Charles Cornwallis Chesney Charles Cornwallis Chesney ( 29 September 1826 – 19 March 1876 ) , British was a British soldier and military writer . Life . He was the third son of Charles Cornwallis Chesney , captain on the retired list of the Bengal Artillery , and nephew of Francis Rawdon Chesney , was born in County Down , Ireland . He was educated at Blundell ' s School , Tiverton , and afterwards at the Royal Military Academy , Woolwich , he obtained his first commission as second lieutenant of engineers in 1845 , passing out of the academy at the head of his term . His early service was spent in the ordinary course of regimental duty at home and abroad , and he was stationed in New Zealand during the Crimean War . Among the various reforms in the British military system which followed from that war was the impetus given to military education ; and in 1858 Captain Chesney was appointed professor of military history at Sandhurst . In 1864 , he succeeded Colonel ( afterwards Sir ) Edward Bruce Hamley in the corresponding chair at the Staff College . The writings of these two brilliant officers had a great influence not only at home , but on Continental Europe and the United States . Chesney ' s first published work ( 1863 ) was an account of the American Civil War in Virginia , which went through several editions . But the work which attained the greatest reputation was his " Waterloo Lectures " ( 1868 ) , prepared from the notes of lectures orally delivered at the Staff College . Up to that time the English literature on the Waterloo campaign , although voluminous , was made up of personal reminiscences or of formal records , useful materials for history rather than history itself ; and the French accounts had mainly taken the form of fiction . In Chesney ' s lucid and vigorous account of the momentous struggle , while it illustrates both the strategy and tactics which culminated in the final catastrophe , the mistakes committed by Napoleon I of France are laid bare , and for the first time an English writer is found to point out that the dispositions of Arthur Wellesley , 1st Duke of Wellington were far from faultless . And in the Waterloo Lectures the Prussia ns are for the first time credited by an English pen with their proper share in the victory . The work attracted much attention abroad as well as at home , and French and German translations were published . Chesney was for many years a constant contributor to the newspaper press and to periodic literature , devoting himself for the most part to the critical treatment of military operations , and professional subjects generally . Some of his essays on military biography , contributed mainly to the " Edinburgh Review " , were afterwards published separately ( 1874 ) . In 1868 he was appointed a member of the royal commission on military education , under the presidency first of Earl de Grey and afterwards of Frederick Hamilton - Temple - Blackwood , 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava , to whose recommendations were due the improved organization of the military colleges , and the development of military education in the principal military stations of the British army . In 1871 , on the conclusion of the Franco - Prussian War , he was sent on a special mission to the French Third Republic and the German Empire , and furnished to the government a series of valuable reports on the different siege operations which had been carried out during the war , especially the two sieges of Paris . These reports were published in a large volume , which was issued confidentially . Never seeking regimental or staff preferment , Colonel Chesney never obtained any , but he held at the time of his death a unique position in the army , altogether apart from and above his actual place in it . He was consulted by officers of all grades on professional matters , and few have done more to raise the intellectual standard of the British officer . Constantly engaged in literary pursuits , he was nevertheless laborious and exemplary in the discharge of his public duties , while managing also to devote a large part of his time to charitable and religious offices . He was abstemious to a fault ; and , overwork of mind and body telling at last on a frail constitution , he died after a short illness . He had become lieutenant - colonel in 1873 , and at the time of his death he was commanding Royal Engineer of the London district . He was buried at Sandhurst .