Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/93

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Lambert
79
Lawes

the third battalion in the campaign of 1794, served with it in Ireland during the rebellion of 1798, and in the expedition to Holland in 1799. He was promoted captain and lieutenant-colonel on 14 May 1801. He served in Portugal and Spain in 1808, and was present at Corunna, and he commanded the light companies of the guards in the Walcheren expedition of 1809. He became colonel in the army on 25 July 1810, and embarked for Cadiz in command of the third battalion on 30 May 1811. In January 1812 he was sent to Carthagena with two battalions. He remained there three months, and in October he joined Wellington's army at Salamanca.

On 4 June 1813 he was promoted major-general, and was appointed to a brigade of the sixth division. He commanded it at the battles of the Nivelle, Nive, Orthes, and Toulouse, and was specially mentioned in despatches for the Nivelle and Toulouse (13 Nov. 1813, 12 April 1814). He received the thanks of parliament and the gold cross, and was made K.C.B. on 2 Jan. 1815. Having been sent to America, he joined the army under Sir Edward Pakenham [q. v.] below New Orleans on 6 Jan. 1815, with the 7th and 43rd regiments. In the unsuccessful attack on the American intrenchments, made two days afterwards, he commanded the reserve. Pakenham being killed, and General Gibbs mortally wounded, the chief command devolved on Lambert. He decided not to renew the attack, withdrew the troops which had been sent across the Mississippi, and retreating on the 18th, re-embarked his force on the 27th (James, ii. 543-7; Porter, i. 363). It proceeded to the bay of Mobile, where Fort Bowyer was taken on 12 Feb., and next day news arrived that peace had been signed.

Lambert returned to Europe in time to command the tenth brigade of British infantry at Waterloo. The brigade joined the army from Ghent only on the morning of 18 June, and was at first posted in reserve at Mont St. Jean. After 3 p.m. it was moved up to the front line to support the fifth (Picton's) division, and one of its regiments, the 27th, which had to be kept in square near La Haye Sainte, lost two-thirds of its men, a heavier loss than that of any other regiment (Wellington Despatches, Supplementary, x. 537; Waterloo Letters, pp. 391-402). Lambert was mentioned in Wellington's despatch, and received the thanks of parliament, the order of St. Vladimir of Russia (3rd class), and that of Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria (commander). He commanded the eighth infantry brigade in the army of occupation in France.

He was promoted lieutenant-general on 27 May 1825, and general on 23 Nov. 1841. He was given the colonelcy of the 10th regiment on 18 Jan. 1824, and the G.C.B. on 19 July 1838. He died at Weston House, Thames Ditton, on 14 Sept. 1847, aged 75. In 1816 he married a daughter of John Morant of Brocklehurst Park, New Forest.

[Gent. Mag. 1847, ii. 539; Burke's Peerage; Hamilton's Grenadier Guards; Royal Military Calendar, iii. 307; Wellington's Despatches; Siborne's Waterloo Letters; James's Military Occurrences of the War between Great Britain and America, ii. 370-94, 543-7; Porter's Royal Engineers.]

LAMINGTON, Baron. [See Cochrane-Baillie, Alexander Dundas Ross Wishart, 1816–1890.]

LAWES, Sir JOHN BENNET, first baronet (1814–1900), agriculturist, was the only son of John Bennet Lawes (d. 1822), lord of the manor of Rothamsted, near St. Albans, Hertfordshire, and his wife Marianne, daughter of John Sherman of Drayton, co. Oxford. He was born at Rothamsted on 28 Dec. 1814. He was educated at Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 14 March 1833; but, as he said in an autobiographical note contributed to the 'Agricultural Gazette' for 3 Jan. 1888 (p. 13), 'in his days Eton and Oxford were not of much assistance to those whose tastes were scientific rather than classical, and consequently his early pursuits were of a most desultory character.' He left Oxford without a degree. From his earliest years, however, he 'had a taste for chemistry,' and he described how at the age of twenty he had 'one of the best bedrooms in the house fitted up with stoves, retorts, and all the apparatus necessary for chemical research.' At this period his attention was chiefly directed to 'the composition of drugs, and he almost knew the Pharmacopœia by heart;' he also spent some time in the laboratory of Anthony Todd Thomson [q. v.] at University College, London.

Lawes entered into possession of the family estate in 1834 on coming of age, and made experiments with growing plants (such as poppy, hemlock, colchicum, belladonna) which contained the active principles of drugs. He says, however, that 'for three or four years he does not remember any connection between agriculture and chemistry crossing his mind; but the remark of a gentleman, Lord Dacre, who farmed near him, who pointed out that in one farm bones were