Joseph Cornelius O'Rourke

Count Joseph Cornelius O'Rourke (Russian: Иосиф Корнилович Орурк (О'Рурк), or Ioseph Kornilovich O'Rourke) (1772-1849) was a Russian nobleman of Irish ancestry. He was a military leader who fought in the Napoleonic Wars and achieved the rank of Lieutenant General; he is noted in present-day Serbia, where he led a combined Russian and Serb army to defeat the Turks at Varvarin in 1810.

O'Rourke was awarded the orders of Saint George, Alexander Nevsky, and Saint Anne for his military victories. His portrait was included in the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace, now part of the Hermitage Museum. A monument commemorating O'Rourke and his men was erected in Varvarin in 1910 on the centennial celebration of their victory against the Turks.

The O'Rourke family were originally members of the Jacobite Irish Nobility; they fled Ireland after the defeat by the Protestant Williamites at the Battle of the Boyne in 1691. The majority of the family moved as refugees to France during this time. The O'Rourkes were a prominent Gaelic aristocratic family who lost lands in the Elizabethan and Cromwellian conquests, and several family members emigrated to Russia. The family members were descendants of ninth-century kings of Connacht and ruled the ancient kingdom of Breifne in the northwest of the country until they were unseated during the Elizabethan conquest in the sixteenth century.

During the reign of Elizabeth in Russia in the eighteenth century, one branch of the O'Rourkes moved to Livonia, a province of the Russian Empire at the time. O'Rourke was born in Dorpat in 1772. By this time, the family had intermarried and had been completely absorbed into Russian high society. According to customs, O'Rourke was immediately enrolled at birth in the Russian Imperial Guard. His father was Count Cornelius O'Rourke, who retired in 1788 with the rank of Major-General.

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