Lieutenant-General Sir John Elley KCB KCH (9 January 1764 – 23 January 1839) 

was a British soldier who joined the cavalry as a private and rose to general officer rank. He fought with distinction during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and later served as the last Governor of Galway and as Member of Parliament for Windsor.

Information about Elley is scarce, perhaps partly because of his humble origins. He was born in London in 1764. His father ran an eating-house at Furnival's Inn, Holborn. Apprenticed to Mr. John Gelderd, a tannery owner of the village of Meanwood near Leeds, West Yorkshire, he became engaged to his master's daughter Anne. After her untimely death, he enlisted in 1789 as a trooper in the Royal Regiment of Horse Guards and saw service in the Flanders Campaign (1793–1795).^[1]

Elley made his first step out of the ranks by becoming a cornet in his regiment on 14 June 1794.^[2] On 30 January 1796, he was promoted to lieutenant,^[3] and 11 January 1800 was made a captain-lieutenant.^[4] Elley acquired promotion to captain by purchase on 17 March 1801^[5] to Major on 15 December 1804,^[6] and to lieutenant-colonel on 11 March 1806.^[7]

One famous act of heroism occurred at the 1809 Battle of Talavera. He led the charge, riding a white horse across unknown terrain. A chasm suddenly appeared before him and he was forced to jump it at full gallop. As he wrote in a letter to his sister Mrs Mary Ellis,^[8] dated 30 July 1809:

More fire I was never in, nor more perils did I escape. I led on one Squadron to the Charge as a forlorn hope and out of 80 men I had not a dozen left – a very severe List of Killed and Wounded you will see by the Gazette. It will be great Satisfaction to my good old Father to know that I had during the action a very conspicuous share, and in which I had the good Fortune to Succeed to the intense Satisfaction of the General Officers ... The battle lasted two days, the ground on which the battle was fought was clothed with corn, long grass and heath. The fire of the artillery was excessive and set fire to the corn and grass, the consequence was a number of the wounded were literally roasted alive.^[9]

In his Reminiscences and Recollections, Rees Howell Gronow described several scenes involving Elley, including one from the Battle of Vitoria in 1813:

Sir John Elley, observing this disaster, got together as many of the 14th and 16th Dragoons as he could, and charged at the head of them through the enemy; thereby saving many of the fine fellows who were dispersed and unable to act. In the charge he was knocked down, together with his horse, the fall breaking his leg; and although continually ridden over by friend and foe in the melee, Elley, nothing daunted, cheered on his men to fight for the honour of old England, and at last, catching hold of Sergeant Cooper's stirrup, was dragged to the rear.^[10]

A contemporaneous letter from an interlocutor of King George III described George III's preoccupation with pedigree and quoted him as saying of Elley: "Fine man! Fine man! No family! No family! Fine soldier! Fine soldier!".^[11]

On 4 January 1815, Elley was named a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.^[12]

Waterloo Campaign

As a colonel in the 1st Regiment of Life Guards, Sir John was appointed Deputy Adjutant-General of Cavalry at the start the Waterloo Campaign.^[13][14] Two days after attending the Duchess of Richmond's Ball, he led the charge of the Life Guards during the holding action at Genappe during the Anglo-allied retreat from Quatre Bras to Waterloo.^[15] He was severely wounded during the subsequent battle.^[16] Sir Walter Scott, in Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, described his feats at the attack on the escarpment of Mont-Saint-Jean, a ridge to the south of the village of Waterloo:

Sir John Elley, who led the charge of the heavy brigade, was himself distinguished for personal prowess. He was at one time surrounded by several of the cuirassiers; but, being a tall and uncommonly powerful man, completely master of his sword and horse, he cut his way out, leaving several of his assailants on the ground, marked with wounds, indicating the unusual strength of the arm which inflicted them. Indeed, had not the ghastly evidence remained on the field, many of the blows dealt upon this occasion would have seemed borrowed from the annals of knight-errantry, for several of the corpses exhibited heads cloven to the chine, or severed from the shoulders.

On 2 August 1815, Sir John was made a Knight of the Order of Maria Theresa by the Emperor of Austria, and on 21 August 1815 he was awarded the Order of St. George by the Emperor of Russia.^[17]

Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Smith remembered Sir John as his mentor in this extract from his autobiography from 1818:

The celebrated Cavalry officer, Sir John Elley, a very tall, bony, and manly figure of a man, with grim-visaged war depicted in his countenance, with whiskers, moustaches, etc. like a French Pioneer, came over to Dover during the time of our occupation of France. He was walking on the path, with his celebrated sword belted under his surtout. As the hooking up of the sword gave the coat-flap the appearance of having something large concealed under it, a lower order of Custom officer ran after him, rudely calling, "I say, you officer, you! stop, stop, I say! What's that under your coat?" Sir John turned round, and drawing his weapon of defence in many a bloody fight, to the astonishment of the John Bulls, roared out through his moustache in a voice of thunder, "That which I will run through your d—d guts, if you are impertinent to me!