Gerard Lake, 1st Viscount Lake

Gerard Lake, 1st Viscount Lake (27 July 1744 – 20 February 1808), was a British general.

Background

He entered the foot guards in 1758, becoming lieutenant (captain in the army) 1762, captain (lieutenant-colonel) in 1776, major 1784, and lieutenant colonel in 1792, by which time he was a general officer in the army. He served with his regiment in Germany in 1760-1762 and with a composite battalion in the Battle of Yorktown of 1781.

After this he was equerry to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV. In 1790 he became a major-general, and in 1793 was appointed to command the Guards Brigade in the Duke of York's army in Flanders during the French Revolutionary Wars. He was in command at the brilliant affair of Lincelles, on 18 August 1793, and served on the continent (except for a short time when seriously ill) until April 1794. He had now sold his lieutenant-colonelcy in the guards, and had become colonel of the 53rd foot and governor of Limerick in Ireland. In 1797 he was promoted lieutenant-general.

1798 rebellion in Ireland

In the following year the Irish Rebellion broke out. Lake, who was then serving in Ireland, succeeded Sir Ralph Abercromby in command of the troops in April 1798, issued a proclamation ordering the surrender of all arms by the civil population of Ulster unleashing a reign of terror which became known as the "dragooning of Ulster".

Lake then took overall command of a force of some 20,000 troops to crush the successful Wexford rebels and defeated the main rebel army at Vinegar Hill (near Enniscorthy, County Wexford) on 21 June. His policy of brutality towards rebels found in arms brought him into conflict with the more humane Lord Cornwallis who had now assumed the chief command in Ireland and had instituted an Amnesty Act to encourage rebels to lay down their arms.

In August Cornwallis sent Lake to oppose a French expedition of 1,000 troops which had landed at Killala Bay, County Mayo on 23rd August. On the 29th of the same month Lake arrived at Castlebar with a force of 6,000 troops, but only to witness the humiliating rout of his troops under General Hely-Hutchinson (afterwards 2nd Earl of Donoughmore) and the loss of his personal baggage. He eventually retrieved this disaster by forcing the surrender of the French at the Battle of Ballinamuck on 8 September.

Indian campaigns

In 1799 Lake returned to England, and soon afterwards became Commander-in-Chief of British India. He took over his duties at Calcutta in July 1801, and applied himself to the improvement of the Indian army, especially in the direction of making all arms, infantry, cavalry and artillery, more mobile and more manageable. In 1802 he was made a full general.

On the outbreak the Second Anglo-Maratha War in 1803 General Lake took the field against Sindhia, and within two months defeated the Marathas at Kol (now called Aligarh), after storming Aligarh Fort during the Battle of Ally Ghur (September 1,1803), then took Delhi and Agra, and won the great victory at the Battle of Laswari (November 1, 1803), where the power of Sindhia was completely broken, with the loss of thirty-one disciplined battalions, trained and officered by Frenchmen, and 426 pieces of ordnance. This defeat, followed a few days later by Major-General Arthur Wellesley's victory at the Battle of Argaon, compelled Sindhia to come to terms, and a treaty with him was signed in December 1803.

Operations were, however, continued against his confederate, Yashwantrao Holkar, who, on 17 November 1804, was allegedly defeated by Lake at the Battle of Farrukhabad.

But the fortress of Bharatpur held out against four assaults early in 1805, and Cornwallis, who succeeded Lord Wellesley as Governor-General of India in July of that year, superseding Lake at the same time as commander-in-chief, determined to put an end to the war. But after the death of Cornwallis in October of the same year, Lake pursued Holkar into the Punjab and compelled him to surrender at Amritsar in December 1805.

Lord Wellesley in a despatch attributed much of the success of the war to Lake's matchless energy, ability and valour. For his services Lake received the thanks of Parliament, and, in September 1804, was rewarded by being created Baron Lake, of Delhi and Laswary and of Aston Clinton in the County of Buckingham. At the conclusion of the war he returned to England, and in 1807 he was created Viscount Lake of Delhi and Laswary and of Aston Clinton in the County of Buckingham.

Parliamentary career

Like many contemporaries Lake pursued both a parliamentary and military career. He represented Aylesbury in the British House of Commons from 1790 to 1802, and he also was brought into the Irish Parliament by the government as member for Armagh in 1799 to vote for the Act of Union. He died in London on 20 February 1808.

References

*See H Pearse, "Memoir of the Life and Services of Viscount Lake" (London, 1908); GB Malleson, "Decisive Battles of India" (1883); J Grant Duff, "History of the Mahrattas" (1873); short memoir in "From Cromwell to Wellington", ed. Spenser Wilkinson.
*1911