1. Ian F W Beckett, ‘Another British Way in Warfare: Charles Callwell and Small Wars’, in Ian F W Beckett, ed., Victorians at War: New Perspectives (Society for Army Historical Research Special Publication No. 16, 2007), pp. 89–102.
2. Hove, Wolseley Mss, W/P 3/17, Wolseley to wife, 16 Dec. 1873.
3. Ian F W Beckett, ‘Command in the Late Victorian Army’, in Gary Sheffield, ed., Leadership and Command: The Anglo-American Experience since 1861 (London: Brassey’s, 1997), pp. 37–56; idem, ‘Command in South Africa’, in Peter Boyden, Alan Guy and Marion Harding, eds, Ashes and Blood: The British Army in South Africa, 1795-1914 (London: National Army Museum, 1999), pp. 60–71.
4. G W Steevens, With Kitchener to Khartoum (Edinburgh: Blackwood & Sons, 1898), p. 22.
5. General Sir Neville Lyttelton, Eighty Years Soldiering, Politics, Games (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1927), p. 212.
6. Royal Archives, VIC/MAIN/N/41/78, Hardinge to the Queen, 12 Feb. 1885.
7. Royal Archives, Cambridge Mss, VIC/AddE/1/8596, Stanley to Cambridge, 20 Mar. 1879.
8. E N Bennett, The Downfall of the Dervishes: Being a Sketch of the Final Sudan Campaign of 1898 (Methuen, London, 1898), p. 70.
9. Ian F W Beckett, ‘Victorians at War: War, Technology and Change’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 81 (2003), 330–38; idem, The Victorians at War (London: Hambledon, 2003), p. 180.
10. Brian Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972), p. 29.
11. Beckett, Victorians at War, pp. 8–9.
12. Narrative of the Field Operations connected with the Zulu War of 1879 (London: War Office Intelligence Branch, 1881), pp. 152–54.
13. Earl of Midleton, Records and Recollections, 1856–1939 (London: John Murray, 1939), p. 120.
14. Beckett, Victorians at War p. 11.
1. Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier’s Life (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903), I, p. 135.
2. Halik Kochanski, Sir Garnet Wolseley: Victorian Hero (London: Hambledon Press, 1999), pp. 1–5.
3. Wolseley, Story of a Soldier’s Life, I, p. 55.
4. Byron Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers: Seekers of Glory (New York: Viking, 1985), pp. 194–96.
5. Charles Rathbone Low, General Lord Wolseley (of Cairo): A Memoir (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1883), p. 25.
6. Ibid., pp. 27–28.
7. Kochanski, Wolseley, pp. 20–24.
8. Low, General Lord Wolseley, pp. 119–24.
9. Ibid., pp. 140–46.
10. The arme blanche was the doctrinal belief in using mounted cavalry as an offensive weapon. The impetus of the mounted charge was believed to overcome modern breech-loading rifles and machine-guns. It was a derivative of offensive doctrine of European military institutions of the period 1870–1914.
11. Henry Havelock and George Denison wrote extensively on the use of cavalry on the modern battlefield and were proponents of the use of mounted infantry, which was the antithesis to the arme blanche school of this time (1870–1914). Mounted infantry doctrine determined that horses were best relegated to transportation of soldiers to the battlefield and not as offensive weapons themselves: essentially a means of transportation to the battlefield. Dension’s book, Modern Cavalry, appeared in 1896.
12. Jay Luvaas, The Military Legacy of the Civil War: The European Inheritance (University Press of Kansas, 1959), pp. 110–12.
13. For a more comprehensive study of the ‘Wolseley Ring’ see Leigh Maxwell, The Ashanti Ring: Sir Garnet Wolseley’s Campaigns, 1870–1882 (London: Leo Cooper, 1985) and Ian F W Beckett, ‘Wolseley and the Ring’, Soldiers of the Queen, 69 (1992), 14–25.
14. Brian Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College 1854–1914 (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972), pp. 117–19.
15. Edward M. Spiers, The Late Victorian Army, 1868–902 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 153–54.
16. Major General Sir Garnet Wolseley, ‘England as a Military Power in 1854 and in 1878’ and ‘Long and Short Service,’ Nineteenth Century 111 (March 1878), 433–56 and IX (March 1881), 558–72, cited from, Spiers, Late Victorian Army, p. 154.
17. Spiers, Late Victorian Army, p. 157.
18. Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Fire-Power: British Army Weapons and Theories of War 1904–1945 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), pp. 7–10.
19. National Library of Scotland, Blackwood Mss, MS 4315 and 4403, Brackenbury to Blackwood, 27 November 1874 and 11 October 1880, cited from, Spiers, Late Victorian Army, p. 158.
20. Low, General Lord Wolseley, p. 239.
21. Wolseley Journal, ‘Memorandum by Wolseley’ (printed extract), August 1872, cited from Henry Brackenbury, The Ashanti War: A Narrative (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1874), pp. 117–23.
22. Kochanski, Wolseley, p. 64.
23. The National Archives (TNA), WO 33/26; WO 106/285; WO 147/27.
24. Maxwell, Ashanti Ring, p. 72.
25. Low, General Lord Wolseley, p. 317.
26. Kochanski, Wolseley, pp. 77–81; Maxwell, Ashanti Ring, pp. 91–95.
27. Kochanski, Wolseley, pp. 98–102.
28. Low, General Lord Wolseley, pp. 397–400.
29. Hove, Wolseley Mss, W/PP SSL8, Notes for autobiography, cited in Kochanski, Wolseley, p. 111.
30. Wolseley to Childers, August 1881, Childers Mss 5/37, cited in Kochanski, Wolseley, p. 119.
31. Alan R Skelley, The Victorian Army at Home: The Recruitment and Terms and Condition of the British Regular, 1859–1899 (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1977), pp. 62–63.
32. South Lanarkshire Council Museum, Hamilton (hereafter SLCM), Wolseley Diaries, 27 July 1882.
33. Kochanski, Wolseley, p. 135; Maxwell, Ashanti Ring, p. 177.
34. Kochanski, Wolseley, p. 136.
35. Maxwell, Ashanti Ring, p. 179.
36. SLCM, Wolseley Diaries, 9 May 1882.
37. Kochanski, Wolseley, pp. 141–42.
38. SLCM, Wolseley Diaries, 13 September 1882.
39. Wolseley to Childers, 16 September 1882; PRO, WO 32/6096.
40. Maxwell, Ashanti Ring, pp. 229–30.
41. Kochanski, Wolseley, pp. 147–48.
42. Ibid., p. 178.
43. Ian Hamilton, Listening for the Drums (London: Faber & Faber, 1945), pp. 129–30 and 170.
44. Arthur P. Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby: Queen Victoria’s Secretary (London: Macmillan, 1943), pp. 222–24.
45. Kochanski, Wolseley, p. 191.
46. Anthony Smith, Machine Gun: The Story of the Men and the Weapon That Changed the Face of War (London: Piatkus, 2002), p. 153.
47. Ibid., p. 159.
48. Spiers, Late Victorian Army, p. 244.
49. Kochanski, Wolseley, p. 226.
50. Ibid., p. 228.
51. Ibid., p. 244.
1. Joseph Lehmann, The First Boer War (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), p. 226.
2. J Paine, ‘From Midshipman to Field-Marshal – The Centenary of Sir Evelyn Wood, V.C.’, The Cavalry Journal Vol. XXVIII (1938), 231.
