bantarleton:George Augustus Eliott, 1st Baron Heathfield, PC, KB (25 December 1717 – 6 July 1790) wi
bantarleton:George Augustus Eliott, 1st Baron Heathfield, PC, KB (25 December 1717 – 6 July 1790) wins the prize for highest number of ridiculously beautiful redcoat paintings. He’s absolutely lush. He also has the history to go with it. He studied military arts first in the Dutch Republic and then in France, and spent a year attached to the Prussian Army in 1735. Commissioned in the British Army, he served at the two most important British battles of the War of the Austrian Succession, Dettingen and Fontenoy, and was wounded at the former. During the Seven Years War he was present at the great British victory at Minden, and at the battle of Emsdorf, was part of the Belle Ile expedition in 1761 and was second in command of the British force that took Cuba from the Spanish in 1762. In 1777 he was appointed Governor of Gibraltar. Now came his finest hour. In 1779 a vast Franco-Spanish fleet of over 100,000 men, 48 ships and 450 cannon laid siege to The Rock. Under Eliott’s command it resisted for four years, until peace in 1783. -- source link