Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Stack, Edward
STACK, EDWARD (d. 1833), general, born in Ireland, came of a family styled Stack de Crotto, three members of which served in the French army during the eighteenth century (O'Hart, Irish Pedigrees, ii. 809). He entered the French army in early life, and became an aide-de-camp of Louis XV. In 1777 he became lieutenant and accompanied La Fayette to America to aid the English colonists in their revolt. He was on board Le Bonhomme Richard on 23 Sept. 1779, when her commander, Paul Jones [q. v.], captured the Serapis in the North Sea. Soon after he was placed in command of Dillon's regiment in the Irish brigade, and proceeded to the West Indies, where he served under the Marquis de Bouillé, governor of the Windward Islands, and assisted in taking the islands of Tobago, St. Christopher, Nevis, and Montserrat from the English. He was promoted captain in 1789, and for his services in America was made Chevalier de St. Louis and Chevalier de Cincinnatus d'Amérique. He remained in Dillon's regiment until the French revolution, when he entered the British service as an officer of the Irish brigade. He became lieutenant-colonel in the 5th regiment on 1 Oct. 1794. The brigade was disbanded in 1798, but he was promoted to a colonelcy on half-pay on 1 Jan. 1801. On the rupture of the treaty of Amiens in 1803 he was one of those detained in France by Bonaparte, and was first imprisoned at Biche for three years, and then at Verdun. In 1804 he was detected while executing secret service for the English government, and was to have been shot with the Duc d'Enghien, but was reprieved at the last minute. He was released in 1814 on the restoration of the Bourbons. While in captivity he was promoted to the rank of major-general in the British army on 25 April 1808, and to that of lieutenant-general on 4 Jan. 1813. After his release he was made a general on 22 July 1830, and died at Calais, at a great age, in December 1833.
[Gent. Mag. 1834, i. 225; Alger's Englishmen in the French Revolution, p. 356; Army Lists.]