Francis Petre

Francis Loraine Petre (22 February 1852 – 6 May 1925) was a British civil servant in India and a military historian upon his retirement. He wrote a two-volume regimental history of the Norfolk Regiment, but is best known for his works on the Napoleonic Wars. The grandson of the 11th Baron Petre, he was educated at Oscott College and joined the Bar in 1880. He took the civil service exam and subsequently joined the Indian Civil Service. He retired as Commissioner of Allahabad in 1900. Subsequently, he chose a literary career, pursuing interests in the history of the Napoleonic Wars. He wrote five books on the Wars, most of which are in use a century later. His studies of Napoleon's conquest of Prussia 1806–1807 (1901) and Napoleon's Campaign in Poland, 1806–1807 (1901) were among the first such books in the English language. He also wrote several regimental histories, a study of Simon Bolivar, and a descriptive study of Colombia. World War I interrupted his literary pursuits; he served in the Finance Branch of the Ministry of Munitions. In 1920, Petre was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Family F. Loraine Petre descended from an aristocratic English Catholic family, the House of Petre. His father, the Honourable Edmund George Petre, was born 23 June 1829 (d. 1 September 1889), in London's Marylebone district; he was the son of William Petre, 11th Baron Petre, and his second wife, Emma Agnes Howard. Edmund married Marianna Jane Kerr, born in 1831 in Midlothian (Edinburgh), Scotland, the daughter of the accountant and stock broker Lorraine M. Kerr, Esquire, They married 3 June 1851, at her home at 26 India Street in Glasgow, Lanarkshire. Edmund Petre worked as a stockbroker. Petre was born at Netherley House, in Aberdeen, Scotland on 22 February 1852, Loraine Petre's younger sister, Rosamund Catherine, was born on 25 August 1857, at the High Elms, in Hampton Court (now Hampton, London). She married in 1884 to William Henry Hare Hedges-White, an Irish Peer, the fourth and last Earl of Bantry. Petre maintained his connections to his illustrious family; in 1873, his cousin married George Forbes, 7th Earl of Granard, and he was listed as a guest.