3. The Daily Telegraph, 3 December 1919.
4. Byron Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers (London: Viking, 1985), p. 258.
5. Private Collection, Sir Norman Moore Mss, Case Box 18, 17 February 1895, p. 159.
6. Killie Campbell Africana Library (hereafter KCL), Wood Mss, KCM 89/9/16/8 (a) & (b), Michell to Raglan, 20 June 1855, and Raglan to Michell, 21 June 1855.
7. KCL, Wood Mss, KCM 89/9/16/25, Lushington to Wood, 28 February 1857.
8. E Bradhurst, A Century of Letters 1820–1920: Letters from Literary Friends to Lady Wood and Mrs A C Steele (London: Thomas & Newman, 1929), p. 77.
9. Evelyn Wood, The Revolt in Hindustan 1857–59 (London: Methuen, 1908), p. 331.
10. Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers, p. 245.
11. KCL, Wood Mss, KCM 89/9/17/3 (a), Michel to Chief of Staff, India, 14 April 1859.
12. Ibid., KCM 89/9/17/4, Somerset to Asst. Adjt General, 14 April 1859.
13. Evelyn Wood, From Midshipman to Field Marshal (London: Methuen & Co., 1906), I, p. 177.
14. Ibid., pp. 179–80.
15. KCL, Wood Mss, KCM 89/9/18/9, Wood to Mayne, 6 August 1860.
16. Wood, Midshipman to Field Marshal, I, p. 239.
17. Leigh Maxwell, The Ashanti Ring – Sir Garnet Wolseley’s Campaigns 1870–1882 (London: Leo Cooper, 1985), p. 38.
18. Wood, Midshipman to Field Marshal, I, p. 261.
19. C Williams, The Life of Lieut-General Sir Henry Evelyn Wood (London: Sampson Low & Marston, 1892) p. 55.
20. Wood, Midshipman to Field Marshal, I, p. 265.
21. Ibid., p. 273.
22. Henry Brackenbury, The Ashanti War of 1873–4 (London: Frank Cass, New Impression, 1968), I, p. 181.
23. Wood, Midshipman to Field Marshal, I, p. 276.
24. Williams, Life of Wood, p. 64.
25. Ibid., p. 70.
26. Ibid, p. 107.
27. Ibid, p. 105.
28. Wood, Midshipman to Field Marshal, II, p. 82.
29. Royal Archives (hereafter RA), VIC/QVJ/1879, The Queen to Beaconsfield, 9 September 1879.
30. Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers, p. 257.
31. Private Collection, Wood to Moore, 18 January 1881.
32. Melton Prior, Campaigns of War Correspondents (London: Edward Arnold, 1912), p. 128.
33. For a detailed explanation of the reason for the assault and the defeat at Majuba see John Laband, The Transvaal Rebellion – The First Boer War 1880–81 (London: Longman, 2005).
34. William Perkins Library, Duke University, Wood Mss, DUK III/6/3, Wood to Kimberley, 5 March 1881.
35. RA, VIC/QVJ/1881, Wood to the Queen, 3 May 1881.
36. RA, VIC/MAIN/039/207, Queen Victoria to Wood, 31 March 1881.
37. RA, VIC/MAIN/040/144, Wood to the Queen, 4 May 1881.
38. Halik Kochanski, Sir Garnet Wolseley: Victorian Hero (London: Hambledon Press, 1999), p. 111.
39. RA, VIC/QVJ/1882, Wood to the Queen, 4 July 1882.
40. RA, VIC/MAIN/018/24, Bigge to the Queen, 6 November 1882.
41. KCL, Wood Mss, KCM 89/9/38/9, Granville to Wood, 28 November 1882.
42. RA, VIC/MAIN/Z 209/3, Wood to the Queen, 1 April 1883.
43. RA, Cambridge Mss, VIC/MAIN/ADDE/1/10573, Wood to Cambridge, 18 December 1883.
44. Adrian Preston, ed., In Relief of Gordon – Lord Wolseley’s Campaign Journal of the Khartoum Relief Expedition 1884–1885 (London: Hutchinson, 1967), pp. 31–32.
45. Wood, Midshipman to Field Marshal, II, p. 177.
46. The Times, 7 October 1893.
47. RA, VIC/MAIN/E64/54, Davidson to the Queen, 7 April 1897.
48. John Lee, A Soldier’s Life – General Sir Ian Hamilton 1853–1947 (London: Macmillan, 2000), p. 44.
49. H O Arnold-Forster, The War Office, The Army and The Empire (London: Cassell, 1900), p. 40.
50. Evelyn Wood, Winnowed Memories (London: Cassell, 1918), p. 292.
51. The Times, 3 December 1919.
52. Paine, ‘Midshipman to Field Marshal’, 232.
53. Saul David, Zulu (London: Viking, 2004), p. 250.
54. Ibid., p. 251.
55. Ibid., p. 261.
56. Ron Lock, Blood on the Painted Mountain (London: Greenhill, 1995), p. 178.
57. Wood, Midshipman to Field Marshal, II, p. 53.
58. Frank Emery, The Red Soldier: The Zulu War of 1879 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977), p. 179.
59. Wood, Midshipman to Field Marshal, II, p. 53.
60. Maxwell, Ashanti Ring, p. 118.
61. Wood, Midshipman to Field Marshal, II, p .62.
62. Lock, Blood on the Painted Mountain, p. 197.
63. The Times and Daily News, 17 April 1879.
1. Edmund Gosse, ‘Sir Redvers Buller: A Character Study’, in James Bryce et al., Briton and Boer: Both Sides of the South African Question (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1900), p. 305.
2. Buller’s teeth were kicked in. For early biographical information on Buller, see Walter Jerrold, Sir Redvers H Buller V.C.: The Story of his Life and Campaigns (London: S W Partridge & Co., 1900), Lewis Butler, Sir Redvers Buller (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1901), C H Melville, The Life of General The Rt Hon. Sir Redvers Buller (London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1923) and Geoffrey Powell, Buller: A Scapegoat? A Life of General Sir Redvers Buller 1839–1908 (London: Leo Cooper, 1994).
3. William Francis Butler, Sir William Butler: An Autobiography, 2nd edn (Toronto: Bell and Cockburn, 1911), pp. 103–4.
4. Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier’s Life, 2 vols (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903; reprint, New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1971), II, p. 178.
5. Henry Brackenbury, The Ashanti War: A Narrative, 2 vols (London and Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1874; new imp., Frank Cass, 1968), I, p. 170.
6. The ‘Ring’ was a clique of officers who accompanied Wolseley on many of his campaigns and who became very influential in building the late Victorian army. It included Evelyn Wood, Baker Russell, John McNeill, Henry Brackenbury, Frederick Maurice, William Butler, Thomas Baker, Robert Home, George Greaves, Hugh McCalmont and George Colley.
7. In 1874, his older brother, James, died, and Buller inherited the family estates.
8. Chelmsford to Wood, 3 February 1879, cited in John Laband, ed., Lord Chelmsford’s Zululand Campaign 1878–1879 (Dover, NH: Alan Sutton, 1994), pp. 91–92.
