in January 1852, and questions were asked in both houses of parliament about the appointment, for which the Duke of Wellington was really responsible. Cathcart was sent out to establish a colonial parliament and revive the dying loyalty of the colonists, and also to crush the Basutos and Kaffirs. On his arrival he summoned the first Cape parliament, and granted them a constitution, and then marched against the Kaffir and Basuto chiefs. The Kaffirs were soon subdued, and in the autumn of 1852 he marched against the Basutos, Sandilli and Macomo. He pursued them right into the recesses of the mountains, to which no English general had ever before penetrated, and in February 1853 Macomo and the old rebel Sandilli surrendered to him, and were granted residences within the Cape Colony. Cathcart received the thanks of both houses of parliament, and in July 1853 was made a K.C.B. On 12 Dec. 1853 he was appointed adjutant-general at the Horse Guards, and in April left the Cape. On reaching London he found that an army had already been sent to the East, and that he had been nominated to the command of the 4th division. The Duke of Newcastle also granted him a dormant commission, by which Cathcart was to succeed to the command-in-chief of the army in the East in case of any accident happening to Lord Raglan, in spite of the seniority of Burgoyne and Brown. His division was hardly engaged at all at the battle of the Alma, and his advice to storm Sebastopol at once was rejected by the allied generals. He at last became bitterly incensed against Lord Raglan for not paying more attention to him, and on 4 Oct. addressed him a note (see Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea, v. 21), complaining of the influence of Sir George Brown and Major-general Airey, and alluding to the dormant commission. Raglan undoubtedly behaved coldly towards Cathcart, who regarded himself as badly treated, until a private letter from the Duke of Newcastle, dated 13 Oct. 1854, directed the cancelling of the dormant commission, which Cathcart accordingly surrendered on 26 Oct. On the morning of 5 Nov. he heard the heavy firing which announced the attack upon Mount Inkerman. He collected his 1st brigade and led them to where the battle was raging. There is a considerable conflict of evidence as to the later course of events. A despatch from Sir Charles Windham, first published in the ‘Times,’ 8 Feb. 1875, by Lord Cathcart, should be compared with Mr. Kinglake's narrative. The Duke of Cambridge sent, requesting him to fill the ‘gap’ on the left of the guards, and thus prevent them from being isolated; and Airey soon conveyed Lord Raglan's orders that Cathcart should ‘move to the left and support the brigade of guards, and not descend or leave the plateau.’ Great confusion prevailed; many contradictory messages were sent; and it is disputed whether Cathcart ever received these orders. Cathcart ordered General Torrens to lead his four hundred men down the hill to the right of the guards against the extreme left of the Russian column. Torrens was immediately struck down, and Cathcart rode down to take the command, but before he had gone far he perceived that a Russian column had forced its way through the ‘gap,’ and had isolated the guards. Cathcart then attempted to charge up the hill with some fifty men of the 20th regiment to repair his fault; his last words to his favourite staff officer, Major Maitland, were, ‘I fear we are in a mess,’ and then he fell dead from his horse, shot through the heart. Lord Raglan, his lifelong friend, referred to him in the highest terms in his despatches. Many posthumous honours were paid to him; a tablet was erected to him in St. Paul's Cathedral, though his body rests under the hill in the Crimea which bears his name, and it was announced in the ‘Gazette’ of 5 July 1855 that if he had survived he would have been made a G.C.B., but greater honour was paid to him in the universal lamentation which broke out upon the arrival of the news of his glorious death.
[For Sir George Cathcart's life see the notices which were published at the time of his death, and especially that in Colburn's United Service Magazine for January 1855; see also for his South African government the Correspondence of Lieut.-general the Hon. Sir George Cathcart, K.C.B., relative to his military operations in Kaffraria, 1856; and for his conduct at the battle of Inkerman, Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea, vol. v.]
CATHCART, Sir WILLIAM SCHAW, tenth Baron Cathcart in the peerage of Scotland, and first Viscount in the peerage of the United Kingdom (1755–1843), general, was the eldest son of Charles, ninth Lord Cathcart, K.T. [q. v.], by Jean, daughter of Admiral Lord Archibald Hamilton, and sister of Sir William Hamilton, K.B., the well-known English ambassador at Naples. William Schaw Cathcart was born at Petersham on 17 Sept. 1755, and was educated at Eton from 1766 to 1771, when he joined his father at St. Petersburg, where he was ambassador. He returned to Scotland with his father in 1773, and, after studying law at the universities of Dresden and Glasgow, was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates in February 1776. His father died in the
