General

General

A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....

 Walter Fane CB

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...

 was a British General who served in Central India, on the North West Frontier as well as in China during the Opium Wars. Fane raised a troop of irregular cavalry to fight in China made up of Indian volunteers and they went on to become Fane's Horse, a regiment that remains part of Pakistan's armed forces.

Life

Walter Fane a member of the Fane family was born in 1828 in Fulbeck

Fulbeck

Fulbeck is a small village and civil parish in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It lies on the A607, north from Grantham and north-west from Sleaford. To the north is Leadenham, and to the south is Caythorpe.-Toponymy:...

 Lincolnshire son of the Rev. Edward Fane of Fulbeck Hall and brother of Colonel Francis Fane

Francis Fane (soldier)

Colonel Francis Augustus Fane was an English officer in the British Army who raised the Peshawar Light Horse during the Indian Mutiny. Fane was also a noted traveller, diarist, artist as well as in later years a successful banker.-Early life:...

 and Henry Hamlyn-Fane

Henry Hamlyn-Fane

Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Edward Hamlyn-Fane , known as Henry Fane until 1861, was a British soldier and Conservative politician.-Background:...

 member of Parliament.

Army career

He entered the army in 1845 and became a lieutenant in 1853. He served in the Punjab Irregular Cavalry on the North West frontier where they fought a number engagements against the hill tribes.

During the Indian Mutiny of 1857 Fane fought against Tantya Tope and he was present when the Indian rebel leader was captured and executed.

In 1860 Fane raised the irregular cavalry force of Fane's Horse to fight in China during the Second Opium War

Second Opium War

The Second Opium War, the Second Anglo-Chinese War, the Second China War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China, was a war pitting the British Empire and the Second French Empire against the Qing Dynasty of China, lasting from 1856 to 1860...

. Fane's horse fought in the engagements of Sinho, Chinkiawbaw, Pulli-chi-on as well as in the sacking of Peking under Fane's cousin Field Marshal Sir John Michel. For these services he was nominated as a companion of the Order of the Bath.

Later life

Fane was also an artist and had limited success throughout his lifetime, and he was the most successful member of a moderately artistic family. he married Maria Hodges but they had no children and he died aged 58 in Fulbeck where is buried.