Mante, Thomas, fl. 1760-1785 : Very little is known about Thomas Mante (fl. 1760-1785). He apparently served in the British forces in various capacities during the Seven Years War. He claims to have served the whole war "with reputation" and to have been an assistant engineer at the siege of Havana in 1762. He was certainly commissioned as a lieutenant in 1762 and served in America with the 77th Regiment until its reduction in 1763. During the 1764 expedition against the western Indians, he served as a major of brigade under Colonel John Bradstreet (1711-1774), but was not remunerated for that service and had to pay his own passage back to England.
After returning to Britain Mante published a Treatise on the Use of Defensive Arms, translated from the French of Joly de Maizeray, with Remarks (London, 1771) and a History of the late War in North-America, and the islands of the West-Indies, including the campaigns of MDCCLXIII and MDCCLXIV against His Majesty's Indian enemies (London, 1772), which latter is available in the Archives Library (R+E 199 M29).
In 1773, Mante took service with the French government and, with one brief interval, continued in that service in various capacities for about eight years. During that period he also acted as a secret agent for the British government. In 1779, he was imprisoned for four months on charges of conducting an illicit correspondence with the British government and remitting money to Holland with the intention of following it. As a result of that experience and a deterioration of health in consequence of having been cut for the stone twice in five months, he returned to England in the early part of 1781.
For some time after his return, Mante endeavoured fruitlessly to obtain compensation for his services from the British government and lived on the somewhat grudging charity of a brother and the benevolence of such senior military officers as the Duke of Richmond and Sir Guy Carleton, to which later, in 1781, he dedicated his System of Tactics, the second of his translations from the French of Joly de Maizeray. His papers suggest that he was also augmenting his income by writing romantic novels and perhaps other popular works for Thomas Hookham's Circulating Library. The last two volumes of his Naval and Military History of the Wars of England, including those of Scotland and Ireland (London, 1795?-1807) are described as "completed by an impartial hand", which presumably indicates that he died before its completion.
