William Siborne

William Siborne, Sibourne or Siborn (15 October 1797–9 January 1849) was a British officer and military historian.

Biography

William Siborne was the son of Benjamin Siborne, a captain in the 9th (East Norfolk) regiment wounded at the battle of Nivelle in the Peninsular War. William Siborne graduated from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1814, having been commissioned as an ensign in the same regiment (renamed the 9th Regiment of Foot in 1782) on 9 September 1813 before it joined the 2nd battalion at Canterbury then Chatham and finally Sheerness in 1815. In August 1815 he was sent to France to join the duke of Wellington's army of occupation, doing duty in the Camp of Bologne, near Paris. He obtained the rank of lieutenant in November 1815, but was put on half pay from March 1817, when his regiment was reduced to one battalion.

In September 1820, he undertook a secret mission in Germany on behalf of the Treasury.

Two years later, he published his first book, Instructions for Civil and Military Surveyors in Topographical Plan-drawing.

In July 1824, he married Helen Aitken, daughter of a Scottish banker and colonel of the militia, having four children with her.

On 11 November 1824, he was gazetted to the 47th (Lancashire) regiment, this being backdated to November 1815, and went on leave in Europe.

In March 1826, he was appointed as assistant military secretary to the Commander-in-Chief, Ireland (first Lieutenant-General Sir George Murray, then Sir John Byng, then Sir Richard Hussey Vivian and finally Sir Edward Blakeney), holding this post until 1843.

In 1827, he published his second book, Instructions for Civil and Military Surveyors in Topographical Plan-drawing, which was dedicated to his commander-in-chief Sir George Murray.

Early in 1830, Lord Roland Hill, then commander-in-chief Britain, commissioned Siborne to construct a model of the battle of Waterloo. Siborne carried out extensive research, writing to officers in the allied forces present to obtain information on the positions of the troops at the crisis of the battle at 7 p.m. His attempts to get the same information from the ministry of war in Paris were politely ignored, while the Prince of Orange kindly supplied him with information on the Netherlands forces.

The replies to the circular he sent out and the subsequent correspondence amount to the largest single collection of primary source material on the subject ever assembled. The British Museum purchased the collection after his death and it is now in the British Library. He spent eight months at the farm of La Haye-Sainte surveying the entire battlefield. The actual model took until 1838 to complete (Siborne still had his main military duties to fulfil) and progress was interrupted in 1833 by the new ministry's refusal to allocate new funds and Siborne's having to finance it himself from then onwards. During the construction of the Large Model, Siborne earned the enmity of the duke of Wellington, as Siborne's research called into question parts of the duke's version of events at Waterloo. This led to Siborne's attempts to get the government to honour its obligation to him being thwarted, his attempts to obtain his captaincy being obstructed and a smear campaign being undertaken against him. Even removing 40,000 of the 48,000 Prussians on the model did not placate the duke. The final total cost was around £3000, which Siborne had considerable difficulty in recovering, as the exhibitor of its first public display in London cheated him of much of his share of the revenues. Siborne also built a smaller model of a portion of the battlefield on a larger scale. The main model was purchased by the Royal United Service Institution after his death, and is now in the Changing the World gallery at the National Army Museum, London. The smaller, or so-called New, Model is on display at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

One attempt Siborne made to raise the finances he needed was to make use of the considerable amount of material he assembled to write his third book, a history of the Waterloo campaign. It was first published in 1844, and the 4th edition is still in print today.

On 31 January 1840, he purchased an unattached captaincy, although this was on half pay.

Exhausted by his efforts and broken by the hostility of the duke of Wellington, friends in the army obtained a sinecure for him as Secretary and Adjutant of the Royal Military Asylum at Chelsea. He took up his post in November 1843, where he remained until his death. He is buried at Brompton Cemetery. His second son Henry Taylor Siborne later published a selection of the letters in his collection.

Bibliography

• Instructions for Civil and Military Surveyors in Topographical Plan-Drawing, 1822
• A Practical Treatise on Topographical Surveying and Drawing, 1827, dedicated to his c-in-c George Murray
• Guide to Captain Siborne's New Waterloo Model
• two-volume History of the War in France and Belgium in 1815 (with folio atlas), 1844, still in print in the 4th edition

References

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Peter Hofschroer, Wellington's Smallest Victory: The Duke, the Model Maker, and the Secret of Waterloo, 2004
• Description of the Siborne model
• Template:Fr iconWilliam Siborne, l'étrange historien de Waterloo by Michel Damiens on Larousse.fr