Talk:John Huske

Full general?

At present the article states that Huske was promoted full general on 5 December 1756. This date is taken from Henry Manners Chichester's 1891 article in the Dictionary of National Biography, and is repeated in Jonathan Spain's article on Huske in the Oxford DNB (2004). Chichester's article cites "Cameron's [sic, should be Cannon's] Hist. Rec. of the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers" as a source. In fact this 1850 work (at page 168) gives a date of 5 December 1746 for Huske's promotion to general, which is obviously wrong as Huske was only promoted lieutenant-general in 1747 (see "No. 8682". The London Gazette. 6–10 October 1747.).

In the renewal of general officers' commissions following the accession of George III in 1760 (i.e. after his supposed promotion to full general), Huske is still among the lieutenant-generals ("No. 10056". The London Gazette. 25–29 November 1760.). The annotated Army List for 1760 in the National Archives (available for free download here) also lists Huske's name among the lieutenant-generals, with a handwritten note of his death. In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1761, his death notice (at page 44) and the copy of his will (at page 22) both refer to him as Lieut.-Gen. Huske. For what it's worth, Beatson's Political Index (volume II, page 132, 1806) lists Huske among the lieutenant-generals, but Dalton's English Army Lists (volume VI, page 320, note 25 to page 318, 1904) makes no mention of promotion to full general either. Such a promotion would indeed have been unusual, as advancement in the Army was by seniority, and those of Huske's 1747 contemporaries as lieutenant-general who were still living were only promoted to full generals in 1765 (see "No. 10507". The London Gazette. 23–26 March 1765.), i.e. after Huske's death.

I believe that an erroneous statement by Cannon that Huske was promoted to general on 5 December 1746 was "corrected" to 5 December 1756 by Chichester in the DNB, and perpetuated in the ODNB and this article. Contemporary sources (Gazette, Army List, Gentleman's Magazine) and subsequent publications (Beatson, Dalton) show that John Huske died in 1761 as a lieutenant-general. Opera hat (talk) 13:36, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Agreed; he doesn't appear on the list of full British generals. Robinvp11 (talk) 19:20, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

B class review comments

This is a well-written article. However, there are a few issues. Please fix the second bullet point and I'll call it B class. Djmaschek (talk) 19:29, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

• Introduction: The delegate part of this statement was not cited. I copied data from the infobox to Life section to fix this issue.
• Infobox: The infobox shows he fought at Malplaquet, but this is not mentioned or cited in the text.
• Why was he major in 1739 after he was promoted the equivalent of lt. colonel in 1715? Can you explain?
• I added some hyperlinks. I also added clarification in some sentences (I hope).

Thanks, corrected for Malplaquet.

The difference is due to the practice of double-ranking, whereby a Guards commission gave the holder higher rank; this was about precedence eg who was the senior officer in action, and also for promotion (holders of a Guards commission came first, which is why Huske was first in line for a new regiment in 1740). As Marlborough also used brevet (temporary) ranks, it caused huge confusion, and there was a concerted effort after 1715 to remove these. I've changed the wording slightly to simplify. Robinvp11 (talk) 09:33, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

B class. The USA also used brevet ranks which caused headaches. Djmaschek (talk) 04:01, 3 June 2020 (UTC)