Have you Seen My General?

[hoof]

Make sure that he's really dead (check your faction family tree). Often the computer will "retreat" your troops clear back to a neighboring city. Thus, he may be hanging out in one of your cities and you don't even know. Sometimes this automatic movement is done very fast (the game thinks you want "fast movements" or something).

If the unit was at near full strength, it is very unlikely he was killed by the game unless he had nowhere to retreat to.

Amphibious assaults have this problem too. Sometimes the army will retreat back to a ship, and disappear from the strat map. Clicking on the ships in the area might show that they now have your army.

Pull up the faction family tree. Click on living guys until you see him (assuming you don't spot him right away). If his scroll comes up, click the magnifying glass icon in the corner of the scroll. The game will center on his current location.

The advantage of generals vs regular armies is that you can use the faction family tree to track them down. With lone units (like Horse Archers mentioned above), they could move a whole province and into a city, and you'll think they're dead (then scratch your head as to how that city suddenly has some extra units). I'm not saying there isn't a bug, but lets rule out the known behavior first.