A Welshman from Pembrokeshire, Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton joined the British Army in the early 1770s and served as the governor of Trinidad during 1797-1803. He administered a brutal regime over the island’s slaves where severe corporal punishments and executions were commonplace. He was forced to resign after being accused of approving the torture of a mixed-race teenage girl and was found guilty by a British court. An 1808 retrial led to his sentence being indefinitely postponed before he was appointed to command the 3rd Division in Iberia in 1810.
The Duke of Wellington had mixed feelings about Picton but respected his fighting skills, “I found him a rough foul-mouthed devil as ever lived, but he always behaved extremely well.”
Despite his crimes and battlefield experience, Picton eventually showed signs of exhaustion from violence. He once wrote after the Siege of Badajoz, “Military reputation is not to be purchased without blood, and ambition has nothing to do with humanity” Picton fought in many battles of the Peninsular War including the Battles of Bussaco and Fuentes de Oñoro as well as the Sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz.