Cornwallis: Soldier and Statesman in a Revolutionary World

by C. Richard Middleton

The first biography of Charles Cornwallis in forty years—the soldier, governor, and statesman whose career covered America, India, Britain, and Ireland

Charles, First Marquis of Cornwallis, was a leading figure in late eighteenth-century Britain. His career spanned the American War of Independence, Irish Union, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the building of the Second British Empire in India—and he has long been associated with the unacceptable face of Britain’s colonial past.

In this vivid new biography, Richard Middleton shows that this portrait is far from accurate. Cornwallis emerges as a reformer who had deep empathy for those under his authority, and was clear about his obligation to govern justly. He sought to protect the population of Bengal with a constitution of written laws, insisted on Catholic emancipation in Ireland, and recognized the limitations of British power after the American war. Middleton reveals how Cornwallis’ rewarding of merit, search for economy, and elimination of corruption helped improve the machinery of British government into the nineteenth century.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, American Revolution, Military History, American History

440 pages, Hardcover

First published March 22, 2022

About the author

C. Richard Middleton is Professor of History at Queens University Belfast. He earned his BA and Ph.D. at the University of Exeter.

Reviews

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough and well-researched biography of Cornwallis.

Some may not find the book as thorough as they wish. Cornwallis had a rather complex career, spent in the British Isles, North America and India, and Middleton’s treatment feels a bit rushed, considering that. His treatment of certain episodes you may be interested in (like the Seven Years’ War) take up only a few pages. I assume many readers will be drawn to this book for an account of Cornwallis’ role in the Revolutionary War. If that’s the case, the version here is perceptive, but not much different from what you’ve read in other books, at least from my reading. The coverage of Cornwallis’s campaigns in the South is briefer than I hoped. There is however, coverage of topics I didn’t know much about, like Cornwallis’s wife and her death in England during the war.

The book does have some solid commentary, such as the feud between British generals over who lost the war in the South. While Cornwallis could be insubordinate, Middleton assigns more blame to Clinton. The book also does a great job describing his relationships with fellow soldiers and statesmen.

Personally, I didn’t know much about Cornwallis’s later service in India, just some brief summaries from other books on the American war. It’s a pretty boring story, full of tedious details of Cornwallis’s financial policies and administrative reforms, often told using eighteenth-century terminology that will likely mystify general readers. Also, Middleton’s summary of Cornwallis’ accomplishments there is largely positive; according to Middleton’s endnotes, other historians have been more critical, but, if so, he doesn’t really address these controversies.

A well-written and readable work.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I confess that I read only the chapters about Cornwallis's role during the Revolutionary War. It was rather basic -- outfoxed at Trenton, hemmed in at Yorktown and the rocky relationship with General Clinton. Nothing new. It did not inspire me to read on.

[Judy Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

In addition to being famous for his surrender of British troops at Yorktown, it is fascinating that this was not a career-ender! He became the Governor-General of India, reformed the East India Company, and then the Lord Lieutenant who led the British response to the Irish Rebellion of 1798. This telling is dense and lots of minute-by-minute battle scenes, but is still a fascinating and complete picture of an important historical figure.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

To the extent most people ever think about Charles, Earl Cornwallis, they think of him as portrayed in Mel Gibson’s film The Patriot. There he is an aged, somewhat hapless, conflicted military officer, ultimately defeated at Yorktown, whereupon he sails back to England in disgrace. Little of this is true, and his life after the War of Independence was full of distinguished service to England, which pushed his service in the colonies to the background. And as this excellent biography shows, Cornwallis was an exemplar of the type of competent, selfless aristocrat who made the now-dead British Empire the greatest empire the world has ever known. We do well to recover the knowledge of his life, and apply lessons learned from it to our own lives.

The Cornwallis family was (the main line is extinct) traceable to the fourteenth century, but they only received noble status in 1661, for support of the Crown during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the English civil wars. They held lands in Suffolk, northeast of London. Through smart and lucky choices of whom to support in those years of ferment, the family increased their wealth, power, and titles, with Cornwallis’s father being elevated by the King from a baronetcy to an earldom in 1753. Cornwallis himself was born in 1738, and after stints at Eton and Cambridge, in 1756 he joined the Grenadier Guards as a junior officer, a prestigious regiment appropriate for his station. The Seven Years War (what we Americans call the French and Indian War) had just begun, and Cornwallis fought in several engagements in Germany, receiving quick promotion, to lieutenant colonel. His father died in 1762, and in that same year the war ended and Cornwallis returned to England, only twenty-five, to assume his father’s title and role as head of the family.

