Richard Church (general)
British and Greek general and Greek politician
General Sir Richard Church (Greek: Ριχάρδος/Ρίτσαρντ Τσούρτς/Τσωρτς; 23 February 1784 – 20 March 1873) was an Anglo-Irish military officer in the British Army and commander of the Greek forces during the last stages of the Greek War of Independence after 1827. After Greek independence, he became a general in the Hellenic Army and a member of the Greek Senate.
Early life and career
He was the second son of Matthew Church, an Anglo-Irish, Quaker merchant in the North Mall area of Cork, Ireland, and Anne Dearman, an English woman originally from Braithwaite, Yorkshire. At the age of 16, he ran away from home and enlisted in the British Army. For this violation of its principles he was disowned by the Society of Friends, but his father bought him a commission, dated 3 July 1800, in the 13th (Somersetshire) Light Infantry. He served in the demonstration against Ferrol, Spain, and in the expedition to Egypt under Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1801, where he took part in the Battle of Abukir and the taking of Alexandria. After the expulsion of the French from Egypt, he returned home, but he was posted back to the Mediterranean in 1805 among the forces sent to defend the island of Sicily. He accompanied the expedition which landed in Calabria and fought a successful battle against the French at the Battle of Maida on 4 July 1806. Church was present on this occasion as captain of a recently raised company of Royal Corsican Rangers. His zeal attracted the notice of his superiors, and he had begun to show his capacity for managing and drilling foreign levies.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2500093. VIAF identifies the subject as 293127125. The Library of Congress control number is n88175813. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1784, 1873, 1827 and 1800.
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard Church (general)” 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.