References: Napier, Priscilla Hayter, Black Charlie: A Life
of Admiral Sir Charles Napier KCB, 1786–1860 (Wilby,
U.K.: Michael Russell, 1995); Williams, Hugh Noel, The
Life and Letters of Admiral Sir Charles Napier, K.C.B. (Lon-
don: Hutchinson & Co., 1917); “Napier, Vice-Admiral
Sir Charles,” in Men of the Time. Biographical Sketches of
Eminent Living Characters. Also Biographical Sketches of
Celebrated Women of the Time (London: David Bogue,
Fleet Street, 1856), 578.
Napier, Sir Charles James (1782–1853)
British general
Charles James Napier—not to be confused with Sir
Charles naPier, who was his cousin—was born in Lon-
don on 10 August 1782. He was the eldest son and one
of three military sons (including Sir William Patrick
Napier) of Colonel George Napier and his wife, born
Lady Sarah Lennox. Charles James Napier was commis-
sioned into the British army at age 12 and, through the
influence of his cousin, General Henry Edward Fox, was
advanced to the rank of major by the time he was 24. He
saw action in the Napoleonic wars, particularly in Spain,
when he served in Sir John moore’s campaign against
the French at Corunna (16 January 1809). Wounded at
the battles of Coa and Busaco, he returned to England to
recuperate and was then given command of the 102nd
Regiment, which was sent to fight the United States in
the War of 1812.
In 1819, Napier was posted to Cephalonia, in the
Ionian Islands, where over the next decade he imple-
mented much-needed civic reforms and introduced a
program of public works, including bridge and road
building. In 1837, he was promoted to major general,
and in 1838 he was made a Knight Commander of the
Order of the Bath (KCB). In 1839, when the Chartists,
a group of reformers who demanded expansion of the
suffrage, agitated for immediate change, Napier was dis-
patched to northern England. Sympathizing with their
goals, he was able to convince the Chartists not to turn
to violence, thus avoiding bloodshed.
In 1841, Napier went to India, where he was given
command of the Sind, also known as the Scinde, serving
under Edward Law, earl of Ellenborough, governor-gen-
eral of India. In 1843, Ellenborough signed a treaty with
the Sind leaders to build British forts in the area but
allowing the Sindhi amirs, or tribal rulers to continue
in power as long as they remained peaceful. Napier soon
found many of these rulers were breaking their word; he
wrote that “barbaric chiefs must be bullied or they think
you are afraid: they do not understand benevolence or
magnanimity.” He was soon forced into warfare, win-
ning victories at Miani (17 February 1843) and Dabo
(also Dubba, 24 March 1843) near Haidarabad (now
Hyderabad), and was named as governor of the Sind.
Lord Ellenborough paid him £50,000 for his conquest
of Haiderabad.
As the Sind’s governor, Napier formed a new ad-
ministration, including a police force, built roads, and
improved communications. When he departed in 1847,
he left behind a peaceful and prosperous region. In
1849, he was sent back to India to replace Lord Gough
as commander in chief of British forces there. His time
in India was short, and he departed in 1851 following
an argument over policy with the governor-general, Lord
Dalhousie. He died in Portsmouth, Hampshire, on 29
August 1853, shortly after his 71st birthday. A statue
of Napier was later placed in Trafalgar Square in Lon-
don. The note on the pedestal states: “Erected by Public
Subscription, the most numerous Contributors being
Private Soldiers.”
Although nearly forgotten today, Sir Charles James
Napier’s legacy as a military commander is solidly placed
in military history. Sir William Butler, a Napier biogra-
pher, wrote in 1890:
“When the light was made manifest to the world
four years after the hero’s death, the man who had stood
[a] faithful sentinel through so many years over his
brother’s fame—William Napier—was still left to haul
the full-risen beam, and to show to a careless world the
length and breadth of that signal vindication. And long
before the lower crowd could see the light, it had flashed
upon the great solitary summits. ‘A lynx-eyed, fiery man,
with a spirit of an old knight in him,’ wrote Carlyle, one
year before the Indian Mutiny. ‘More of a hero than any
modern I have seen for a long time; a singular veracity
one finds in him, not in his words alone, but in his ac-
tions, judgments, aims, in all that he thinks, and does,
and says, which indeed I have observed is the root of all
greatness or real worth in human creatures, and properly
the first, and also the earliest, attribute of what we call
genius among men.’ ”0 nApieR, SiR chARleS JAmeS