To 1815

Baring's military career began with his joining the Hanoverian Army in 1787. In November 1803 (dating the commission to 17 November) he became a brevet major in the King's Germans (renamed the King's German Legion on 19 December 1803), a force of which he had been one of the first members. He fought in the campaigns in Hannover (1805, Third Coalition), the Baltic (1807–08, Gunboat War / English Wars), the Pyrenees (1808–13, Peninsular War), the Walcheren Campaign (1809, Fifth Coalition), southern France (1813–14, Sixth Coalition) and the Netherlands (1814, Sixth Coalition). On 16 May 1811 he was slightly wounded at the battle of Albuera. On 18 June 1815 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

Waterloo

Plaque to Baring, Von Ompteda and the Legion on the outer wall of La Haye Sainte

At the head of the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion of the Legion, Baring was put in charge of the defence of the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte during the battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. He wrote about the events of the day in a detailed report,^[2] which ended with the words:

The Division, which was terribly tired and had suffered infinitely, spent the night lying on the battlefield, and of the 400 men with which I had entered the battle I now had no more than 42. According to who I could ask, the answers came: dead! – wounded! – I freely admit that I instinctively wept tears at this news and also at so great a bitterness I felt helplessly take possession of me. I was roused from these sad thoughts by the general-quartermaster of our division, Major Shaw, who was my trusted friend. I felt exhausted in the highest degree and my leg was very painful; with my friend I lay down in some straw, which the men had gathered for us to sleep on. On waking, we found ourselves between a dead man and a dead horse. But I will pass over these scenes of the battlefield with their misery and grief in silence.
We buried our dead friends and comrades; among them was the commander of the brigade, Oberst von Ompteda, and many a brave man. After we had boiled something up and our men had just about recovered, we left the battlefield in pursuit of the enemy.

After Waterloo

The King's German Legion was dissolved after Waterloo and Baring joined the newly formed army of the Kingdom of Hanover, in which he became oberst in the Garde-Grenadier-Regiment (26 December 1828) and from 1830 as Flügel-Adjutant in the general staff. In 1831, the year in which his Erzählung der Teilnahme des 2. Leichten Bataillons der Kgl. Deutschen Legion an der Schlacht von Waterloo (History of the Participation of the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion of the King's German Legion at the Battle of Waterloo) was published in a Hanoverian military journal, he held the rank of Brigade-Kommandeur. On 18 June 1832, the seventeenth anniversary of Waterloo, he and his descendants were made Freiherrs by William IV (then still king of Hanover) in recognition of his war service and made Hanover's city commander. In 1834 he rose to Generalmajor then in 1846 to Generalleutnant.