mortally wounded. At Badajoz, a month later, the successful storming of the fortress was due to his daring self-reliance and penetration in converting the secondary attack on the castle, delivered by the 3rd Division, into a real one. He was himself wounded in this terrible engagement, but would not leave the ramparts, and the day after, having recently inherited a fortune, he gave every survivor of his command a guinea. His wound, and an attack of fever, compelled him to return to Britain to recoup his health, but he reappeared at the front in April 1813. While in Britain he was invested with the collar and badge of a Knight of the Order of the Bath by the Prince Regent George, and in June he was made a lieutenant-general in the army.

At the Battle of Vitoria, Picton led his division across a key bridge under heavy fire. According to Picton, the enemy responded by pummeling the 3rd with 40 to 50 cannon and a counter-attack on their right flank (which was still open because they had captured the bridge so quickly) causing the 3rd to lose 1,800 men (over one third of all Allied losses at the battle) as they held their ground. The conduct of the 3rd division under his leadership at the battle of Vittoria and in the engagements in the Pyrenees raised his reputation as a resolute and skilful fighting general to a still higher point. Early in 1814 he was offered, but after consulting Wellington declined, the command of the British forces operating on the side of Catalonia. He thus bore his share in the Orthez campaign and in the final victory before Toulouse.

On the break-up of the division the officers presented Picton with a valuable service of plate, and on 24 June 1814 he received for the seventh time the thanks of the House of Commons for his great services. Somewhat to his disappointment he was not included amongst the generals who were raised to the peerage, but early in 1815 he was made a G.C.B.

Death
When Napoleon returned from Elba, Picton, at Wellington's request, accepted a high command in the Anglo-Dutch army. He was severely wounded at Quatre Bras on 16 June, but concealed his wound and retained command of his troops. His name stands in the list of invited characters to the Duchess of Richmond's Ball that was held on 15 June, the eve of the Battle of Quatre Bras.

At Waterloo two days later, while in command of the 5th Infantry Division, while repulsing with impetuous valour "one of the most serious attacks made by the enemy on our position", he was shot through the temple by a musket ball, making him the highest ranking victim of the battle on the allied side. Since his luggage had not arrived in time, he had fought the battle wearing civilian clothes and a top hat. Welsh folklore says that his top hat was shot off by a cannon-ball moments before his death, but this is not known to be backed by any historical source. Family folklore contends that he did not ride out in tails but in his night shirt and top hat because he had overslept, and he died at the hands of one of his own men who shot him in the back of the head because they hated him so much. Again this is not backed by any historical source.

Announcing his death in his typically laconic style, Wellington wrote to Minister of War, Lord Bathurst: "Your lordship will observe, that such a desperate action could not be fought, and such advantages could not be gained, without great loss; and, I am sorry to add, that ours has been immense. In Lieutenant-general Sir Thomas Picton, his majesty has sustained the loss of an officer who has frequently distinguished himself in his service; and he fell, gloriously leading his division to a charge with bayonets, by which one of the most serious attacks made by the enemy of our position was defeated."

His body was brought home to London, and buried in the family vault at St George's, Hanover Square. A public monument was erected to his memory in St Paul's Cathedral, by order of parliament, and in 1823 another was erected at Carmarthen by subscription, the king contributing a hundred guineas.

Namings in his honour

 * The town of Picton in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada was named in his honour.
 * The town of Picton, New Zealand was named in his honour.
 * Picton, New South Wales is a town named in his honour by his military colleague, Lachlan Macquarie
 * Picton Road is a Highway in Australia
 * Picton Road is located in the Laventille area of Port of Spain, in Trinidad.
 * Picton Barracks, Bulford, Wiltshire is HQ of UK 3 Div
 * The Picton, a boys boarding house at Wellington College, Crowthorne, UK which is an English co-educational public school founded by Queen Victoria and Prime Minister The Earl of Derby in 1859 as the national monument to Britain's greatest military figure, the Duke of Wellington.
 * A First World War Royal Navy Lord Clive-class monitor was named HMS Sir Thomas Picton in his honour.
 * Sir Thomas Picton School (Ysgol Sir Thomas Picton) is a mixed comprehensive school in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales.
 * Picton Street, Montpelier, Bristol was built and named in honour of Sir Thomas Picton who, as mere Captain Picton, in 1783 endeared himself to Bristolians by bravely facing the rebellious 75th Battalion on College Green, Bristol and averting a military mutiny. There is also a fine double-bayed villa in the street named after him, Picton Lodge.
 * There is a General Picton Inn in Porthcawl.
 * There is a General Picton public house in Picton Place, Nantyffyllon, Maesteg. The sign bears an image of Sir Thomas. The area also contains a Picton Street named after him. He owned a large amount of land very close to The General Picton public house.
 * The Picton is a public house in Commercial Road, Newport. The sign depicts Sir Thomas in military uniform resting the blade of his sword upon his left shoulder.
 * The Rhymney Brewery in Rhymney, Gwent, South Wales, produces a "real ale" (classic cask bitter) named General Picton.