Warriors of the Queen E-Book

William Wright

• Herausgeber: Spellmount
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Who were the men who commanded the British Army in the numerous small wars of the Victorian Empire? Today, many are all but forgotten, save the likes of Cardigan, Kitchener, Baden-Powell and Gordon of Khartoum. Yet they were a disparate and fascinating assemblage, made up of men of true military genius, as well as egoists, fools and despots. In Warriors of the Queen, William Wright surveys over 170 of these men, examining their careers and personalities. He reveals not only the lives of the great military names of the period but also of those whom history has overlooked, from James 'Buster' Browne, who once fought a battle in his nightshirt, to Jack Bisset, who had fought in three South African wars by his twenty-third birthday. Based on original research and complemented by over sixty photographs, Warriors of the Queen provides new insight into the men who built (and sometimes endangered) the British Empire on the battlefield.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title page

Introduction

Warriors of the Queen

Acronyms

Appendix A – The Generals and the Campaigns

Appendix B – The Missing Generals

Select Bibliography

Plate Section

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

This book is the first to bring together in one volume the lives of 170 Victorian army generals. Not wanting to write pure hagiography of the kind offered in nineteenth-century works (and often in the Dictionary of National Biography), I have, where possible, tried to analyse these men and include contemporary criticisms alongside modern historical opinion.

Critics will rise up en masse, I have no doubt, to complain that a favourite soldier is omitted – there is no Raglan here, nor famous heroes like Bromhead and Chard – so a word or two in explanation: the book deals with soldiers who reached the rank of major-general or higher before the death of the Queen-Empress on 22 January 1901. Inclusion has had to be a personal choice since the list is long, so brigadier-generals or those who reached major-general rank after Victoria’s death have been excluded, along with men like Bromhead and Chard, who reached the ranks of major and lieutenant-colonel, respectively.

To further help me I have restricted the book to officers who saw action in three campaigns or more. When considering early Victorian generals I have treated the continental war against Napoleon as one campaign, hence no Raglan, who followed the Iron Duke and then had four decades of peacetime soldiering until the Crimean War.

Let me be clear: this is a book of sketches in the same way that Commander Charles Robinson’s Celebrities of the Army (1900) sketches seventy-two commanders (not all of them generals) at the time of the South African War. It is impossible within the space I can permit myself to do more than shine a small torch on an individual officer’s career but, if the book encourages you to delve further or research more, then the exercise will have been worthwhile. The book includes familiar names (Baden-Powell, Gordon of Khartoum) and important warriors (Frederick Roberts, Garnet Wolseley), along with the men of their Rings (Adye, Hamilton, Maurice, McCalmont, Pole-Carew), Indian Army generals (Brownlow, Fraser-Tytler, Palmer, Stewart), and old Africa hands (Carrington, Grenfell, Molyneux, Woodgate). A large number of the men who I think worth remembering and re-assessing will be unknown to all but the most specialist scholars – names like Robert Bright, Patrick Grant, Charles Palliser and Henry Stisted.

There is not a warrior in this book who did not believe in the British Empire as a force for good in the world and wanted to defend it to the best of his ability. But in war mistakes happen and they cost men’s lives. Thus, besides the great all-rounders (Gasalee, Macpherson) are some who failed in battle (Pomeroy-Colley, Primrose) and others who, while generally successful, brushed against disaster (Graham, Rowlands). The book includes generals who viewed themselves as scapegoats (Buller, Methuen) and others who fell victim to the political axe (Appleyard, Blood).

Twenty-six of these generals won the coveted Victoria Cross, including names largely forgotten today, such as George Channer and Frederick Maude. A great number received battle wounds (Alison, Tytler); indeed, sometimes reading of their battle scars makes one wonder how they possibly survived (Reynell Taylor, Watson). Some never got the glorious bronze cross, but were every bit as brave (Delafosse, Hope Grant). Fifteen of them were born in India (two more in Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon). All the India boys returned to the land of their birth and the Indian Army (the Battye and Gough brothers, for example).

Within these pages you can read of martinets and tyrants (Brown, Franks), romantic idealists (Butler), a brilliant amateur botanist (Collett), snobs (the Crealock brothers) and eccentrics (Colville, Charles Napier). Some generals saw action in only one theatre of war, such as John Bissett on the Eastern Frontier of Cape Colony, or Charles Keyes on the North-West Frontier of India. Old-school generals of the kind favoured by the reactionary Duke of Cambridge, C-in-C of the British Army 1856–95, let us not forget, were brave fighting men in their younger days (Dillon, Horsford). They contrast with the later and younger generation of Victorian scientific soldiers (Brackenbury, Nicholson). The officer-class of the Victorian Army was a relatively close-knit institution but it was possible to rise from relatively humble beginnings (Clyde, O’Connor) to great fame and riches. More typical were the aristocratic officers (Chelmsford, Somerset), the sons of wealthy churchmen (Wood) and landed county families (Drury-Lowe, Yeatman-Biggs). Thirty of the generals in this book belonged to the cavalry and 110 to the infantry, with ten gunners, sixteen sappers and two doctors.

A book of this size containing so much biographical data is bound to have accidentally incorporated some errors. I can only apologise and hope these are few while begging the reader’s indulgence.

To make the book additionally useful to those interested in a particular campaign, an appendix lists the wars of all the warriors. Bold type indicates a soldier featured in the book for purposes of cross-reference.

Finally, my thanks to Shaun Barrington at the History Press for his support and encouragement on this project, and Kristina Elias for re-photographing the generals and helping prepare the index. Illustrations are from my own collection.

William Wright

Budapest

WARRIORS

OF THE

QUEEN

ADYE, GENERAL SIR J. – BEST OF STAFF OFFICERS

A GUNNER WITH family associations in the Royal Artillery back to 1762, John Adye saw service in several wars but always in a staff capacity. He remains an interesting personality because, as the years rolled by, he became somewhat old-fashioned in his views on artillery, yet he remained a progressive thinker on other subjects, including the defence of India and the treatment of subject peoples.

Born in 1819, Adye entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1834 to train as a gunner. He first saw action in the Crimea on the staff of Lord Raglan (years later, in his autobiography, he strongly defended his old chief). Staff duties put Adye under fire on several occasions; on one, during the Battle of Inkerman, a shell passed amongst the group of officers near Raglan, killing two horses and mortally wounding General Strangways, whose left leg was taken off below the knee. In escorting the dying officer from the field, Adye was almost captured by the enemy.

