Circle Dance";
"Silvery Moonlight"; "A Waterfall by Moonlight"; "Solitude"; and
"Moonlight on Long Island Sound."

BLAKENEY, WILLIAM BLAKENEY, BARON (1672-1761), British soldier, was born
at Mount Blakeney in Limerick in 1672. Destined by his father for
politics, he soon showed a decided preference for a military career, and
at the age of eighteen headed the tenants in defending the Blakeney
estate against the Rapparees. As a volunteer he went to the war in
Flanders, and at the siege of Venlo in 1702 won his commission. He
served as a subaltern throughout Marlborough's campaigns, and is said to
have been the first to drill troops by signal of drum or colour. For
many years after the peace of Utrecht he served unnoticed, and was
sixty-five years of age before he became a colonel. This neglect, which
was said to be due to the hostility of Lord Verney, ceased when the duke
of Richmond was appointed colonel of Blakeney's regiment, and
thenceforward his advance was rapid. Brigadier-general in the Cartagena
expedition of 1741, and major-general a little later, he distinguished
himself by his gallant and successful defence of Stirling Castle against
the Highlanders in 1745. Two years later George II. made him
lieutenant-general and lieutenant-governor of Minorca. The governor of
that island never set foot in it, and Blakeney was left in command for
ten years.

In 1756 the Seven Years' War was preluded by a swift descent of the
French on Minorca. Fifteen thousand troops under marshal the duc de
Richelieu, escorted by a strong squadron under the marquis de la
Gallisonniere, landed on the island on the 18th of April, and at once
began the siege of Fort St Philip, where Blakeney commanded at most some
5000 soldiers and workmen. The defence, in spite of crumbling walls and
rotted gun platforms, had already lasted a month when a British fleet
under vice-admiral the Hon. John Byng appeared. La Gallisonniere and
Byng fought, on the 20th of May, an indecisive battle, after which the
relieving squadron sailed away and Blakeney was left to his fate. A
second expedition subsequently appeared off Minorca, but it was then too
late, for after a heroic resistance of seventy-one days the old general
had been compelled to surrender the fort to Richelieu (April 18-June 28,
1756). Only the ruined fortifications were the prize of the victors.
Blakeney and his little garrison were transported to Gibraltar with
absolute liberty to serve aga