Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis
British general, colonial official, diplomat (1738–1805)
General Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis (31 December 1738 – 5 October 1805) was a British Army officer, Whig politician and colonial administrator. In the United States and United Kingdom, he is best known as one of the leading British general officers in the American War of Independence. His surrender in 1781 to a combined Franco-American force at the siege of Yorktown ended significant hostilities in North America. Cornwallis later served as a civil and military governor in Ireland, where he helped to bring about the Act of Union; and in India, where he helped to enact the Cornwallis Code and the Permanent Settlement.
Born into an aristocratic family and educated at Eton College and the University of Cambridge, Cornwallis joined the British Army in 1757, seeing action in the Seven Years' War. Upon his father's death in 1762 he succeeded to his peerage and entered the House of Lords. From 1766 to 1805 he was colonel of the 33rd Regiment of Foot. Cornwallis next saw military action in 1776 in the American War of Independence. Active in the advance forces of many campaigns, in 1780 he inflicted a major defeat on the Continental Army at the Battle of Camden. He also commanded British forces in the March 1781 Pyrrhic victory at Guilford Court House.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.