Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Scovell, George
SCOVELL, Sir GEORGE (1774–1861), general, was born 21 March 1774. He was commissioned as cornet and adjutant in the 4th queen's own dragoons on 5 April 1798, became lieutenant on 4 May 1800, and captain on 10 March 1804. He exchanged to the 57th foot on 12 March 1807. He went to the Peninsula in the following year, and was employed in the quartermaster-general's department throughout the war. He was present at Coruña, the passage of the Douro, Talavera, Busaco, Fuentes d'Onoro, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Burgos, Vittoria, the Pyrenees, Nivelle, Nive, the passage of the Adour, and Toulouse. He commanded the corps of guides and had charge of the postal service and the communications of the army till 1813, when he was appointed (on 15 June) to the command of the staff corps of cavalry. He had been made brevet-major on 30 May 1811, and lieutenant-colonel on 17 Aug. 1812, having been mentioned in Wellington's Salamanca despatch. At the end of the war he received the cross with one clasp, and on 2 Jan. 1815 was made K.C.B.
He was again employed in the Waterloo campaign as assistant quartermaster-general, and in command of the staff corps of cavalry; and during the subsequent occupation of France he was charged on different occasions with the duty of preventing collisions between the troops and the people. He received the medal for Waterloo and the Russian order of St. Wladimir (fourth class). On 25 Dec. 1818 he was placed on half pay, and on 23 March 1820 he was appointed to the command of the royal wagon train. He became colonel in the army on 27 May 1825, major-general on 10 Jan. 1837, lieutenant-general on 9 Nov. 1846, and general on 20 June 1854. He was lieutenant-governor of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from 25 April 1829 to 2 Feb. 1837, and governor from the latter date to 31 March 1856. He was given the colonelcy of his old regiment, the 4th dragoons, on 18 Dec. 1847, and received the G.C.B. on 18 May 1860. He died at Henley Park, Guildford, Surrey, on 17 Jan. 1861. There is a marble tablet to his memory in the church of the Royal Military College, and a portrait, painted in 1837, in the officers' room there.
[Gent. Mag. 1861, i. 349; R. M. Calendar, iv. 430; Wellington Despatches, Suppl. vols. vii.–xiv.]