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George Augustus Eliott, Baron Heathfield

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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Baron (1717-1790), British general, a younger son of Sir Gilbert Eliott, Bart., FIG. 2. Erica cinerea. of Stobs, Roxburghshire, was born on the 25th of December 1717, and educated abroad for the military profession. As a volunteer he fought with the Prussian army in 1735 and 1736, and then entered the Grenadier Guards. He went through the war of the Austrian Succession, and was wounded at Dettingen, rising to be lieutenant-colonel in 1754. In 1759 he became colonel of a new regiment of light horse (afterwards the 15th Hussars) and became well known for the efficiency which it displayed in the subsequent campaigns. He became lieutenant-general in 1765. In 1775 he was selected to be governor of Gibraltar, and it is in connexion with his magnificent defence in the great siege of 1779 that his name is famous. His portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds is in the National Gallery. In 1787 he was created Baron Heathfield of Gibraltar, but died on the 6th of July 1790. He had married in 1748 the heiress of the Drake family, to which Sir Francis Drake belonged. His son, the 2nd baron, died in 1813 and the peerage became extinct, but the estates went to the family of Eliott-Drake (baronetcy of 1821) through his sister.