Sir George Walker, 1st Baronet

Early life

George Townshend Walker was born on the Isle of Wight on 25 May 1764, the eldest child of Major Nathaniel Walker of the Queen's Rangers and Henrietta, the only heir of Captain John Bagster of the Royal Navy. His paternal great-great-grandfather was Sir Walter Walker, advocate to Catherine of Braganza, the wife of King Charles II. He had two younger brothers; Frederick who became a general in the army and Charles who became a post captain in the navy. Walker was educated at Rugby School from 1773. His father, while fighting in the American War of Independence, had him commissioned into the 95th Regiment of Foot as an ensign on 4 March 1782.

Military career

Early career

Walker was promoted to lieutenant in the 95th on 13 March 1783, serving on Jersey, but the regiment was disbanded on 31 May as part of the cut-downs at the end of the American War of Independence. He instead joined the Second Battalion of the 71st Regiment of Foot on 22 June of the same year; again Walker was unlucky in his choice of regiments, as his battalion was disbanded in October as well. On 15 March 1784 Walker joined his third regiment in two years, the 36th Regiment of Foot. It was stationed in southern India, at which he arrived on 10 March 1785. He was then appointed deputy quartermaster general for the army in the Madras Presidency. In February 1786 he participated in operations against the tax farmers of the Nawab of Arcot, who had previously handed control of taxation in his lands to the East India Company but had attempted to continue taking taxes despite this, at Tinnevelli.

Walker was brought down with jungle fever soon after this and he was invalided home to England in 1787. Being away from his regiment, he chose to transfer to the 35th Regiment of Foot on 25 July 1787 and then from May 1788 served as an aide de camp to General Thomas Bruce, who was a staff officer in Ireland. He transferred regiments again on 13 March 1789, this time to the 14th Regiment of Foot, and was promoted to captain lieutenant. The regiment was serving in Jamaica at the time but Walker chose not to join it there and instead went to study tactics and German in Germany. His regiment returned to England in 1790 and Walker returned to command his company at Hilsea Barracks. Continuing to change regiments to assist his quest for promotion, Walker was promoted to captain in the 60th Regiment of Foot on 4 May 1791. He served at the regiment's depot in England, at the time the rest of the regiment was stationed exclusively in North America, until Britain became involved in the French Revolutionary Wars in February 1793. He then volunteered to go with new recruits to the army of the Duke of York on the Flanders campaign in March, as part of which he fought at the Battle of Tournay on 10 May 1794. After this he was again appointed to the staff of the army's quartermaster general, and he served as such as the army retreated through the Dutch Republic at the end of the year.

Regimental command

After having been used to fulfil several confidential missions which took him to The Hague, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam, in early 1795 Walker was appointed Inspector of Foreign Corps, for the purpose of which he was sent to south-west Germany and Switzerland. Here he assisted the French royalist officer Louis de Roll in forming Roll's Regiment for service in the British army. When the allied campaign against France began to falter in April 1795 Walker took command of the regiment and took it to Civitavecchia in Italy where they embarked for England in August 1796. He was promoted to major in the 60th on 27 August despite still being detached from them in his role as inspector. In October Spain declared war on Britain and began to threaten Britain's ally Portugal. To assist in defending the country, Roll's Regiment was sent to Lisbon in June 1797, with Walker having gone ahead of it in March. He served as an aide de camp to the second in command of the British army, Major-General Simon Fraser, until June when he was transferred to the staff of the overall Anglo-Portuguese commander, Friedrich Karl August, Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont.

Later in the same month Walker was again sent home from campaign because of medical issues. He served as an Inspecting Field Officer of Recruiting in Manchester between February 1798 and March 1799, during which time on 6 September he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the 50th Regiment of Foot. He briefly commanded this regiment in Portugal in early 1799, but was posted to the British military mission assisting the Russians in the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland in October. Soon after the invasion ended and Walker evacuated with the rest of the army to the Channel Islands. Walker stayed with the Russians until they returned to their homeland in October 1800. He then re-joined the 50th, commanding them as a garrison unit at Malta from August 1801. The regiment moved in May 1802 to serve in Belfast, Ireland, where they assisted in putting down the Irish rebellion of 1803. Walker's next chance to see action did not come until 1807 when the regiment was sent to join a brigade commanded by Brigadier-General Brent Spencer.