9. The National Archives (hereafter TNA), Buller Mss, WO 132/1, Buller’s report on the attack on Inhlobana Mountain, sub-enclosure of Colonel Bellairs’s dispatch.
10. John Laband, Kingdom in Crisis: The Zulu Response to the British Invasion of 1879 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 150–51.
11. Ibid., p. 150.
12. Jerrold, Buller, p. 120.
13. TNA, WO 32/7724, Staff Officer’s report, 29 March 1879.
14. Ian Knight, The National Army Book of the Zulu War (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 2003), pp. 158–61.
15. See note 9 above.
16. Henry Evelyn Wood, From Midshipman to Field Marshal (London: Methuen & Co., 1906), II, p. 68.
17. Waller Ashe and E V Wyatt-Edgell, The Story of the Zulu Campaign (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1880; new edn, Cape Town: N & S Press, 1989), p. 12; TNA, WO 32/7226, Wood’s report, 30 March 1879.
18. Buller’s report of Khambula, 29 March 1889, as cited in Melville, Buller, I, pp. 120–21.
19. Ibid., p. 121.
20. Laband, Kingdom in Crisis, pp. 156–57.
21. Letter from Schermbrucker dated 1 May 1879, in Frank Emery, ed., Marching Over Africa, Letters from Victorian Soldiers (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986), p. 65; as cited in Laband, Kingdom in Crisis, p. 163.
22. D’Arcy was the awarded the VC at Ulundi. See Knight, National Army Book, p. 170.
23. F W Grenfell, Memoirs of Field Marshal Lord Grenfell (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1925), p. 54.
24. Jerrold, Buller, p. 150.
25. TNA, WO 32/7763, Chelmsford’s Report on Ulundi, 6 July 1879.
26. John Laband, The Battle of Ulundi (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter, 1988), p. 40.
27. Powell, Buller, p. 43.
28. Melville, Buller, I, p. 151.
29. Jerrold, Buller, p. 193.
30. J F Maurice, Military History of the Campaign of 1882 in Egypt (London: HMSO, 1887), p. 75.
31. Adrian Preston, ed., In Relief of Gordon: Lord Wolseley’s Campaign Journal of the Khartoum Relief Expedition, 1884–1885 (Rutherford, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970), pp. 112–13.
32. Powell, Buller, p. 72; Robin Neillands, The Dervish Wars: Gordon and Kitchener in the Sudan 1880–1898 (London: John Murray, 1996), p. 145.
33. Douglas Dundonald, My Army Life (London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1926), p. 58.
34. TNA, Buller Mss, WO 132/2, Wolseley to Buller, 29 January 1885.
35. Dundonald, My Army Life, p. 58.
36. Preston, ed., In Relief of Gordon, p. 162.
37. For Buller’s years at the War Office, see James B Thomas, ‘Sir Redvers Buller in the post-Cardwellian Army: A Study of the Rise and Fall of a Military Reputation’, unpub. PhD thesis, Texas A&M University, 1993.
38. Buller to Henry Campbell Bannerman, 18 June 1895, as cited in Halik Kochanski, Sir Garnet Wolseley: Victorian Hero (London: Hambledon Press, 1999), p. 213.
39. W St John Midleton, Records & Reactions, 1856–1939 (New York: E P Dutton, 1939), pp. 132–33; as cited in Powell, Buller, p. 114.
40. Melville, Buller, II, p. 2.
41. The War Office vigorously denied all these charge. See TNA, CAB 37/52/37, Buller to Lansdowne, 6 January 1900. For Buller’s response to the charges, see ibid., CAB 37/52/49, Buller to Lansdowne, 17 April 1900.
42. Butler, Sir Redvers Buller, p. 420.
43. For further discussion of the military decisions made prior to the outbreak of the war, see John Gooch, ed., The Boer War: Direction, Experience and Image (London: Frank Cass, 2000).
44. TNA, Buller Mss, WO 132/24, p. 3.
45. Ibid., WO 132/6, Buller to Tremayne Buller, 3 November 1899.
46. Leo S Amery, My Political Life (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1953), I, pp. 118–19.
47. Buller and Wolseley had lost faith in White, yet he remained the senior officer in Natal. His juniors, Major Generals C F Clery, Henry Hildyard and Neville Lyttelton, encouraged Buller to come.
48. TNA, Buller Mss, WO 132/24, p. 17.
49. Ibid., p. 29.
50. Dundonald, My Army Life, pp. 109–10.
51. See, for example, Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 226; and, Leo S Amery, ed., The Times History of The War in South Africa 1899–1902 (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1900–9), II, pp. 430–40.
52. TNA, WO 32/7887, Orders by Clery, 14 December 1899.
53. Pakenham, Boer War, p. 239.
54. National Army Museum (hereafter NAM), Greening Mss, 8307–121.
55. British casualties at Colenso were 1,130. The Boers lost forty men.
56. Dundonald, My Army Life, pp. 109–10.
57. TNA, Buller Mss, WO 132/24, p. 37b.
58. Ibid., WO108/399, p. 55, Lansdowne to Buller, 16 December 1899.
59. Neither the Queen nor Wolseley were notified of the decision. See TNA, WO 108/39, p. 57, Lansdowne to Buller, 18 December 1899.
60. Buller to Lady Audrey Buller, 18 December 1899; as cited in Powell, Buller, p. 155.
61. TNA, WO 105/5, copy of letter to Lansdowne, through Roberts forwarding Warren’s report on the capture and evacuation of Spion Kop, 30 January 1900.
62. Ibid., Buller Mss, WO 132/24, p. 51.
63. Buller denied this claim as well. See ibid., WO 105/5.
64. Great Britain, South Africa, The Spion Kop Despatches (London: Harrison and Sons, 1902), pp. 4, 29.
65. Ibid. Amery erroneously claimed that Thorneycroft was ready to stay but Coke had made the decision to retire. See Amery, ed., Times History of The War in South Africa, III, pp. 260–75.
66. British casualties on 24 January 1900 were 1,044. See Great Britain, The Spion Kop Despatches, p. 21.
67. Pakenham, Boer War, p. 317.
68. Dundonald, My Army Life, p. 133.
69. Great Britain, The Spion Kop Despatches, pp. 4–5.
70. Ibid.
71. Keith Surridge, ‘Lansdowne at the War Office’, in Gooch, ed., Boer War, pp. 34–36.
72. TNA, WO 105/5, Buller’s Vaal Krantz dispatch, 8 February 1900.
73. Ibid., WO 132/24, p. 65.
74. War Office: Correspondence and Papers, South African War, Secret Despatches, 1901, Cd 457, xlvii, 87, Roberts to Lansdowne, 28 February and 15 March 1900; TNA, WO 108/380.
75. Amery, ed., Times History of The War in South Africa, III, p. 543.
76. Ibid., p. 549.
77. See, for example, Herbert Wrigley Wilson, After Pretoria: The Guerrilla War (London: Amalgamated Press, 1902), p. 125.
78. (An Average Observer), The Burden of Proof (London: Grant Richards, 1902), p. 76.
79. Amery, ed., Times History of The War in South Africa, IV, p. 452.
80. TNA, WO 105/10, Buller to Roberts, 13 September 1900.
81. NAM, Greening Mss, 8307-121.
82. Amery, My Political Life, II, p. 156.
83. Maurice V Brett, ed., Journals and Letters of Reginald Viscount Esher (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1934), p. 308.
