William Howe de Lancey

William Howe de Lancey was born in New York in 1778 into a family with deep military connections and entered the British Army as a young man. He developed a career in staff service as well as line duty and served in the Peninsular War, gaining the experience in movement, supply and headquarters work that made him valuable to senior commanders.

During the Hundred Days campaign in 1815, de Lancey became quartermaster-general to the army commanded by the Duke of Wellington. He was struck by a cannon shot during the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June and died from his wounds several days later. His recent marriage to Magdalene Hall and the circumstances of his death became part of the personal history surrounding Wellington’s headquarters at Waterloo.

In Iain Gale’s Four Days in June, de Lancey is one of the novel’s principal historical viewpoints. His responsibility for orders, movement and staff work allows the Waterloo campaign to be seen through the machinery of Wellington’s headquarters as well as through combat, while his new marriage gives the known historical outcome a private human cost.