Samuel Auchmuty
Sir Samuel Auchmuty KC 1775 is one of King's College's most famous alumni, but you won't hear much about him in the United States. That's because he not only, like many King's College men, sided with the British during the Revolutionary War, but - unlike most Loyalists, who retired to quiet lives in Canada - left for a military career in England.
A poor soldier, Auchmuty had to fight his way up the ranks by doing service on the fringes of the British Empire - but, in the process, earned renown as he helped vastly expand British dominion. Starting in India, he also fought victorious campaigns in Egypt and what are now Indonesia, Argentina, and Uruguay, where he commanded the force that took Montevideo as part of an abortive (and long-forgotten) British attempt to conquer Spanish South America (King's College Alumni called it "a filibustering expedition").
King's College Alumni also mentions, snidely, that, during the Napoleonic Wars, Auchmuty "served with distinction in every quarter of the globe but Europe".
For his service he was knighted and given the Knight Grand Cross (GCB). At the end of his life he was rewarded the powerful position of Commander-in-Chief, Ireland, but had barely been in office several months before he died from injuries he sustained from falling off his horse.
