LAKE, GERARD LAKE, 1ST VISCOUNT, cr. 1807 18o8), British general, was born on July 27, 1744. He entered the foot guards in 1758. By 1792 he was a general officer in the army. He served with his regiment in Germany in 1760-1762 and with a composite battalion in the Yorktown campaign of 1781. After this he was equerry to the prince of Wales, afterwards George IV. In 1793 he was appointed to command the Guards Brigade in the duke of York's army in Flanders. He was in com mand at Lincelles, on Aug. 18, 1793, and served on the con tinent until April 1794. In 1797 he was promoted lieut.-general. In the following year the Irish rebellion broke out. Lake suc ceeded Sir Ralph Abercromby in command of the troops in April 1798, issued a proclamation ordering the surrender of all arms by the civil population of Ulster, and, on June 21, routed the rebels at Vinegar Hill (near Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford). He exercised great severity towards all rebels found in arms. Lord Cornwallis now assumed the chief command in Ireland, and in August sent Lake to oppose the French expedition which landed at Killala Bay. On Aug. 29 Lake arrived at Castlebar, but only in time to witness the rout of the troops under General Hely Hutchinson. He retrieved this disaster by compelling the sur render of the French at Ballinamuck, near Cloone, on Sept. 8. In 1799 Lake returned to England, and in 1800 obtained the command in chief in India. He took over his duties at Calcutta in July 1801, and applied himself to the improvement of the Indian army, especially in the direction of making all arms, infantry, cavalry and artillery, more mobile and more manageable. In
1802 he was made a full general.
On the outbreak of war with the Mahratta confederacy in 1803 General Lake took the field against Sindhia, and within two months defeated the Mahrattas at Coel, stormed Aligahr, took Delhi and Agra, and won the great victory of Laswari (Nov.
1803), where the power of Sindhia was completely broken. This defeat, followed a few days later by Wellesley's victory at Argaum, compelled Sindhia to come to terms, and a treaty with him was signed in December 1803. Operations were, however, continued against his confederate, Holkar, who, on Nov. 17, 1804, was defeated by Lake at Farrukhabad. Lake was superseded as commander-in-chief by Cornwallis in July 1805. But after the death of Cornwallis in October of the same year, Lake pursued Holkar into the Punjab and compelled him to surrender at Amritsar in December 1805. For his services Lake received the thanks of parliament, and a peerage. He represented Aylesbury in the House of Commons from 1790 to 1802, and he sat in the Irish parliament as member for Armagh in 1799 to vote for the Union. He died in London on Feb. 20, 1808.
See H. Pearse, Memoir of the Life and Services of Viscount Lake (London, 1908) ; and a short memoir in From Cromwell to Wellington, ed. Spenser Wilkinson.