Cornwallis was not rich. While he owned a modest set of lands, the earldom had not come with new lands or other income sources. His manor house was run down, and he had expenses necessary to maintain a house in London, because he sat in the House of Lords. A man of his position was also required to entertain and employ quite a few servants, which stretched Cornwallis’s budget. He managed to supplement his income through appointment to a variety of middling government sinecures, such as constable of the Tower of London. Such sinecures, however, were contingent on remaining in good favor with the government in power, not easy given that he had to vote in Parliament. He thus necessarily had both allies and opponents, and the latter might be in power at any given time, cutting his income. His primary employment, however, was as the colonel, that is, the chief officer, of the 33rd Foot Regiment. Yet he married for love, in 1768, to the daughter of a lieutenant-colonel in a Foot Guards regiment, and for the next several years was occupied primarily with regimental duties.

The war in America brought him back to active fighting (along with his younger brother, captain of a British warship). As did most of the British ruling class, he viewed the war as brought on by a handful of troublemakers, the disposal of whom was the main aim of fighting the war. He arrived in 1776, and fought in the early part of the war against George Washington’s army around Manhattan. It appeared the war would soon be over, and so Cornwallis made plans to return to his family (he now had a son and a daughter). But Washington’s crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton put the British on the back foot, and Cornwallis, sent to hunt Washington down, was out-maneuvered. The war ground on; Cornwallis remained in America and fought in and around Philadelphia, and was sent home for a rest, and with messages for the King from his superiors, at the beginning of 1778.

Most importantly, his beloved wife Jemima was sick, with a liver ailment. He resigned his commission, reluctantly agreed to by the King, to attend to his wife. But she died in February of 1779, and, greatly bereaved, he sought to return to active service. With his reputation as a solid military commander (although he had more than one dispute with other officers, mostly the result of personality conflicts attributable to the others), this was eagerly granted, and by July he was back in New York. Soon, though, he was sent to the Carolinas, where, among other efforts, he drummed up support among Loyalists, as well as among the Creeks and Cherokees, even if neither group proved very reliable. Here he came into contact with, as the superior officer of, Banastre Tarleton, a highly competent and ruthless commander (and the main villain of Gibson’s movie). He wasn’t, and the British weren’t, nearly as ruthless as portrayed there, however. For example, Cornwallis did not hesitate to execute two British soldiers who raped a local girl. Nonetheless, the southern war was fairly brutal, both because it was a type of civil war and because the Scots-Irish presence there, along with the irregular nature of much of the fighting, conduced to less gentlemanly forms of conflict.

Cornwallis ably implemented his orders, and proved an excellent administrator, solving many problems resulting from laxity and corruption, but the British strategy was confused and often counterproductive. Conflict among the British commanders therefore increased. For example, Tarleton tried, unsuccessfully, to tarnish Cornwallis with responsibility for various British failures, especially at the Battle of Cowpens, in 1781 in South Carolina, where Tarleton was badly defeated by the Americans. Ordered to Yorktown, Cornwallis was cut off from resupply by the French navy, defeated by Washington on land, and surrendered in October of 1781, ending the major fighting of the War of Independence.

Middleton does not spare Cornwallis from some criticism for his conduct in the war. Certainly, however, others bore more of the blame for losing the war, notably Henry Clinton, his immediate superior. Middleton’s opinion is that the British simply did not understand “the ideological underpinning of the Revolution,” leading to the false assumption that defeating a small number of troublemakers would win the war. In his nature, Cornwallis only strove to do his duty for King and country, and despite errors, did the best he could with the limited resources he was given.

