John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun

John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun ( born May 5, 1705 Loudoun Castle, Ayrshire, † April 27, 1782 ) was a British military.

Life

John Campbell was the only son of the Scottish Earl Hugh Campbell, 3rd Earl of Loudon and inherited his title in 1731. His mother was Lady Margaret Dalrymple, daughter of John Dalrymple, 1st Earl of Stair. He was thus a member of the Clan Campbell, a clan of loyal behaved during the Jakobitenaufstände against the British government.

1727 he joined the British Army. In April 1741, he became commander of Stirling Castle in 1743 then aide- de-camp of King George II At the outbreak of the Jacobite Rising of 1745 he raised a regiment of Highlanders, whose Colonel ( Oberst ), he was appointed; but it has been almost completely wiped out at the Battle of Prestonpans. After the battle he sat on the sloop Saltash to Inverness, where he was recruited to the 2,000 men within six weeks. With these new troops, he freed the besieged from the Clan Fraser Fort Augustus. Then he moved on to Inverness Dounie Castle, where he, one of the ringleaders of the rebellion, arresting the Lord Lovat and took hostage to Inverness; Lovat, however, soon managed to escape. In the spring of 1746 he fled before the advance of the Jacobite forces from Inverness to Sutherlandshire, and finally sat down with about 800 faithful from the Isle of Skye.

During the Seven Years' War he was appointed on February 17, 1756 the captain - general and governor of the Virginia colony, in March of the year, the commanding general of all British land forces in North America. He reached New York in July of this year and went immediately to Albany, where the largest British army quartered. Loudoun faced a difficult situation with respect to: the French had his predecessor Edward Braddock trounced in the Battle of the Monongahela and taken control of the Ohio valley; in further offensives they Oswego had taken in upstate New York. His time as Commanding Loudoun in North America was characterized above all by inaction; he did not do a single offensive. For months he was planning an attack on the French fortress of Louisbourg, but this was delayed again and again, so that the French had enough time to reinforce Louisbourg, and the attack plan was abandoned. In February of Loudoun was recalled.

One last time he was drafted in 1762, this time as a deputy commander of the British expeditionary force in Portugal. After the end of his military career, he devoted himself to his seat Loudoun Castle of landscape gardening. He let angesalbte trees that do not occur in Scottish climes, remove, and instead had plants mainly pastures.

He died in 1782 as a bachelor, his title passed to his cousin James Mure- Campbell.