This is a list of general officers of the British Armed Forces who were killed or died while on active service during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This comprises the period of 1793–1815, and includes British general officers who were serving in the British Army or attached to the allied Portuguese Army. Officers of the rank of colonel are included if they were acting in the position of a general officer, that being a brigade or larger, at the time of their death, despite them not themselves being general officers. Officers are also included if they had recently left a command at the time of their death, and their active service was the cause of it.
Background
The death and injury rate of senior officers fighting in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars was unusually high. General officers of the period regularly demonstrated their courage and served to the forefront in battles, placing themselves in positions of high jeopardy. Sanitary and living conditions on military campaigns in the period were also poor, leading to a number of general officers succumbing to illness and disease while on service.[1]
The historian Rory Muir contrasts this style of service for British general officers with that of their successors fighting in the First World War, saying that the added risks officers of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars put themselves in meant that their troops "never felt the alienation from their senior officers which developed during the First World War".[2] The highest rate of death among general officers occurred during the Peninsular War, where fifteen per cent who served were killed, having a sixty per cent higher chance of dying than their junior officers.[1]
Brown, Steve (2018). By Fire and Bayonet: Grey's West Indies Campaign of 1794. Solihull: Helion. ISBN 978-1-91286-694-6.
Burnham, Robert; McGuigan, Ron (2010). The British Army against Napoleon. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Frontline Books. ISBN 978-1-84832-562-3.
Burke, John; Burke, John Bernard (1844). A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies of England, Ireland, and Scotland. London: John Russell Smith.
Cannon, Richard (1842). Historical Record of the Eighty-Sixth, or The Royal County Down Regiment of Foot. London: John W. Parker.
Clayton, Tim (2015). Waterloo: Four Days that Changed Europe's Destiny. London: Abacus. ISBN 978-0-349-12301-1.
Gaudencio, Moises; Burnham, Robert (2021). In the Words of Wellington's Fighting Cocks: The After-Action Reports of the Portuguese Army during the Peninsular War 1812–1814. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 978-1-52676-168-2.
Glover, Michael (2001). Wellington as Military Commander. London: Penguin Books.
Haythornthwaite, Philip J. (1996). Die Hard! Dramatic Actions from the Napoleonic Wars. London: Arms and Armour. ISBN 1-85409-245-6.
Heathcote, T. A. (2010). Wellington's Peninsular War Generals & Their Battles. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 978-1-84884-061-4.
Howard, Martin R. (2015). Death Before Glory! The British Soldier in the West Indies in the French Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 978-1-78159-341-7.
Turnbull, Gordon (1795). A Narrative of the Revolt and Insurrection of the French Inhabitants in the Island of Grenada. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable.
Ward, S. G. P. (Summer 1975). "The Portuguese Infantry Brigades, 1809–1814". Journal of the Society for Army History Research. 53 (214): 103–112.
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