Charles Colville was born on 7 August 1770 in Scotland.
He joined the British Army in 1787 and lived a remarkable military career through his multiple involvements in the West Indies, Ireland, Egypt, Bermuda, Martinique, the Iberian Peninsula, Netherlands, France and India.
In 1814, Charles Colville superintended the final embarkation of the last English troops left in France and was given the successful duty of storming Cambrai, the only French fortress which did not immediately surrender during the Battle of Waterloo.
In January 1815, Colville was conferred the title of Knight Commander (K.C.B) and in March the Knight Grand Cross (G.C.B).
Sir Charles Colville was the Army Commander-in-chief in Bombay from 1819 to 1825.
In 1828, Sir Charles Colville was appointed the 3rd British Governor of Mauritius.
Sir Charles Colville; although of a most polite and sympathetic nature, found himself in the awkward situation of implementing improvement laws and reported bad feeling against Britain. The British government was in the process of abolishing slavery at the time of a slave revolt against the Crown. The Mauritian population was made up of some 100,000 people, two-thirds of which were enslaved.
Sir Charles Colville’s support to the Mauritian botany is undeniable. In 1829 the Natural History Society of Mauritius was created by Charles Telfair, Julien Desjardins, Louis Bouton and Wencheslas Bojer. A report of Sir Charles Colville to the Colonial Office in 1829 included eleven hand-drawn watercolour sketches and botanical descriptions of ten different plants cultivated in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Pamplemousses. Those illustrations were produced by John Newman who was director of the Royal Botanic Garden of Mauritius.
Wencheslas Bojer named the plant specimen Colville’s Glory Colvillea racemosa, after Sir Charles Colville. In 1824, Bojer first found a single cultivated tree of Colville’s Glory in Madagascar and It was from Mauritius that the plant specimen was disseminated worldwide.
In 1830, there was a general refusal to pay taxes as slave owners were extremely hostile to any reforms of the slave’s working conditions. Charles Colville’s management of the Planters Rebellion of 1832 was disastrous as he allowed the slave owners to create a private army.
Sir Charles Colville was recalled in 1833.