Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bock, Eberhardt Otto George von
BOCK, EBERHARDT OTTO GEORGE von (d. 1814), baron, a major-general in the British army, was descended from an old military family, and entered the Hanoverian cavalry about the year 1781. His name appears as a premier-lieutenant in the 6th Hanoverian dragoons in 1789, and as rittmeister (captain) in 1800. On the dissolution of the Hanoverian army after the convention of Lauenburg, Bock was one of the officers who came to England, where he raised four troops of heavy cavalry, which became the 1st dragoons, King's German legion, of which he was gazetted colonel 21 April 1804. The regiment was formed at Weymouth, and was a particular favourite of George III. Bock served at its head in the expedition to Hanover in 1805; also in Ireland, whither it was sent after its return home. From Ireland Bock, who had attained the rank of major-general in 1810, proceeded to the Peninsula in 1811 in command of a brigade composed of the two heavy cavalry regiments of the legion, with which he made the subsequent campaigns in Spain and the south of France in 1812-13. The steadiness and gallantry of Bock's heavy Germans often won approval, particularly on 23 July 1812, the day after the victory at Salamanca, when in a charge, which by the enemy's own admission was the most brilliant cavalry affair that occurred during the whole war, they attacked, broke, and made prisoners three entire battalions of French infantry. With one of his sons, Captain L. von Bock, and some other officers. Bock was lost in the Bellona transport, on the Tulbest rocks, on 21 Jan. 1814, on a voyage from Passages to England. His body was washed on shore at the little Breton village of Pleubian (arrondissement of Paimpol), where it was recognised and interred.
[Gross-Britt. u. Braunschw.-Lunenburg Staats-Kalendar. 1780-1803; Beamish's Hist. German Legion (1832-7); Foy's Histoire de la Guerre de la Péninsule, i. 290; Alison's Hist. of Europe, x. 367-8].