Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pasley, Charles William
PASLEY, Sir CHARLES WILLIAM (1780–1861), general, colonel-commandant royal engineers, was born at Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire, on 8 Sept. 1780, and was educated by Andrew Little of Langholm. He progressed so rapidly with his studies that at the age of eight he could read the Greek testament. At twelve years of age he wrote a history of the wars between the boys on either side of the Esk, the Langholmers, and the Mucklemholmers, and translated it into Latin in imitation of the style of Livy. He also wrote a poem upon Langholm Common Riding, which brought some profit to the publisher. In 1794 he was sent to school at Selkirk with some of his cousins, the Malcolms—Sir James, Sir John, Sir Pulteney, and Sir Charles Malcolm, who, with another cousin, Sir James Little, and Pasley, were styled in later life the six knights of Eskdale. In August 1796 he joined the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, and on 1 Dec. 1797 obtained a commission as second lieutenant in the royal artillery. He was transferred to the royal engineers on 1 April 1798, and on 28 Aug. 1799 he was promoted first lieutenant in that corps.
Between 1799 and 1807 he served in Minorca, Malta, Naples, and Sicily, and was employed on various important services and confidential missions. In 1804 he was sent by General Villettes from Malta to communicate with Lord Nelson. He was promoted second captain on 1 March 1805. In 1806 he served under the Prince of Hesse in the defence of Gaeta against the French, and under Sir John Stuart at the battle of Maida in Calabria on 4 July. Pasley took part in the siege of Copenhagen under Lord Cathcart in 1807. He was promoted first captain on 18 Nov. 1807. He joined Major-general Leith at Oviedo in the north of Spain in September 1808. He was employed to reconnoitre the Asturian frontier, and then to communicate with General Blake at Reynosa in November. He left Soto on the 15th of that month at night as the French entered it.
After joining Crawford's brigade he was retained on the 18th by Sir David Baird [q. v.] as an extra aide-de-camp in consequence of his general attainments and knowledge of the Spanish language. On the 25th he joined Sir John Moore's staff in a similar capacity, and was with him during the retreat upon and at the battle of Coruña. He lent his horse during the retreat to a lame soldier to carry him to Villafranca, and he had to perform on foot, and for part of the time with only one shoe, some fatiguing marches.
Pasley accompanied the expedition to Walcheren, and was employed in reconnoitring the coasts of Cadsand and Walcheren under the fire of the enemy's batteries. He was present at the siege of Flushing in 1809. At his own suggestion he led a storming party, consisting of the first company of the 36th regiment, the first company of the 71st regiment, the German picket, and a party of artillery under Colonel Pack, in the middle of the night of 14 Aug., to obtain possession and spike the guns of a French battery on the dyke. They succeeded in spiking the guns and taking fifty prisoners; but Pasley was wounded, first by a bayonet in the thigh, and then, after reaching the top of the dyke, by a shot through the body fired by a French soldier from below. The bullet injured his spine, and he was invalided for a year. He employed his leisure in learning German. Pasley received the silver war medal for his services, and a pension for his wounds.
In November 1810 Pasley published the first edition of his ‘Essay on the Military Policy and Institutions of the British Empire.’ It attracted great attention and ran through four editions; the second was published in March 1811, the third in October of the same year, and the fourth in November 1812. It was favourably noticed (by Canning, as was supposed) in the ‘Quarterly Review’ of May 1811, the reviewer stating that it was one of the most important political works that had fallen under his notice. While in command of the Plymouth company of the royal military artificers in 1811, Pasley endeavoured to improve the practice of military engineering. He visited a Lancasterian school in August of that year, and commenced a course of instruction for his non-commissioned officers. He composed an elaborate treatise on a similar principle to the systems of Bell and Lancaster, to enable the non-commissioned officers to teach themselves and their men without the assistance of mathematical masters, and to go through their course of geometry in the same manner as their company drills or their small-arms exercises. The system was found so successful at Plymouth that in March 1812 it was laid before a committee of royal engineers, who reported favourably upon it to the inspector-general of fortifications, and it was afterwards introduced on an extended scale into the schools at Chatham. While Pasley was at Plymouth he was temporarily commanding royal engineer of the district, a position in which, although so junior an officer, he was allowed, owing to his merits, to continue for nearly two years. He received a special allowance for which there was no precedent.
