Biographical Note

LT. GENERAL GOVERNOR SIR BENJAMIN D'URBAN, KCB, KTS, GCB
 (1777-1849)

D’Urban was born in Halesworth, Suffolk, England in 1777. He entered the army as a Cornet in the 2nd Dragoon Guards, or Queen's Bays in 1793. He was promoted Lieutenant and Captain in 1794when he accompanied his regiment to the Netherlands, where he served during the retreat from Holland, and in Westphalia after the return of the infantry to England, under the command of Major General David Dundas. In 1795 he exchanged into the 29th Dragoons in order to accompany Sir Ralph Abercromby to the West Indies, and served under him in San Domingo in 1796. In April 1797 he returned to England in command of the remnant of his regiment. He later exchanged into the 20th Dragoons, and acted as Aide-de-Camp to Major General the Earl of Pembroke, commanding at Plymouth until 1799 when he accompanied Major-General St. John to Jamaica as Aide-de-Camp, but returned in November of that year on being promoted Major into the Warwickshire Fencibles.

In April 1800, and joined the Royal Military College in order to instruct officers in staff duties and the higher branches of the military profession. He was appointed Major in the 25th Light Dragoons, but still continued at the Royal Military College, where his proficiency was so great that he was in 1803 appointed Superintendent of the junior department of. the College. He was promoted Lieutenant-Colonel by brevet in 1805 and accompanied his regiment on foreign service, serving during the futile expedition to Hanover under Lord Cathcart. In 1806 he was made Lieutenant-Colonel of the 9th Garrison Battalion, and in 1807 of the 1st West India Regiment; he remained all the time employed in various staff appointments, and particularly in establishing a system of communication by means of the semaphore between Dublin and the ports of the southern and south-western districts of Ireland. Appointed Assistant Quartermaster-General at Dublin, he transferred to Sir David Baird’s command accompanying that general to the Peninsula in the same capacity, but was immediately detached to the force left under Sir John Cradock in the neighbourhood of Lisbon. He further served under Sir Robert Wilson in the Lusitanian Legion in Castille and Estremadura until April 1809, when General William Carr Beresford arrived to organize the Portuguese army.

Beresford knew of D'Urban's high reputation as a staff officer, and he was immediately selected to fill the important post of Quartermaster-General of the Portuguese Army, with the rank of Colonel in the Portuguese army. He most ably seconded Beresford's efforts, and served in that capacity throughout the Peninsular war without once going on leave, and was successively promoted Brigadier-General and Major General in the Portuguese Army, and Colonel in the English Army on 4 June 1813. He was with Beresford at all the great battles of the Peninsular war, and at its close was made one of the first KCB.'s (Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath) on the extension of the order of the Bath, he also received the KTS (Knight of the Tower and Sword) by the Portuguese, and received a gold cross and five clasps for the nine pitched battles and sieges at which he had been present, namely: Busaco, Albuera, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, the Pyrenees, the Nivelle, the Nive, and Toulouse.

He returned to England and was appointed Colonel of the Royal Staff Corps and Deputy Quartermaster-General at the Horse Guards. He was made a KCH (Knight Commander of the Hanoverian Guelphic Order) in 1818, and promoted Major-General in 1819, when he was also made Governor of Antigua. In 1824 he became Lieutenant Governor of Demerara-Essequibo. In 1825 he was transferred in the same capacities to Barbadoes. In 1831 he carried out the amalgamation of Demerara-Essequibo with Berbice to form British Guiana (now Guyana).  In 1833 he was appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Districts of the Cape of Good Hope, a post which he held until his promotion to the rank of Lieutenant-General in 1837. In 1840 he was made a GCB (Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath) and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Cape of Good Hope.

The chief event of his governorship was his occupation of Natal, where a large body of Dutch Boers had settled in 1830's, being dissatisfied with the English administration of the Cape Colony and the increasing immigration of English colonists. His administration was complicated by this exodus of Dutch farmers to the far north and east (known as the Great Trek) and the outbreak of the Cape Frontier Wars created by incursions of Bantu-speaking Xhosa peoples. He drove back the invaders and annexed the territory between the Keiskamma and Great Kei (Groot-Kei) rivers. He abolished slavery, established municipal and legislative councils, occupied Natal, now KwaZulu-Natal, and named it as a new colony for the British Empire. To commemorate this the name of the principal port was changed from Port Natal to Durban.

In 1847 D'Urban declined a high military appointment in British Raj India offered him by Sir Robert Peel and instead accepted appointment as Commander of Her Majesty's forces in British North America and set up his headquarters in Montreal. He remained in Montreal until his death in 1849. He was originally buried at the Papineau military cemetery in Montreal. However, the graves had to be moved because they were in the way of building a new access ramp to the Jacques-Cartier bridge. Sir D'Urban's remains now rest at the National Field of Honour, a military cemetery owned by the Last Post Fund in Pointe Claire where there is an obelisk to his memory.

From the Sir Charles Stuart, Lord Rothesay, Correspondence. Stuart was His Britannic Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Portugal during the greater part of the Peninsular War (10 January 1810 to 26 May 1814). He was a personal friend and confidante of Wellington and Nelson, member of the Portuguese Regency Council (the only British Subject in the war ever permitted to hold an official position in a foreign government while also representing Britain), and later ambassador to Netherlands & France. The most important foreign diplomat of the Peninsular War, his archive of diplomatic, military and intelligence dispatches are second only to Wellington's Dispatches.

 Offered by Berryhill & Sturgeon, Ltd