Richard Church ( general ) Sir Richard Church KCH , CB ( ) ( 1784 – March 1873 ) , was a military officer in the British Army and general in the Greek army during the last stages of the Greek Revolution after 1827 and elected politician in Greece , member of the Greek Parliament in 1843 , member of the Greek Senate . Early life and career . He was the son of a Quaker , Matthew Church of Cork . At the age of sixteen he ran away from home and enlisted in the British Army . For this violation of its principles he was disowned by the Society of Friends , but his father bought him a commission , dated 3 July 1800 , in the 13th ( Somersetshire ) Light Infantry . He served in the demonstration against Ferrol , and in the expedition to Egypt under Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1801 , where he took part in the Battle of Abukir and the taking of Alexandria . After the expulsion of the French from Egypt he returned home , but came back to the Mediterranean in 1805 among the troops sent to defend the island of Sicily . He accompanied the expedition which landed in Calabria , and fought a successful battle against the French at the Battle of Maida on 4 July 1806 . Church was present on this occasion as captain of a recently raised company of Corsican Rangers . His zeal attracted the notice of his superiors , and he had begun to show his capacity for managing and drilling foreign levies . His Corsicans formed part of the garrison of Capri from October 1806 till the island was taken by an expedition directed against it by Joachim Murat , in September 1808 , at the very beginning of his reign as king of Naples . Church , who had distinguished himself in the defence , returned to Malta after the capitulation . In the summer of 1809 he sailed with the expedition sent to occupy the Ionian Islands . Here he increased the reputation he had already gained by forming a Greek regiment in British pay . It included many of the men who were afterwards among the leaders of the Greeks in the War of Independence . Church commanded this regiment at the taking of the island of Santa Maura ( Lefkada ) , on which occasion his left arm was shattered by a bullet . During his slow recovery he travelled in northern Greece , and Macedonia , and to Constantinople . In the years of the fall of Napoleon ( 1813 and 1814 ) he was present as British military representative with the Austrian troops until the campaign which terminated in the expulsion of Murat from Naples . He drew up a report on the Ionian Islands for the congress of Vienna , in which he argued in support , not only of the retention of the islands under the British flag , but of the permanent occupation by Britain of Parga and of other formerly Venetian coastal towns on the mainland , then in the possession of Ali Pasha of Yanina . The peace and the disbanding of his Greek regiment left him without employment , though his reputation was high at the war office , and his services were recognized by the grant of an Companion of the Order of the Bath . In 1817 he entered the service of King Ferdinand of Naples as lieutenant - general , with a commission to suppress the brigandage then rampant in Apulia . Ample powers were given him , and he attained a full measure of success . In 1820 he was appointed governor of Palermo and commander - in - chief of the troops in Sicily . The revolution which broke out in that year led to the termination of his services in Naples . He escaped from violence in Sicily with some difficulty . At Naples he was imprisoned and put on his trial by the government , but was acquitted and released in January 1821 ; and King George IV conferred on him a Knight Commander of the Royal Guelphic Order . Role in the Greek Revolution . The rising of the Greeks against the Turks , which began at this time , had his full sympathy from the first . But for some years he had to act only as the friend of the insurgents in England . In 1827 he took the honorable but unfortunate step of accepting the commandership - in - chief of the Greek army . At the point of anarchy and indiscipline to which they had now fallen , the Greeks could no longer form an efficient army , and could look for salvation only to foreign intervention . Sir Richard Church , who landed in March , was sworn " archistrategos " on 15 April 1827 . But he could not secure loyal co - operation or obedience . The rout of his army in an attempt to relieve the acropolis of Athens , then besieged by the Turks , proved that it was incapable of conducting regular operations . The acropolis capitulated , and Sir Richard turned to partisan warfare in western Greece . Here his activity had beneficial results , for it led to a rectification in 1832 , in a sense favourable to Greece , of the frontier drawn by the powers in 1830 ( see his " Observations on an Eligible Line of Frontier for Greece " , London , 1830 ) . Church had , however , surrendered his commission , as a protest against the unfriendly government of John Capodistria , on 25 August 1829 . He lived for the rest of his life in Greece . He was created general of the army - an honorary title - in 1854 , and died at Athens on 1873 . Family . Sir Richard Church married Marie - Anne , daughter of Sir Robert Wilmot , 2nd Baronet of Osmaston in Worthing , on 17 Aug 1826 Death . He died after an illness on Thursday , 8 March 1873 and he was buried at the First Cemetery of Athens at public expense on 15 March 1873 . The funeral took place after a delay in waiting for his nephew , who was expected to come from England . The funeral service took place in the Anglican Church in Filellinon Street in the presence of King George I and a large numbers of official guests . The funeral monument is at the First Cemetery of Athens , opposite the Church of St . Lazarus , and it has an inscription in English on the front ( " Richard Church , General , who having given himself and all he had , to rescue a Christian race from oppression , and to make Greece a nation , lived for her service , and died among her people , rests here in peace and faith " ) and Greek on the back . On 15 March , the minister of justice , Panagiotis Chalkiopoulos , gave the funeral speech in Greek , while gave a speech in English .