[4] As aide-de-camp to Sir Herbert Stewart,[5] he participated in the Sudan Campaign, accompanied the Nile Expedition to Khartoum in the abortive effort to relieve General Charles George Gordon, and was present at the battles of El Teb and Tamai.

[10] He served as military secretary to the Governor of Bombay Lord Harris from 1890[11] to 1893,[12] and in 1893 he was chief of staff on Sir Gerald Herbert Portal's mission to Uganda.

Rhodes also served for a brief period as Administrator of Mashonaland and as the appointed military member of the council of four in the government of Matabeleland under Leander Starr Jameson.

After his release from jail, he immediately joined his brother Cecil and the British South Africa Company in the Second Matabele War.

[18][19] After retiring from the Army in 1903,[20] he served as managing director of the African Trans-Continental Telegraph Company until his death in 1905 in Groote Schuur, Cape Colony.