George Cockburn (British Army officer)

General Sir George Cockburn, GCH (9 May 1781 – 18 August 1847) was a British Army officer and writer.

Cockburn, born in Dublin, was the eldest son of George Cockburn and a maternal nephew of Sir Benjamin Caldwell. He was commissioned as an ensign in the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards on 9 May 1781, and in 1782 went to Gibraltar, where he was aide-de-camp to General Eliott during the Great Siege. For his services, he was promoted to captain lieutenant in the 105th Regiment of Foot in 1784, and transferred in 1785 to the 65th (2nd Yorkshire, North Riding) Regiment of Foot, then quartered in Dublin. His new colonel, the Earl of Harrington, took a great fancy to the young man, and instead of letting him go to Canada with the rest of the regiment in June 1785, he kept him at home for recruiting duties, and sent him to study the Prussian autumn manoeuvres. In the following years, he went to Austria, France, and in 1788 to Spain for the same reason, and in March 1790, was promoted to captain in the 5th (Royal Irish) Light Dragoons. He married in 1790, the eldest daughter of Phineas Riall. In the same year, he was made a major of the Royal Irish Independent Invalids, and in November 1793 was transferred to the 92nd, of which he purchased the lieutenant colonelcy in the following month, and soon after went on half pay. In 1797, he was promoted to colonel, to major general in 1803, and from 1806 to 1810 he held a command in the northern district.

In April 1810, Cockburn was appointed to the command of a division in the army of occupation in Sicily, and took charge of Messina, but his period of command was short, and in November, on his promotion to lieutenant general, he had to resign. Previously, however, he had been present at the defeat of Cavaignac's division when it attempted to land in Sicily, but the chief credit for this action is due to the adjutant general, James Campbell. Cockburn then travelled in Sicily, and on his return to England, published two illustrated volumes called "A voyage to Cadiz and Gibraltar, up the Mediterranean to Sicily and Malta" in 1810 and 1811, including a description of Sicily and the Lipari Islands, and an excursion in Portugal.

On leaving Sicily, Cockburn settled down at Shanganah Castle, near Bray, County Wicklow, which he had purchased, and began to devote himself to politics. He was initially a radical reformer and admirer of Cobbett, and erected a column in his grounds in memory of the Reform Act 1832, which he speedily demolished when the Whigs ceased to please him. He became a supporter of Peel. In 1821, he was appointed a KCH by George IV, and promoted to GCH by William IV in 1831, more for his activity as a magistrate than for his military services. In 1843, he published a pamphlet, praised at the time, "A Dissertation on the State of the British Finances", in which he advocated banknotes be issued by the government and not the Bank of England. In 1846, he issued another, in which he examined such historical puzzles as Hannibal's passage over the Alps, and the authorship of the "Letters of Junius", which he ascribed, on the testimony of Dr Parr, to Charles Lloyd. In 1821, Cockburn was promoted to a general. When he died at Shanganah Castle, on 18 August 1847, he was fourth general in seniority in the British army.

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* [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5fUIAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA539&lpg=PA539&dq=General+%22John+Lambert%22&source=web&ots=tfyfsb_x4L&sig=86vWy61d1hI6vk48Br6r4RILETQ&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result#PPA539,M1 Gentlemen's Magazine 1847]