John Lysaght Pennefather

General Sir John Lysaght Pennefather GCB (9 September 1798 – 9 May 1872) was a British soldier who won two very remarkable victories. First, at Meanee, India, where it was said that 500 British soldiers defeated 35,000 Indians. Second, at the Battle of Inkerman on 5 November 1854 during the Crimean War, where he commanded the 2nd Division, a force of 3,000 soldiers who fought in the fog and played a key role in the defeat of 35,000 Russians. Early life He was born on 9 September 1798, the third son of the Rev. John Pennefather of County Tipperary and Elizabeth Percival, and nephew of Richard Pennefather, Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland). The Pennefathers of Darling Hill were a junior branch of a long-established landowning family which came to Ireland in about 1665. Career He entered the army on 14 January 1818 as a Cornet in the 7th Dragoon Guards, became a Lieutenant on 20 February 1823, and a Captain on half-pay on 5 November 1825. On 8 April 1826 he was appointed to the 22nd Regiment of Foot (the Cheshire regiment), in which he became Major on 22 March 1831, and Lieutenant-Colonel on 18 October 1839. He rose by the regular grades of promotion without having purchased any of his grades. Up to this time he had seen no active service, but in 1843 his was the one European regiment in the small force with which Sir Charles Napier won the battle of Miani (Meanee) (17 February), and it bore the brunt of that action, in which two thousand men defeated thirty-five thousand. The battalion was about five hundred strong, nearly all Irishmen, like their Colonel and their General. "The noble soldier, Pennefather" (as Napier described him), fell wounded mortally, it was thought, on the top of the bank that bordered the riverbed and formed the crest of the Baluchis' position. He was made a C.B., and received the thanks of Parliament.