Phineas Bowles (British Army officer, died 1722)

Phineas Bowles (died 1722) was an English army major-general.

Bowles is first mentioned in the Military Entry Books in January 1692, when he was appointed captain-lieutenant in the regiment of Colonel W. Selwyn, later the 2nd Queen's, then just arrived in Holland from Ireland. In July 1705 he succeeded Colonel Caulfield in command of a regiment of foot in Ireland, with which he went to Spain and served at the Siege of Barcelona.

According to memoranda of General Erie, Bowles's was one of the regiments broken at the bloody battle of Almanza. It appears to have been reorganised in England, as Narcissus Luttrell mentions Bowles's arrival in England on parole, and afterwards that he was at Portsmouth with his regiment, awaiting embarkation with some troops supposed to be destined for Newfoundland. Instead, he again went with his Regiment to Spain, where it was distinguished at the battle of Saragossa in 1710, and was one of the regiments surrounded in the mountains of Castile, and made prisoners, in December of the same year.

After this Bowles's regiment disappeared from the rolls, and its colonel remained unemployed until 1715, when, as a brigadier-general, he was commissioned to raise a corps of dragoons, of six troops, in Berkshire, Hampshire, and Buckinghamshire, to rendezvous at Reading. This corps became the 12th Royal Lancers. In 1719 Bowles was transferred to the colonelcy of a Regiment of Dragoons.

He died in 1722. His cousin's son Phineas Bowles (1690–1749) was a lieutenant-general.