George Landmann,
who I have written about here before, was the man who built the Greenwich Railway, the first railway in
London. His background and training was
as an officer in the Royal Engineers and he eventually retired to a private civil engineering practise. As a child he had lived in the original Royal
Military Academy building which
is still on the Arsenal site now and his roots were in a family from France who
had come to England when his father was offered a job at the Academy in 1777.
His father, Isaac
Landmann, was Professor of Fortification and Artillery in Woolwich in the late
eighteenth century. He left behind a canon of important books on his specialist
subjects - and yet we know very little about who he was and where he came from.
There is a suspicion of a very interesting background, which nevertheless
remains totally obscure.
When Isaac
worked in Woolwich the Royal Military Academy – and indeed the Arsenal itself
was still very new and evolving. The
Crown had purchased the Woolwich Warren estate in 1671 from Sir William
Pritchard. It contained Tower Place built
in of 1545, Sir Richard’s mansion. The Board of Ordnance had intended to use
the old house as offices but found it unsuitable.
A new building went
up on the mansion site based on the original foundations. This was designed by, the famous architect,
Nicholas Hawksmoor, and the tower itself remained next to it until 1786. It
was thus a purpose built office block with two large rooms on the ground floor.
The northern room was used by the Board of Ordnance and the southern became the
Royal Military Academy. It is the
building today known as ‘The Academy ‘or ‘Building 40.’ And now, as part of Woolwich Works, it houses
dance studios and the like.
The Royal
Military Academy had been launched with a Royal Warrant in 1741 as a
mathematics school but teaching included the practice of engineering and
artillery. From 1764 the ‘masters’
became ‘professors’ – hence Isaac became the Professor of Fortification and Artillery.
Isaac had been born
in 1841 but his origins are unclear. The name Isaac
Landmann - is not uncommon and is frequently a name of men of German Jewish descent.
From the little we know of his past
'our' Isaac Landmann may have been German. This comes from a chance remark to
him by George III who commented that he had origins in common with his Queen,
Charlotte, who came from Mecklenburg-Strelitz, in Northern Germany. However
Isaac seems to have been involved with the French military - and in fact is
said to have had 'field experience with them. He is said to have been Aide de
Campe to (French) Marshall de Broglie.
I must admit here to being confused. How did a young German get to be assistant
to a major French General - and Marshall of France? De Broglie is said to have been experimenting
with the ideas of a division of his armed forces based on skills - cavalry,
artillery and, maybe, also engineers. He was out of favour and dismissed from
army command during the 1760s but returned to successfully promote the division
between artillery and engineering which became the future of military practice.
Perhaps a future researcher will discover how Isaac Landmann became his protégé
and such an expert in 'the art of war’ as to be sought out and appointed by the
British Government. It is also
important to note that French practice in fortification was very advanced, following
the work of Vauban and others, including de Broglie.
Isaac seems to have been head hunted by the Government to his post in Woolwich.
He had been teaching at the Ecole Militaire in Paris, but, following
reorganisation there was reduced to tutoring 'the art of war’ privately to
young French gentlemen. Sir Thomas Page
was sent to Paris, under Royal Command, with inducements for him to coke to
England, including a pension which was apparently never paid. Page, is said to have already known Isaac
Landmann. He was an important cartographer, engineer and graduate of the RMA. At
the time he was sent to Paris to see Landmann he was Engineer in charge of the
eastern coastal defences, but was also recovering from wounds received at the
Battle of Bunkers Hill, in America, in 1775.
There is
one more small clue to Isaac's past. - In Gibraltar George Landmann was to meet
the Countess of Noailles - Anne Louise Marie de Beauvau. She told him she would
give him "some information as to the fate of my mother's uncle, who commanded
a regiment of Swiss guards at the commencement of the great revolution; and
also respecting another relative then serving in the gardes-du-corps of Louis
the Sixteenth, and belonging to the company of her father -in- law, the Prince
de Poix". But that information was never given. The Swiss guards were, and
are, elite mercenaries who defended foreign royalty - of particular note was
their defence of the Tuileries in 1792 during the French revolution.
We know
little of, George’s mother, Isaac's wife; except that her name was Katherine
Helene Mathey and that she came from an elite military family in the Moselle
area.
Isaac was introduced by the Board of Ordnance to the Governor of the Academy, as having ‘seen a great deal of service and acted as aide-de-camp to Marshal Broglie. His salary was £494 per annum with a house and 12 chaldrons of coals and 1,216 candles.
As Professor of Fortification, his
.replaced
Professor Allen Pollock, who had been First Master, and who may have been
dismissed following many rows –while Isaac is described as a ‘genial Frenchman’. They
lived in family
accommodation in a rear extension to the RMA building. Next door lived Hutton, Professor of
Mathematics.
Charles
Hutton had been appointed in 1773 as Professor of Mathematics. - He was an
extremely important mathematician from a humble background in Newcastle, who,
along with a distinguished publishing record performed the calculations
necessary to work out the mass and density of the earth. Another staff member was the artist, Paul
Sandby who had been appointed Drawing Master in 1768, and founded the Royal
Society of Arts at the same time.
In his
years teaching at Woolwich Isaac produced a number of books and papers on his
specialist subjects. There are also manuscripts
which, when I saw them, were in the Royal Artillery Library, with drawings and
Isaacs commentary, were written in French and describe working practices in the
Arsenal.
The family
eventually moved to Greenwich – to a house still standing in Crooms Hill. Isaac
is that he was respected and sought out by many influential people. George’s childhood was full of occasions when
various luminaries visited or who he was taken to meet. For instance He relates
conversations that Isaac had with the King - George III-
Isaac retired when he was 75 after working for 37 years in Woolwich. The Prince Regent granted him a pension of £500 p.a. “in consideration of his not having received the annual gratuity promised him when he came to England”. However it is his son George who I will write about itrermittently ij the coming weeks
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