He returned to England, where he was, to his relief, given a cordial reception by the King and praised by all, or nearly all, high and low. (Technically, in that more ceremonial age, he was a prisoner of war on parole, until the final settlement of the war, and thus could not publicly appear at court.) He had to endure public inquiries in Parliament, but emerged unscathed. He occupied himself with various political tasks and his sinecures, though he had trouble with his children. His daughter, at age sixteen, eloped with an Irish ensign of the Foot Guards. This was not a suitable match, and the groom had no chance of earning an income that would keep Cornwallis’s daughter in an appropriate social position. Thus, he was forced to supplement their income. Meanwhile, his son was frequently ill, and showing signs of profligacy, which grew worse as he grew older.

Cornwallis needed something to do with his life, and he was still eager to serve. There was no call for more soldiering at the time, but in 1786 he was appointed as both governor-general and commander-in-chief of India—that is, simultaneously the top civilian and military leader, in a complicated place that desperately needed a highly capable chief in both areas. The East India Company was struggling both to turn a profit and to deal with several military conflicts, and Cornwallis had proved himself both an able administrator and an excellent military commander. Moreover, unlike most of the men serving in India, he had a well-deserved reputation for being incorruptible. And he would receive an annual salary in the range of, in today’s money, two to three million pounds, solving his money problems (as well as being made a knight of the Garter, increasing his social prestige).

Cornwallis stayed in India for six years, dealing with a very complex situation on many levels. India was governed by a patchwork of principalities, some of whom were independent and some subordinate to the Company. Taxation and the law codes were a mess, and Cornwallis expertly reformed both, taking an appropriately paternalistic attitude to the backwards Indians, with the prime goal of bringing consistency and reducing arbitrariness (as in the Muslim rule that killing someone in a way that did not shed blood was not a capital crime). However, his aim was not to replace local law; the English always governed with a light and enlightened touch. Rather, he aimed to raise the Indians out of their degradation by giving them the tools to do the task mostly themselves. Thus, he put a stop to child slavery, widespread in India, but he could do little about slavery more generally, since it “was sanctioned by both Hindu and Islamic law.” The final result of his efforts was the Cornwallis Code, portions of which survived into the twentieth century, and which made huge advances in bringing proper administration to India.

Much of his time was spent dealing with internal Company matters. He reformed the debt of the Company, reducing interest payments to a more acceptable level. He also had to deal with endless requests for preference and patronage from the powerful in England, from the Prince of Wales (later George IV and notoriously undisciplined and dissolute) on down, all of which he refused, furthering his reputation for incorruptibility. He remained unmarried, and moreover, he did not take a mistress, while he reacted with rage to rumors spread about that he intended to marry the sixteen-year-old daughter of a Company official.

Other difficulties loomed with military affairs. The Company maintained regiments with a rank-and-file of British men and others with a rank-and-file of high-caste Hindus, sepoys. These latter men were skilled and loyal, but they were the exception among the mass of Indians, then as now, and coordinating the two was difficult. Cornwallis needed the military in shape; the Sultan of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, was causing trouble. Mysore was an independent principality and Tipu wanted to expand at the expense of his neighbors. (Middleton notes that today Indians try to point to Tipu as an “Indian nationalist who challenged the imperialist order,” but that he was in fact just a “feudal warlord.”) Tipu had modernized his army with French help, although the French declined to help him fight his enemies, but it was not enough to defeat the combined forces of the British and their Indian allies. Tipu was defeated in 1792 and forced to give up half his lands (measured by revenue, not geographic expanse).

The Indians, like all peoples with a justified inferiority complex, are very touchy about having their inadequacies pointed out. For example, a few weeks ago on X I pointed out, to refute the constant mendacious claim we need to import Indians to America for “talent,” that India has never had any accomplishments, scientific or otherwise, of the first order, despite having a massive population, and showed that Grok agreed with me. Thousands of Indians were tremendously offended, and tried desperately to disprove my very obvious and totally inarguable point by all offering up an identical pathetic short list of extremely modest accomplishments, leading with their ace-in-the-hole, India landing an unmanned probe on the south pole of the Moon a few years ago (for some reason it is important to them it was the south pole). When I pointed out that Americans had put an actual man on the moon sixty years ago, their response was—that was fake, India is Number One! There is no reasoning with such people. Thus, I have great sympathy for Cornwallis, who had to deal with them every day for years. I also suspect that Americans would do well to try to pay attention to the Indian caste system, and to assume that it reflects realities among Indians. It is entirely clear that there are huge differences among Indians, both genetically and culturally, reflected among other places in the caste system, and if we are to have dealings with Indians, we should be dealing with the quality Indians, of which there are certainly some, while ignoring and totally excluding the dregs.