Pasley's energy and success, backed by the representations of the Duke of Wellington from the Peninsula as to the defective condition of military engineering in the field, resulted in the formation of the establishment for field instruction at Chatham, and in Pasley's appointment to the office of director of that establishment by Lord Mulgrave in June 1812, with the rank of brevet-major, antedated to 5 Feb. of that year. Pasley was promoted brevet lieutenant-colonel on 27 May 1813, and became a regimental lieutenant-colonel on 20 Dec. 1814.
In 1814 there appeared the first volume of his work on ‘Military Instruction;’ the second followed, and the third and last in 1817. The first contained the course of practical geometry before referred to; the two latter, a complete treatise on elementary fortification, including the principles of the science and rules for construction, many of which apply to civil as well as to military works. In 1817, finding that his men had been ‘most grossly ill-treated by the army bread contractor,’ he was led to inquire into the system under which the army was supplied with provisions, and he printed and circulated in 1825, but abstained from publishing, a volume containing the results of his investigations into the system of general or commissariat contracts. He recommended that it should be abolished in favour of the system of regimental purchases. Pasley's suggestions were partly the means of introducing better arrangements. In 1818 he published a volume of ‘Standing Orders,’ containing a complete code of military rules for the duties of all ranks in the army.
During his tenure of office as head of the instructional establishment at Chatham he organised improved systems of telegraphing, sapping, mining, pontooning, and exploding gunpowder on land and in water, and laid down rules for such explosions founded on careful experiment. He also prepared pamphlets and courses of instruction on these and other subjects. A volume on ‘Practical Architecture’ was especially valuable. In his leisure time he learnt the Welsh and Irish languages from Welsh and Irish privates of the corps of sappers and miners. His work on the ‘Practical Operations of a Siege,’ of which the first part was published in 1829 and the second in 1832, is still an authority, and was the best text-book at the time that had been written in any language on that subject. Every operation of the siege was treated as a separate study, and it exposed various mistakes into which French and German authors had fallen. It was translated into French, and published in Paris in 1847.
Pasley was promoted brevet-colonel on 22 July 1830, and regimental colonel on 12 Nov. 1831. In that year he prepared a pamphlet, and in May 1834 he completed a volume of 320 pages, on the expediency and practicability of simplifying and improving the measures, weights, and money used in this country, without materially altering the present standards. By this work he hoped to bring about the result that, in the words of sect. 2 of the Act 27 George III, cap. x., there should be ‘only one weight, one measure, and one yard throughout all the land.’ He advocated the adoption of the decimal systems, and opposed the introduction of the French units into this country.
In May 1836 he commenced a work on ‘Limes, Calcareous Cements, Mortar, Stuccos and Concretes, and on Puzzolannas, Natural and Artificial Water Cements equal in efficiency to the best Natural Cements of England, improperly termed Roman Cements, and an Abstract of the Opinions of former Authors on the same Subject,’ 8vo. The first edition was published in September 1838. It contains several discoveries, the result of experiments at Chatham, and led at once to the manufacture in large quantities of artificial cements, such as Portland, patent lithic, and blue has. A second edition was published in August 1847.
In connection with experiments on the explosion of gunpowder under water, Pasley carried out the removal of the brig William and the schooner Glenmorgan from the bed of the Thames near Gravesend in 1838. For this service he received the thanks of the municipal authorities, and was presented with the freedom of the city of London in a gold casket of the value of fifty guineas. During six successive summers (1839 to 1844) he executed the more formidable task of clearing away the wreck of the Royal George from the anchorage at Spithead, and that of the Edgar from St. Helen's. The value of the materials recovered from these vessels was more than equal to the expense incurred in removing the wrecks.
