John Mansel
John Mansel (1729–1794) was a British Army cavalry general killed at the Battle of Beaumont.
John Mansel was born in Cosgrove, Northamptonshire in 1729, son of the Reverend Christopher Mansel, and Sarah Hoare. He married Mary Anne Biggin on 9 June 1768. Among their six children, one son John (1771-1839) became a major of the 3rd Dragoon Guards and ADC to his father, another Robert (1773-1838), joined the Royal Navy and rose to the rank of rear admiral.
In the army Mansel was made
At
Mansel was buried in a redoubt with all military honours. Six generals—Abercrombie, Dundas, Harcourt, Garth, and Fox, who supported the pall—and the majority of senior officers of York's army attended the funeral.
Craig attributed the failure of the heavy cavalry at Villers en Cauchies "mainly to Mansel, whom after the action of the 17th [Premont] he had already reported as an incompetent officer."[4] Mansel felt he was disgraced after Villers-en-Cauchies despite being reinstated, and swore not to survive. Whether he deliberately sought death or not though is disputed.[5] Others "seemed to feel that a brave man had been untowardly sacrificed."[6]
References
- ^ Alfred H Burne The Noble Duke of York (Staples Press 1949) p. 84
- ^ Evening Mail, 14 May 1794
- ^ The Times, 26 January 1855
- ^ Fortescue, Sir John British Campaigns in Flanders 1690-1794 (extracts from Volume 4 of A History of the British Army) (London: Macmillan) (1918) p. 305
- ^ Burne p. 130
- ^ Wilson, quoted in Phipps, Ramsay Weston (1926), The Armies of the First French Republic and the Rise of the Marshals of Napoleon I, London: Oxford University Press Vol I p. 288