MEMOIR
OF
MAJ.-GEN. SIR WILLIAM HENRY SLEEMAN, K.C.B.

The Sleemans, an ancient Cornish family, for several generations
owned the estate of Pool Park in the parish of Saint Judy, in the
county of Cornwall. Captain Philip Sleeman, who married Mary Spry, a
member of a distinguished family in the same county, was stationed at
Stratton, in Cornwall, on August 8, 1788, when his son William Henry
was born.

In 1809, at the age of twenty-one, William Henry Sleeman was
nominated, through the good offices of Lord De Dunstanville, to an
Infantry Cadetship in the Bengal army. On the 24th of March, in the
same year, he sailed from Gravesend in the ship Devonshire, and,
having touched at Madeira and the Cape, reached India towards the
close of the year. He arrived at the cantonment of Dinapore, near
Patna, on the 20th December, and on Christmas Day began his military
career as a cadet. He at once applied himself with exemplary
diligence to the study of the Arabic and Persian languages, and of
the religions and customs of India. Passing in due course through the
ordinary early stages of military life, he was promoted to the rank
of ensign on the 23rd September, 1810, and to that of lieutenant on
the 16th December, 1814.

Lieutenant Sleeman served in the war with Nepal, which began in 1814
and terminated in 1816. During the campaign he narrowly escaped death
from a violent epidemic fever, which nearly destroyed his regiment.
'Three hundred of my own regiment,' he observes, 'consisting of about