His most severe fight was at Cawnpore in the Mutiny, where he served under General Windham. Left to hold the city by Colin Campbell as he marched on Lucknow, Windham was given purely defensive orders and a steadily growing army as driblets of troops marching up-country reached Cawnpore. Then a massive rebel army of 25,000 men arrived to challenge the British. The defenders had just ten guns and 1,700 bayonets. As AAG, Adye had his work cut out for him and was often under intense fire. On the night of 27 November 1857 he led a dangerous sortie into the rebel-held city to rescue a naval 24-pounder. He described the task as ‘rather like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay’. Led by a native guide on a roundabout route, Adye thought that the man might be leading them into a trap, but eventually they found the gun in a narrow lane with its wheels sunk into a drain. As silently as possible, his fifty infantry, aided by some sailors, pulled the gun upright and marched back triumphantly to their lines, where every man got a glass of grog and the guide a bag of rupees.

General Windham was out-generalled by the wily rebel, Tatya Tope, and was barely holding his own when Campbell returned with his army. Adye wrote a book in defence of his chief, whose position had been precarious and whose courage never in doubt, aiming to set the record straight. History has largely validated his opinion that Windham ‘was a brave soldier and an excellent leader, and [his] difficulties were by no means understood and appreciated’.

Six years later, Adye was sent to Umbeyla on the North-West Frontier to report on the campaign turning disastrously wrong against the tribes. Once there he was asked to stay on as a staff officer and was one of the small party that was permitted, under escort by the tribesmen, to see Malka, the fanatics’ stronghold, being put to the torch. One of Adye’s colleagues, Frederick Roberts, noted that if a shot had been fired on either side, ‘the desire for blood would quickly have spread, and in all probability not one of our party would have escaped’.

In 1870 Adye was made director of artillery and stores at the War Office. Here he became a firm advocate of the reforms being made by the War Minister, Edward Cardwell. It has been argued by some that during his tenure, ‘British artillery development failed to keep pace with technological advances and rival nations’. He seems to have been a little too close to the Armstrong armaments family, marrying a daughter to one of its sons, while promoting an Armstrong rifle-barrel breech loading gun that, after many trials, had to be abandoned. Other high positions followed; governor of the ‘shop’ at Woolwich in 1875 and surveyor-general of the ordnance in 1880.

Adye’s war services were not at an end; in 1882 he was a most competent chief of staff to Garnet Wolseley in Egypt. One writer claims that Adye was ‘chagrined’ at serving under an officer fourteen years his junior but, if so, he kept it to himself. He rode with his chief to witness the capture of Mahsama and was present with the rest of the staff during the battle of Tel-el-Kebir. After the war Adye defended the medical and hospital services at a royal commission, though Wolseley noted in his diary that Adye had painted too rosy a picture.

In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, when Roberts and his friends held sway on all matters Indian, Sir John Adye was bold enough to write that ‘the war of 1878–79 was bad in policy and unjust in principle from beginning to end’, and ‘there is no cause for war, or indeed probability of it, between Russia and England, in that part of the world’. Time was to prove Adye right. Remarkably free of colour prejudice, he was also one of the few soldiers of his age to predict that British days in India were numbered. Indian self-government, he always thought, was inevitable, and natives needed to be made part of the governmental system. ‘If such principles are not carried out, we shall not only lose India, but shall deserve to do so. Others talk of the people of India as being composed of inferior races. I am not aware that God has created any races of men who are inferior.’

Wise and brave, a classic gentleman and fine soldier, John Adye died in his eightieth year on 26 August 1900.

AIREY, LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR J. – CHEERY AFGHAN CAPTIVE

DURING THE FIRST Afghan War, when a few British, such as Lady Sale and George Lawrence, became captives in the mountains, a handful of their countrymen had already agreed to be prisoners at Kabul. One of these was Lieutenant James Talbot Airey.

Born in 1812, James was commissioned an ensign in the 30th Foot in 1830, exchanging into the 3rd Foot in 1833. He served as an aide to the Governor of Madras 1834–37 and went to Afghanistan in the same capacity with the gout-ridden British commander General Elphinstone. Once there, Airey found himself sleeping most nights on the floor outside ‘Elphy Bey’s’ room in case he was required to deliver orders. He was also in several skirmishes with the Afghans and acted as aide on occasions to the hot-tempered Brigadier Shelton. Assisting Robert Sale in the Khoord-Kabul Pass, his horse was killed beneath him. In December 1841, with the Afghans demanding hostages during negotiations, Elphinstone asked his young aide if he would volunteer. Being a bachelor, and realising that many of his fellow officers had wives or family, he agreed and went into captivity two days before the British envoy, Sir William Macnaghten, was murdered. In a letter to his brother, Lt-Colonel Richard Airey, James explained how Kabulis ‘on several occasions surrounded the house … and demanded our blood in anything but a civil manner,’ adding, ‘I shall not be surprised to find myself, some fine morning, tending sheep as a slave in Tourkistan [sic], but … having grown grey from confinement, I shall fetch a very small price.’ He concluded a letter on 19 June with the cheery words: ‘I am as healthy a ghost as you generally see … I am a little tired … of sitting cross-legged and eating Pillau with my fingers.’

After his release by Pollock’s army on 21 September 1842, James heard the good news that he had been promoted and also that Elphinstone had kindly left him £300 in his will. He then joined Brigadier McCaskill’s force in Kohistan, fought in ‘the thick’ of the bloody storming of Istalif and was twice mentioned in despatches. A year later he served with the 3rd Foot in the Gwalior War.

Peacetime soldiering, with an exchange into the Coldstream Guards, kept Airey busy until the Crimean War broke out in 1854; he was present at all the main battles as AQMG of the Light Division (his elder brother, Richard, was Lord Raglan’s confidante as QMG). James was mentioned three times in despatches. He stayed with the Coldstreams until 1868, when he was promoted to major-general; lieutenant-general rank followed nine years later. A bachelor all his life, Sir James died in London on 1 January 1898.

ALISON, GENERAL SIR A. – SCOTLAND’S ONE-ARMED HERO

WHEN, IN 1882, Madame Tussauds waxworks displayed a model of the new peer and victor of Tel-el-Kebir, General Lord Wolseley, the only other hero of the Egyptian War afforded a similar honour was Sir Archibald Alison. His courage at the head of the Highland Brigade made his name a household word, especially north of the border.

The eldest son of an eminent historian of the same name, Alison was born on 21 January 1826. He was commissioned an ensign in the 72nd Foot (later the Seaforth Highlanders) and served in various parts of the globe before first seeing action in the Crimean War. It was his coolness under fire at Sebastopol and during one of the assaults on the Redan that brought him to the attention of Scotland’s great hero, Major-General Sir Colin Campbell.

