GENERAL
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A General is an officer of high military rank. The term is used by nearly every country in the world. General may be a rank on its own, or can be used as a generic term for "general officers". In most nations, the various grades of General are at the top of the rank structure; but some countries have even higher ranks such as Field Marshal or Marshal.
"General Officer", often referred to less formally and imprecisely as "General", refers to a military officer who holds any rank grade of General. The exact rank of a general may be determined by combining a prefix (e.g. Major General) or suffix (e.g. General of the Army).
A General, without prefix or suffix (and sometimes referred to informally as a "full general"), is usually the most senior general officer rank, above Lieutenant General. In some armies, however, the rank of Captain General, General of the Army, Army General or Colonel General occupied or occupies this position. These ranks may be considered to be equivalent to a full General or to a Field Marshal, depending on the army in question.
While historically an army rank, General is also used in most air forces, although those based on the British Royal Air Force use Air Marshal instead, with Air Officer being the generic title. In most navies of the world, the equivalent rank is Admiral and the generic term is Flag Officer; however a noteworthy historical exception was the Cromwellian naval rank General at sea. In the Israeli Defence Forces there are no separate naval ranks and the Hebrew term Aluf can be both "General" and "Admiral". In recent years in the American service there is a tendency to use "Flag Officer" and "Flag Rank" to refer to generals and admirals of the services collectively.
The rank of General began appearing around the time of the organization of professional armies in the 17th century. At first, it was added as an adjective to existing names of ranks, yielding Colonel General, Captain General, Lieutenant General and Sergeant Major General. These titles were used to distinguish the ruler's most important officers and usually involved a certain amount of negotiation over precedence.
General officer ranks
Common systems
There are two common systems of using general ranks. One is an old system perpetuated in particular by British usage which spread to the commonwealth. The other is an ostensibly more logical derived from the French revolution, where generals' ranks are named according to the unit they (theoretically) command.
Old (British) system
French (Revolutionary) system
Other common versions of general are:
In some nations (particularly in the Commonwealth), the equivalent to Brigadier General is Brigadier, which is not always considered by these armies to be a general officer rank a part entiere, although it is always treated as equivalent to the rank of Brigadier General for comparative purposes.
Other versions
Other versions of general include:
General ranks by country
The following articles deal with the rank of General as it is employed in the militaries of various countries.
General equivalent ranks
Other General ranks
See also
External links
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