Such Indian fabulism is on full display in a topic tangentially related to Cornwallis, so-called Mysorean rockets, used by the natives in India. Rockets had been known for hundreds of years in Europe, and longer in China. The Chinese, contrary to myth, did not only use gunpowder, which they invented, for fireworks. But their weapons were very crude and were not improved for a millennium, whereas when the Europeans got their hands on gunpowder, within a few decades they were forging twenty-foot cannon to hurl giant balls which smashed fortifications. As always, it is the Europeans who advanced technology, even in those rare instances they did not invent it.

So it was in India. The British noted the occasional use by Tipu of rockets (though Middleton does not mention them), and if you look on the internet, such as on Wikipedia, there are numerous breathless references to Tipu’s mighty advances and sophisticated use of rockets, which they claim William Congreve stole for his famous military rockets. Most of the references in Wikipedia are to “citation needed,” but there are some trackable references, mostly to Indian sources, some of which in turn point to actual reference works, such as Werner von Braun’s and Frederick Ordway’s History of Rocketry and Space Travel, published in 1966. I bought all those reference works to check the facts. And, as I expected, it is true that Tipu used rockets (because he could not make cannon, and probably at the instigation of the French), but they were extremely crude and of little effect (although he may have been the first to use iron-cased rockets), and almost everything you can read about them on the internet is either a gross exaggeration or a fiction. Congreve, and Congreve alone, turned them into effective weapons of war. Yet legions of Indians behind their keyboards, when not producing slop to earn money for clicks, spend their time corrupting the internet with their limitless ethnic chauvinism, on this and doubtless thousands of other topics. This is why, of course, trusting the internet, or “AI,” which mostly just summarizes errors it finds on the internet, is a mistake, and you should only rely on books, preferably those published before 1960, when ideology started to badly infect the history profession in the West.

In any case, in 1794 Cornwallis returned to England, worn down but still eager to serve. He left the Company on a vastly sounder footing, on every level, than he had found it. Europe, however, was now much changed—the French Revolution had upended the entire European system, and the scent of war was everywhere. After a short period with his family, he was asked to oversee a combination of diplomatic and military work with the Austrians, which he found to be a waste of time. He then became Master of the Ordnance, the administrator of England’s military infrastructure, and a role very much in keeping with his talents. In 1798 he was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with the mandate to quell the rebellious Irish, not in the Cromwellian way but with his proven ability to combine military and administrative competence. In 1801 he returned and, with Napoleon Bonaparte now ruling France and threatening England, in 1802 negotiated the short-lived Peace of Amiens.

And, finally, in 1805, unable to retire or sit still, he was again appointed governor-general of India, in part because his successors had proved less able than him. Cornwallis could never relax; he claimed to want to retire to his estate, but when given the chance, hated it. Most likely this inability was a combination of his personality and that when left alone, he brooded on his long-dead wife. Thus, he sought this appointment. But he died only a few months after arriving, aged sixty-six, and is buried in Ghazipur, overlooking the Ganges.

He has had a long afterlife; for a very long time, Cornwallis was a hero in England, while an object of unjustified derision in America, as the focus of British defeat in the War of Independence. In England, he is naturally no longer a hero. Today, when dusky invaders from the Third World rule over Britain, he is treated with contempt, because he is associated with “colonialism” and “imperialism,” falsely claimed to be bad things—although Middleton notes that his reputation is “brightest in India,” where “his administrative reforms continue to be acknowledged,” which speaks well of the Indians. But mostly his memory has just been erased, like so many men who built Britain, brick by brick, over centuries—the vast majority of them, certainly of their leaders, men of the ancient British aristocracy.