In July 1857 Campbell set sail for India to quell the uprising which threatened to engulf the sub-continent. With him went Alison as his military secretary while his younger brother, Frederick, was ADC. During the final assault at Lucknow, a cannon ball took one of Archibald’s arms and knocked him off his horse. It took him four years to recover, but during the following decade he artfully rose up the ladder of promotion in a series of staff positions.

Much to the chagrin of Wolseley, the rising star in the military firmament, Alison was chosen in 1873 to command the European Brigade, with the local rank of brigadier-general, in an expedition against the warlike Ashanti of West Africa. ‘I don’t care much for him and I don’t think he is the man I want’, wrote Wolseley, who had been forced to accept Alison by the Duke of Cambridge, the British Army’s C-in-C. Despite Alison’s bravery and cool handling of his men at Amoaful, on 31 January 1874, he never became a real member of Wolseley’s inner circle. Alison was critical of Wolseley’s transport arrangements for the campaign and told his wife that the staff officers were too young and inexperienced. They responded by spreading the rumour that a sick Alison would have retreated after Amoaful if he had been in charge. Wolseley was most annoyed that Alison always had the ear of the Duke of Cambridge. Knighted shortly after his return from the Gold Coast, Sir Archibald also complained to Cambridge about errors he saw in the unofficial history of the Ashanti War, written by Wolseley’s assistant military secretary.

Stints in Aldershot, Ireland, and as commandant at the new Staff College at Camberley led, in 1878, to Alison’s appointment as DQMG for intelligence at the War Office, a position he held until the outbreak of the Egyptian War in 1882. Clever, discreet and shrewd, Alison probably knew more about the military situation in Egypt than anyone, including Wolseley. This was to lead to another clash of egos.

Sent to Egypt as head of an advance force, with instructions to safeguard the Suez Canal, Alison found himself at the centre of a confused situation; while he had been on the high seas a British fleet had gone into action and bombarded Alexandria. He landed at Port Said with instructions to head back to Cyprus. Sensibly, Alison told his staff that if they had to turn back it was appropriate to do this via Alexandria. Here he took charge as British regiments started to arrive. Wolseley’s idea was that nothing should disturb things until he landed, but, ten days before his chief’s arrival, Alison led a reconnaissance that turned into a small battle at Kafr Dawar. This action, hailed as a British victory in London was, in reality, pretty inconclusive. But it encouraged Alison to plan a bigger feint towards the Egyptians at Abourkir Bay. This impertinent plan to fight his own little war on the Egyptian coast was quashed on Wolseley’s arrival, but his greatest moment of glory was at hand; just after 5 a.m. on 13 September 1882, riding at the head of his Highland Brigade, he led the attack on the Egyptian fortified trenches at Tel-el-Kebir. The fighting was intense and in the close-quarter scrum Sir Archibald had his horse shot from under him. Unperturbed, he strode about, using a pistol when necessary and urging on his troops. It was a tough fight and even Alison praised the Egyptians, saying ‘I never saw men fight more steadily.’

Back in Scotland after the campaign, the press lauded Alison’s exploits. He made himself more popular by wearing a sprig of heather in public and stating how proud his old chief, Colin Campbell, would have been of his highland boys. Eleven years later, in 1893, Alison retired. Among his last important duties were those of adjutant-general during Wolseley’s absence in the Sudan 1884–85 and his membership of the Indian Council. He died as one of Scotland’s best loved warriors in 1907.

APPLEYARD, MAJOR-GENERAL F. – THE MAN WHO UPSET A VICEROY

IT WAS A dangerous move to antagonise a Viceroy of India. One career that illustrates this rather well is that of Frederick Appleyard, a gallant soldier who offended the highly strung Lord Lytton and was removed from his command during the Second Afghan War.

He enlisted in 1850 as an ensign in the 80th Foot and within a few weeks set sail with his regiment for India. Two years later the 80th sailed again to take part in the Second Burmese War. Appleyard was present at the taking of Prome and the first officer to force his way through the huge pagoda gate at Rangoon. ‘Caught sight of the tail end of the Burmese troops escaping on the opposite side,’ he recalled, ‘pursued them with about half a section down the steps, and came to some sheds in which were some ponies, one of which I bagged – a really good one – but as the enemy were still in force, firing at us, and no help near, we had to return …’

Dysentery soon saw him sent home on sick leave. He next joined the 7th Royal Fusiliers in time for the Crimean War, was wounded in the shoulder carrying their colours at the Alma and fought in the thick of things at Inkerman and the first assault on the Redan. It was said that Appleyard did more various duties than any other officer in the 1st Brigade, Light Division; these included over ninety nights in the trenches, sometimes not being relieved for seventy-two hours in the cruel winter of 1854. Next Frederick sailed to India and the Mutiny, but arrived too late to see action. He transferred to the 85th Regiment in 1861 and remained with them for the next nineteen years. When the 85th were ordered to India in 1868 the ambitious Appleyard went as their commanding officer.

It was at a durbar in the spring of 1878, where Lord Lytton was meeting the rulers of Oudh, that the hapless colonel ‘unfortunately, and quite unintentionally’ incurred the Viceroy’s displeasure. In his autobiography Appleyard does not reveal exactly what he said to upset the impulsive and neurotic Lytton – who once wrote, ‘I am as variable as the wind, and I certainly don’t know myself’ – but when the commands for the invasion of Afghanistan were announced, his name was erased from the list. He complained to headquarters and was given command of the 3rd Brigade, Peshawar Valley Field Force. Then, despite being the senior brigadier in the 1st Division, he found this command mysteriously taken from him as he was posted to the rear. Appleyard quickly telegraphed his complaints to the War Office in London and in March 1879 got back his earlier command.

During the attack on the Afghan fortress at Ali Musjid, high above the Khyber Pass, Appleyard was as courageous as he had been in Burma and was the first officer through the breach. He was now put in charge of the Lundi Kotal-Ali Musjid section of the Khyber and, according to the war’s historian, Colonel Hanna, the energetic Appleyard did sterling work keeping the supply line open despite attacks from Afridis and other tribes.

Fate now dealt Appleyard a cruel blow; the loss on 23 May 1879 of about fifty mules and some supplies (due, he thought, to transport department deficiencies beyond his control), brought him eventually to the Viceroy’s desk. Lytton accused him of ‘lamentable errors of judgment’ and of ‘unfitness to move troops in a difficult country, of inertness, incompetence, a want of zeal and enterprise …’ The unfortunate Appleyard complained to anyone who would listen, up to and including the C-in-C, and his protests dragged on for the next fifteen years. It was all to no avail.

