Sir William Erskine, 2nd Baronet

Major-General Sir William Erskine, 2nd Baronet (30 March 1770 – 1813) was an officer in the British Army, served as a member of Parliament, and achieved important commands in the Napoleonic Wars under the Duke of Wellington, but ended his service in insanity and suicide.

He was the eldest son of Lieutenant-General Sir William Erskine, 1st Baronet and his second wife, Frances. He succeeded to the baronetcy on his father's death in 1795.

Erskine was commissioned into the 23rd foot 1785, and transferred to the 5th Dragoons as a lieutenant in 1787, and in 1791 became captain of the 15th King's Light Dragoons (the unit his father had served in with distinction) on 23 February 1791. His first active service was in Flanders 1793–95, during the French Revolutionary Wars, when he acted as aide-de-camp to his father. In 1794 he was made lieutenant-colonel. and fought at the Battle of Villers-en-Cauchies, where a handful of English and Austrian cavalry routed a much larger force of French infantry and cavalry.

On his father's death in 1795, Erskine became baronet. He represented Fife in Parliament in 1796 and 1802–1805. Despite being "blind as a beetle", according to a fellow officer, in 1808, Erskine received promotion to major general. When he heard Erskine was being shipped to Portugal, Wellington complained that he "generally understood him to be a madman." The administrators of the army at Horse Guards responded that, "No doubt he is sometimes a little mad, but in his lucid intervals he is an uncommonly clever fellow; and I trust he will have no fit during the campaign, though he looked a little wild as he embarked."

During the 1811 campaign in Portugal, Erskine took over the command of the famous Light Division in the absence of Robert Craufurd. He soon developed a reputation for rashness. Wellington wrote, "It is impossible to trust to his judgment in any critical case."

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