Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany

Prince Frederick
Duke of York and Albany
Frederick in military uniform
Portrait by Thomas Lawrence, 1816
Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück
Reign27 February 1764 – 24 March 1803
Born(1763-08-16)16 August 1763
St. James's Palace, London
Died5 January 1827(1827-01-05) (aged 63)
Rutland House, London
Burial20 January 1827
Spouse
(m. 1791; died 1820)
Names
Frederick Augustus
HouseHanover
FatherGeorge III
MotherCharlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
SignaturePrince Frederick's signature
Military career
Allegiance
Service/branch British Army
Years of active service
  • 1780–1809
  • 1811–1827
RankField marshal
UnitLife Guards
Commands heldCommander-in-Chief of the Forces
Battles/wars

Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, KG, GCB, GCH (Frederick Augustus; 16 August 1763 – 5 January 1827) was the second son of George III, King of the United Kingdom and Hanover, and his consort Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. A soldier by profession, from 1764 to 1803 he was Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück in the Holy Roman Empire. From the death of his father in 1820 until his own death in 1827, he was the heir presumptive to his elder brother, George IV, in both the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Kingdom of Hanover.

Frederick was thrust into the British Army at a very early age and was appointed to high command at the age of thirty, when he was given command of a notoriously ineffectual campaign during the War of the First Coalition, a continental war following the French Revolution. Later, as Commander-in-Chief during the Napoleonic Wars, he oversaw the reorganisation of the British Army, establishing vital structural, administrative and recruiting reforms[1] for which he is credited with having done "more for the army than any one man has done for it in the whole of its history".[2]

  1. ^ Glover, (1963), p.12
  2. ^ The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (1994) p. 145