Alexander Lindsay (East India Company officer)

Alexander Lindsay was born in 1785, the second son of Ann and James Smyth Lindsay of the Dowhill branch of the Lindsay family.[1] On 9 January 1795, at the age of nine, he was appointed an ensign in Meyrick's Independent Company of Foot of the British Army.[1][2] He transferred to the 104th Regiment of Foot (Royal Manchester Volunteers) on 3 March 1795 and at the same time was promoted to the rank of lieutenant.[3] The regiment disbanded later that year.[1] Lindsay went onto half-pay, being formally transferred into the previous 104th Regiment that was disbanded in 1783.[4] Lindsay would remain a half-pay lieutenant in the British Army throughout the rest of his life. He studied at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, from January 1800, passing out in February 1804.[1]

Lindsay joined the Bengal Army of the East India Company as a first lieutenant of artillery on 14 August 1804. He served with the foot artillery at the 1806 siege of Gohad Fort and afterwards at the sieges of Komanur and Gunnowrie. Lindsay served in Bundelkhand in 1807-1808 and was promoted to captain on 26 March 1813.[1] Lindsay served with the Dinapur Division of David Ochterlony's army in the 1814-16 Anglo-Nepalese War. He served at the 1816 siege of Hariharpur Gadhi where he was wounded by a musket shot which shattered the forefinger and thumb of his right hand and embedded in his right hip.[1]

Lindsay recovered enough to participate in the March 1817 siege of Hathras and the 1817-18 Third Anglo-Maratha War. He was appointed a brevet major on 12 August 1819. Around this time he served as superintendent of telegraphs between Calcutta and Chunar and as agent for the manufacture of gunpowder in Allahabad. He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel on 1 May 1824.[1] Lindsay was commander of the artillery of Joseph Wanton Morrison's division during the 1824-26 First Anglo-Burmese War.[1] Lindsay was promoted to colonel and colonel-commandant on 2 July 1835.[1]

Lindsay received promotion to major-general in the Bengal Army in 1838 and on 21 November 1851 he was appointed to the brevet rank of lieutenant-general in the British Army, applicable to the East Indies only.[5] Lindsay was promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant-general in the East India Company's Army later that year and to general on 11 September 1859.[1][6] When the presidency armies came into the control of the British government in 1860 (in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny) Lindsay became colonel-commandant of the Bengal Artillery.[1] His appointment transferred to the Royal Artillery on 29 April 1862, being antedated to 2 July 1835.[7] His commission was also transferred and so Lindsay was in the unusual position of holding both a general's and lieutenant's commission in the British Army.[4]

Lindsay married Flora Loudon, the daughter of a fellow officer, in Calcutta on 1 January 1820.[1] He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 26 September 1831 and a Knight Commander on 9 November 1862.[8][9] His wife died in 1863, and Lindsay died of bronchitis at home in Perth, Scotland, on 22 January 1872.[1] Lindsay's nephew Alexander Hadden Lindsay became a major-general in the British Army.[10]