Family and early life
RICHARD DEBAUFRE GUYON, born at Walcot, Bath, the 31st March, 1813, in which fair city he received his early tuition, was the third son of the late John Guyon, of Richmond, Surrey; a commander in the royal navy, and a shipmate of our sailor King, William IV.; descended from the noble house of Guion de Geis, of Languedoc, his ancestor, second son of James de Guion de Geis, de Pampeluna, born at Montpelier, holding the doctrines of the reformed Church, was compelled to fly his country at the revocation of the edict of Nantes (1685), and afterwards served the crown of Great Britain, in Marshal the Duke of Schomberg's, and the Marquis de Miremont's regiments of foot, sent by William III. into Piedmont; the said regiments being then in. the English pay, and commanded by an English general. While leading a body of some two hundred men to the attack of Chateau Dauphin, in Dauphiny, William de Guion lost his left arm, on which occasion he was highly complimented for his gallantry by his colonel, the Seigneur de Loche. For his services, and the loss he had sustained, he was, in 1697, placed upon the military list of French pensioners, on the establishment in Ireland; where, being married in 1700 to a Madlle. de Cadroy, a lady of good family and connexions, he finally took up his residence at Portarlington, Queen's County, until his death in 1740. In the articles of the marriage contract, and also in his commission from the Duke of Schomberg, as second captain in the regiment of Loche, he is styled, "Le Sieur de Guion," a title indicative at least of a high social standing and position.
Richard Debaufre Guyon, generally known in Europe as the "brave Irishmen," was educated for the army, and at an early age held a commission in the Surrey militia. A passion for a military life, inherited doubtless with their blood, appears to have been general in the family. One of his brothers, Lieutenant Colonel Guyon, of the Bengal army, now a resident in Bath, served with distinction in the second Burmese war, and subsequently in the Gwalior campaign, under Lord Gough, as assistant adjutant-general to Sir John Grey. Another brother, holding the present rank of lieutenant in the royal navy, served in the last Syrian war, under Admiral Sir Charles Napier. Richard Guyon, when eighteen years of age, obtained a commission in the Austrian army, in Prince Joseph's 2nd regiment of Hungarian Hussars, where he in time attained to the rank of captain. In November, 1838, he was united to the amiable and accomplished daughter of Field Marshal Baron Spleny (commander of the Hungarian Life Guards), sprung from a noble Magyar race, who held a high post at the Court of the Emperor Ferdinand, and claimed relationship with that distinguished and lamented patriot, Count Louis Batthyanyi. (1) Soon after his marriage, he retired to an estate near Pesth, the vicinity of his wife's friends and relatives, where he occupied his leisure after the manner of a Coventry gentleman, in cultivating his property, in hunting the wolf and the wild boar, in that mimic warfare which trains the ready hand and the quick eye, wich perfects the horseman, and accustoms man to calculate and measure his strength and resources in the hour of peril.
The great and wise Duke of Wellington was known to observe, that the hunting field was a good training school for the battle field; and no one can better testify to the correctness of this opinion, than the subject of this memoir, who attributed one of his most brilliant victories in Hungary to the circumstance of his having hunted the country in the neighbourhood of Komorn, the scene of a tremendous battle, which enabled him to post his troops advantageously; on which occasion, so glorious for the Hungarian tricolor, General Guyon commanded in chief, with 24,000 men and 80 pieces of cannon. The Austrian general was driven from his position, and, dividing his army into two divisions to escape pursuit, it was cut to pieces, the enemy leaving 4000 dead on the field. (2) In these sports of the field, identifying himself with the habits and feelings of this interesting people, and exercising hospitality towards his neighbours, he passed his time, until the troubles in Hungary broke out, and called him to his duties as a patriot and a soldier.
We know, too, that previous to this, the condition of his peasantry interested him greatly, and he sought their amelioration and improvement at a considerable cost and sacrifice. In the spring of 1848 he writes to a friend in England, expressing the difficulty he finds in obtaining religious books for the Protestant portion of his dependents, and desiring that a large supply of Bibles in the Hungarian language should be forwarded, if procurable at the Bible Societies in London, in order to be distributed among them. This calm course of life was of short duration. Signs of an approaching struggle between blind despotism and constitutional freedom had been seen and felt.