The Battle of Albuhera: Charles de Lorentz fought with the 7th Fusiliers at this Pennisular War battle in 1811, where just 85 men survived from a force of 435
SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: A house in Addiscombe became the final home for a much-travelled old soldier, who fought in Wellington’s armies in Spain and France, and for 36 years served as a police chief in a frontier colony in South Africa, as DAVID MORGAN explains
In the years before Moira House in Addiscombe was acquired by Charles Ingham for his new progressive girls’ school, it was where Baron Charles de Lorentz lived out his last years, dying there, aged 79, in 1873.
For those neighbours who got to know him, the Baron must have had some interesting stories to tell.
He was born in 1794 and spent his childhood in the German state of Hesse-Cassel. When France’s Napoleon created the client Kingdom of Westphalia in 1807, where he installed his youngest brother, Jerome, on the throne, young Charles and his father became refugees, fleeing to London.
Settling down in his newly adopted country, and with the Napoleonic Wars at their height, a military career beckoned for the young de Lorentz. At the age of 13, in the same year as he arrived in England, de Lorentz signed up as an ensign with the British Army regiment, the 60th Foot.
Duke of Wellington: the British aristocrat commanded coalition forces in Spain and Portugal against Napoleon
An ensign was the most junior commissioned officer in British infantry regiments, where they were often responsible for carrying the company’s colours – a large flag, easily recognisable amid the smoke and confusion of the battlefield, an important rallying point for a unit’s soldiers.
Between 1807 and 1809, the 60th Foot, an infantry regiment in which its soldiers were equipped with rifles rather than the previous weapon, muskets, participated in the Battle of Copenhagen and was then deployed to Portugal where it formed part of the Duke of Wellington’s forces in the Peninsular War. They were engaged in several battles, including the Battle of Talavera.
By 1809, Charles de Lorentz was promoted to lieutenant. He transferred to the 7th Fusiliers in 1810. He was still only 16.
In April 1811, he found himself on duty in Spain again, seeing action in the Battle of Albuera. The 7th Fusiliers were in the thick of the fighting. De Lorentz was part of the 2nd Battalion. They went into the battle with 435 men. Only 85 survived, many with serious wounds.
De Lorentz was himself wounded and shipped back to England to recover.
Such were the losses suffered by the British and their allies at Albuera that Wellington famously said: “Another such battle will ruin us.”
Once recovered from his wounds, de Lorentz was transferred to the 1st Battalion of the 7th Fusiliers and returned to Iberia in 1812. In 1813, he took part in the Battle of Vitoria, where Wellington’s victory over the French and Spanish was another significant milestone in the war with Napoleon.
The British and allied troops pursued the retreating French army, engaging them in battle at Sorauren, also called the Battle of the Pyrenees. The 7th Fusiliers again suffered heavy casualties.
De Lorentz remained with the army as they crossed into France. He was severely wounded at the Battle of Orthez in February 1814. This was a confrontation where Wellington’s troops forced the French, under Marshal Soult, back across the River Adour, down in the south west of the country, near Bayonne.
Colonial policing: after retiring from the army, de Lorentz spent 36 years heading the police in the Cape Colony
This campaign in early 1814 eventually saw coalition armies capture Paris and force Emperor Napoleon to abdicate, which resulted in him being sent into exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba.
De Lorentz, recovering from his latest wounds, was now sent with his regiment to the Americas, where he took part in the Battle of New Orleans on January 8 1815.
This was to prove to be the decisive battle of the War of 1812, a campaign waged by Great Britain against the recently formed United States, largely as an attempted land grab against the young nation in the hope of regaining some territories lost during the Revolutionary War fought 30 years earlier. It only served to demonstrate that the British generals had failed to learn very much from their previous losing campaigns.
The fighting in what is now Chalmette, Louisiana, took place despite a peace treaty having already been signed in Europe: the news hadn’t crossed the Atlantic in time to prevent the battle.
De Lorentz and the Fusiliers were initially kept in reserve, as it was thought that if New Orleans was taken, then experienced soldiers would be needed to keep order. But plans changed, and the reserves were called up for an assault on the Crescent battery, an important position on the left front of American General Andrew Jackson’s forces.
The British troops, after some early success, were unable to hold their gains. Coming under extreme pressure, in fierce hand-to-hand combat, the British were driven out and de Lorentz was lucky to survive, as the majority of the officers were killed.
De Lorentz was wounded, again, and was lucky to escape with his life when the back of his white shoulder belt was cut in two by a musket ball.
De Lorentz was by now a military veteran of campaigns in Portugal, Spain and France, and now in America, all by the time he was 20 years old. But New Orleans would prove to be his last time in combat. The date of 1815 is significant.
De Lorentz and the Fusiliers were withdrawn from America. They were needed elsewhere, and quickly. Napoleon had escaped from his exile on Elba. But sailing back across the Atlantic, de Lorentz and the Fusiliers failed to reach Waterloo in time for the battle, which took place on June 18 and finally ended more than a decade of warfare across Europe and around the world.
