Henry Lloyd

Henry Humphrey Evans Lloyd (c.1718 – 19 June 1783) was a Welsh army officer and military writer. He fought for the French against the Austrians, the Jacobite forces of Charles Stuart against the British, the Austrians against the Prussians and the Prussians against the Austrians (during the same war), and the Russians against the Turks. He also undertook various diplomatic missions for Britain. His writings on military theory were studied by George Washington and George S. Patton, and were used by J. F. C. Fuller to espouse a science of war.

Early life Lloyd, a clergyman's son, was possibly born in Llanbedr, Merioneth, but the "Memoir of General Lloyd, Author of the History of the Seven Years War, etc, etc by his son Hannibal Evans Lloyd. [Printed for Private Circulation] 1842: Marchant, Singer, and Smith, Printers, Ingram Court " [copy in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge] states he was born in Wrecsam (Wrexham). Lloyd was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, 1740-c.1742. He could not afford to purchase a commission in the army and so resorted to alternative methods to begin his military career. He travelled to France in 1744, but was unable to obtain an appointment as an officer. He then spent a year at a Jesuit college as a lay brother, instructing officers in geography and field engineering.

With the rank of captain, Lloyd then accompanied the 1745–46 Jacobite expedition in support of the Young Pretender to Scotland. He left the army to carry dispatches to rebels in Wales and then surveyed the south coast of England (disguised as a clergyman) in anticipation of a French invasion. He was arrested as a suspected spy and taken to London, but his release was procured by John Drummond and Lloyd returned to France. He fought for the French army as a major at the siege of Bergen op Zoom in 1747. He then served the Prussian army before returning to French service in 1754 in the service of Marshal Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet de Belle-Isle. He then returned to England, this time disguised as a merchant, to carry out another survey of the coast for a French landing. He met up with Drummond in London, in 1756, claiming to be receiving £500 a year from the British government: Lloyd was never commissioned in the British army, but this may have been secret service money.

Lloyd influenced the British military strategist J. F. C. Fuller, who considered Lloyd's work in the light of the trench warfare of the First World War. In the Second World War, the American general George S. Patton had a dog-eared copy of Lloyd's History in his library.

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