Frederick Ernest Appleyard never held another field command, though he became a major-general in 1884, after being placed on half-pay. One can guess that he went to his grave in 1911 still feeling bitter. Ten years earlier an officer had described him as ‘a most pompous little old gentleman’. Some small satisfaction came with a letter the general received in his later years from his old PVFF commander, Sam Browne, who wrote: ‘I consider Lord Lytton’s treatment of you was most unjust and most harsh.’

BADEN-POWELL, LIEUTENANT-GENERAL LORD R. – ALWAYS ‘B.P.’

NO VICTORIAN SOLDIER has had his career and personality examined under the microscope of historical reassessment quite like Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell. Many contemporaries called him ‘brilliant’, ‘indefatigable’, and ‘a ‘prince of scouts’ as well as a ‘prince of good fellows’. Recent historians have tended to view him as an energetic eccentric, a man with a tendency to stretch the truth when it suited him and a callous regard for native life.

He was born in 1857 and aged 19 was commissioned into the 13th Hussars. Sent to India and dull cantonment life, ‘B.P.’, as he was known to his friends, was a cheery subaltern with a ready wit, always happy to sketch the memsahibs or dress up in comic plays. His commanding officer, Baker Russell, liked him and he was popular in society. Sent to Afghanistan in 1880 with the 13th, ‘B.P.’ saw no fighting but managed to shoot himself in the leg.

Eight years later, serving as an aide to his peppery uncle, General Sir Henry Smyth, Baden-Powell took part in suppressing a Zulu rising. This was part of a civil war in Zululand and ‘B.P.’ had with him a large contingent of ‘splendid’ Zulu scouts. He saw little fighting but on 10 August allowed his irregulars to charge into some caves, stab a woman and two men to death and take several Zulus prisoners. There was a hullabaloo because the incident occurred in Boer territory. ‘B.P.’ claimed it was a mistake at the time, but years later confessed: ‘We disregarded the border and followed them up, attacked and got them.’ The matter reveals how Baden-Powell had a tendency to shift the truth if it enhanced his position.

Riding across the magnificent valleys and hills of Zululand inspired Baden-Powell to make a study of scouting techniques and irregular warfare. In 1895–96 he was given command of a native levy in the bloodless Ashanti expedition that abducted King Prempeh. On the other side of Africa ‘B.P.’ was propelled into another war as the Matabele and Mashona tried to resist the white men encroaching on their lands. In his role as chief staff officer to Frederick Carrington, our fast-balding hero at last saw some real action; on 5 June 1896 he took part without a sword but firing wildly with his revolver in his first and last cavalry charge. It was, in truth, an ugly massacre, with just four whites wounded and, according to Baden-Powell, 200 Matabele killed.

‘B.P.’ once again demonstrated his method of getting results after he captured a proud chief called Uwini. Injured in fighting (where Baden-Powell was not present), Uwini tore off his bandages after his wound was dressed. Despite a warning from Carrington not to shoot prisoners, Baden-Powell decided that if an example was made of this ‘fine, truculent-looking savage’ many other headmen might lay down their arms. Accordingly, after a sham trial that Uwini quite rightly deigned not to recognise, he was shot. Many headmen did surrender in the next few days, but the High Commissioner, Lord Rosmead, appalled by ‘B.P.”s actions, demanded a court of inquiry which, hardly surprisingly, exonerated the cavalryman. Rosmead continued to maintain, however, that ‘B.P.’ had behaved in an ‘illegal and immoral’ manner.

Returning to India, and command of the 5th Dragoon Guards, ‘B.P.’ got permission to visit the North-West Frontier during the 1897 Pathan Revolt. With Bindon Blood’s agreement he observed actions against the Mohmands and was impressed by one brave ghazi who, all alone, attacked an entire battalion of infantry. In his private life, ‘B.P.’ was getting more eccentric; so well-known was he for dressing up and playing the women’s parts in amateur theatricals that he was even asked to give recitals in a fake soprano!

This neat, dapper, eccentric exhibitionist with ‘a boyish enthusiasm for hard work and new knowledge’, accompanied by a rather unpleasant veneer of self-promotion, was catapulted to fame when he led the defence of Mafeking, a small tin-roofed town of 1,500 whites and 5,000 natives besieged by the Boers from 13 October 1899 to 17 May 1900. Modern studies have revealed that there is some justification in the charge that ‘Baden-Powell was deliberately prolonging the siege for the sake of his reputation, while bringing upon the town unnecessary damage from Boer shelling.’ Locals, like auctioneer Edward Ross, also complained that while many in Mafeking suffered privations, ‘B.P.’ and his staff were ‘filling themselves with fiz, brandies and sodas etc.’ and getting all the praise and honours that followed. It can also be argued that Baden-Powell worked hard to keep people’s spirits up. His chief clerk thought him ‘a wonderful man’. Others were less sure; Charles Weir, a leading citizen, thought ‘he might have done more to save the lives of the natives’ (354 Africans were officially recorded as dying, but the actual toll was considerably higher). Historian Brian Willan, an authority on the siege, has written: ‘From a purely military point of view … it is difficult to resist the conclusion that his reputation was built on somewhat shaky foundations. Certainly he displayed a good deal of ingenuity in securing the defence of Mafeking … But on the few occasions that he took the offensive the results were, to say the least, unfortunate.’ News of Mafeking’s relief was greeted with fervour in Britain. After so many confused disasters and so much loss of life, this strange victory – more an avoidance of a defeat – seemed like a plucky game of cricket. Within days Mafeking’s commandant was promoted to major-general, the youngest in the British Army. Lord Roberts told the Queen that ‘B.P.”s ‘pluck and resource are quite wonderful’. As time passed Roberts changed his mind, complaining that ‘it is curious Baden-Powell should not be acting with more vigour. He certainly showed himself to have resources while defending Mafeking, but he disappointed me afterwards, & I gather those who were with him at Mafeking, do not look upon him as a great commander.’ By July 1901 his lordship simply dismissed ‘B.P.’ as ‘not a General’.

Whatever Roberts privately thought, Baden-Powell went on to become a lieutenant-general, though he saw no more campaigning. He directed his energies to developing his ideas for the character-building youth organisation that would become the Boy Scouts. He retired in 1910, aged 53, and his new life’s work won him a baronetcy in 1929 as Lord Baden-Powell of Gilwell. He died in Kenya, the continent of his military triumphs, on 8 January 1941.

