Charles Cornwallis

Biography

Charles Cornwallis was born in London in 1738, the eldest son of the 5th Baron Cornwallis, and was educated at Eton and Clare College, Cambridge. Commissioned in the 1st Foot Guards in 1757, he studied at the military academy in Turin and fought in Germany during the Seven Years' War, including at Minden. He entered the House of Commons for Eye in 1760 and moved to the Lords when he succeeded his father as Earl Cornwallis in 1762; there he was one of five peers who voted against the Stamp Act.

Despite his sympathy for the colonists he sought active service in the American War of Independence, leading the advance in the New York and New Jersey campaigns, defeating the Continental Army at Camden in 1780 and winning a costly victory at Guilford Court House in 1781. His campaign through the Carolinas into Virginia, conducted amid disputes with his superior Sir Henry Clinton, ended with the surrender of his army to a French and American force at Yorktown in October 1781.

He kept the government's confidence and in 1786 became Governor-General and commander-in-chief in India. There he reformed the East India Company's administration and courts in the Cornwallis Code, which included the Permanent Settlement of Bengal land revenue, and defeated Tipu Sultan in the Third Anglo-Mysore War, for which he was made a marquess. Back in Britain he was Master of the Ordnance, and from June 1798 Lord Lieutenant and commander-in-chief in Ireland, where he put down the rebellion and a French landing and secured the Irish Parliament's passage of the Act of Union.

In March 1802 he signed the Treaty of Amiens with France on Britain's behalf. Reappointed Governor-General of India in 1805, he arrived in July and died of fever at Ghazipur on 5 October 1805.