Victoria, serving in that position until 1931. Under his
leadership, the state of Victoria was, for the first time,
able to provide cheap electric power and not rely on
other Australian states.
Monash died at his home, “Iona,” in Toorak, Vic-
toria, on 8 October 1931. His funeral drew a crowd of
some 300,000 to Melbourne’s Brighton Cemetery, where
he was laid to rest. Australian governor-general Sir Isaac
Isaacs said, “With all Australia I mourn the loss of one
of her ablest, bravest, and noblest sons, a loyal servant
of the King and country. He served Australia and the
Empire well, and in his passing he has left an example
that will be a beacon light of patriotic and unselfish en-
deavour.” Monash University in Melbourne is named in
his honor.
Monash was the author of The Australian Victories
in France in 1918, published in 1920. Historian Peter
Nunan writes: “Appalled at the horrific casualties and
‘ghastly inefficiency’ of World War I combat, Monash
... adopted the view that the infantry’s role was ‘not
to expend itself upon heroic physical effort,’ but ‘to ad-
vance under the maximum possible array of mechani-
cal resources, in the form of guns, machine guns, tanks,
mortars, and aeroplanes... to the appointed goal.’
Monash became an advocate of the use of combined
arms operations, including those that employed tanks.”
References: Serle, Geoffrey, John Monash (Melbourne,
Australia: Melbourne University Press, 1982); Peder-
son, P. A., Monash as Military Commander (Carlton,
Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1985); Nunan,
Peter, “Diggers’ Fourth of July,” Military History 17, no.
3 (August 2000): 26; Monash, Sir John, War Letters of
General Monash, edited by Frederic Morley (Sydney, New
South Wales: Angus & Robertson, 1934); Monash, Sir
John, The Australian Victories in France in 1918 (London:
Hutchinson, 1920).
Monck, George, duke of Albemarle (George
Monk) (1608–1670) English military and naval
commander
George Monck—also noted as “Monk” in early his-
tories of the English navy—was born in the village of
Potheridge, near Torrington in the county of Devon,
England, on 6 December 1608. Historian John Char-
nock wrote in 1794 that “he was the second son of Sir
Thomas Monk of Potheridge... where his family had,
for many ages, flourished in a knightly degree, and had,
by marriages into great and worthy families, continued
the same... .” His great-grandmother was a daughter of
Arthur Plantagenet, son of King Edward IV of England.
As a young man, Monck assaulted the under-sheriff of
Devonshire, who had come to arrest his father for debt,
despite the fact that the family had bribed the official
not to go forward with the arrest. To escape a prison
sentence, he volunteered for the duke of Buckingham’s
expedition to Cádiz, Spain, in 1625. Two years later, he
participated in Buckingham’s mission to the Ile de Ré.
Much of the details of Monck’s life are unknown,
so dates for some of his accomplishments are guesses and
not exact. For instance, it is thought that in 1629 Monck
joined the prince of Orange and fought in Holland dur-
ing the Thirty Years’ War and that he distinguished him-
self at Breda in 1637. When Charles I raised an army to
fight the Scottish uprising known as the Second Bishops’
War in 1640, Monck was given a commission as a lieu-
tenant colonel and sent to fight. He saw action in several
battles, with his most noted service being at Newburn-
on-Tyre (1640), when Scottish Covenanters routed the
English, but Monck’s troops were among the few En-
glish units not to flee. Following the end of that war,
King Charles I sent Monck to Ireland to fight the rebels
there, serving under the earl of Ormonde. In 1643, a
year after the Civil War had begun, Monck received a
letter in Ireland from John Pym, a member of Parlia-
ment who invited Monck to serve with Parliamentary
forces. Ormonde discovered the letter’s contents and
had Monck arrested and sent back in chains to En-
gland, where he was imprisoned at Bristol. After Monck
appealed personally to Charles that he was still loyal to
the Crown, the king released him and gave him com-
mand of Irish troops who had come over to fight for
the Royalists. At Nantwich in January 1644, Monck was
taken prisoner by the Parliamentarians and held for two
years.
With his release in November 1646, Monck
changed sides and joined the Parliament forces. He was
sent to Ireland, where his troops fought both the king’s
forces under Ormonde and the Irish rebels under Owen
O’Neill. Following Charles’s capture and execution in
1649, Monck signed a peace treaty with O’Neill and was
then summoned back to London, where he was repri-
manded for the treaty. In 1650, Oliver cromWell, the
Parliamentary leader gave him command of two regi-
ments, and Monck went to Scotland when Cromwell monck, geoRge, Duke oF AlbemARle