Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/181

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Havelock
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HHavelock

gress Hall, and removed to Clifton. At the beginning of 1813 Havelock was entered at the Middle Temple, and became a pupil of Joseph Chitty [q. v.]; his fellow-student was Thomas Talfourd [q. v.] Owing to a misunderstanding with his father in 1814, Havelock was thrown upon his own resources, and obliged to abandon the law as a profession. By the good offices of his brother William, who had distinguished himself in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, he obtained on 30 July 1815 a commission as second lieutenant in the 95th regiment, and was posted to the company of Captain (afterwards Sir) Harry Smith, who encouraged him to study military history and the art of war, and Havelock diligently read all the standard works on these subjects. He was promoted lieutenant on 24 Oct. 1821.

During the first eight years of his military life he was quartered at various stations in Great Britain and Ireland. Seeing no prospect of active service, he resolved to go to India, and at the end of 1822 exchanged into the 13th regiment, then commanded by Major (afterwards Sir) Robert Sale, and embarked in the General Kyd in January 1823 for India. Before embarkation he studied Persian and Hindostani with success under John Borthwick Gilchrist [q. v.] During the voyage a brother officer, Lieutenant James Gardner, was the means of awakening in him religious convictions which had slumbered since his mother's death, but henceforth became the guiding principle of his life.

Havelock arrived in Calcutta in May 1823, and while stationed there made the acquaintance of Bishop Heber, Archdeacon Cowie, and the Rev. T. Thomason. He visited the missionaries at Serampore, and took great interest in their work. Before, however, he had been a year in India, war was declared against Burmah, and Havelock was appointed deputy assistant adjutant-general to the army under the command of Sir Archibald Campbell. After the occupation of Rangoon Havelock was in the habit of assembling any religiously disposed soldiers, particularly those of his own regiment, for services in one of the cloisters of the pagoda of Gaudama. On the occasion of a night attack on an outpost these men were called for by the general to take the place of troops rendered unfit for duty by drink, because ‘Havelock's Saints,’ as he called them, were always sober, and to be depended on in an emergency. After some stockade fighting Havelock was prostrated with illness, and was invalided to India. At the end of a year, spent chiefly with his brother William of the 4th dragoons at Poonah, he was sufficiently recovered to rejoin the army at Prome in Burmah, where he arrived on 22 June 1825. He was present at the capture of Kemundine, Kumaroot, and Melloon, and in the engagements of Napadee, Patanago, and Pagahm Mew. When the Burmese king sued for peace, Havelock was selected to go to Ava to receive the ratification of the treaty. The army returned to India in February 1826, and Havelock rejoined his regiment at Dinapore. His narrative of the Burmese expedition was published at Serampore in 1828.

In March 1827 Havelock was appointed adjutant of the depôt of king's troops, then recently established at Chinsurah, near Serampore, the headquarters of the baptist mission; he was a constant visitor at Serampore, and much in the society of Dr. Carey and Dr. Joshua Marshman, whose daughter Hannah he married on 9 Feb. 1829, having previously been received into the baptist community. In 1831 the depôt at Chinsurah was abolished, and Havelock rejoined his regiment at Dinapore, moving with it at the end of the year to Agra. In 1834 he was appointed interpreter to the 16th regiment at Cawnpore, and the following year adjutant to his own regiment (13th), a position he held for three years and a half. Towards the end of 1836 the regiment moved to Kurnaul, and Havelock sent his wife and children to the hill station, Landour, where their bungalow was burnt down, and Mrs. Havelock nearly lost her life. Havelock was promoted captain on 5 June 1838, at the age of forty-three, after twenty-three years' service as a subaltern.

On the outbreak of the first Afghan war in the same year Havelock was appointed aide-de-camp to Sir Willoughby Cotton [q. v.], commanding the Bengal division. After a toilsome march of four and a half months the force reached Kandahar, and two months later was joined by the Bombay division, under Sir John Keane, who assumed the chief command. An advance was then made on Ghazni, and Havelock was present at the blowing in of the Cabul gate and the capture of the fortress by assault. Cabul was occupied in July 1839, and an army of occupation, under the command of Sir Willoughby Cotton, was left to support the puppet Shah Sujah on the Afghan throne. Sir Willoughby Cotton pressed Havelock to remain with him as aide-de-camp, offering him in addition the appointment of Persian interpreter, but Havelock, having kept careful notes of the campaign, was eager to publish before the interest should abate. He therefore declined the offer, and hastened to Serampore, where he wrote his work. It was pub-