During the nearly thirty years that he was director of the royal engineer establishment at Chatham there was hardly any subject in connection with his profession as a military man and an engineer that did not benefit by his attention. He formed the school for the royal engineers and for the army, and the corps of royal engineers owes its high state of efficiency in no small degree to his energy and exertions. In the debate in the House of Commons on 6 Feb. 1840, on the vote of thanks to the army after the capture of Ghazni, Sir H. Hardinge stated that the merit of the invention by the use of which the gates of Ghazni were blown open was due to Pasley. The easy and bloodless capture of the native pahs in the last New Zealand war was due to the adoption by officers (one of them his own son) of the use of explosives, and to the systematic employment of the spade as taught by him at Chatham.
Pasley remained at Chatham until his promotion as major-general on 23 Nov. 1841, when he was appointed inspector-general of railways. He received the honorary distinction of D.C.L. from the university of Oxford in 1844, and on relinquishing the appointment of inspector-general of railways in 1846 he was made a K.C.B. He had previously been made a C.B. He held the appointment of public examiner at the East India Company's military school at Addiscombe for sixteen years, up to 1855, and took an active part in its management. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society as far back as 1816, and had joined in early years the Astronomical, Geological, Geographical, Statistical, and other societies.
Pasley held no public office after 1855, but occupied himself chiefly in re-editing his works, in superintending the construction of pontoon equipages, and other matters connected with his profession. He was promoted lieutenant-general on 11 Nov. 1851; was appointed colonel-commandant of the royal engineers on 28 Nov. 1853, and became general in the army on 20 Sept. 1860. He died at his residence, 12 Norfolk Crescent, Hyde Park, London, from congestion of the lungs, on 19 April 1861.
Pasley was twice married, first, on 25 June 1814, at Chatham, to Harriet, daughter of W. Spencer Cooper, esq., who died after a few months; and, secondly, at Rochester, on 30 March 1819, to Martha Matilda Roberts, by whom he had six children, three of whom survived him. His second wife died in 1848. His son, Charles Pasley [q. v.] was an officer of the royal engineers.
A full-length portrait of Pasley, by Eddis, hangs in the mess of the royal engineers at Chatham.
Besides the works already noticed, Pasley published:
- ‘Lampedosa: a Series of Four Letters to the “Courier” written at the time of the Peace of Amiens,’ 1803.
- ‘A Course of Elementary Fortification,’ originally published as part of a ‘Course of Military Instruction,’ 2nd ed. 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1822.
- ‘A complete Course of Practical Geometry, including Conic Sections and Plan Drawing,’ treated on a principle of peculiar perspicuity, originally published as the first volume of a ‘Course of Military Instruction,’ 2nd ed. much enlarged, 8vo, London, 1822.
- ‘Rules for Escalading Works of Fortifications not having Palisaded Covered Ways,’ 2nd ed. Chatham, 1822, 8vo, lithographed; 3rd ed. 8vo, Chatham, 1822; new edition, 12mo, Madras, 1845, and 8vo, 1854.
- ‘Practical Rules for making Telegraph Signals, with a Description of the Two-armed Telegraph, invented in 1804 by Lieut.-Colonel Pasley,’ 8vo, Chatham, 1822, lithographed.
- ‘Description of the Universal Telegraph for Day and Night Signals,’ 8vo, London, 1823.
- ‘A simple Practical Treatise on Field Fortification,’ 8vo, 1823.
- ‘Observations on Nocturnal Signals in General; with a simple Method of converting Lieut.-Colonel Pasley's Two-armed Telegraph into a Universal Telegraph for Day and Night Signals,’ 8vo, Chatham, 1823.
- ‘Exercise of the new-decked Pontoons or Double Canoes, invented by Lieut.-Colonel Pasley,’ lithographed, &c., 8vo, Chatham, 1823.
- ‘Rules, chiefly deduced from Experiments, for conducting the Practical Operations of a Siege,’ 8vo, 1829, Chatham; 2nd ed. 2nd pt. 8vo, London, 1843; 3rd ed. 1st pt. 8vo, London, 1853. (No more published; duplicate with new title-page, 8vo, London, 1857.)
He also contributed to the ‘Royal Engineers' Professional Papers,’ 4th ser. vols. i. and ii., and new ser. vol. viii.