84. TNA, WO 138/16, Kelly-Kenny to Roberts, 16 October 1901; and Brodrick to the King, 22 October 1902.
1. General Sir Ian Hamilton, Listening for the Drums (London: Faber & Faber, 1944), p. 130.
2. Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, From Midshipman to Field Marshal (London: Methuen & Co., 1906), II, p. 112; Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (hereafter LHCMA), Maurice Mss, 2/2/9, Wolseley to Maurice, n.d. (1881); South Lanarkshire Council Museum (hereafter SLCM), Wolseley Diaries, CAM.H.12, Diary, 31 December 1881; Hove Reference Library (hereafter Hove), Wolseley Mss, W/P 8/22 and 27, Wolseley to his wife, 26 August and 29 September–3 October 1879; Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier’s Life (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903), II, p. 317.
3. Lieutenant General Sir William Butler, The Life of Sir George Pomeroy-Colley (London: John Murray, 1899), pp. 80–81.
4. The National Archives (hereafter TNA), WO 33/26, Wolseley to Cardwell, 24 October 1873; Royal Archives (hereafter RA), Cambridge Mss, VIC/ADDE/1/7217, Wolseley to Cambridge, 24 October 1873.
5. TNA, WO 147/3, Wolseley journal, 16 January 1874; ibid., CO 96/111, Report of Judicial Court, 14 November 1873; RA, Cambridge Mss, VIC/ADDE/1/7309, Wolseley to Cambridge, 25 January 1874; National Army Museum (hereafter NAM), Cooper Mss, 6112-596-8-5, Colley to Cooper, 26 February 1874; G Salis, ‘Carrier Corps and Coolies on Active Service in China, India and Africa, 1860–79’, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution 24, 107 (1880), 815–46.
6. Frederick Boyle, Through Fanteeland to Coomassie (London: Chapman and Hall, 1874), p. 220; G A Henty, The March to Coomassie (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1874), p. 444; Winwood Reade, The Story of the Ashantee Campaign (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1874), pp. 241–43.
7. Henry Brackenbury, The Ashanti War: A Narrative (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1874), II, p. 357.
8. NAM, Cooper Mss, 6112-596-8, Colley to Cooper, 26 February and 19 April 1874; Author’s Collection, Colley to his brother, ‘Wednesday morning’ (March 1874).
9. Adrian Preston, ed., Sir Garnet Wolseley’s South African Diaries (Natal), 1875 (Cape Town: A A Balkema, 1971), p. 185; Butler, Colley, p. 123.
10. G W Forrest, The Life of Field Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1909), p. 153; Brian Robson, The Road to Kabul: The Second Afghan War, 1878–81 (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1986), p. 70; Adrian Preston, ‘Sir Charles MacGregor and the Defence of India, 1857–87’, Historical Journal 12, 1 (1969), 58–77.
11. British Library, Oriental and India Office Collection (hereafter OIOC), Burne Mss, Eur Mss. D951/8, Colley to Burne, 3 November 1878; NAM, Cooper Mss, 6112-596-14, Colley to Cooper, 24 February 1879; OIOC, Burne Mss, Eur Mss. D951/8, Colley to Burne, 15 November 1880; ibid., Lyall Mss, F.132/26, Colley to Stewart, 13 December 1878; Butler, Colley, pp. 217–18.
12. OIOC, Burne Mss, Eur MSS D951/11, Colley to Burne, 3 November 1878 and 20 January 1880.
13. Robert Rait, The Life of Field Marshal Sir Frederick Paul Haines (London: Constable & Co., 1911), pp. 213–14; RA, Cambridge Mss, VIC/ADD E/1/8794, Haines to Cambridge, 14 July 1879.
14. NAM, Haines Mss, 8108-9-5, Haines to Lytton, 7 October 1877 and Lytton to Haines, 9 October 1877; Ian F W Beckett, ‘Cavagnari’s Coup de Main: The Projected Attack on Ali Masjid, October 1878’, Soldiers of the Queen 82 (1995), 24–28.
15. RA, VIC/MAIN6/47, Salisbury to Ponsonby, 12 February 1877.
16. Butler, Colley, pp. 192–93.
17. SLCM, Wolseley Diaries, CAM.H.9, Diary 3 October 1878; Hove, Wolseley Mss, W/P 7/26, Wolseley to wife, 2–4 April 1878.
18. W G Beaver, ‘The Development of the Intelligence Division and its role in aspects of Imperial Policy-making, 1854–1901: The Military Mind of Imperialism’, unpub. DPhil thesis, Oxford, 1976, pp. 41–45; A W Preston, ‘British Military Policy and the Defence of India: A Study of British Military Policy, Plans and Preparations during the Russian Crisis, 1876-80’, unpub. PhD thesis, London, 1966, pp. 96–102.
19. Giles St Aubyn, The Royal George: The Life of HRH Prince George, Duke of Cambridge (London: Constable, 1963), pp. 187–88; Hove, Wolseley Mss, LW/P, 5/11 Lady Wolseley to Wolseley, 30 October 1877; ibid., S.A.2. Wolseley to Stanley, 30 May 1879; ibid., W/P 8/26, Wolseley to wife, 24–25 September 1879; Preston, ed., Wolseley’s South African Journal, pp. 2, 32–33, 35–36, 53, 122, 318; ibid., p. 106; Charles Ballard, ‘Sir Garnet Wolseley and John Dunn: The Architects and Agents of the Ulundi Settlement’, in Andrew Duminy and Charles Ballard, eds, The Anglo-Zulu War: New Perspectives (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1981), pp. 120–47.
20. OIOC, Burne Mss, Eur Mss. D951/11, Colley to Burne, 4 February 1880; Hove, Wolseley Autobiographical Collection, Colley to Wolseley, 15 April 1880.
21. NAM, Anstruther Mss, 5705-22, Anstruther to Gina Anstruther, 1 August 1880.
22. Butler, Colley, pp. 147–48.
23. OIOC, Burne Mss, Eur. Mss D951/8, Lytton to Burne, 7 March 1878; RA, VIC/MAIN35/45, Lady Lytton to the Queen, 7 September 1878.
24. Butler, Colley, p. 88.
25. RA/VIC/MAINO/38/276, Wood to the Queen, 27 February 1881; Butler, Colley, pp. 347–48; John Laband, The Transvaal Rebellion: The First Boer War, 1880–81 (London: Pearson/Longman, 2005), p. 189.
26. Oliver Ransford, The Battle of Majuba Hill: The First Boer War (London: John Murray, 1967), p. 72.
27. Joseph Lehmann, The First Boer War (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), pp. 88, 234.
28. Butler, Colley, pp. 367–8.
29. Hove, Wolseley Mss, W/P 20/23, 84 and 85, Wolseley to his wife, 8 February, 28 May and 31 May 1891; William Perkins Library (Durham, NC), Wolseley Mss, Wolseley to George Wolseley, 28 May 1891; Ian F W Beckett, ‘Women and Patronage in the Late Victorian Army’, History 85, 279 (2000), 463–80.
30. Brian Bond, ‘The South African War, 1880–81’, in Brian Bond, ed., Victorian Military Campaigns (London: Hutchinson, 1967), pp. 201–40.
