ABSTRACT
Abercromby's successor as Commander-in-Chief, Major-General the Hon. John Hely-Hutchinson, was an odd creature though a talented one. His family background was in Irish law and politics. Born in Dublin in 1757, he was the second son of John Hely, a lawyer who had added the name Hutchinson on marrying a rich heiress. The father successfully climbed the ladder of patronage through the Irish House of Commons, acquiring the 'lucrative and honourable situation' of Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and rising in politics to the Irish Secretaryship of State. His son John, the future general, was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Dublin, and commissioned in the army in 1774. Three years later he took his seat in the corrupt old Irish House of Commons, whose abolition he would later support by voting for the Union with Great Britain. On half-pay like Abercromby during the years of peace before the French Revolution, he studied tactics in France at the Strasburg Military Academy; and on the outbreak of war between France and the German Powers in 1792 he seized the opportunity to visit the French and Prussian camps and study their organisation and tactics. When Britain entered the war in the following year he served as a volunteer with the Duke of York's army in Flanders, acting as a supernumerary aide de camp to Abercromby. After the British withdrawal from Europe in 1795 he raised a regiment; became a major-general; and being present at the disgraceful rout of Irish troops by the French at Castle bar he was blamed by Lord Cornwallis for his misplaced confidence in unreliable fencibles and disaffected militia.
