Admiral John Byng
NOTORIOUSLY COURT-MARTIALED AND SHOT DEAD
From the age of thirteen, John Byng devoted his life to the Royal Navy. At the age of fifty-two, the Royal Navy took Admiral John Byng’s life.
Byng’s arrest, trial, and subsequent execution literally became a worldwide phenomenon. In France, the French philosopher Voltaire wrote famously in his 1759 satirical novel Candide, that in Britain, they kill admirals from time to time ‘to encourage the others’. Voltaire could find little else to justify Byng’s death. Here, in the twenty-first century, Byng’s alleged guilt – ‘not doing his utmost’ – and death sentence seem abhorrently over the top, even according to the dictates of eighteenth-century law and justice.
My research and resulting manuscript took a different tack than the typical military or political histories that already exist. I chose to focus on what else was occurring in Great Britain culturally and socially that made Admiral John Byng a candidate for scapegoating. The resulting work is thus microhistory allowing for a more three-dimensional view of a Royal Navy officer judicially murdered. Click on the link below to purchase.