William Phillips (British Army officer)
British Army general (1731-1781)
Major-General William Phillips (c. 1731 – 13 May 1781) was a British Army officer who served in the Royal Artillery during the American War of Independence.
Early career
Phillips entered the academy at Woolwich and eventually joined the Royal Artillery. His service at the Battle of Minden led to a reputation as an excellent officer. By the outbreak of the American War of Independence he had risen to the rank of colonel in the British Army. He served as the Commander of Artillery at Woolwich and Lieutenant Governor of Windsor Castle, and was eventually elected as MP for Boroughbridge.
American War of Independence
Phillips was promoted to the rank of Major-General and sent to Quebec in 1776, along with his friends General Henry Clinton and General John Burgoyne, to be the commander of all artillery in the province. Governor Sir Guy Carleton put him in charge of the shipyard at St. John's where, along with Captain Sir Charles Douglas, he supervised the building of the small fleet of ships that fought the Americans under Benedict Arnold at the Battle of Valcour Island. He later took part in the recapture of Fort Ticonderoga, where he stated, "Where a goat can go, a man can go. And where a man can go, he can drag a gun."
As part of Burgoyne's army, he was captured at Saratoga in 1777.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q873602. VIAF identifies the subject as 169847422. The Library of Congress control number is no95017779. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1731, 1781, 1776 and 1777.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Phillips (British Army officer)” 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.