31. Butler, Colley, p. 268.
32. Ian F W Beckett, ‘Military High Command in South Africa, 1854–1914’, in Peter Boyden, Alan Guy and Marion Harding, eds, Ashes and Blood: The British Army in South Africa, 1795–1914 (London: National Army Museum, 1999), pp. 60–71.
33. RA, VIC/MAINO/38/141, Colley to Wolseley, 17 January 1881.
34. Butler, Colley, p. 283; Laband, Transvaal Rebellion, pp. 137–38.
35. Ian Bennett, A Rain of Lead: The Siege and Surrender of the British at Potchefstroom (London: Greenhill Books, 2001), pp. 212–18.
36. Killie Campbell Library, Wood Mss, KCM 89/9/35, Roberts to Wood, 6 January 1881; RA, Ponsonby Mss, VIC/ADDA36, Ponsonby to his wife, 3 March 1881; General Sir Luther Vaughan, My Service in the Indian Army – and After (London: Constable, 1904), p. 182.
37. RA, VIC/MAINO/38/6, Colley to Bigge, 1 January 1881; OIOC, Burne Mss, Eur Mss. D951/8, Colley to Burne, 20 January and 27 January 1880; ibid., Lyall Mss, F. 132/24, Roberts to Lyall, 29 January 1880; Butler, Colley, pp. 409–10.
38. RA, VIC/MAINO/38/141, Colley to Wolseley, 17 January 1881.
39. Laband, Transvaal Rebellion, pp. 146–57.
40. Butler, Colley, p. 369.
41. Hove, Wolseley Mss, Autobiographical Collection, Colley to Wolseley, 21 February 1881; RA, VIC/ADDMAINO/38/141, Colley to Wolseley, 30 January 1881.
42. Sir Percival Marling, Rifleman and Hussar (London: John Murray, 1931), p. 41.
43. Butler, Colley, pp. 311–12.
44. Ibid., pp. 293–96; RA, VIC/MAINO/40/27, Wood to the Queen, 13 April 1881; RA, Cambridge Mss, VIC/ADDE/1/9527, Colley to Cambridge, 18 February 1881.
45. Butler, Colley, p. 340.
46. Laband, Transvaal Rebellion, p. 190; Bond, ‘South African War’, in Bond, ed., Victorian Military Campaigns, p. 223; Hove, Wolseley Mss, Autobiographical Collection, Colley to Wolseley, 21 February 1881.
47. Thomas Carter, A Narrative of the Boer War: Its Causes and Results (Cape Town: Juta, 1896), p. 253; OIOC, Burne Mss, EUR Mss D951/11, Colley to Burne, 20 January 1880.
48. NAM, Essex Mss, 7505-49, Journal of the Natal Field Force, 26 February 1881 (reproduced in Paul Butterfield, ed., War and Peace in South Africa, 1879–81: The Writings of Philip Anstruther and Edward Essex (Melville: Scripta Africana, 1986), p. 213).
49. Hamilton, Listening for the Drums, p. 142.
50. Ransford, Majuba, pp. 82–83; Butler, Colley, pp. 383, 385.
51. Carter, Narrative of the Boer War, p. 276.
52. Ransford, Majuba, pp. 105–6; Lehmann, First Boer War, pp. 247–49, 252.
53. Natal Archives Depot, Wood Mss, III/2/6, Lady Colley to Wood, 26 October 1881; Laband, Transvaal Rebellion, p. 209.
54. Ransford, Majuba, pp. 120–21; Willoughby Verner, The Military Life of HRH George, Duke of Cambridge (London: John Murray, 1905), II, p. 195; Buller Family Mss, Box 1, Buller to Henrietta, 6 March 1881; ibid., Buller to Lucy, 7 June 1881; Sir Archibald Anson, About Others and Myself (London: John Murray, 1920), pp. 374–75.
55. LHCMA, Maurice Mss, 2/2/9, Wolseley to Maurice, n.d. (1881); Hove, Wolseley Mss, H.11, Memorandum, 3 March 1881; ibid., SSL. 10/1 Uncompleted Autobiography, xxxix, f. 33–38; Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, Winnowed Memories (London: Cassell & Co., 1918), pp. 275–76.
56. National Library of Scotland, Minto Mss, MS 12380, Pretyman to Minto, 18 January 1892.
57. Ian F W Beckett, ‘Command in the Late Victorian Army’, in Gary Sheffield, ed., Leadership and Command: The Anglo-American Military Experience since 1861 (London: Brassey’s, 1997), pp. 37–56; idem, ‘Wolseley and the Ring’, Soldiers of the Queen 69 (1992), 14–25; idem, The Victorians at War (London: Hambledon, 2003), pp. 3–12.
1. Hansard 3rd series, vol. 244 cc. 910–11, House of Commons: Questions, Mr E Jenkins, 14 March 1879.
2. Basic biographical information throughout this chapter concerning both the first and second Barons Chelmsford is drawn from J A Hamilton, ‘Thesiger, Frederick, first Baron Chelmsford (1794–1878)’, rev. Sinéad Agnew; and J P C Laband ‘Thesiger, Frederic Augustus, second Baron Chelmsford (1827–1905)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Chelmsford’s obituary in The Times, 10 April 1905; and Adrian Greaves and Ian Knight, Who’s Who in the Zulu War, 1879: I, The British (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2006), pp. 54–60.
3. In August 2007 the house was undergoing renovation.
4. Lawrence H Officer, ‘Purchasing Power of British Pounds from 1264 to 2006’, available at: http://www.MeasuringWorth.com (accessed March 2007). There are various other ways of computing the relative value of the pound sterling, such as employing the GDP deflator, average earnings or per capita GDP. Using the retail price index, as is done here, gives the lowest relative value, but is useful in suggesting contemporary buying power. All further calculations in this chapter of the current purchasing power of nineteenth-century pounds are derived from this same source.
5. David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), pp. 250–51.
6. Edward M Spiers, The Army and Society 1815–1914 (London and New York: Longman, 1980), pp. 8–9; idem, The Late Victorian Army 1868–1902 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 2, 94–95.
7. Spiers, Victorian Army pp. 93–94.
8. Between 1800 and 1849, sixty-nine peers and peers’ sons served in the Grenadiers, and fifty-nine between 1850 and 1899. See Philip Mansel, Pillars of Monarchy: An Outline of the Political and Social History of Royal Guards 1400–1984 (London: Quartet Books, 1984), p. 78: Table I.
9. G Harries-Jenkins, The Army in Victorian Society (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), pp. 24–25.
10. Spiers, Army and Society, p. 18.
11. Ibid., pp. 11, 17: Table 1.6: Regulation of prices of commissions established by the Royal Warrant of 1821; Spiers, Late Victorian Army, p. 104.
12. National Army Museum (hereafter NAM) Chelmsford Papers (hereafter CP), 18/35, Chelmsford to Whitmore, draft of a letter sent for the consideration of the Duke of Cambridge, 2 January 1881.
13. Spiers, Victorian Army, pp. 105–6; Anthony Clayton, The British Officer: Leading the Army from 1660 to the Present (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2006), p. 101.
14. Spiers, Army and Society, pp. 17: Table 1.6; 19.
15. Ibid., pp. 17: Table 1.6; 18.
16. When the Rifle Brigade was formed in 1816 its previous number of 95 was reassigned to the new foot regiment formed in 1823.
