The Trusty Servant May 2015 No.119 | Page 5

NO.119 T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T Waterloo 200: ‘The Noblest Kind of Soldier’ Sir John Colborne, a Winchester Saint Mark Romans, History don and Housemaster of Beloe’s writes: Every day Wykehamists walk past Musa without sparing a glance at the busts ¯ in the four roundels over the loggia, yet here the history of the College is literally built into the brickwork. The sculptures represent the spheres of intellectual endeavour and public life through which the men of the School might repay the debt of a Winchester education. The four, in former days known as ‘the Winchester saints’, are Grocyn for academe; Ken for the Church; Selborne, the Law; and Seaton, the military life. In many respects, Sir John Colborne, first Baron Seaton, was a model Wykehamist; however, his beginnings at Winchester were far from auspicious. He arrived in 1789 and was enrolled as a Scholar in the following year in VII Chamber. Here he showed great independence of spirit, and seems to have been heavily involved in the Great Rebellion of 1793. While many of his peers suffered expulsion following those disturbances, Colborne was spared and his star ascended as evidenced by his dramatic advance up the Roll from 100th out of 109 boys on his admission, to 11th in 1793. Nevertheless, Colborne left Winchester in 1794, aged 16, to take up a commission in the 20th Foot. In 1799 he served in Holland, where he miraculously survived being shot through the cap twice, and was in the Mediterranean between 1800-7, where he became a close friend of Sir John Moore, the hero of the battle of Corunna. Colborne was at Moore’s bedside to witness his death and one of the few present at his burial. The war in the Iberian Peninsula found him at the major engagements of Bussaco 1810, Albuera 1811 (in which his brigade was annihilated by Polish lancers), the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo 1812 (where he suffered a serious wound to the shoulder), and the battles of the Pyrenees 1814. It was at the battle of Waterloo on 18th June 1815 that Colborne’s decisions helped to tip the balance of history. With the outcome poised on a knife-edge as the Imperial Guard neared the British line, Colborne exhibited what any don will confirm to be the most frustrating, but sometimes the most endearing Wykehamical trait – he acted as he thought best without waiting to be asked or told what to do. The French column had been halted by the British guards, and by moving his regiment, the 52nd Light Infantry, on to their flank, his troops opened up a destructive fire which put them to rout. James Shaw-Kennedy, one of Wellington’s aides-de-camp at the battle later wrote: ‘no man can point out to me any instance, either in ancient or modern history, of a single battalion so influencing the result of a great general action as the result of the Battle of Waterloo was influenced by the attack of the 52nd Regiment on the Imperial Guard, of which it defeated first four battalions and afterwards three other battalions, and Colborne did almost all this from his own impulse and on his own responsibility.’ Colborne moved to a civil career after the defeat of Napoleon and he used 5 his appointments to promote his life-long interest in education. As Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey he oversaw the refoundation of Elizabeth College and similarly as Lieutenant Governor of Canada, he founded Upper Canada College in 1830. It was in Canada that Colborne found himself on the other side of a rebellion and he was instrumental in suppressing the risings of 1837 and 1838 with a minimum of bloodshed. For his decisive and humane intervention, he was created Baron Seaton in 1839. Waterloo remained something of a bittersweet memory for Colborne. The Duke of Wellington did not mark him out for special praise in his Waterloo despatches and those who saw an opportunity for scandal and profit tried to push Colborne into advertising his claims for greater recognition after the Duke’s death in 1852. Colborne was too loyal and modest a man to be flattered or enticed into advancing himself at the expense of Wellington and steadfastly refused to be drawn into any publication questioning the Duke’s account. This self-abnegation was very much the mark of the man. In 1889, Sir William Fraser wrote of him: ‘Lord Seaton was certainly the noblest type of soldier that I have ever known…Mildest, kindest, gentlest of human beings; clear-headed, calm and vigorous in mind as he was strong in body, he was always my idea of a soldier.’ Colborne’s qualities of unassuming dedication and competence might still be said to be the marks of an ideal Wykehamist. For that reason, even more than for his considerable achievements, he deserves the occasional lift of the eye as one passes on the way up to books. I