May 28, I860.] OBITUARY.— GENERAL BRISBANE. 119 



defence wliicli it commands; and the report was transmitted to 

 the Commissioners then recently appointed for inspecting the 

 Defences of the Naval Arsenals and the Coasts of the country. 



General Sir T. Makdougall Brisbane, Bart., was the represen- 

 tative of a family of high antiquity and elevated position. After 

 some preliminary education, partly at home and partly at the 

 University of Edinburgh, young Brisbane was placed at an academy 

 at Kensington, where he distinguished himself by his great pro- 

 ficiency, and showed the bent of his mind by attending the lectures 

 of eminent professors, particularly on astronomy and mathematics. 

 In 1789 an ensign's commission was procured for him, and in the 

 following year he joined the 38th regiment, then stationed in Ire- 

 land, where he became acquainted with the Honourable Arthur 

 Wellesley, who was then of similar rank; and the friendship thus 

 commenced endured until the death of the Great Duke, more than 

 sixty years after. In 1793 he proceeded to Flanders, and served 

 through the campaigns of that and the following year, was wounded, 

 and endured almost incredible hardships during the retreat of the 

 British army. In a work entitled ' Eeminiscences ' (privately 

 printed shortly before his death, and which contains many curious 

 anecdotes of the Duke of Wellington), he says, "This was the 

 severest winter I have ever seen in Europe. The troops were 

 literally frozen to the ground every morning, and in one of those 

 severe nights eight hundred men were frozen to death. . . . The Ehine 

 was covered with a layer of ice 6 feet deep." In the October of 

 the next year he was ordered to the West Indies, where he served 

 with distinguished bravery under Sir E. Abercromby, Sir John 

 Moore, Sir Thomas Picton, and other generals, at the capture of 

 St. Lucia, Trinidad, and other islands. In 1799 his friends pur- 

 chased a Lieutenant-Colonelcy for him in the 69th regiment, for the 

 purpose of bringing him from the tropics, as his health had suff(^red 

 greatly there. He accordingly came to England, but only to find 

 that, contrary to expectation, the 69th had just sailed for Jamaica, 

 which, after a few months at Cheltenham to recruit, he went out to 

 join. 



Colonel Brisbane, now for the first time in command, soon 

 showed his aptitude for the situation. He endeavoured to im- 

 prove the position of the army generally, by representing to the 

 Commander in Chief the unhealthy position of the barracks through- 

 out the West Indies, as being placed on the leeward instead of the 

 windward side of the islands j but no notice was taken of his well- 



