[F.]
MEMOIR OF SIR HENRY TORRENS.
The following Memoir of the services of Major-General Sir Henry Torrens is inserted, not only with the view of recording his merits as an officer, but of showing to the army and to the public one of the many instances in which the talents of an active and enterprising officer were duly noticed and rewarded by the King, and by His late Royal Highness the Duke of York, as well as by other illustrious commanders of the army:—
Sir Henry Torrens was born at Londonderry in 1779, and having been educated at the military academy in Dublin, he was appointed to an Ensigncy in the Fifty-second Regiment on the 2nd of November, 1793, at the age of fourteen years; he was promoted to a Lieutenancy in the Ninety-second Regiment on the 14th of June, 1794; and on the 11th of December, 1795, was removed to the Sixty-third Regiment, then under orders for the West Indies. At the attack of Morne Fortuné in the island of St. Lucie, on the 1st of May, 1796, while serving with the army under Major-General Sir Ralph Abercrombie, he was severely wounded in the right thigh: after taking a prominent part in storming three French redoubts, he was employed for the space of seven months at an outpost in the woods against the Charibs: on the conquest of those people he was promoted to a company in the Sixth West India Regiment on the 28th of March, 1797. In 1798 he returned to England, and was appointed Aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-General Whitelocke, then acting as second in command under Earl Moira at Portsmouth; in November of the same year he went to Portugal as Aide-de-camp to General Cuyler, who commanded a body of auxiliary troops, sent thither by the British government, to repel the threatened invasion of that country by the Spaniards. While on service at Lisbon, he was removed to the Twentieth Regiment, on the 8th of August, 1799, and immediately relinquished the advantages of his Staff situation in order to join his Regiment, which was a part of the force then destined for the liberation of the United Provinces from the yoke of France. Throughout the short but arduous campaign in Holland, the Twentieth Regiment distinguished itself on every occasion, particularly at the battle of Alcmaar on the 2nd of October, 1799: on the retreat of the British and Russian troops upon the two villages of Egmont, and after a most severe conflict with the enemy from morning till night of the 6th of October, Captain Torrens received a severe wound from a musket-ball, which, passing through the right thigh, entered the left, where it lodged so deeply as to baffle all surgical efforts to extract it.
On the return of the troops from the Helder, in November, 1799, Captain Torrens was promoted to a Majority in the Surrey Rangers, which he joined and commanded in Nova Scotia. In 1801 he came back to England, and exchanged, on the 4th of February, 1802, to the Eighty-sixth Regiment, then serving in Egypt, to which country it had come from India with a division of troops, under the command of Major-General Sir David Baird. Major Torrens lost no time in embarking for the Mediterranean: on his arrival at Alexandria, he found that the object of the expedition had completely succeeded, although attended with the melancholy loss of his revered commander and steady friend, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who had been mortally wounded at the battle of Alexandria. As the expulsion of the French rendered the presence of a large force no longer necessary in Egypt, the auxiliary troops from India returned across the desert, and embarking at Cosseir, proceeded to Bombay. Soon after the arrival of the troops from Egypt, hostilities broke out between the English and the Mahrattas: in this contest Major Torrens again evinced his natural courage and talents, and obtained the approbation of the officers under whom he served: his health giving way to the active exertions he had made in the execution of his duty, and suffering under the effects of a coup de soleil, he was compelled to have recourse to a change of climate, and accordingly obtained leave to return to England. On arrival at St. Helena, he found his state of health so far improved as to induce him to forego his return to England, and to go back to his regiment. While at St. Helena, he formed an attachment to the daughter of Governor Patton, and was married. On his return to India, he served under General Lord Lake, until the conquest of Scindiah, the most formidable of the Mahratta Chiefs. On the 1st of January, 1805, he was promoted to the brevet rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and in the same year he returned to Europe: after his arrival in England, he was employed as Assistant Adjutant-General in the Kent District. He exchanged from the Eighty-sixth to the Eighty-ninth Regiment on the 19th of February, 1807, and in the same year he proceeded as Military Secretary to Lieutenant-General Whitelocke, with the expedition against the Spanish colonies on the Rio de la Plata, and was present at the disastrous attack upon Buenos Ayres on the 5th of July, 1807.
After his return to England, he was re-appointed an Assistant Adjutant-General on the Staff of Great Britain, and subsequently to be Assistant Military Secretary to His Royal Highness the Duke of York, as Commander-in-Chief. In the month of July, 1808, he embarked with the expedition for Portugal, under the orders of Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley, and was present at the battles of Roleia on the 17th of August, and of Vimiera on the 21st of August, 1808, for which he received a medal struck for the purpose of commemorating those victories, and of distinguishing the officers engaged in them: he received also from the Portuguese Regency the Chivalric Order of the Tower and Sword. These victories led to the Convention of Cintra, and to the consequent evacuation of Portugal by the French army under Marshal Junot, Duke of Abrantes.
Lieutenant-Colonel Torrens returned to England with Sir Arthur Wellesley about the end of the year 1808, and resumed his former situation as Assistant Military Secretary to His Royal Highness the Duke of York; he was promoted to be his Military Secretary on the 2d of October, 1809. He was appointed from the Eighty-ninth Regiment to a company in the Third Foot Guards on the 13th of June, 1811, and Aide-de-camp to the Prince Regent, with the rank of Colonel, on the 20th of February, 1812. He was promoted to the rank of Major-General on the 4th of June, 1814, and in the new arrangement and extension of the Military Order of the Bath in 1815, he was enrolled in the honourable list of Knights Commanders: he was appointed to the Colonelcy of the Second Garrison Battalion on the 5th of April, 1815; removed to the Royal African Colonial corps on the 27th of November, 1815, removed to the Second West India Regiment on the 21st of September, 1818, and on the 26th of July, 1822, he was promoted to the Second, or Queen's Royal; on the 25th of March, 1820, he was appointed from the situation of Military Secretary to that of Adjutant-General to the Forces.
During the period of his employment as Military Secretary, in which the most active operations of the late war took place, the labours of his office were excessive, and his health became affected; yet his exertions were never lessened, and after his appointment as Adjutant-General, he undertook, with considerable labour and zeal, the revision of the 'Regulations for the Exercise and Field Movements of the Infantry of the Army,' and, with the authority of His Majesty King George IV., engrafted in them the alterations and improvements which had been introduced and practised by different Commanders during the late war.
The death of Sir Henry Torrens took place suddenly, on the 22d of August, 1828, while on a visit to his friend Mr. Johnes Knight, at Welwyn, Herts., where his remains were consigned privately to a grave in the church of that parish.