Lieutenant-General Lord William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (14 September 1774 – 17 June 1839) known as Lord William Bentinck, was a British military commander, politician, and colonial administrator, who served as the governor-general of India from 1828 to 1835.
He has been credited for significant social and educational reforms in India, including abolishing sati, forbidding women to witness the cremations on the ghats of Varanasi, and suppressing female infanticide and human sacrifice.
Bentinck noted "the dreadful responsibility hanging over his head in this world and the next, if… he was to consent to the continuance of this practice (sati) one moment longer." After consultation with the army and officials, he passed the Bengal Sati Regulation, 1829. This was challenged by the Dharma Sabha which appealed in the Privy Council; however, the ban on sati was upheld.
He has been credited with reducing lawlessness by eliminating the supposed Thuggee with the aid of his chief captain, William Henry Sleeman. Along with Thomas Babington Macaulay he introduced English as the language of instruction in India.
Mysore was annexed under his presidency.
Bentinck was born in Buckinghamshire, the second son of Prime Minister William Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, and Lady Dorothy (née Cavendish), only daughter of William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire. On the marriage the family name became Cavendish-Bentinck.
He was educated at Westminster School, a boys' public school in Westminster, London.
In 1783, at the age of 9, he was given the sinecure of Clerk of the Pipe for life.
Bentinck joined the Coldstream Guards on 28 January 1791 at the age of 16, purchasing an ensign's commission. He was promoted to captain-lieutenant (lieutenant) in the 2nd Regiment of Dragoons on 4 August 1792, and to captain in the 11th Regiment of Light Dragoons on 6 April 1793. He was promoted to major in the 28th Foot on 29 March 1794 and to lieutenant-colonel in the 24th Dragoons that July. On 9 January 1798, Bentinck was promoted to colonel. In 1803 he was, to some surprise, appointed Governor of Madras, and was promoted to major-general on 1 January 1805. Although his tenure was moderately successful, it was brought to an end by the Vellore Mutiny in 1806, prompted by Bentinck's order that the native troops be forbidden to wear their traditional attire. Only after serious violence was order restored and the offending policy rescinded, and Bentinck was recalled in 1807.
After service in the Peninsular War, including as a brigade commander at the Battle of Corunna, Bentinck was appointed commander of British troops in Sicily. He was brevetted to lieutenant-general on 3 March 1811. A Whig, Bentinck used this position to meddle in internal Sicilian affairs, effecting the withdrawal from government of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies in favour of his son, Francis I of the Two Sicilies, the reactionary Queen's disgrace, and an attempt to devise a constitutional government for the troubled island, all of which ultimately ended in failure. As a result of his miscalculation, his Anglo-allied forces were defeated at the Battle of Ordal (1813) in Northern Spain. In 1814, Bentinck landed with British and Sicilian troops at Genoa, and commenced to make liberal proclamations of a new order in Italy which embarrassed the British government (which intended to give much of Italy to Austria), and led, once again, to his recall in 1815.
As conditions in Sicily began to deteriorate at the beginning of the 19th century, England began worrying about its interests in the Mediterranean. Internal dissensions in the Sicilian government, and an ever-increasing suspicion that Queen Maria Carolina was in correspondence with the French with the French Occupation of Sicily as its object, led to the appointment of Bentinck as British representative to the Court of Palermo in July 1811. At the beginning of his time at the head of Sicilian affairs, politicians in London opposed the Bourbon rule and appealed for Sicilian annexation. Bentinck was sympathetic to the cause and plight of the Sicilians and "was quickly convinced of the need for Britain to intervene in Sicilian affairs, not so much for Britain's sake as for the well-being of the Sicilians." He was also one of the first of the dreamers to see a vision of a unified Italy.
The English, however, were content to support the Bourbons if they were willing to give the Sicilians more governmental control and a greater respect of their rights. Bentinck saw this as the perfect opportunity to insert his ideas of a Sicilian constitution. Opposition to the establishment of a constitution continued to surface, Maria Carolina proving to be one of the toughest. Her relationship with Bentinck can be summed up in the nickname that she gave him: La bestia feroce (the ferocious beast). Bentinck, however, was determined to see the establishment of a Sicilian Constitution and shortly thereafter exiled Maria Carolina from Palermo. On 18 June 1812 the Parliament assembled in Palermo and, about a month later, on 20 July 1812 the constitution was accepted and written on the basis of 15 articles, on the drafts prepared by Prince Belmonte and other Sicilian noblemen. With the establishment of the constitution the Sicilians had now gained an autonomy they had never experienced before. The constitution set up the separation of the legislative and executive powers and abolished the feudalistic practices that had been established and recognised for the past 700 years.
Bentinck's success in establishing a Sicilian constitution lasted only a few years. On 8 December 1816, a year after Ferdinand IV returned to the throne of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the constitution was abolished and Sicily was reunited with Naples. The constitutional experiment was deemed a failure although it cannot be said to be his alone. The Sicilian nobles were inexperienced and in the face of the difficulties of 1814 and 1815 could not sustain a constitution without British support, which was withdrawn in the wake of the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The British no longer had an invested interest in the internal affairs of Sicily now that the threat of French invasion had been removed. The establishment of a Sicilian constitution that was facilitated by Bentinck was not to be soon forgotten. The ideas found therein and the small taste of freedom lingered in the memories of the Sicilians and had an influence on the desire for autonomy that was at the base of the Sicilian revolutions of 1820 and 1848.
Sailing from Sicily on 30 January 1814, Bentinck first made for Naples. There he reluctantly signed an armistice with Joachim Murat, whom he personally detested as being a man whose "whole life had been a crime", yet whom Britain found it expedient to detach from his brother-in-law, Napoleon, by guaranteeing his Kingdom of Naples in return for an alliance. Having instructed the forces under his command in Sicily to make a landing at Livorno, Bentinck then travelled north, with a day's stop in Rome, to join them. The disembarkation at Livorno began on 9 March and took three days to complete, Murat's Neapolitans already having occupied the port beforehand.
Murat, who had just joined the Sixth Coalition, was married to Napoleon's sister Caroline. Another sister, Elisa, though having now abandoned her Grand Duchy of Tuscany, had nevertheless not given up completely in attempting to salvage something from the collapse of Napoleon's Empire; she had obtained from Murat the guarantee that he would obtain the consent of the Coalition to her retaining the Principality of Lucca and Piombino in return for having rendered up Tuscany without a fight. Elisa had, by the time of Bentinck's appearance at Livorno, retired to Lucca. Upon hearing of his landing, she sent a delegation to gain assurances that Murat's pact would be respected. Bentinck replied that it would not, and that if she did not depart immediately, she would be arrested. With 2,000 British troops dispatched towards the city to carry out this threat, the heavily pregnant Elisa had no choice but to abandon the last of her territories and flee north, where she eventually fell into Allied hands at Bologna.