Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lindsay, Alexander (1785-1872)
LINDSAY, Sir ALEXANDER (1785–1872), general, colonel-commandant royal (late Bengal) artillery, son of James Lindsay, was born in 1785, and at the age of nine received an ensigncy in the old 104th (royal Manchester volunteers) regiment of foot, in which he became lieutenant in 1795. The regiment was disbanded in the same year, and Lindsay remained on half-pay as a reduced officer to the end of his long life. He entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and passed out in 1803, as a cadet for the Bengal artillery, and received his first Indian commission as first lieutenant (on augmentation) 14 Aug. 1804. He became captain on 26 March 1813, major on 30 June 1820, lieutenant-colonel on 1 May 1824, colonel and colonel-commandant on 2 July 1835. He served with the Bengal foot artillery at the siege of Gohud in 1806; at the sieges of Komanur and Gunnowrie and other affairs in Bundelkund in 1807–8. While with the Dinapore division of Ochterlony's army in the Nepâl campaigns of 1814–16, he was very severely wounded at the siege of Harriarpore in 1816, a musket-ball shattering the forefinger and thumb of the right hand, and entering the right hip-joint. He took part, however, in the siege of Hattras in March 1817, and in the operations against the Pindarrees in 1817–18. He was subsequently superintendent of telegraphs between Calcutta and Chunar, and agent for the manufacture of gunpowder at Allahabad, until disqualified by promotion. He commanded the artillery of General Morrison's division engaged in Arracan during the first Burmese war. He became a major-general in 1838, lieutenant-general in 1851, general in 1859, was transferred to the royal army as a colonel-commandant with the Bengal artillery in 1860, and was made K.C.B. in 1862. He had the East Indian Company's war medal, with clasps, for Nepâl and Ava. Lindsay married in 1820 the daughter of Captain Donald Mackenzie of Hartfield, Applecross, Ross-shire; she died in 1863. Lindsay died at Earlybank, Perth, on 22 Jan. 1872, aged 87.
[Dod's Knightage, 1871; English and Indian Army Lists; Stubbs's Hist. Bengal Artillery (London, 1877), vols. i. ii. chaps. ix. x. xi. xii.; information supplied by the India Office.]