#earl cornwallis

Watercolour of the East Indianman Earl Cornwallis and other ships drawn by William Gibson 3rd Mate, 1783

His small collage shows several scenes from his sea life. For example, the first vignette shows the crew of the General Barker drifting away from the costs of Holland after a shipwreck.  The second shows a battle between the English ship Crawford and the Spanish ship Santa Lucie, the third shows the ship Amity in a storm in the North Sea and the fourth shows the Amity stuck in the ice of the coast of Labrador.  

The slightly portly chap who lost at Yorktown and thus, in popular memory, basically guaranteed the creation of the United States, right? 

Well, while that isn’t exactly untrue (though it does ignore all the fighting that took place across both North America and the globe after Yorktown in 1781), Cornwallis was actually a pretty interesting guy who did a great deal - for good and for ill - both before the American Revolution and after it. So here are some factoids about him that you may well not have known.

First off, while he’s almost always referred to as “Lord” Cornwallis by American writers, during the American Revolution he was actually an earl. 

While playing hockey as a youth he received an injury to his eye from the future Bishop of Durham.

At the age of 19 he went on adventures on the continent with a Prussian officer, Captain de Roguin, before attending the European military school at Turin.

At the age of 21 he was present at the famous battle of Minden. 

He was happily married to Jemima Tullekin Jones, the daughter of a regimental colonel, until her death in 1779.

In 1765 he voted against the Stamp Act, and was a vocal supporter of American colonists during the years of debate between them and parliament. 

The claim that he avoided surrendering to Washington in person at Yorktown by pretending to be ill is a myth. He never actually gave a reason. 

Much like Tarleton, when he arrived back in Britain after the surrender he was greeted by cheering crowds. 

In 1785 he was appointed as ambassador to the court of Frederick the Great. He attended Prussian military maneuvers (which didn’t impress him one bit) and whilst doing so encountered his old enemy Lafayette. 

In 1786 he was appointed Governor-General of India. Once there he undertook a great number of reforms which laid “the foundation for British rule throughout India and setting standards for the services, courts and revenue collection that remained remarkably unaltered almost to the end of the British era." 

In 1790 he commanded forces during the Third Anglo-Mysore War, which ended in British victory over the Tipu Sultan. 

In 1793 he returned to Britain. He was given the rank of Master of Ordinance, giving him responsibility for the British Army's military infrastructure, overseeing its storage depots and supplies, as well as commanding its artillery and engineering forces. 

In 1798 he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and crushed the rebellion of the United Irishmen there that year. 

In 1800 he played an instrumental role in the passage of the Act of Union through the Irish Parliament.  

In 1802 he was sent to France to finalise peace treaties with Napoleon Bonaparte, bringing to an end the War of the Second Coalition.

He died in 1805, in India. He is buried there, overlooking the Ganges River, where his memorial is a protected monument maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India. 

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis KG, styled Viscount Brome between 1753 and 1762 and known as The Earl Cornwallis between 1762 and 1792, was a British Army officer and colonial administrator.

Born into an aristocratic family and educated at Eton and Cambridge, Cornwallis joined the army in 1757, seeing action in the Seven Years' War. Upon his father's death in 1762 he became Earl Cornwallis and entered theHouse of Lords. From 1766 until 1805 he was Colonel of the 33rd Regiment of Foot. He next saw military action in 1776 in the American War of Independence. Active in the advance forces of many campaigns, in 1780 he inflicted an embarrassing defeat on the American army at the Battle of Camden, though he surrendered his army at Yorktown in October 1781 after an extended campaign through the Southern states which was marked by disagreements between him and his superior, General Sir Henry Clinton (which became public knowledge after the war).

Despite this defeat, Cornwallis retained the confidence of successive British governments and continued to enjoy an active career. Knighted in 1786, he was in that year appointed to be Governor General and commander-in-chief inIndia. There he enacted numerous significant reforms within the East India Company and its territories, including the Cornwallis Code, part of which implemented important land taxation reforms known as the Permanent Settlement. From 1789 to 1792 he led British and Company forces in the Third Anglo-Mysore War to defeat the Mysorean ruler Tipu Sultan.