17. NAM, CP, 18/34, Chelmsford to Whitmore, 2 January 1881; ibid., statement of foreign, staff and active service of Major General Lord Chelmsford, 1 January 1881.
18. The houses in Stanhope Gardens were still largely in domestic use in 2007, though many in the surrounding area are being converted into hotels and businesses.
19. Richard Holmes, Sahib: The British Soldier in India 1750–1914 (London: HarperCollins, 2005), pp. 146–77; Spiers, Late Victorian Army, p. 105.
20. Philip Mason, A Matter of Honour. An Account of the Indian Army Its Officers and Men (Harmondsworth: Peregrine Books, 1976), pp. 367–68.
21. P G Robb, ‘Frederic John Napier Thesiger, first Viscount Chelmsford (1868–1933)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Cannadine, British Aristocracy, p. 210.
22. Arvel B Erickson, ‘Abolition of Purchase in the British Army’, Military Affairs 23, 2 (Summer, 1959), 75; Spiers, Army and Society, p. 16.
23. Spiers, Late Victorian Army, pp. 90–93.
24. War Office, Field Exercise and Evolutions of Infantry (London: HMSO, 1877), pp. 53–54.
25. Philip Gon, The Road to Isandlwana: The Years of an Imperial Battalion (Johannesburg: Ad. Donker, 1979), pp. 134–40, 145–46.
26. NAM, CP, 2/13, Mitchell to Thesiger, 28 January 1878.
27. Jeffrey Mathews, ‘Lord Chelmsford: British General in Southern Africa 1878–1879’, unpub. DLitt et Phil thesis, University of South Africa, 1986, pp. 37, 40–1. See also Vanity Fair, 3 September 1881, for the sarcastic observation that although ‘distinguished as an able player of Kriegspiel’, he was ‘outwitted, outmanoeuvered, and beaten in tactics by ignorant savages’.
28. Gon, Road to Isandlwana, p. 163.
29. Cape Mercury, 12 June 1878.
30. For Chelmsford and the Ninth Frontier War, see Gon, Road to Isandlwana, pp. 152–63; Mathews, ‘Chelmsford’, pp. 42–9; John Milton, The Edges of War (Cape Town: Juta, 1983), pp. 274–78.
31. NAM, CP, 2/12, Thesiger to Stanley, 10 April and 5 May 1878.
32. Gon, Road to Isandlwana, pp. 146–47, 156.
33. Crealock to Alison, 14 January 1879, cited in Sonia Clarke, Zululand at War, 1879: The Conduct of the Anglo-Zulu War (Houghton: Brenthurst Press, 1984), p. 74.
34. British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter BPP) XX of 1881 (C. 2719), Report of the Committee of General and Other Officers of the Army on Army Reorganisation, Q. 4699.
35. The ambitious Clery passed Staff College in 1870, was an instructor and then professor of tactics at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst (1871–75), and held various staff appointments before coming out to Zululand as a special-service officer.
36. Clery to Harman, 17 February 1878 (actually 1879), cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 82.
37. Mathews, ‘Chelmsford’, pp. 26–7, 39–41, 341–42.
38. BPP, LI of 1878–9 (C. 2220), enc. 1 in no. 72, Thesiger to Frere, 2 September 1878.
39. Richard Cope, Ploughshare of War. The Origins of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1999), chapts 7–9; John Laband, Kingdom in Crisis: the Zulu Response to the British Invasion of 1879, 2nd edn (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2007), pp. 10–14.
40. Charles Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, 3rd edn (London: HMSO, 1906), pp. 21–23, 25–29; Spiers, Late Victorian Army, pp. 272–304; and G Harries-Jenkins, ‘The Development of Professionalism in the Victorian Army’, Armed Forces and Society, 1, 4 (1975), 484–85.
41. Peter Burroughs, ‘Imperial Defence and the Victorian Army’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, XV, 1 (1986), 58, 66, 72.
42. David French, Military Identities. The Regimental System, the British Army, and the British People c. 1870–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 10–20, 25–27; Spiers, Late Victorian Army, pp. 3, 5–8, 31–2; Mathews, ‘Chelmsford’, pp. 17–18, 22–26, 300–1, 313, 322, 324. See Chelmsford’s comment in April 1879 that ‘Drafts will not be of much use, as they are certain to be composed of boys’ in KwaZulu-Natal Archives, Pietermaritzburg (hereafter KZNA), Wood Mss, II/2/2: Chelmsford to Wood, 22 April 1879.
43. The fullest treatment of the NNC is to be found in Paul Thompson, Black Soldiers of the Queen: The Natal Native Contingent in the Anglo-Zulu War (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2006).
44. The National Archives (hereafter TNA), WO 32/7704, Chelmsford to Stanley, 25 November 1878.
45. While an improvement over earlier maps such as Lieutenant Colonel A W Durnford’s Sketch of Zululand &c. Compiled from Original Sources and from Personal Observation & Information of September 1878, even the Intelligence Branch of the Quartermaster General’s Department of the War Office’s Military Map of Zulu Land compiled from Most Recent Information, and published in March 1879, was still full of inaccuracies and empty spaces.
46. Major Ashe and Captain E V Wyatt-Edgell, The Story of the Zulu Campaign (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1880), p. 189.
47. Spiers, Late Victorian Army, pp. 67–69, 109–11, 157.
48. Crealock excelled at water-colour paintings and sketches, and those executed on campaign in the Cape and Zululand in 1878–79 constitute an invaluable graphic record. The originals are in the Sherwood Foresters Museum in Nottingham, and a selection has been published in R A Brown, ed., The Road to Ulundi. The Water Colour Drawings of John North Crealock (the Zulu War of 1879) (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1969).
49. Gon, Road to Isandlwana, p. 147; J P C Laband, ‘Crealock, John North (1836–1895)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, available at: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/50002 (accessed 8 October 2008).
50. Clery to Alison, 1 February and 18 March 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, pp. 81, 124.
51. Crealock to Alison, 11 April 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 205. See also Clery to Alison, 6 December 1878 and 18 March, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, pp. 61, 124.
52. F Fynney, The Zulu Army and Zulu Headmen. Compiled from Information Obtained from the Most Reliable Sources, and Published by Direction of the Lieut.-General Commanding for the Information of Those under His Command, 2nd edn, revised (Pietermaritzburg: 1879); and Anon, Regulations for Field Forces in South Africa 1878 (Pietermaritzburg: November 1878).
53. Clery to Alison, 13 April 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 126.
54. Clery to Alison, 18 March 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 122.
55. NAM, CP, 10/13, Memorandum by Chelmsford on the military requirements of the Natal Colony with regard to its N Eastern Border should offensive or defensive measures against Zululand be considered necessary, 23 October 1878; John Laband, ‘Bulwer, Chelmsford and the Border Levies: The Dispute over the Defence of Natal, 1879’, in John Laband and Paul Thompson, eds, Kingdom and Colony at War: Sixteen Studies on the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 (Pietermaritzburg and Cape Town: University of Natal Press and N & S Press, 1990), pp. 150–53.
