Denis Pack (1775-1823)
Command Ratings
Commands
- Commands the 6th Division of Allied Army at Sourauren (1813, age 38)
Denis Pack (born 7 October 1775; died 24 July 1823) was a British Army officer who rose to major-general and commanded infantry brigades in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo. He was the son of the Very Reverend Thomas Pack, Dean of Ossory, and Catherine Sullivan of Berehaven in County Cork, and he married Lady Elizabeth Louisa Beresford in 1816. In the period covered by the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars he is most often referred to as Sir Denis Pack (later KCB).
Pack entered the army in 1791 as a Cornet in the 14th Light Dragoons. He was promoted Lieutenant in the same regiment in 1795. In 1796 he transferred to the 5th Dragoon Guards as a captain, and in 1798 he became a Major in the 4th Dragoon Guards. These early postings placed him in the cavalry, but in 1800 he made the transition to the infantry when he became lieutenant-colonel of the 71st Regiment of Foot, a regiment with which his name became closely associated.
His first wartime service was in Ireland in the early 1790s, followed by service in the Flanders campaign of 1794. In 1795 he took part in the Quiberon expedition. He returned to Ireland and served during the rebellion of 1798. As lieutenant-colonel of the 71st he continued in active employment in the years that followed, and in 1805–1806 he served in the expedition to the Cape of Good Hope. In the fighting there he was wounded during the battle of Blaauwberg (8 January 1806), the action that decided the campaign.
From the Cape he went to South America with the forces employed in the British invasions of the River Plate. In 1806, during the fighting at Buenos Aires, he commanded the 71st Regiment of Foot when the city was retaken by the local Spanish forces; he was severely wounded and taken prisoner. He later escaped captivity (1807) and returned to British control. After his escape he was given command of a provisional battalion at Colonia in the River Plate theatre, continuing in operational employment until the British withdrawal from that venture.
Pack’s service then shifted to the Iberian Peninsula. In 1808 he served in Portugal and fought at Vimeiro (21 August 1808). In the winter campaign that followed he was present in the operations that ended with the retreat to and battle of Corunna (16 January 1809). In 1809 he also served on the Walcheren expedition.
In 1810 Pack was appointed a brigadier in the Portuguese service within the Anglo-Portuguese Army, a role in which he commanded Portuguese troops under Wellington’s overall direction. He was made an aide-de-camp to the King in 1810, and he received brevet rank as a Colonel in the same year. From 1810 to 1813 his principal field employment was the command of Portuguese brigades, including service in the campaign that culminated in the battle of Bussaco (27 September 1810) and in the continued operations associated with the Lines of Torres Vedras and the defense of Portugal.
As the allied army resumed the offensive, Pack continued to command on the same footing and remained in continuous campaigning. His brigade-level command brought him into the sequence of Major Peninsular actions of 1812 and 1813, and he was in the fighting around the Pyrenees in 1813. He was wounded at Sorauren in July 1813 during the operations against Soult’s attempt to relieve the pressure on the French frontier. In July 1813 he was given command of a brigade in the 6th Division, and in the same month he temporarily commanded the division. He continued with the 6th Division later in 1813 and into 1814, fighting in the later Peninsular battles that carried the allied army into France, and he was wounded again at Toulouse on 10 April 1814.
His substantive promotion to major-general came in 1813. In that year he declined a separate command offered with the rank of major-general for service on the Atlantic coast of the United States. Instead, he remained committed to the Iberian and southwestern France theatre until the end of the campaign.
During the Hundred Days in 1815 Pack served in the Netherlands with Wellington’s army and commanded the 9th Brigade. His brigade fought in the campaign’s two principal battles, Quatre Bras (16 June 1815) and Waterloo (18 June 1815). In the Waterloo fighting Pack’s brigade was heavily engaged in the defence of the allied position, and his name was widely attached to the formation as “Pack’s Brigade” in contemporary and later accounts of the battle.
For his 1815 service he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB). After Waterloo he remained on active duty with the Army of Occupation in France, commanding the 4th Brigade there from 1815 to 1818. In addition to these commands he held regimental colonelcies later in his career, including service as Colonel of the York Chasseurs from 1816 to 1819. He remained on the home staff in his final years.
Pack died in London on 24 July 1823, at Wimpole Street, and was buried at St Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny.
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