In America, aristocracy is both suspect and alien to us. We have little history, at least since the Civil War, of hereditary aristocracy, of the great house, of men raised into a family and born into an inexorable acceptance of the duties that flow from that position. The American approach, relative to the British, is not necessarily better or worse, merely different. Americans always had more admiration for the self-made man than did the English, and the possibility of rapid social change this allows in turn permits great accomplishment, if the ruling class embodies adequate virtue. The British, however, now have the worst of all worlds, because in their lust to reach the left-wing paradise, Year Zero, for a hundred years those who control Britain have worked to destroy the aristocracy that raised Britain to first place on the entire globe. That aristocracy, tens of thousands of mostly nameless men who selflessly dedicated themselves to Albion, has therefore simply either disappeared or become irrelevant, in the same way as Great Britain itself.

The malignant in England, including many traitors within the ruling class . . . [Review completes as first comment.]

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book. I like the way the author set it up and divided Cornwallis life into the 3 significant parts of his career. I wish there had been more about Cornwallis’ early life but it sounded like there aren’t a lot of sources on it. Also I think Cornwallis would have preferred his biography focusing more on his career and service to his country than on himself as a person, based on what little personal information the author did give. Since it was really a survey of his career and we didn’t hear many of Cornwallis’ personal insights the book was a touch dry but still had a lot to offer if you only know Cornwallis as an officer for the British in the American Revolution. Based on this account of Cornwallis’ actions and decisions in India and Ireland, you can see his growth and what he probably learned from serving in America which is a narrative that we don’t often get of the men British officers in the Revolution.

[Carl Palmateer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book, like many Americans I knew Cornwallis from Yorktown and having plowed though a hagiography of Francis Marion (Swamp Fox) I had a greater familiarity with his career in America. As this book shows that is a small part of his life. Rising above the defeat at Yorktown he went on to do and accomplish much for and in England, India, Ireland as soldier, administrator and Governor.

[Daniel Rosanova · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing detailed view into a man few Americans know much about. Even by todays standards he looks like a fair and honest leader doing his best to implement the policies of his nation. Really an impressive work on an impressive man.

[Dave Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an eventful life in the braces of service. The author stays out of the way of the story, it has a life of it's own and there is so much to tell. Duty defines this man like few others.

[Philip Healey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Initially picking up this book to read about the American Revolution I was pleasantly surprised to see what a varied and interesting career Cornwallis had. Indeed his time in India appears to be the most important part of his life, and my only wish for this book would have been for the author to expand on this.

The book offers great insight into the time for Britain and it's empire. For the revolutionary war section it offers insight into the senior staff of the British army and the difficulty they had fighting a civil far far from home. For India the balance between local elites, Crown authority and the profit of the East India Company. Finally the time in Ireland focuses on internal UK politics and the difficulty of maintaining civil peace and reform when opposed by the King and cabinet colleagues.

Covering as much as it does it can't be relied as a sole source, i.e the discussion on the American Revolution is necessarily only a part of the book. But it will supplement existing knowledge, and points the reader in the direction of further study.

The book also benefits by being well written. Understandably the author becomes endeared with Cornwallis, but in doing so he helps bring the man to life.

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charles Edward Cornwallis V was born in England in 1738. He was the eldest son of Charles Cornwallis, 5th Baron Cornwallis. His mother, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, and niece of Sir Robert Walpole. His uncle, Frederick, was Archbishop of Canterbury. His brother was the founder of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Cornwallis attended both Eton and Clare Colleges before entering the military. He also became involved in politics, serving as a Member of Parliament and in the House of Lords. Cornwallis would go on to become a prominent figure in the American War of Independence. He got information from Benedict Arnold, ultimately surrendering to George Washington. After the war, he became Governor General of India, where he wound up dying.

This book was expansive on the life and career of Cornwallis. I have had this book on my Audible wish list for some time. I am glad I was finally able to get it and listen to it. I learned a lot about Cornwallis as a person and the thought behind his decisions and tactics. If you are interested in the Revolutionary War, I think this is a great book to add to your collection.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most, I only thought of Cornwallis as the losing General in the American War for Independence. His life was much richer, especially professionally. I was impressed by his consideration of the needs of others, especially those the British label "common." I've no doubt his children missed him terribly though they were educated as others were in their class for parents consumed with work and not accessible. He advanced his career but one wonders at what cost to his family. Being in the military he took orders and likely little choice in his posts abroad. A different mindset probably made him eager to serve King and Country, perhaps not realizing what he missed at home.

[Philip Reari · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the juicy details are there, but they are a bit dry