Sir George Charles Hoste CB (10 March 1786 – 21 April 1845) was a British Army officer who fought in various battles and engagements of the Napoleonic Wars in Italy, Egypt, Belgium, and France between 1805 and 1815.

In 1810 he was in the Spartan frigate, under Captain Jaheel Brenton, and distinguished himself during a successful engagement with a squadron of French Neapolitan vessels in the Bay of Naples; for which he received from Ferdinand the Sicilian Order of Merit.

From 1813 to 1814 he served in Holland with Sir Thomas Graham, and was present at the attack on Antwerp and the storming of Bergen-op-Zoom, for which he obtained the brevet rank of major.

[2] After home service at Portsmouth and Dover, Hoste was sent to the Mediterranean in April 1805, and accompanied the expedition under Lieutenant-general Sir James Craig in November, to co-operate with the Russians in the protection of the Kingdom of Naples and King Ferdinand against the looming threat of French invasion.

In April he took part in the siege of the town of Rosetta until the costly retreat to Alexandria, and, on the evacuation of Egypt by the British forces, returned to Sicily with the defeated expedition in September.

[2] Hoste was kept busy in the Mediterranean during 1808 and 1809 in improving the defences and communications of the east of Sicily (whence King Ferdinand had fled, supported by the British) to resist attack from Napoleonic Naples.

After a hard-fought action, in which the Spartan lost ten killed and twenty-two wounded, she stood in victorious with her prize, the brig Sparvière, of eight guns, to the Mole of Naples, where Murat had apparently observed the fight.

[2] For his services Hoste was mentioned in despatches, and made a companion of the Order of the Bath, military division (dated 22 June 1815), on the recommendation of the Duke of Wellington.

[11]There is a portrait in oils of Hoste by William Salter, dated roughly 1834 to 1840, which portrays the colonel with red hair and ruddy cheeks, standing, holding his shako with its white and red plumes and star badge, in his Royal Engineers uniform, and wearing the badges of the Companion of the Bath, the Sicilian Order of St. Ferdinand, and the Waterloo Medal.

[13] It is one of eighty-one studies made by Salter for a grand group portrait of the 'Waterloo Banquet' held at Apsley House on 18 June 1836, at which Hoste was present.

[14] Hoste died at his home, Mill Hill, Woolwich, on 21 April 1845, and was interred at Charlton churchyard, Kent, in a grave which was later covered by a tomb.