of 110 cavalrymen. Dunn broke down and cried. Queen Victoria instituted the Victoria Cross in 1856, for conspicuous acts of bravery by any member of the British military. The award was available for events from 1854 onwards, to include acts of bravery during the Crimean War, which began in late 1853. After the war, it was announced that the 11th Hussars could nominate a soldier to receive the Victoria Cross for his bravery. Dunn was the unanimous choice of the regiment. His name was on the list of the first group of recipients of the Victoria Cross, announced in February 1857. On 26 June 1857, Queen Victoria presented the first sixty-two Victoria Crosses at an awards ceremony in Hyde Park, in front of a crowd of 100,000. Although Dunn by that time had left the 11th Hussars, he was amongst that group of the first recipients. Later military career Dunn sold his commission at the end of the Crimean War, having conducted an affair with the wife of a fellow officer. She left her husband for Dunn. He returned to Canada in 1856, where he initially ran his family's estate, north of Toronto, and joined a local Masonic lodge. In 1857, the Indian Mutiny began. Dunn assisted in raising a regiment in Canada for the British Army, the 100th (Prince of Wales's Royal Canadian) Regiment of Foot, which he joined with the rank of major. When the 100th Regiment was leaving for Britain, Dunn was presented with a sword which had been recently found on the Plains of Abraham, and was thought to have belonged to General Wolfe. After arriving in Britain, the 100th Regiment was sent to Gibraltar to act as garrison troops. Dunn exchanged into the 33rd Regiment of Foot in 1864, as a lieutenant-colonel. He was promoted to the rank of colonel in 1866, the youngest colonel in the British Army. At the start of the British Expedition to Abyssinia in 1868, he was given the command of the 33rd Regiment, the first Canadian to command a British regiment, but was killed in unusual circumstances during a hunting accident at Senafe before the military part of the campaign started. Death in Abyssinia The accounts of Dunn's death vary. It occurred at the town of Senafe in Abyssinia (now Eritrea). The official version from the 33rd Regiment is that Dunn was holding his rifle and trying to uncork