De Lorentz appeared on the Grenadier Guards roll, five years later, in 1820, claiming half pay – a form of reservist policy, saving the government some money when they no longer needed so many soldiers.
On December 1 1825, he married Edith Mills in Marylebone. There had also been a previous ceremony in Scotland.
Different audiences: as part of his work, de Lorentz was placing advertisements in local newspapers in English and Dutch
What might the future hold for de Lorentz with a new wife? Looking for a job, he could always show his Peninsular medal, with seven clasps, as proof of his bravery and good service to the country.
De Lorentz didn’t have to wait long for a job offer. Now with the title Baron, he and his wife were off to South Africa. In 1826, he was appointed as the first Superintendent of the Cape Police by Lord Charles Somerset, the Governor of the Cape Colony.
Top cop: how de Lorentz was portrayed during his time in the Cape
The Duchess of Cambridge – the wife Prince Adolphus, the seventh son of King George III – was said to have put in a good word for the Baron. There was a good reason for this, as the Duchess was Princess Augusta from Hesse-Cassel, the place where de Lorentz had been born.
His appointment as Police Superintendent also revealed all his first names: he was sworn in as Charles George William Christian de Lorentz.
His new municipal police force was to replace the old Dutch system of the burgher watch, overseen by black Africans, referred to disparagingly by the Cape Boers as “caffers”.
The caffers were slaves of a sort but were not subject to curfews. They roamed the streets day and night administering a sort of rough justice and were permitted to carry arms. They also had the right to detain any burgher who broke the law.
For the first few years in the Cape, de Lorentz found his job hard. He rarely had more than 20 constables at his disposal. Recruitment was difficult since the duties were unpopular and the pay was poor: £45 per year – equivalent to £6,000 today – was the wage for a constable. De Lorentz was on £600 per year.
Most of the newer recruits were from the British army, who had bought their discharge.
Absenteeism among the constables was all too common and discipline was lax. Drunkenness was rife and even de Lorentz was on one occasion accused of drunk and rowdy behaviour. It wasn’t until 1840, when an experienced police officer from London was appointed, that things really began to change. Inspector John King arrived and immediately set to work reorganising the constabulary.
De Lorentz, as well as being the Superintendent of Police, became a magistrate, too, empowered to try in the Police Court minor cases involving pilfering, vagrancy or disturbances of the peace. More complex cases were heard in the Magistrates’ Court.
Forced to deal with many local disputes, de Lorentz was considered by many to be a fair and thoughtful magistrate.
His name appeared regularly in the Cape Colony’s local newspapers. In 1827, he issued a plea for all families to be careful when picking wild mushrooms, after all three children from the Laing family died as a result of their misadventure.
It was under de Lorentz that work began in 1830 to send prisoners to Robben Island, the prison island where the South African apartheid state would incarcerate Nelson Mandela between 1964 and 1982.
Street name: a road in Cape Town still carries de Lorentz’s name
De Lorentz heard one case in 1830 involving a white servant girl accused of running away. During the procedures, de Lorentz told the girl, “I see no distinction between the colour of any of my servants.” Others in the Cape Colony noted his views accordingly.
In another case in January of the same year, an appeal was made by de Lorentz in the local paper, The Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette. A slave girl, named Rachel belonging to the widow Botha, had been held at the police station for two weeks. If no one came forward to claim her, then Rachel would be freed and any expenses occurred by the police force would be retrieved from the family of widow Botha.
Another task which he had to undertake was to arrange the supervision of prisoners to keep the streets clean. One commentator described the streets as “dung-strewn”. Residents were expected to keep the areas in front of their houses clean, but many didn’t bother.
Final word: a newspaper obituary for the Baron in 1873
Despite sceptics questioning his background, referring to de Lorentz as a “self-styled baron” and “eccentric”, he must have been reasonably good at his job. He retired from his position in 1862, having held it for 36 years.
Baron de Lorentz returned to England with his wife, where he received pension of £600 a year.
The couple had only a short retirement together as Edith died in 1865 at Powell Villa, near Weymouth. A note was placed in the Gentleman’s Magazine to inform friends and acquaintances.
It was some time after that that de Lorentz moved into Moira House.
When he died in 1873, it was said that he was one of the last remaining officers who had fought in the Peninsular War. His death was announced in Cape Town in the local paper after a ship docked with the news.
And to this day, for this hero of the Napoleonic Wars forgotten in the history of Croydon, there remains a street named after de Lorentz in Cape Town.
David Morgan, pictured, is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- School for girls where learning was more valued than exams
- Music hall star Minnie Cunningham does a turn for North End
- Enter the Almshouses and travel back in time four centuries
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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Baron Charles de Lorentz does sound quite a character, joining the army as a 13 year-old, and being a veteran of conflicts in four countries by the time he was 20, and then spending a long time in South Africa as the first police chief of the Cape Colony. My main focus is on buildings in Croydon and I will certainly do some more research on Moira House, which was apparently the last home of the baron, before later becoming the site of Moira House School (in last week’s Sunday supplement), and having an undisclosed link to the Earl of Moira, an Irish aristocrat……….