British field marshal and governor-general of India, born at Wrotham in Kent on the 30th of March 1785. After being at Eton, he entered the army in 1799 as an ensign in the Queen’s Rangers, a corps then stationed in Upper Canada. His first active service was at the battle of Vimiera, where he was wounded; and at Corunna he was by the side of Sir John Moore when he received his death-wound. Subsequently he received an appointment as deputy-quartermaster-general in the Portuguese army from Marshal Beresford, and was present at nearly all the battles of the Peninsular War, being wounded again at Vittoria. At Albuera he saved the day for the British by taking the responsibility at a critical moment of strongly urging General Cole’s division to advance. When peace was again broken in 1815 by Napoleon’s escape from Elba, Hardinge hastened into active service, and was appointed to the important post of commissioner at the Prussian headquarters. In this capacity he was present at the battle of Ligny on the 16th of June 1815, where he lost his left hand by a shot, and thus was not present at Waterloo, fought two days later. For the loss of his hand he received a pension of £300; he had already been made a K.C.B., and Wellington presented him with a sword that had belonged to Napoleon. In 1820 and 1826 Sir Henry Hardinge was returned to parliament as member for Durham; and in 1828 he accepted the office of secretary at war in Wellington’s ministry, a post which he also filled in Peel’s cabinet in 1841–1844. In 1830 and 1834–1835 he was chief secretary for Ireland. In 1844 he succeeded Lord Ellenborough as governor-general of India. During his term of office the first Sikh War broke out; and Hardinge, waiving his right to the supreme command, magnanimously offered to serve as second in command under Sir Hugh Gough; but disagreeing with the latter’s plan of campaign at Ferozeshah, he temporarily reasserted his authority as governor-general. After the successful termination of the campaign at Sobraon he was created Viscount Hardinge of Lahore and of King’s Newton in Derbyshire, with a pension of £3,000 for three lives; while the East India Company voted him an annuity of £5,000, which he declined to accept. Hardinge’s term of office in India was marked by many social and educational reforms. He returned to England in 1848, and in 1852 succeeded the duke of Wellington as commander-in-chief of the British army. While in this position he had the home management of the Crimean War, which he endeavoured to conduct on Wellington’s principles—a system not altogether suited to the changed mode of warfare. In 1855 he was promoted to the rank of field marshal. Viscount Hardinge resigned his office of commander-in-chief in July 1856, owing to failing health, and died on the 24th of September of the same year at South Park near Tunbridge Wells. His elder son, Charles Stewart (1822–1894), who had been his private secretary in India, was the 2nd Viscount Hardinge; and the latter’s eldest son succeeded to the title.
The younger son of the 2nd Viscount, Charles Hardinge, 1st Baron Hardinge of Penshurst, was born in London on the 20th of June 1858, second son of the 2nd Viscount Hardinge. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1880 entered the diplomatic service. He became secretary of legation at Teheran in 1896, and in 1898 went to St. Petersburg as secretary of embassy. In 1903 he returned to England and became Assistant Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, becoming later (1906–10) Permanent Under-Secretary. In the latter capacity he accompanied King Edward VII. on his foreign visits. He was created K.C.M.G. in 1904 and G.C.M.G. in 1905. From 1904 to 1906 Sir Charles Hardinge was ambassador to Russia, and in 1910 was appointed Viceroy of India and raised to the peerage. On December 22, 1912, a bomb was thrown at him as he entered the city of Delhi in state, seriously wounding him, besides killing an attendant. It fell to Lord Hardinge’s lot to welcome King George V. and Queen Mary on their historic visit to India in the winter of 1911–2. Lord Hardinge returned to England in 1916 and was reappointed to the post of Permanent Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, retiring in 1918. In November 1920 he succeeded Lord Derby as ambassador in Paris.
Lord Hardinge married in 1890 the Hon. Winifred Selina Sturt, daughter of the 1st Baron Alington. Lady Hardinge did much during her husband’s period as Viceroy of India to further the medical training of Indian women. She escaped unhurt when her husband was wounded at Delhi, but the resulting shock to her nerves did much to hasten her death in London on the 11th of July 1914.
See C. Hardinge, Viscount Hardinge (Rulers of India Series, 1891); and R. S. Rait, Life and Campaigns of Viscount Gough (1903).