56. J E Carlyle, ‘The Zulu War’, British Quarterly Review 69 (1879), 438–39; Captain H Hallam Parr, A Sketch of the Kaffir and Zulu War: Guadana to Isandhlwana (London: C Kegan Paul, 1880), pp. 170–71; Laband, Kingdom in Crisis: the Zulu Response, pp. 12–14.
57. Callwell, Small Wars, pp. 57–59, 64, 66; Howard Bailes, ‘Technology and Imperialism: A Case Study of the Victorian Army in Africa’, Victorian Studies, 24, 1 (1980), 89–103. Even cavalry chargers had to have their fodder transported since (unlike colonial horses) they could not live off the poor grazing.
58. H Bulwer to E Bulwer, 8 December 1878, cited in Sonia Clarke, Invasion of Zululand 1879: Anglo-Zulu War Experiences of Arthur Harness; John Jervis, 4th Viscount St Vincent; and Sir Henry Bulwer (Houghton: Brenthurst Press, 1979), pp. 212–14.
59. Intelligence Division of the War Office, Précis of Information Concerning Zululand, Corrected to December, 1894 (London: HMSO, 1895), p. 58.
60. For an example of Chelmsford’s abortive attempts to improve supply and transport, see NAM, CP, 5/20, Memorandum by Chelmsford for District Commissary General E Strickland, rough notes, undated (probably November 1878). For ox-drawn transport, see War Office, Narrative of the Field Operations Connected with the Zulu War of 1879 (London: HMSO, 1881), p. 171; and Ian Bennett, ed., Eyewitness in Zululand: The Campaign Reminiscences of Colonel Walter Dunne, CB, South Africa, 1877–1881 (London: Greenhill, 1989), pp. 43–45, 49–54. See also Jeffrey Mathews, ‘Lord Chelmsford and Problems of Transport and Supply during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879’, unpub. MA thesis, University of Natal, 1979, pp. 1–9, 42–43; idem, ‘Chelmsford’, pp. 71–84, 111–12, 243–44, 344.
61. For laagering procedure as laid down by Chelmsford, see NAM, CP, 26/9, His Excellency the Lieutenant General Commanding, Special Instructions Regarding the Management of Ox Transport on the Line of March, and for Conducting the Line of March when Troops March with Ox Wagon Transport, and for Forming Wagon Laagers (Durban: ‘Mercury’ Press, n.d. [1879]), pp. 10–11, items 15–26.
62. Anon, Regulations for Field Forces in South Africa 1878, p. 3, item 19.
63. Arthur Harness, ‘The Zulu Campaign from a Military Point of View’, Fraser’s Magazine new series XXI, 101, April 1880, 478–79.
64. For a selection of anxious letters addressed by Chelmsford to his commanders on the eve of invasion, see John Laband, ed., Lord Chelmsford’s Zululand Campaign 1878–1879 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing for the Army Records Society, 1994), documents 13, 23, 24, 26, 28.
65. NAM, CP, 27, Chelmsford to Wood, 11 January 1879, and Chelmsford to Frere, 16 January 1879; Ashe and Wyatt-Edgell, Zulu Campaign, pp. 306-7; Harness, ‘Zulu Campaign’, p. 478.
66. NAM, CP, Chelmsford to Col Bellairs, 31 December 1878.
67. John Laband, ‘Zulu Civilians in the Rise and Fall of the Zulu Kingdom c. 1817–187’, in John Laband, ed., Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Africa from Slavery Days to Rwandan Genocide (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp. 64–76.
68. John Laband, ‘The Cohesion of the Zulu Polity and the Impact of the Anglo-Zulu War: A Reassessment’, in Laband and Thompson, eds, Kingdom and Colony at War, pp. 3–7.
69. KZNA, Sir Theophilus Shepstone Papers (hereafter TS) 35, Chelmsford to Shepstone, 28 November 1878.
70. Callwell, Small Wars, pp. 37–39, 90–91, 93, 103–4, 106.
71. Burroughs, ‘Imperial Defence’, p. 61; Hew Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 82.
72. Laband, Kingdom in Crisis: the Zulu Response, p. 60.
73. For a first-hand account of the fighting so reminiscent of the campaign against the Xhosa, see Daphne Child, ed., The Zulu War Journal of Colonel Henry Harford, C.B. (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter, 1978), pp. 18–21.
74. Clery to Alison, 13 April 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 126.
75. Clery to Alison, 18 March 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, pp. 121–22.
76. NAM, CP, 8/31, Notes by Chelmsford on the findings of the Court of Enquiry, n.d.
77. NAM, CP, 26/36, Gosset to Lady Chelmsford, 7 June 1906.
78. Clery to Harman, 17 February 1878 (actually 1879), cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 84. See also Clery to Alison, 28 April 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 129 for a reiteration of this statement.
79. Child, Zulu War Journal of Colonel Henry Harford, p. 23.
80. Henry Curling to his Mother, 2 February 1879, cited in Adrian Greaves and Brian Best, eds, The Curling Letters of the Zulu War: ‘There Was Awful Slaughter’ (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2001), pp. 91–92.
81. KZNA, TS, 35, Chelmsford to Shepstone, 7 December 1879.
82. Clery to Harman, 17 February 1878 (actually 1879), cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 84.
83. Clery to Alison, 18 March 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 122.
84. Clery to Harman, 17 February 1878 (actually 1879), cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 85.
85. ‘Letter from an Abergavenny Man’, Abergavenny Chronicle, 29 March 1879, cited in Edward Spiers, The Victorian Soldier in Africa (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 42.
86. Clery to Harman, 17 February 1878 (actually 1879), cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 85.
87. NAM, CP, 8/15, Chelmsford to Frere, 23 January 1879.
88. Crealock to Alison, 2 and 9 February 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 93.
89. TNA, WO 32/7709, Chelmsford to Stanley, 9 February 1879.
90. Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 244, cc. 1494–7, House of Lords: Statement by the Duke of Cambridge, 24 March 1879; Chelmsford to Dillon, 14 May 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 94.
91. KZNA, Wood Ms, II/2/2, Chelmsford to Wood, 29 January and 3 February 1879.
92. NAM, CP, 28, Chelmsford to Cambridge, 1 February 1879.
93. Clery to Harman, 17 February 1878 (actually 1879), cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, pp. 83–84.
94. The evidence is in TNA, WO 33/34, Zulu War, Miscellaneous, 1878–9, 234–42. It is conveniently reprinted in Ian F W Beckett, Isandlwana 1879 (London: Brassey’s/Chrysalis, 2003), pp. 105–21.
95. NAM, CP, 27, Chelmsford to Durnford, 19 January 1879.
96. Clery to Alison, 28 April 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 129.
97. R W F Drooglever, The Road to Isandhlwana (London: Greenhill Books, 1992), pp. 181–82; Beckett, Isandlwana, p. 75.
98. See Ron Lock and Peter Quantrill, Zulu Victory (London: Greenhill, 2002), pp. 236–46, 251–57 for their careful assessment of the evidence.
99. Maurice to Alison, 23 June 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 272. See also Clery to Alison, 11 and 18 March 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, pp. 100, 102, 125.
100. For typical, critical responses in the British press, see the Daily Telegraph, 3 March 1879 and the Standard, 3 and 8 March 1879. For the Natal press, see the Colonist, 15 February 1879 and the Natal Witness, 27 February 1879. See also Crealock to Alison, 24 February 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 96 for comment on the stance taken by the colonial press.