BAKER, LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR T. – BETWEEN THE RINGS

DESPITE THE RIVALRY between the rings of Roberts and Wolseley, it was possible for a good soldier to work closely with both of these generals and be mutually respected. One such was Thomas Durand Baker. Born in the year of the Queen’s accession, he went to Cheltenham College before being commissioned into the 18th Foot in 1854. He served with this regiment, first as an ensign and then a lieutenant, his bravery noticed in the attack on the Redan at Sebastopol. Next he and his fellow Royal Irish were sent to India and took part in the sweaty work of pursuing some of the final rebel bands in 1858.

On 2 April 1863 the 2nd Battalion, 18th Foot, set sail for New Zealand where a fierce war with the Maoris had broken out. Captain Baker was appointed DAAG and later AAG under General Cameron, frequently getting mentions in despatches. The most notable event was at Orakau on 31 March 1864, where Baker leapt off his horse and personally led a vain third assault on the staunchly defended Maori pah (or fort). At the close of the campaign he was rewarded with a brevet majority.

After passing out of the Staff College he applied in 1873 to join Wolseley’s intended Ashanti expedition. Baker was made AAG, then QMG and finally Chief of Staff. Wolseley was full of praise for an officer ‘who does his work well, but I fear he will break down as it is too much for one man’. On 11 October in a confidential letter to the War Minister a fair-minded Wolseley pointed out Baker for future honours and promotion. Finally, when George Greaves arrived to take up chief of staff duties, Baker went down with fever, but ‘won’t confess he is ill and won’t go on board the Commodore’s ship … He is a splendid fellow …’

In 1878, now a full colonel, Baker won the plum appointment of Military Secretary to the bellicose Viceroy, Lord Lytton. When the Afghan War broke out it was Roberts’s opinion that much of the British planning had been done not by Haines, but by Baker and Pomeroy-Colley, the Viceroy’s closest military advisors, commenting that he considered the colonel more clever than East or Elles. During the war’s second phase he requested Baker as a brigadier; at Charasiab near Kabul the new general was told to lead the attack, which he did, according to a contemporary officer, ‘cool, confident and quiet’. The Afghans, outflanked and enfiladed by Baker, lost almost 300 while the British had only eighteen fatalities. After the battle there was a furious spat between Baker and the cavalry commander, Brigadier Massy. Fellow officers took sides, but the majority disliked Massy, thinking him as ‘arrant an imposter as ever drew a sword. [A] self-indulgent, timid, good-for-nothing fellow’. Baker was soon kept busy fighting around Kabul and led one of Roberts’s three infantry brigades in the push to Kandahar.

After the war he got a KCB and was made AG in India 1884–88, during which period he saw his last active service in Burma. In 1886 Roberts recommended him for a division, which he got two years later. In 1890 he returned to London and the War Office as QMG, a post he held for three years until his death at a relatively early age, the result of a West African ague that had never left him. Had he lived another seven years he almost certainly would have taken a senior field command in the South African War.

BARTON, MAJOR-GENERAL G. – FUSSY LITTLE MAN OF ACTION

GEOFFREY BARTON SPENT most of his career in the Royal Fusiliers, seeing plenty of action along the way. It was his misfortune, during the South African War, to fall foul of Lord Kitchener.

He joined the 7th Foot (Royal Fusiliers) in 1862 at age 18 and had a quiet first decade in the army until he volunteered as a special service officer for the 1873–74 Ashanti War. This saw him mentioned in despatches. Four years later he went out to Africa again on special service and commanded the 4th battalion of the Natal Native Contingent. He soon saw fighting again at the Battle of Gingindlovo in which over 1,000 Zulus were slain. Two mentions in despatches quickly followed.

After attending the Staff College and now accepted as a junior member of Wolseley’s ring of bright young officers, Barton served as staff officer in the Egyptian War in 1882. Ostensibly commanding the regular police, he managed to see action at Kassassin and again at Tel-el-Kebir. Three years later he served in a similar staff role with Gerald Graham fighting the Mahdists in the Eastern Sudan. In 1890 Lt-Colonel Barton took command of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers. A year later he exchanged into the 1st Battalion serving in India.

With his Staff College and Wolseley credentials, it was not surprising that he was given command of the 6th Brigade, South African Field Force in Natal on the outbreak of war with the Boers. Barton was one of that clutch of generals who, within a year, had failed to impress the new warlords – Roberts and Kitchener. According to the gossipy Ian Hamilton, by the end of 1901 Lord Kitchener considered him of ‘very little use now …’ Hamilton went on to say that he did not entirely agree; Barton was, he declared, a ‘fussy little man, who is inclined to devote all his attention to details, and to disregard, in doing so, more weighty matters. These are serious faults, but still he has a good deal of energy and keenness and he certainly seems to have worked out the defences of Pretoria and neighbourhood in a very satisfactory style. Of course, I have always understood that he is no leader of troops in the field, but this is mere hearsay’. Harsh words perhaps but, unfortunately, valid. Barton’s big moment had come at Colenso on 15 December 1899. It is true that he and his fellow commanders were saddled with instigating the plan of their C-in-C, Redvers Buller, for a ‘frontal attack directed on three points of an insufficiently reconnoitred position held in unknown strength by an entrenched enemy’, but Barton raised no objections. Towards the end of this frightful battle, in which British losses totalled 1,138 killed, wounded and missing, the cavalry commander, Lord Dundonald, saw a chance to cut off the Boer line of retreat and asked for Barton’s brigade to assist him. The request was denied. Barton was in the right strictly speaking but, as one historian has noted, ‘By Barton’s refusal the last chance of redeeming the day was lost.’

Despite Lord Kitchener’s lack of faith in him, Barton retained his command and served in the Western Transvaal until the end of the war in 1902. It was almost the end of his fighting career. He died in 1922.

BATTYE, LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR A. – HIGHEST RANKED OF THE ‘FIGHTING TEN’

NO FAMILY SOLDIERED and died for the Empire quite like the Battyes. It came to be said that it was rare for a Battye to die in his bed, though, in truth, only four died in action (Quintin, Wigram, Richmond and Fred), but the ‘fighting ten’ brothers certainly carved a niche for themselves in the pantheon of imperial heroes, and especially in the Indian Army.

The career of Arthur, highest ranked and longest serving, must stand for the rest. He was born in 1839, the seventh son, and aged 17 was gazetted an ensign in the 19th Bengal Native Infantry at Berhampur. Broadly built and not exceptionally clever (according to his biographer), Arthur was a kindly, sensitive, religious youth who was mercilessly bullied by his fellow subalterns. On one occasion they even set light to him and threw him down the steps of the mess. In these first months he saw his regiment disbanded when they threatened to mutiny. He was also present at Barrackpore when the sepoy, Mangal Pandey, stoned on hashish, tried to incite rebellion and was hanged.

Transferring to the 1st Bengal Fusiliers, Arthur served at the Siege of Delhi where his brother Quintin was to die in action leading his Corps of Guides with the final words, ‘Ah well, old fellow, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” That’s how it is …’ (the words were meant as an ironic jest, says his biographer). Arthur’s regiment, called ‘the dirty shirts’ because of the amount of fighting they took part in, often went into battle with the Guides, or the Sirmoor Gurkhas, both of which were quartered beside them. In the final assault at Delhi the 1st Bengal Fusiliers took part in the leading first column under the command of the courageous and possibly half-mad Brigadier-General John Nicholson. Young Arthur climbed the glacis near the Kashmir Gate under terrific shelling and pressed into the teeming city with a deadly hail of gunfire all around him. He was not far from Nicholson when the latter fell, mortally wounded.

Seven of the Battye brothers fought in the Mutiny and, after Quintin’s death, half a dozen of them were present at the Siege of Lucknow. Getting a reputation as a superb horseman, Arthur was recruited by William Hodson, the dashing and unorthodox commander of a newly formed irregular cavalry regiment called Hodson’s Horse. Rapidly proving himself an adept leader, Arthur was mentioned several times in despatches for his gallantry as he led his sowars in mopping-up operations in Oudh throughout 1858. He remained in the saddle hunting mutineers until March 1859.

That May saw the disbandment of Arthur’s 3rd Squadron and he transferred to the 2nd (Sirmoor Rifles) Gurkha Regiment. In 1863 he marched with them to take part in the Umbeyla expedition on the North-West Frontier, but the fighting was over before the regiment arrived. Within days they were ordered to relieve the fort of Shabkadar in Mohmand country. Battye and his Gurkhas arrived just in the nick of time; on 2 January 1864 over 5,000 tribesmen attacked the fort. Sword in hand, Arthur joined the 7th Hussars and units of the 2nd and 6th Bengal Cavalry in a mounted charge that had the enemy running for the hills, but not before his horse was shot under him and he narrowly escaped with his life. Seven years later, in a north-east frontier expedition against the Lushai tribe, who had kidnapped the young daughter of a British tea planter and kept her as a hostage, Battye was almost killed again. While attacking the abductor’s village he was impaled (along with two of his non-commissioned officers and nine of his men) on the sharp bamboo spikes of a palisade.

Rated a first-class regiment, the 2nd Gurkhas under Battye, now a major, were sent to Cyprus in 1878 when war seemed likely between Russia and Turkey. It was a sham manoeuvre, but within months war broke out for a second time with Afghanistan and the Battye family were once more in the thick of things. Wigram Battye died nobly leading his Guides at Futtehabad and Arthur Battye took part in General Roberts’s tough and duly celebrated march from Kabul to Kandahar. In the battle that followed, he was shot in the shoulder as his Gurkhas raced to secure a village that was the key to breaking the enemy line. Following the war’s close and two more mentions in despatches, Arthur was raised to a full colonelcy and gained a CB.

It was his last campaign; on retirement he settled in Torquay. He died in 1909. One obituary noted that ‘it has become an unusual event for a soldier Battye to die in his bed, though he gave fate every opportunity, was wounded, and in the thick of the Indian warfare for many years …’

BISSET, LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR J. – TELLER OF TALL TALES

IT WAS UNCOMMON for a soldier to spend his campaigning fighting just one tribe, but that was the proud boast of John Jarvis Bisset, who fought in the sixth, seventh and eighth frontier wars against the Xhosa of South Africa. His memoirs, Sport and War, are replete with tall tales and economies of truth. What is not in dispute is that he packed an awful lot of action into his first fifteen years in the army.

The son of an officer who had fought in the Napoleonic Wars, Jack Bisset was just 15 when in 1834–35 the Sixth Xhosa War broke out and he joined a civilian militia known as the Bathurst Volunteers. On his first patrol this tender youth saw fighting and found two Boers who had been attacked – one with nineteen assegai wounds, the other with twenty-three – ‘a portion of his entrails were protruding … three men actually fainted from the sight …’

In the same year young Bisset gallantly saved a chief’s daughter from being mistakenly shot, but his greatest feat was taking part in the pursuit and death of the supreme Xhosa chief, Hintsa. On 9 May 1835, while leading British troops into his territory (it has never been clarified if he was a guide, a hostage or a prisoner), Hintsa suddenly galloped off in the direction of his hills. Fast in pursuit was the British commander, Sir Harry Smith, who, in a bit of close-quarters action, managed to unseat his opponent. Bisset and a small body of men now took up the chase and Hintsa was shot and killed as he rested in a stream. In his memoirs Bisset claimed, ‘I was the first to reach the dead chief’ and ‘took his assegais and the charm from around his neck …’, while tactfully omitting the fact that Hintsa had begged for his life and that his ears were hacked off as grisly souvenirs.

Bisset won his commission that same day and soon joined the Cape Mounted Rifles, a corps he was associated with for the remainder of his life. For a decade an uneasy peace reigned along the Cape frontier, but a number of warriors, especially the clever Sandile, chief of the amaRharhabe Xhosa, and his brother, Maqoma, were soon to give the British authorities several years of severe fighting.

During the invasion of the Amatola hills, heartland of the Xhosa, in the 1846–47 ‘War of the Axe’, all three advancing columns ran into difficulties and over fifty wagons were abandoned (HM 7th Dragoon Guards lost all their regimental silver). Bisset’s horse was shot from under him in the fighting and ‘my gun was shattered to pieces in my hands …’ Sent to recover an ammunition wagon, he found a soldier who had been lashed to the limber and burnt alive. During the relief of Fort Peddie, while leading his troopers, Bisset ran into an ambush, one bullet grazing his forehead and another denting a barrel of his shotgun. A few days later, on 8 June 1846, he charged with his regiment at the Battle of the Gwanga, but was unable to draw his sabre as he needed to hold tightly to the reins of his headstrong horse. During the mopping-up operations in which 300 Xhosa were killed he shot seven men, though all were, he later claimed, ‘in the act of firing at me …’ To be fair, Bisset was also the only British officer to take prisoners, one of whom was an important chief. It was on 19 October 1847 that he won his greatest fame; riding out with just one interpreter, he convinced Sandile to meet with senior officers and discuss a closure of the war. Bisset afterwards said that he guaranteed the chief only his personal safety, but on arrival at the British camp Sandile was made a prisoner. It seems likely that Bisset used subterfuge to convince Sandile and this act, though of no matter to contemporaries, has rankled with historians ever since. Sandile was later released. Sir Harry Smith’s intentions to have him deposed as chief were, Bisset felt, ‘a great mistake’.

