General Sir Horatio Shirley (8 December 1805 – 8 April 1879) was a British general of the Victorian era. His disinclination for studies led his family to purchase him a commission in the Rifle Brigade in 1825; in 1833, he obtained a captaincy in the Connaught Rangers. He rose to become lieutenant-colonel commanding that regiment in 1848 and led it to the Crimean War in 1854. During the Siege of Sevastopol, Shirley supervised a successful attack on the Quarries in front of the Great Redan and received the CB and command of a brigade. Wounded in the Battle of the Great Redan, he returned home on leave and commanded troops in Great Britain and Ireland until 1861. Made a K.C.B. and a general in retirement, he became colonel of his old regiment before his death in 1879. Education and early service Shirley was the fifth and youngest son of Evelyn Shirley of Ettington Park and his wife Phillis, the daughter of Charlton Wollaston. His eldest brother was Evelyn John Shirley. He was educated at Mr. Davies' school in Streatham and became a student at Rugby School in 1820; however, his mother, in 1821, described him as "a pleasant, droll, active boy, but would never make a scholar." He matriculated on 10 May 1823 at Trinity College, Oxford, where his brother James was a student. True to his mother's prediction, he was "very idle" in college, and she withdrew him in November 1824 to send him into the British Army, in which his brothers Charles and William were officers. He purchased a second lieutenancy in the Rifle Brigade on 12 May 1825, and joined the regiment on 1 July in Dublin. The Rifle Brigade was ordered to Malta in January 1826; Shirley initially stayed with the regimental depot in Kinsale and then in Tralee, joining the regiment in Malta in September. Shirley purchased a lieutenancy in the Rifle Brigade on 31 October 1826, and was posted with the 1st Battalion in Gibraltar. He was with the regiment in Ireland in 1827, England in 1828, and went with them to Halifax, Canada in May 1829. Aside from a visit to England on leave in autumn 1831, Shirley remained in Canada with the Rifles until 1833. On 5 July 1833, Shirley purchased a captaincy on the unattached list, and then paid to exchange as a captain into the 88th Regiment of Foot (Connaught