Sir Thomas Picton
In the early afternoon of 18th June 1815, the top hat wearing commander of the British 5th Infantry Division was leading forward his men, part of the Duke of Wellington's army at Waterloo. Exhorting his men forward he was shot through the temple, dying instantly.
As much as he was mourned by the army, Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton (1758 - 1815) would certainly not have been by the slaves of Trinidad who remembered his Governorship of the island.
Picton (right, by Thomas Lawrence) was born in Haverfordwest, seventh child of Thomas Picton of Poyston Hall, Pembrokeshire.
In 1773 he joined the Army, having already obtained and ensign's commission. In those days such a position would have been bought and paid for - in Picton's case this would have cost around £400 - nearly £40,000 today.
He rose through the ranks, moving through several regiments, which was the usual path for an officer at the time. By 1795 he was a Major in the 58th (Rutlandshire) Regiment of Foot.
This was a good time to be a career officer as Britain was at war not only with Revolutionary France, but with its ally, Spain. Picton was sent with his new Regiment to the West Indies as the Royal Navy, with the Army, were capturing Spain's wealthy possessions there. In 1795 he was present at the capture of St Lucia; in 1796 the British crushed a slave revolt on St Vincent and in 1797 took Trinidad from the Spanish.
By then Picton was Lieutenant-Colonel of the 56th Regiment of Foot. The British commander in the West Indies, Sir Ralph Abercromby made him Governor of Trinidad, a post he could hold for five years. As Governor he had supreme power on the island - including the power of life and death.
Thomas Picton took advantage of his position on this new British possession. He became a planter himself and favoured the slave-based plantation system and its expansion on the island. When it was captured, the Spanish already had 4,625 slaves on Trinidad. By 1807 this had risen to 22,887 - brought in by the British. The export of sugar in this period nearly doubled. Picton became wealthy from his land and slaves on Trinidad. Boasting that he had made up to £100,000 out of his plantations - around £4.5 Million today - he invested in land back in Wales, such buying a mansion at Iscoed, Carmarthenshire.
What marked Picton out though, was the brutality of his regime.
Cutting Canes, Trinidad (right, lithograph from 1836).
Very little, if anything, would have changed since Picton's time on the island.
With a new colony to establish Picton behaved to the people of Trinidad almost as if they were an army to command. He believed he did not have sufficient men to enforce British rule. Summary executions and torture were used. He was accused himself of ordering the execution of twelve slaves. Despite officially governing under the old Spanish laws, Picton wrote his own slave code. He imprisoned and punished any slaves practising the old African traditions of Obeah, a spiritual healing and justice practice brought over by the enslaved of West Africa. The cells in the island's capital, Port of Spain were used for tortures for any breakers of the slave code.
Picton also had a mistress, Rosetta Smith, a mixed race woman with whom he had four children. Rosetta was already infamous for making her money from slavery.
None of this could not go unnoticed and when peace came in 1802, Picton found an new Commission set up to govern the island, which remained in British hands. The Senior Member, William Fullarton, was a Whig MP who wanted a more humane approach to British rule in its colonies. He was soon at odds with Picton and began a series of enquiries on the allegations of brutality against Picton. Fullarton's report was highly critical of Picton, who resigned from the Commission, of whom he had been made a junior member to Fullarton, in 1803.
When he returned to Britain, Picton was arrested by order of the Privy Council on the charge of illegally inflicting torture, but freed on a bail of £40,000. He would eventually stand trial in 1806. He was tried before the Court of King's Bench but on only one charge of unlawful torture.
He was accused of using the military-type torture of "picketing" - tying the prisoner so that they stood on only one toe on a wooden peg - on a young woman Luisa Calderon.
Luisa was a free mixed-race girl, fourteen years old. She was suspected to be involved in a robbery plot. She was allegedly tied by one arm to the ceiling, lowered until one toe rested on the flat peg until her whole weight was borne by that toe. She was kept like this, barefoot, for 55 minutes. She did not confess to anything, but was imprisoned for 8 months.
Thomas Picton was found guilty, but appealed for a retrial, which, in 1808 reversed the decision. Arguments in both trials rested on the legality of the use of torture and Spanish law. With his legal fees paid for by friends in the army and fellow slave owners, Picton was free to resume his military career that ended on that afternoon at Waterloo.
Picton was regarded as a war hero and his statue (right) unveiled in 1916 in Cardiff City Hall, stands among other Heroes of Welsh History.
There has been debate about such statues of slave owners since the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol in June 2020. In July 2020 Cardiff Council voted to remove his statue.
A hero to some, but a brutal villain to others, Sir Thomas Picton remains a figure of controversy over 200 years since his death. He remains the only Welshman buried in St Paul's Cathedral (right).