Page 137 - Wish Stream Year of 2017

The life and times of Major
General John Gaspard Le
Marchant, founder of the Royal
Military College (1766–1812)
John Gaspard Le Marchant was a notable and visionary man, who was celebrated in his time. He was admired for his skill as an artist and as a superb horseman and swords- man, as well as for being an exemplary cavalry commander and, of course, the architect of the eventual Staff College and Royal Military Acad- emy, Sandhurst. His military achievements are well-known here at Sandhurst and include:
• His experience in the Flanders Campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1795) convinced him of the urgent need for the pro- fessional training of cavalry and infantry offic- ers, leading eventually to the establishment of the Royal Military College (RMC), which he led and developed for its initial twelve years.
• His development of a new cavalry sabre and sword training throughout the British cavalry.
• His tragic death on the battlefield at Sala- manca, Spain in 1812, after personally lead- ing a tactically brilliant and devastating charge of one thousand sabres of the Heavy Brigade against the French Army.
But probably little is generally known of his more personal life and times, and it is that which this article attempts to address.
The early years
Le Marchant’s father (John Le Marchant Sen- ior) was a Guernseyman from an ancient and well-connected family of great wealth and coal influence. He was the second son of Thomas Le Marchant of Le Marchant Manor in L’Hvyreuse, St Peter Port. The Le Marchants were one of the few remaining descendants of a Norman family which had settled in Guernsey during the reign of King John (1199 – 1216). John Le Marchant
Ian Pattison (Sandhurst Trust Volunteer Guide)
Maj Gen John Gaspard Le Marchant by Henry Haley
Junior, the eldest son of the marriage, was born near Amiens, Picardy in February 1766, at the family seat of his maternal grandfather, Count Heinrich Justus Hirzel de St Gratien. (Wealthy women at that time seemed to have returned to their parental homes to give birth to their first child or two.)
The Count’s eldest daughter, Marie, had married Le Marchant’s father in 1764. The Count’s family were Protestant, originating in German-speaking Switzerland, and acquired the French element of their title through marriage. John Gaspard received the name of one of his ancestors, the
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