Author: Oswald, John
Biography:
OSWALD, John (c. 1760-1793: ODNB)
Born in Edinburgh, the son of John Oswald, goldsmith and proprietor of a coffee house, in his youth he acquired Latin and Greek and, later, five other languages. Initially a goldsmith’s apprentice, he joined the Royal Irish Regiment in 1776 or 1777. A legacy permitted him to purchase a commission in the 42nd regiment under Colonel Norman Macleod. He served as a lieutenant in India for three years, from 1781. Before then, in Deal he had married a woman named Louisa, by whom he had two sons. Presumably Louisa died, because on 1 June 1784, at Folkestone, Kent, he married Bathsheba Fagge Owen (bap. 1759), with whom he had two more children. His political enemies, aware of his two marriages, claimed he was a polygamist. His primary occupation in the 1780s was as a journalist for the Political Herald and Review (1785-86), the British Mercury (1787), and the London Gazetteer (1789-91). During that period, he befriended famous radicals, Thomas Paine, John Horne Tooke, David Williams, and James Mackintosh. Resident in Paris from May 1790, in Nov. of that year he advertised in the Manchester Mercury for volunteers for “an independent company” (he failed to mention the objective, to join Jacobin forces in France). He was present during the historic debates in the National Assembly, co-edited Chronique du Mois (1791-93), was a reporter for the Universal Patriot, and secretary of the radical British Club at White’s Hotel. In 1792 and 1793 spoke before the Jacobin Club. An intimate of leading revolutionaries, including Danton, he was made an honorary French Citizen on 25 Sept. 1792. On 26 Mar. 1793, to great fanfare, he led his battalion of pikemen, the Parisian 14th, out of Paris. He was killed by a cannonball on 14 Sep. 1793 during the battle of La Vendée. A vegetarian and atheist, his vegetarianism arose from his exposure to Brahmin practice during his time in India. A writer in Scots Magazine (Jan. 1792) called his book Cry of Nature; or, An Appeal to Mercy and Justice, on Behalf of the Persecuted Animals “a puerile rhapsody.” Paine is reported to have said to Oswald, “you have lived so long without tasting flesh, that you now have a most voracious appetite for blood.” (ODNB 20 May 2023; D. V. Erdman, Commerce des Lumières: John Oswald and the British in Paris, 1790-1793 [1986]) JC