General

General (United Kingdom)

General is currently the highest peace-time rank in the British Army and Royal Marines. It is subordinate to the Army rank of Field Marshal, has a NATO-code of OF-9, and is a four-star rank....

 Sir Alfred Hastings Horsford GCB

Order of the Bath

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...

 (1818 - 13 September 1885) was a senior British Army

British Army

The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 officer who went on to be Military Secretary.

Military career

Born in Bath and educated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Horsford was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in 1833.

He served in the Cape Frontier War

Xhosa wars

The Xhosa Wars, also known as the Cape Frontier Wars, were a series of nine wars between the Xhosa people and European settlers, from 1779 to 1879 in what is now the Eastern Cape in South Africa....

 in 1847 and was Commanding Officer

Commanding officer

The commanding officer is the officer in command of a military unit. Typically, the commanding officer has ultimate authority over the unit, and is usually given wide latitude to run the unit as he sees fit, within the bounds of military law...

 of 1st Bn the Rifle Brigade during the 8th Xhosa War

Xhosa wars

The Xhosa Wars, also known as the Cape Frontier Wars, were a series of nine wars between the Xhosa people and European settlers, from 1779 to 1879 in what is now the Eastern Cape in South Africa....

 in 1852.

He also served in the Crimean War

Crimean War

The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...

 and fought at the Battle of Alma

Battle of Alma

The Battle of the Alma , which is usually considered the first battle of the Crimean War , took place just south of the River Alma in the Crimea. An Anglo-French force under General St...

, Battle of Inkerman

Battle of Inkerman

The Battle of Inkerman was fought during the Crimean War on November 5, 1854 between the allied armies of Britain and France against the Imperial Russian Army. The battle broke the will of the Russian Army to defeat the allies in the field, and was followed by the Siege of Sevastopol...

, Battle of Balaklava and the early part of the Siege of Sevastopol.

He served in the repression of the Indian Mutiny

Indian Rebellion of 1857

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of sepoys of the British East India Company's army on 10 May 1857, in the town of Meerut, and soon escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to...

, having been made Commander

Commander

Commander is a naval rank which is also sometimes used as a military title depending on the individual customs of a given military service. Commander is also used as a rank or title in some organizations outside of the armed forces, particularly in police and law enforcement.-Commander as a naval...

 of the 6th Brigade at the Capture of Lucknow

Capture of Lucknow

The Capture of Lucknow was a battle of Indian rebellion of 1857. The British recaptured the city of Lucknow which they had abandoned in the previous winter after the relief of a besieged garrison in the Residency, and destroyed the organised resistance by the rebels in the Kingdom of Awadh The...

.

He was made Deputy Adjutant-General at Army Headquarters in 1860, a Brigade commander at Aldershot

Aldershot Command

-History:After the success of the Chobham Manoeuvres of 1853, a permanent training camp was established at Aldershot in 1854 on the recommendation of the Commander-in-Chief, Viscount Hardinge...

 in 1866, Major-General on the General Staff at Malta

Malta

Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...

 in 1869 and General Officer Commanding

General Officer Commanding

General Officer Commanding is the usual title given in the armies of Commonwealth nations to a general officer who holds a command appointment. Thus, a general might be the GOC II Corps or GOC 7th Armoured Division...

 South-Eastern District in 1872. He went on to be Military Secretary in 1874.

In retirement he was involved in an unfortunate accident when Mr Frederick Gye, Manager of the Royal Italian Opera

Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...

, was assisting Horsford over a fence when Horsford's gun went off and shot Gye in the eye.