Lord Cornwallis after Yorktown

 

Despite his defeat at Yorktown, Lord Charles Cornwallis was cheered when he landed in England on January 21, 1782.  He retained the confidence of successive British governments and was appointed Governor-General and Commander-in-chief in India in 1786.  He successfully led British forces to victory in the Third Anglo-Mysore War from 1789 to 1792.  In 1798 Cornwallis was appointed Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-chief of Ireland.  The spirit of revolution had swept the British out of America and now threatened to do the same thing in Ireland.  Disaffected Irishmen began to assert their “constitutional rights” and sought aid from the French who had staged their own revolution in 1789.  A massive force of 26,000 was assembled under Lord Cornwallis which crushed the Irish rebellion and repulsed a French invasion of Ireland.  Following his service in Ireland, Cornwallis was reappointed to India in 1805 where he died of fever at the age of sixty-six not long after his arrival.

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