Christopher Chowne
Long thought of as an incompetent officer who lacked energy and ability, Chowne was recalled from the Iberian Peninsula for the last time in December 1812 and did not see action again.
[4] Tilson had three brothers; John, who became a lieutenant-colonel in the British Army, George, who became a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and James, who followed his father into banking.
[5][8][11][12] In October the regiment joined the expedition preparing to fight the British campaign in Egypt, in Major-General Sir John Doyle's 4th Brigade.
[5][11] They spent some time ashore at Minorca in November to train and prepare for long cross country marches and then in February 1801 practiced amphibious landings.
[15] The 44th then fought at the Battle of Mandora on 13 March where, still heavily understrength, they were ordered to attack two forward-placed French howitzers that were dropping shells behind the hills the army was using as cover.
The regiment charged the guns and destroyed them but was then caught in a crossfire by thirty French cannon situated on the Nicopolis heights on their right flank.
[5][16][18] On 25 May 1805 Tilson was appointed a brigadier-general on the staff of the army of Lieutenant-General Sir James Craig that initiated the Anglo-Russian occupation of Naples soon afterwards.
[36] Later in the month Tilson resigned command of his brigade because he refused to continue to serve alongside the Portuguese soldiers of Beresford's column, having also gained a reputation as an incompetent officer.
[Note 3][39][40][41] He commanded the brigade at the Battle of Talavera, where on 27 July Hill's division engaged an attacking column led by General François Amable Ruffin and routed it as it attempted to take the high ground of the Cerro de Medellín on the left, or north, side of the battlefield.
[50] The routing of the 24th exposed the flank of Ruffin's remaining units, and attacks from the King's German Legion pushed the rest of the force back.
[Note 5][59][63] Hill commanded 6,000 men split into three columns, with the intention of capturing and destroying a tactically important bridge and the fortresses guarding it at Almaraz.
[65] Chowne commanded the left-most of Hill's columns, tasked with making a diversionary attack on the fortress of Mirabete, 4 miles (6.4 km) south-west of the bridge.
[71][72] Early in the morning of 19 May, Chowne made his feint on the castle with a heavy bombardment of 24-pound howitzers and a small attack by some skirmishers, which diverted the attention of the French forces guarding the bridge itself.
[79] An air of incompetency had surrounded Chowne since the start of his service in the peninsula, but added to that now was the opinion that he had spent too much of his time on leave in England.
[24][58][81] He spent the rest of the war unemployed, making up part of Jane Austen's Drury Lane party in early March.
[5][85] While on leave in Exmouth in December 1810, Chowne courted a famous heiress named Esther Acklom, but she reneged on their engagement shortly before the wedding in 1812, at which point he retired to Bath.
