previous next

Barre, Isaac, 1726-1802

Military officer; born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1726. His parents

Isaac Barre.

were French, his father being a small tradesman in Dublin. Isaac entered the British army at the age of twenty-one, and participated in the expedition against Louisburg in 1758. Wolfe was his friend, and appointed him major of brigade; and in May, 1759, he was made adjutant-general of Wolfe's army that assailed Quebec. He was severely wounded in the battle on the Plains of Abraham, by which he lost the sight of one eye. Barre served under Amherst in 1760; and was the official bearer of the news of the surrender of Montreal to England. In 1761 he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel, and the same year he obtained a seat in Parliament, where he found himself in opposition to the ministry. For this offence he was deprived of his offices, given him as a reward for his services in America. He was the warm friend of the colonies, and made able speeches in Parliament in their favor. Barre was one of the supposed authors of the Letters of Junius. Strong in person, vigorous in mind, independent in thought and action, he was a dreaded opponent. During the last twenty years of his life he was blind. He died in London, July 20, 1802.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)
hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Isaac Barre (4)
James Wolfe (2)
Junius (1)
Richard French (1)
Jeffrey Amherst (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1726 AD (2)
July 20th, 1802 AD (1)
1802 AD (1)
1761 AD (1)
1760 AD (1)
May, 1759 AD (1)
1758 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: