The next question of debate was the Sudan issue (1884–85). Since Egypt controlled the southern province of Sudan, it seemed Egypt and Britain inherited the problems of the region. Since Britain had a considerable military presence in Egypt it seemed to exacerbate the problems in Sudan. There was a Muslim uprising led by Mohammed Ahmed, who was the self-proclaimed Mahdi or ‘Chosen One’, who was to regenerate the faith of Islam and to expel the infidels or convert them into the folds of Islam. The Egyptian government decided to evacuate the Sudan and hopefully contain the spread of Mahdist teachings north. The British government did not want to intervene militarily after the defeat of Colonel Hicks’s forces at El Obeid by the Mahdist forces. It was then decided to send Charles Gordon to the Sudan to expedite the evacuation and ensure the loyalty of the tribes not swayed by the Mahdi. Though Wolseley was instrumental in getting Gordon to go to the Sudan, he was slightly untrusting of Gordon’s methods but he did see much worth in the man as a military leader. He also felt that the convictions Gordon brought with him would be helpful in maintaining the loyalty of the populace in Khartoum and the Sudan. Gordon’s mission had turned into a disaster and the government was begrudgingly forced to send a relief expedition to save Gordon in Khartoum. Wolseley was to be in command of this expedition. There were two factors that dominated this relief expedition and doomed it to ultimate failure: procrastination by Gladstone’s government, which perceived Gordon as disobeying orders, and the flow of events in the Sudan. Wolseley pressed for an immediate relief expedition to be sent in the autumn and wanted to start making logistical plans for this expedition. The Cabinet delayed and did not make any decisions on this mission. It was not until 5 August 1884 that the government allowed a budget and made plans to send a relief expedition to Khartoum. Wolseley was put in command and dispatched to Egypt, arriving in Cairo on 9 September 1884.
There was a large effort made by Wolseley to move from Wadi Halfa, and build up men and supplies and there was also the much-famed battle of Abu Klea, but this was all in vain as on 4 February 1885 Wolseley read the news that Khartoum had fallen and Gordon was dead. The expedition’s failure weighed heavily upon Wolseley’s shoulders. He squared the blame on Gladstone and subsequently Gladstone’s government fell in the aftermath of Gordon’s death. The Gordon relief expedition was the real first failure in Wolseley’s career as a commander in the field. It would prove to be his last field command. It seemed that Wolseley’s career was in the doldrums but this was not the case, as outlined by his most recent biographer, Halik Kochanski,
Wolseley returned from the Sudan chastened, but determined to devote his attention to turning the British army into a professional force capable of meeting and defeating any enemy, colonial or European, on the battlefield. The ingrained conservatism of the Duke of Cambridge meant that his efforts were frequently hampered, and in many areas he could do little more than prepare ground for the time when, he hoped, he would succeed the Duke and create his model of a modern British army.42
Wolseley was a stalwart if not personal commander and many have written on his abilities as a commander. Ian Hamilton said, ‘Wolseley was the most impersonal commander I have ever met … a soldier of quality’,43 and the Queen’s secretary Sir Henry Ponsonby wrote, ‘he does not inspire any love among those who serve under him though I think they have confidence in him. He thoroughly believes in himself and this makes others believe in him. He is hard and very likely unfeeling but this is useful if unpleasant in a general.’44 Wolseley was an intellectual general and perhaps a bit distant to the colloquial club atmosphere of the late Victorian army. He was certainly effective as a commander and successful as an army reformer. He seemed to inspire by example and duty rather than camaraderie.
Wolseley was a keen army reformer and put forth many schemes and ideas in the British army when he returned to the War Office in 1885 as Adjutant General. Wolseley believed that much of the training in the British army was for the benefit of show and parade ground, and that this was of little use in actual battlefield conditions. Wolseley was known for stating that a ‘good battalion’ is one that can shoot well under fire, efficient in outpost colonial duties, capable of night marches and studied in the tactical realities of modern battlefields. This in many ways flew in the face of the notion of army life during this period. The highly personal and fraternal nature of the late Victorian army could be the antithesis to the goals outlined by Wolseley. During his tenure in office as AG (1885–90) Wolseley wanted the British army to have the best possible rifle and he put forth the adoption of the Lee-Metford magazine rifle in 1888.45 This was the precursor to the famous Lee-Enfield rifle, which would serve in two world wars. The Lee-Metford, although it did not use the more-advanced smokeless powder, produced a superior rate of fire and accuracy than the Martini-Henry and Martini-Enfield rifles. Wolseley influenced many upcoming field commanders in both ‘rings’ – his own as well as that of Roberts, such as Kitchener, Hamilton and Smith-Dorrien – on the importance of rifle firepower, musketry accuracy and covered-position field firing.
Wolseley was a deep and strong proponent of the machine-gun. He had employed both the Gardner and Nordenfeld guns on campaign in various situations with a variety of results. The failure of the Gardner gun at Abu Klea did not deter his enthusiasm for this new weapon system. When the Maxim machine-gun was introduced in 1887 it was Wolseley who became a strong proponent of this weapon. He had spoken on the Maxim at a United Service meeting,
the machine gun [Maxim] will take the place of considerable bodies of men … I believe there is a very great future for [it], and that the general of that nation which knows how to develop or make use of it will in the future have a very great opportunity – an opportunity that has never been made use of by anyone before.46
As has been remarked, ‘Garnet Wolseley, who would die one year before World War One began, was surely astounded by the British lack of interest in machine-guns.’47
Since the new Maxim machine-gun was not hand-crank operated like the previous machine-guns (Gatling, Gardner and Nordenfeld), it provided a much higher rate of fire with less likelihood of jamming since it was belt loaded. The tactical implication of this weapon on the burgeoning colonial battlefields was attracting much interest. Wolseley was also enthusiastic about the new weapon: ‘the fire of this small arm, firing from a fixed carriage [or position] at ascertained ranges of 2000 up to 3000 yards and beyond will be most effective’.48 Wolseley also pushed forward the establishment of a Promotion Board in 1890 for the promotion of officers. Two areas that Wolseley failed in were in the establishment of a new modern drill book and regular large-scale manoeuvres, which were prevalent in continental armies. This posed problems in the future since the commanders at Aldershot and Salisbury had little or no experience in handling troops in sizes above brigade levels. Corps and army level manoeuvres were not even considered and divisional manoeuvres were carried out with a very artificial level of organisation and not indicative of a modern battlefield. This of course would prove very detrimental in 1914.49
The Duke of Cambridge finally retired as Commander in Chief in 1895 but the post was first offered to Buller, who was not a boat-rocker and would not implement much or any reform in the army. This is what the outgoing Duke of Cambridge wanted. When the Liberal government that had nominated Buller resigned, however, the incoming Secretary of State for War, Lord Landsowne, put forth Wolseley’s name for the position to the Queen. There was much debate between the Queen and the government but Victoria finally conceded Wolseley’s appointment. It was feared by the Queen that Wolseley would make many changes and was ‘full of fancies’ and had a ‘clique of his own’. Wolseley found that his position as Commander in Chief was a much-watered down version of what the position had been under Cambridge. This of course troubled Wolseley, who wanted to make some much-needed reforms and changes to the British army. Relations between Buller and Wolseley were quite soured, though this did not reflect any plotting against Wolseley. The new organisation of the Army Board and the various departments now reported directly to the Secretary of State for War. This in many ways circumvented the Commander in Chief’s power to command. Wolseley did not like this at all and endeavoured at every chance to get the departments to report through him. Wolseley also did not allow the various heads to overrule his decision as was originally intended. Wolseley observed the Salisbury manoeuvres in 1898 and made some very poignant commentary on the officers and their errors. As outlined by Wolseley, they employed formations that exposed the men to artillery fire, open order was adopted too early in an engagement and the use of ground was poor. Furthermore the use of machine-guns was lacking since they were employed en masse rather than defensively. Machine-guns were employed like artillery rather than infantry support weapon systems. These shortcomings were proved to be eerie predictions of problems that surfaced a year later in South Africa during the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902).50 The men suffered greatly from these errors by regimental officers on the battlefields of Magersfontein and Colenso. Some of the men appointed to command positions in South Africa by Wolseley were dismal failures, such as Sir George White and even Buller did not perform that admirably as commander of forces in South Africa.
The organisation of the War Office was not up to the task of ultimately supporting a force so large with many ancillary and support units, which had been paper units only. Some of this blame can be shouldered by Wolseley but overall it is more of the ‘system’ that was in place in the late Victorian army that limited the capability of the army more so than any one individual. Wolseley was responsible for some much-needed reform and his influence cannot be denied in this area as a reformer and innovator in army organisation.51
Wolseley did lay the framework for the birth of a modern British army and some of his reforms did pay dividends in 1914. However, he was faced by many challenges, with the Duke of Cambridge being one of the greatest obstacles to his reform ideas. Wolseley’s ‘ring’ was one of three rings (Roberts, Cambridge and Wolseley) that existed and the rivalry between the rings could be ascribed to the personal nature of the late Victorian army. The Wolseley ‘ring’ did produce some talented and determined officers who were promoted more on merit than social status. This in many ways was a major legacy of Wolseley. One of his boldest achievements was the organisation of the British army into corps ready for general mobilisation. Wolseley was motivated by his driving ambition to make the late Victorian army more efficient in the waging of modern warfare. In the environment of low-intensity conflict, Wolseley can be seen as an influential impetus for the adoption of modern strategic, tactical and most importantly logistic structural changes in the British military system. Where Roberts, ‘Bobs’, was considered the most-loved and congenial general of this period, Wolseley can be considered the more distant ‘father’ of the modern British army.
Garnet Wolseley was a prolific author. He wrote a memorable two-volume biography, The Life of John, 1st Duke of Marlborough 1650–1702 (1894), and also a shorter biographical sketch, The Decline and Fall of Napoleon (1895). His contribution to British army service manuals is evidenced by five editions of The Soldiers Pocket-Book for Field Services (1868–89), and he also wrote The Field Pocket Book for the Auxiliary Services (1873). Wolseley is also known for some of his personal observations on the American Civil War, some of which were published in magazine articles and have been reproduced in James A Rawley, ed., The American Civil War: An English View by Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1964). His contributions on the Franco-Prussian War are also noteworthy with articles in the United Service Magazine such as ‘Field Marshal Count von Moltke’ (1891) and ‘Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71’ (1891). He also wrote his own two-volume autobiography, The Story of a Soldier’s Life (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903), though this only takes his career up to the end of the Asante campaign. Wolseley’s Narrative of the War with China in 1860 (London, 1862) was heavily edited by his sister, Matilda. The most recent standard single-volume biography of Wolseley is Halik Kochanski, Sir Garnet Wolseley: Victorian Hero (London: Hambledon, 1999), and this represents the most up-to-date scholarship. There are earlier more popular accounts by Joseph Lehmann, All Sir Garnet: A Life of Field Marshal Lord Wolseley (London: Jonathan Cape, 1964); Leigh Maxwell, The Ashanti Ring: Sir Garnet Wolseley’s Campaigns 1870–1882 (London: Leo Cooper, 1985); and a chapter on Wolseley in Byron Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers: Seekers of Glory (New York: Viking Press, 1985). A still earlier work is R J Kentish, Maxims of the Late Field Marshal Wolseley (1916). There are also the hagiographical works of Sir Frederick Maurice and Sir George Arthur, The Life of Lord Wolseley (London: Heinemann, 1924) and Charles Rathbone Low, General Lord Wolseley (of Cairo): A Memoir (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1883), which was based on interviews with Wolseley. Sir George Arthur, ed., The Letters of Lord and Lady Wolseley, 1870–1911 (London: Heinemann, 1922) chronicles the correspondence between Wolseley and his wife throughout his life but in an often heavily bowdlerised form. However, four of Wolseley’s campaign journals have been published in full: Adrian Preston, ed., Sir Garnet Wolseley’s South African Diaries (Natal) 1875 (Cape Town: A A Balkema, 1971); Anne Cavendish, ed., Cyprus, 1878: The Journal of Sir Garnet Wolseley (Nicosia: Cyprus Popular Bank Cultural Centre, 1991); Adrian Preston, ed., Sir Garnet Wolseley’s South African Journal, 1879–80 (Cape Town: A A Balkema, 1973); Adrian Preston, ed., In Relief of Gordon: Lord Wolseley’s Campaign Journal of the Khartoum Relief Expedition, 1884–85 (London: Hutchinson, 1967). Wolseley’s remaining journal of the Asante campaign is to be published by the Army Records Society in an edition by Ian Beckett in 2009. Wolseley’s version of events is also presented in those official or semi-official histories produced by his own staff: G L Huyshe, The Red River Expedition (London, 1871); Henry Brackenbury, The Ashanti War: A Narrative (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1874); Frederick Maurice, The Campaign of 1882 in Egypt (London: HMSO, 1887); and H E Colvile, History of the Sudan Campaign (London: War Office Intelligence Division, 1889).