Events proved him correct when an eighth frontier war broke out in 1850. Appointed AG and later QMG, Bisset was ambushed with a 700-strong column in the narrow Boomah Pass on Christmas Eve 1850 – his birthday. In the hand-to-hand fighting he was shot through the thigh by a warrior who shouted out gleefully, ‘I have shot him!’ Bisset could not resist yelling back in Xhosa, ‘I have got it!’ He was one of twenty-three wounded; the same number again were killed. The Xhosa harried the British all the way to Fort White, where Bisset was left in the care of doctors as the army moved on. Two days later Sandile led a major attack on the fort, which was repulsed by Bisset, a small detachment of Cape Mounted Rifles and several civilians. It was six weeks before Fort White was relieved.

This was the last fighting of Bisset’s career, though many might say he had seen enough for ten men. He quickly rose to the rank of general and was a worthy temporary acting governor of Natal in the 1860s. A hardy old fighter with a ‘ferocious squint’, long-time foe of the Xhosa and teller of tall tales, John Jarvis Bisset died in 1895.

BLACK, MAJOR-GENERAL SIR R. – ZULU WAR FACTOTUM

ONE OF THE men omitted from Greaves and Knight’s excellent The Who’s Who in the Zulu War is Robert Wilstone Black. The historian Sonia Clarke describes him as ‘the Central Column’s general factotum’, and in Zulu Rising Ian Knight calls Black ‘indefatigable’. Black was with Chelmsford at Isandlwana on the morning before and night after the battle, and led the first search back there in March, when a strong stench of death still hung over the place. Zulus tried to cut off his party. He returned on 15 May, but once again the Zulus fired on his patrol. Black’s most celebrated moment came when he led a party of volunteers to Fugitives Drift. The bodies of his comrades Melvill and Coghill were found and buried temporarily under a pile of rocks. Then, with Zulus watching from the opposite riverbank, Black bravely instigated a search for the Queen’s colour of the 24th that had been taken from the battlefield by the dead officers. It was miraculously found in its case and handed to Black, the only officer of the 24th who was present. Later, in a moving ceremony, he returned it to his regiment.

Robert Black was born in in Glasgow in 1833 and commissioned in to the 42nd Highlanders in 1854, serving almost immediately in the Crimean War. He later transferred into the 24th Foot and sailed with them for South Africa. During the Ninth Frontier War, 1877–78, he learned some of the Xhosa languages and acted as regimental interpreter.

Despite seeming to be everywhere, Black fought in none of the major Zulu War battles. Yet on 11 January, when Sihayo’s kraal was attacked in the first fighting of the war, he temporarily commanded the 3rd Regiment, Natal Native Contingent. When his men wavered, Black urged them on at the point of his sword (and some 24th bayonets). Then he got off his horse and led the fight on foot. In the close-quarter action a bullet tore his hat from his hand. Calmly, he bent down and picked it up. A few minutes later an observer recalled Black standing ‘with his back turned to the rock and … waving his sword when the Zulus hearing him rolled over some stones; one struck the gallant Major on the – well, not the head – and he fell on his knees and poured forth a volume of Gaelic that filled my non-coms with delight’. At Isandlwana one fateful morning Black led some of his regiment as an escort for the guns accompanying Chelmsford’s column. Later, when firing was heard in the camp’s direction, he urged a return to investigate. That night, as troops shakily returned in the inky darkness, he was a tower of strength. One officer wrote: ‘Every now and then Black’s voice would ring out, “Steady the 24th – be ready to fire a volley – and charge.”’ John North Crealock, usually acidic towards everyone, was generous in his praise of a man he called ‘energetic and plucky and liked by the men …’ Later in the war, as the columns converged on Ulundi, the Zulu capital, Crealock once again praised Black for his ‘initiative’ while ‘keeping our right flank open’. Hamilton-Browne, one of the tough NNC officers, described him as ‘brave as his own sword … but with a temper, well may I say it, just a little peppery’.

His reputation enhanced by the Zulu campaign, Black held various peacetime military commands across the Empire until his retirement in 1899. He died ten years later.

BLOOD, GENERAL SIR B. – LONG-SERVING SOLDIER OF MANY WARS

A VERY CAPABLE commander, the splendidly named Bindon Blood was a fighting soldier on the Indian frontier, famously shepherding the career of the young Winston Churchill. Less well known is the rebuttal he got from Lord Curzon, probably the harshest censure ever made of a general by a civilian in authority.

Born in Jedburgh of an old Anglo-Irish family, Blood was commissioned in the Royal Engineers on 19 December 1860. Eleven years later he was sent to India and he continued, apart from home leave and African campaigning, to be associated with the Raj until 1907. He was seventeen years in the service before he saw action in the Jowaki Afridi expedition 1877–78 but, to Blood’s annoyance, in this campaign, as with the Zulu War 1879 and second Afghan War, he always seemed to arrive too late for the main show or was sidelined. He also made some enemies; the acerbic Charles Metcalfe Macgregor called him ‘an ass and a sycophant’ in Afghanistan.

Blood was luckier in 1882, when he arrived in Egypt in time to take part in the final big battle at Tel-el-Kebir where he had a hot seat for most of the firefight, guarding some ammunition wagons. A few days later he acted courageously, with shell splinters and bullets whizzing around, when several trains laden with ammunition and supplies caught fire at the Cairo railway station.

The next ten years saw Blood in a number of staff positions, gradually rising in rank as his abilities as a senior engineer were noticed by the top brass. In 1895, as a brigadier-general, he became chief of staff on the Chitral relief expedition sent to the assistance of an isolated fort on the North-West Frontier. This six-week campaign in which Blood, as a staff officer, witnessed most of the major actions, enabled him to use the full scope of his outstanding planning abilities to assist the army to force the steep Malakand Pass and cross the swirling Swat River at Chakdara. At the war’s close Blood was knighted.

He suspected a second frontier war might soon be in the offing. Sure enough, when tribes along almost the entire length of the North-West Frontier region rose in 1897, he was appointed to command the Malakand Field Force to punish the Swat Valley insurgents. A friend of the Churchill family, Sir Bindon allowed the young Winston to take part in the campaign as a war correspondent. Churchill thought Blood ‘kind’ and ‘charming’. He dedicated his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, to him.

