use of all the troops under his command. In February 1794 Prince Ernest was gazetted to the rank of a major-general in the Hanoverian army, and when the campaign opened he was appointed to the command of the first brigade of Hanoverian cavalry in charge of the outposts. In this capacity he was constantly engaged with the enemy, and in the first battle of Tournay, 10 May 1794, he lost his left eye and was severely wounded in the right arm in a hand-to-hand conflict. Recuperating in England, he hurried back to the army in the November of the same year before his wounds were thoroughly healed. Again conspicuous in the field, he in the sortie from Nimeguen on 10 Dec. 1794 lifted a French dragoon off his horse and carried him prisoner into the English camp. Prince Ernest then commanded the Hanoverian cavalry of the rear guard through the winter retreat before the French army, until the troops returned to England and Hanover respectively in February 1795.
In 1796 Prince Ernest returned to England with a high military reputation for courage, and in July 1799 he was made lieutenant-general in the English service, his first rank in the English army; his commission was antedated May 1798. In 1799 also he became governor of Chester. On 4 April 1799 George III created his four younger sons peers of the realm. Prince Ernest became Duke of Cumberland and of Teviotdale in the peerage of Great Britain, and Earl of Armagh in the peerage of Ireland. Parliament also granted him 12,000l. a year, which was in 1804 increased to 18,000l. In the same year (1799) the duke was appointed to command the division of cavalry which was to support the expedition of the Duke of York to the Helder, but owing to the immediate failure of the campaign the cavalry never embarked. On 28 March 1801 he was appointed colonel of the 15th light dragoons, afterwards hussars, and in April 1808 he was gazetted general (commission antedated September 1803); he also received some lucrative military commands, such as that of the Severn district, which he held from 1801 to 1804, and of the south-western district, from 1804 to 1807. Far more important than these military commands was the commencement of Cumberland's political career. He soon gained an important influence over the mind of the Prince of Wales, and in the House of Lords he showed himself a clear, if not very eloquent, speaker and a ready debater. He was a constant attendant at debates, and soon obtained much weight in the councils of his party. From the first he took his place as a tory partisan and a supporter of the protestant religion. His first speech in parliament was delivered in opposition to the Adultery Prevention Bill in 1800, and in 1803 he seconded an address from the House of Lords in reply to an address from the crown, in a speech vigorously attacking the ambition of Napoleon. He was elected chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1805 and grand master of the Orange lodges of Ireland two years later. In 1808 he presented a petition from the Dublin corporation to the House of Lords with a speech in which he declared his undying opposition to any relief of the penal laws against the catholics. In 1810 the tory ministry introduced a regency bill, intended to limit the prerogatives of the Prince of Wales on account of his supposed sympathy with the whigs, when Cumberland at once told the ministers that they were filled with a false idea of his eldest brother's character, and both spoke and voted against them. This conduct strengthened his influence alike over the prince regent and the Duke of York. When his prophecy came true, and the prince regent maintained the tory ministry in power in 1812, the ministers too felt the perspicuity of Cumberland, and admitted him freely to their councils. This alliance with the tories exasperated both the whig leaders and the radical agitators and journalists.
On the night of 31 May 1810 the duke was found in his apartments in St. James's Palace with a terrible wound on his head, which would have been mortal had not the assassin's weapon struck against the duke's sword. Shortly afterwards his valet, Sellis, was found dead in his bed with his throat cut. On hearing the evidence of the surgeons and other witnesses, the coroner's jury returned a verdict that Sellis had committed suicide after attempting to assassinate the duke. The absence of any reasonable motive (see, however, Col. Willis's ‘Diary MS.,’ quoted in Jesse, Life of George III, iii. 545, 546) caused this event to be greatly discussed, and democratic journalists did not hesitate to accuse the duke of horrible crimes, and even to hint that he really murdered Sellis. In 1813 Henry White was sentenced to fifteen months' imprisonment and a fine of 200l. for publishing this rumour.
In the short campaign of 1806, under Lord Cathcart (1755–1843) [q. v.], the duke commanded a Hanoverian division, and after the battle of Leipzig, at which he was present as a spectator, he took over the electorate of Hanover in his father's name, and raised a fresh Hanoverian army, at the head of which he served during the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 in France. At the opening of the campaign of 1813 Cumberland was promoted to be a field-marshal in the British army, and in January 1815 he was made a G.C.B. on the