This brigade formed part of the army that attacked Copenhagen from August to September. The brigade was not broken up after the Copenhagen campaign, and instead sailed in December to attack naval installations at Cádiz and in the Mediterranean Sea. The brigade's naval transports were upset by constant bad weather as they travelled south, however, and they only reached Gibraltar in March 1808, by which time the opportunity to attack the installations had gone. Walker himself did not make Gibraltar at the same time as the rest of his regiment, as his ship had been separated from the rest of the convoy and driven all the way to Sicily, and he only learned of his regiment's landing at Gibraltar several weeks after the event, at which point he joined them.

General

Walker was promoted to major-general on 4 June 1811. The Spanish took Santander on 14 August while he was still working as a liaison. By this time Walker had grown exhausted with the demands and lack of coordination between the Spanish armies, and he successfully applied to Wellington for a regular command in his army. After having briefly served as a staff officer to Wellington, he was given command of the 2nd Brigade of the 5th Division on 2 October.

At the siege of Badajoz on 6 April 1812 his division was called upon to commit a feint attack against one of the city's bastions, and Walker's brigade led them in this attack. The feint was unexpectedly successful and they captured three bastions before retreating in fear that a series of mines were going to be detonated under the walls they had just taken. Walker cajoled his men into continuing the attack despite this, and it would go on to be successful, but soon after he was shot in the chest from very close range by a musket, the bullet of which was deflected by his pocket watch but still entered his body, and then bayoneted four times in the proceeding fighting. The soldier who had bayoneted him ripped his epaulettes off him and prepared to kill him, but Walker was saved by another French soldier because of the masonic signs he had begun to make. The Frenchman cared for him; he survived and was mentioned in dispatches for the action. He lost a great amount of blood and had several ribs broken; it was thought he might die at one point and he was so weak that he was unable to be moved from Badajoz for four months after the fighting had ended. He later found the French soldier who had cared for him in a prisoner of war camp in Edinburgh and rewarded him.

After having been sent home to continue recuperating from his wounds in August, Walker was made colonel of the Regiment de Meuron, a Swiss mercenary unit, on 24 October. He had recovered sufficiently by the beginning of 1813 to return to the Peninsular War, where he was given the 1st Brigade of the 2nd Division on 25 May. He continued recuperating after this and did not physically assume command of the brigade until 4 August. His brigade was made up of the 50th, 71st, and 92nd Regiment of Foot. Prior to Walker's arrival, the army had fought the Battle of the Pyrenees and the 2nd Division's commander, Lieutenant-General William Stewart, had been wounded during this. Walker served as the temporary commander of the division until his return, and then commanded his brigade at the Battle of Nivelle on 10 November. In October the commander of the 7th Division, Lieutenant-General Lord Dalhousie, left the peninsula and on 18 November Walker was appointed as his temporary replacement. He commanded the division at the Battle of the Nive between 10 and 13 December and the Battle of Orthez on 27 February 1814, where he was wounded while leading one of his brigades in an attack and again mentioned in dispatches. Dalhousie took up his command again in March and Walker returned to his brigade.

Personal life

Walker was a poor man throughout his career, widely known to be existing totally on his pay; the military historians Robert Burnham and Ron McGuigan suggest that one of the factors that finally swayed his appointment to the Madras Army was that the extra pay from it would assist him in supporting his family. The primary route of promotion for a British Army officer in the period was through the purchasing of commissions, but with his lack of income this was not a route available to Walker. Unusually he never purchased a single promotion, but was instead appointed to every rank. It has been suggested that his climbing of the ranks was assisted by an unknown benefactor, perhaps a member of the Royal Family; his father was given an apartment at Hampton Court Palace upon his retirement and Walker's initial appointment to the 95th was brought about by Queen Charlotte.

Walker was known to be personally brave, as seen at Vimeiro and Badajoz, but was less well-liked for his command of units outside of battle. He was a strict disciplinarian and his long periods on the staff instead of in regimental duties in his early career may have been the cause of this. One officer who served in the 50th said of him that he was:

"endued with extraordinary coolness and intrepidity of mind, knew right well how to go about his work...with a remarkably handsome set of features, animated by keen expressive eyes, that were full of intelligence and fire."

Walker married Anna Allen, the only daughter of Richard Allen of Bury, Lancashire, in July 1789. Together they had two daughters before her death in 1814:

Anna Louisa Walker (5 June 1796 – 9 July 1828)

Harriet Eliza Walker (b. 21 November 1797)

As his second wife he married Helen Caldcleugh, the daughter of Royal Society fellow Alexander Caldcleugh, on 15 August 1820. They had four sons and two daughters:

Sir George Ferdinand Radziwill Forestier-Walker, 2nd Baronet (24 May 1825 – 1896)

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