The frontier revolt of 1897–98 was the biggest campaign fought by the Indian Army since the Mutiny and Blood was one of the few officers to emerge with an enhanced reputation. The fact that he had covered much of the same ground in 1895 proved invaluable. ‘I knew exactly what I intended to do,’ he later wrote; ‘I assumed command at once, cleared everybody out of the office and had orders out in less than an hour.’ The Swat tribes punished, Blood was given command of the Buner Field Force in January 1898 and in a fortnight his troops successfully coerced the Bunerwals and other tribes of the region into submission. Blood was now, as Churchill told his mother, ‘a made man’.

For the next two years Sir Bindon commanded the Meerut Division before being sent to South Africa at the express wish of Lord Kitchener in January 1900. His handling of operations in the Eastern Transvaal were considered good, though he was outsmarted on a number of occasions by the wily Boer general, Ben Viljoen.

Nine months later Blood returned to India and the important command of the Punjab. It was his bad luck that on 9 April 1902 a cook named Atu was beaten to death in the lines of the newly arrived 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers at Sialkot. Before he died, Atu blamed men of the regiment. Several of his claims were later disputed. It is clear, however, that Sir Bindon took the side of this ‘fine regiment’ and believed the victim’s statement to be ‘unjustifiable’. Punjab military command did not rush to investigate the matter or do a very thorough job when it did so. Finally, Blood sent a report to the Viceroy that was a whitewash. The matter was made worse by a second outrage; a private of the same regiment kicked a punkah-wallah to death, though Blood reported that there was ‘only one kick, and that “a slight one with the bare foot”’, wrote Curzon in disgust.

The report from the Punjab landed on the desk of the Adjutant-General, Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, who remarked wittily to an assistant that Sir Bindon had ‘fallen into the jaws of the lion’. Lord Curzon, full of reforming zeal, was determined to stamp out, as he termed it, ‘the theory that a white man may kick or batter a black man to death with impunity because he is only a “damned nigger.”’ The Viceroy castigated Blood in a withering document of many pages. ‘Really,’ he wrote, ‘can ineptitude further go?’ The report he described as ‘a purely ex-parte statement, couched in the style of an advocate and animated by the spirit of a partisan’.

Sir Bindon found the whole matter distressing and described Curzon’s reply as ‘rude’. He was a defender of the institution he loved and its men, but Blood was not an overt racist (his memoirs contain a portrait of his favourite native orderly and I have a book he presented to an Indian gentleman he called ‘my good friend’). The army closed ranks and supported him, though it must be said that Kitchener agreed with the Viceroy’s censure of the 9th Lancers and the regiment’s punishment. Blood retired five years later, but remained active on ceremonial occasions. He was 90 when he wrote his memoirs and died seven years later on 16 May 1940. It was said his name had appeared in the army lists for eighty years.

BOURCHIER, MAJOR-GENERAL SIR G. – INDIAN ARMY GUNNER

ROUND-FACED WITH LONG white mutton-chop whiskers, George Bourchier was a most gallant gunner during the Indian Mutiny. Later he saw more action in Bhutan and commanded a column in the 1871–72 Lushai expedition.

Bourchier was born in 1821, the son of a parson, was educated at Addiscombe and entered the Bengal Artillery in 1838. Five years later he took part in his first battle at Punniar in the Gwalior campaign. Promoted to captain in 1853, George was commanding No. 17 field battery when the Sepoy Rebellion broke out. He was soon in the thick of things during the siege and capture of Delhi, the march towards Cawnpore and Lucknow and Campbell’s battles for the relief and capture of the latter. Perhaps Bourchier’s biggest success was his pursuit of the Gwalior Contingent at Cawnpore, where he led his gunners as they poured volley after volley into the retreating rebels. With the events fresh in his mind, Bourchier swiftly wrote Eight Months Campaign against the Bengal Sepoy Army, a work that covered events up to December 1857 – and was on sale in the bookshops by May 1858. This remains one of the best accounts of the Delhi siege and especially of the work of Greathed’s column marching up-country.

During the Bhutan War in 1865, now a colonel, Bourchier commanded the Royal Artillery. Promoted brigadier in 1871, he was given command of the Cachar column in the Lushai expedition with young Fred Roberts as his quartermaster. One of two columns sent to invade this hill country on the borders of Assam and Burma, Bourchier led half a mountain battery, one company of sappers and miners, 1,500 infantry composed of three Indian Army regiments, along with 100 police and 1,200 coolies. It was an arduous little war that sapped the strength of all who took part. The other column, entering Lushai territory from Chittagong, was led by Charles Brownlow and rescued Mary Winchester, the 6-year-old daughter of a tea planter whose abduction had sparked the campaign. But it was Bourchier’s troops who had the stiffest fight, on 25 January 1872 at Kangnung. The Lushais had stockaded a village at the top of a steep ascent, the narrow path having a 300ft drop on one side. A participant wrote how ‘the gloom of the forest was lighted up by a myriad of flashes, and bullets and slugs fell around us’ as Bourchier and his staff approached with an advanced guard of fifty men. The general’s orderly was shot dead and Bourchier received multiple wounds. The Lushais were beaten with a loss of over 100 dead (the British lost four dead and six wounded). Bourchier had taken a slug through his hand, but when he removed his coat it was found that ‘a hole was discovered under and behind his left elbow; and a wound which was under his left fore-arm at once accounted for the pain he felt there’.

Ninety-one days of continuous marching, some of it at altitudes of over 6,600ft, often in pestilential jungle, took its toll on Bourchier and all who served in the expedition. Worn out at its close (some of his staff thought he might die), Bourchier praised his troops in a final despatch and wrote: ‘The history of the expedition from first to last has been sheer hard work.’ Barely 50 years old but looking older, Bourchier retired in 1872 after being knighted and promoted to major-general. He died on 15 March 1898.

BRACKENBURY, GENERAL SIR H. – ALMOST TOO CLEVER

‘THE CLEVEREST MAN in the British Army’ was how Lord Wolseley described Henry Brackenbury. This famously ‘ugly’ soldier, labelled ‘a very dangerous man’ by the ultra-conservative Duke of Cambridge was, as his biographer admits, ‘the most radical of Britain’s military reformers in the Victorian era’. Then and now Brackenbury had critics. He was variously described by contemporaries as ‘arrogant’ and ‘sarcastic’. The gossipy Ian Hamilton, who had a penchant for cruel remarks, called him ‘the most competent administrator in our Army’, but added that he hated ‘live soldiers. On paper he appreciated them well … but Brackenbury, the real Brackenbury, hated them in practice. He had never worked with soldiers; never kept in touch with them; always tried to keep out of cannon-shot range of them’. To be fair, this ‘scientific soldier’ belonged to that wealthy class who rarely came into contact with the ordinary rankers on a social level (unless the matter touched on army reform), and had no interest in them whatsoever on a personal one.