101. Clarke, Zululand at War, pp. 26–29.
102. Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 244 cc. 907–24; cc. 1865–1950; cc. 1991–2090; vol. 245, cc. 20–127, House of Commons: Questions and Debate, 14, 27, 28 and 30 March 1879; and vol. 244 cc. 1605–1697, House of Lords: Debate, 25 March 1879.
103. For Chelmsford’s orders for procedures to be followed on the march, see NAM, CP, 3/37, Memorandum by Chelmsford, n.d. (c. 26 March 1879); for his long official report on the battle of Gingindlovu, see TNA, WO 32/7727, Chelmsford to Stanley, 10 April 1879.
104. KZNA, Wood Mss, II/2/2, Chelmsford to Wood (c. 15) April 1879.
105. Cambridge to Frere, 13 February 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 110. See also Ian Beckett, The Victorians at War (London and New York: Hambledon and London, 2003), chapter 13: ‘Chelmsford’s Major-Generals’.
106. KZNA, Wood Mss, II/2/2, Chelmsford to Wood, 19 May 1879. Chelmsford quoted the proverb in Italian: ‘Chi va piano, va sano e va lontano.’
107. NAM, CP, 28, Chelmsford to Cambridge, 11 April 1879; NAD, Wood Mss, II/2, Chelmsford to Wood, 25 April 1879.
108. See CP 13/19: Chelmsford to Stanley, 25 May 1879.
109. John Laband, ‘Bulwer, Chelmsford and the Border Levies: The Dispute over the Defence of Natal, 1879’, in Laband and Thompson, eds, Kingdom and Colony at War, pp. 150–65.
110. The cost of the war was eventually put at £5,230,328, considerably more than the government was willing to countenance for a colonial campaign.
111. W F Monypenny and G E Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, new and revised edn (New York: Macmillan, 1929), II, p. 1297.
112. Cambridge to Frere, 13 February 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 109.
113. TNA, WO 30/129, Ellice to Chelmsford, 6 March 1869; Lock and Quantrill, Zulu Victory, pp. 265–80.
114. NAM, CP, 17/34, Chelmsford to Clifford, 2 July 1879; Beckett, Victorians at War, pp. 123, 125–27.
115. Royal Archives, Cambridge Mss, VIC/ADD E/1/8658, Cambridge to Chelmsford, 8 May 1879. See also Cambridge to Frere, 20 March and 22 May 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 114.
116. Lord Beaconsfield to Queen Victoria, 27 May 1879, cited in Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, II, p. 1304.
117. Beaconsfield to Queen Victoria, 27 May 1879 and Beaconsfield to Anne Lady Chesterfield, 28 May 1879, cited in Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, II, pp. 1303–4, 1305–6; Adrian Preston, ed., Sir Garnet Wolseley’s South African Journal, 1879–1880 (Cape Town: A A Balkema, 1973), pp. 6–7.
118. Crealock to Alison, 9 July 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 245.
119. Mathews, ‘Chelmsford’, pp. 308–9.
120. Killie Campbell Africana Library, Wood Mss, 27/17, Adria Lady Chelmsford to Wood, 3 June 1879.
121. NAM, CP, 28, Chelmsford to Cambridge, 11 April 1879.
122. Ibid., 11/8, Chelmsford to Stanley, 2 June 1879.
123. Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 247 cc. 401–3; 686–9: House of Commons: Questions, 19 and 26 June 1879.
124. For the authoritative account of the Prince Imperial in Zululand, his death and the aftermath, see Ian Knight, With His Face to the Foe. The Life and Death of Louis Napoleon, the Prince Imperial: Zululand 1879 (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2001). Carey’s court martial and reception in England are discussed on pp. 229–32, 238–47, 256–64.
125. See John Laband and Ian Knight, The War Correspondents: The Anglo-Zulu War (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1996), pp. v–xix for a discussion on war reportage in the Anglo-Zulu War. For Chelmsford’s querulous comments about hostile war correspondents, see NAM, CP, 28, Chelmsford to Stanley, 10 June 1879.
126. John Laband, ‘Cohesion of the Zulu Polity’, in John Laband and Paul Thompson, eds, Kingdom and Colony at War, pp. 12–14.
127. See John Laband, ‘Humbugging the General? King Cetshwayo’s Peace Overtures during the Anglo-Zulu War’, in John Laband and Paul Thompson, eds, Kingdom and Colony at War, pp. 52–59.
128. Preston, South African Journal, pp. 43–52, journal entries 24 June to 7 July 1879.
129. Laband and Thompson, Anglo-Zulu War, pp. 60–61.
130. For Chelmsford’s official report of the battle of Ulundi, see TNA, WO 32/7763, Chelmsford to Stanley, 6 July 1879. See Laband, Kingdom in Crisis: the Zulu Response, pp. 206–36 for a description of the battle and its decisive impact.
131. NAM, CP, 28, Chelmsford to Stanley, n.d. (5 July 1879).
132. TNA, WO 32/7770, Chelmsford to Stanley, 9 July 1879.
133. Cambridge to Frere, 26 August 1878, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 275.
134. Clery to Alison, 12 July 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 248.
135. Mathews, ‘Chelmsford’, pp. 338–39.
136. NAM, CP, 21/9, Wolseley to Chelmsford, 12 July 1879.
137. TNA, WO 30/129, Ellice to Chelmsford, 11 August 1879.
138. Beaconsfield to Queen Victoria, 30 August 1879 and Queen Victoria to Beaconsfield, 1 September 1879, cited in Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, II, pp. 1331–32.
139. Preston, South African Journal, p. 107, journal entry, 4 September 1879.
140. Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 256 c. 1035: House of Lords: Debate, 2 September 1880. For the full debates, see vol. 255 cc. 1543–67 and vol. 256 cc. 1025–35: House of Lords: Motion: 19 August and 2 September 1880.
141. See F E Colenso, assisted by Lieutenant Colonel E C L Durnford, History of the Zulu War and its Origin (London: Chapman Hall, 1881); and E C L Durnford, ed., A Soldier’s Life and Works in South Africa, 1872–1879: A Memory of the Late Colonel A W Durnford, Royal Engineers (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1882).
142. Gerald French, Lord Chelmsford and the Zulu War (London: John Lane at the Bodley Head, 1939), p. 316–23; Droogleever, Isandhlwana, pp. 243–46.
143. See NAM, CP, 22/5-7, 38-48, 52-3 for Chelmsford’s extremely pained correspondence on this matter.
144. The United Service Club closed its doors in 1976 and the premises were taken over by the Institute of Directors. See Anthony Lejeune and Malcolm Lewis, The Gentlemen’s Clubs of London (London: Bracken Books, 1984), pp. 276–83.
145. See French, Chelmsford, pp. 306–15, 324–67, 378–83. The inscription reads: ‘Frederic Augustus, 2nd Baron Chelmsford, G.C.B., G.C.V.O., General. Colonel of the 2nd Life Guards. May 31st 1827 – April 9th 1905.’ Twenty-one years later his widow joined him in his tomb (partially obscured in the summer of 2007 by ivy and uncut grass) surrounded by a cluster of other family members.
146. Vanity Fair, 3 September 1881.
147. Clery to Alison, 1 February 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 81.
148. Clery to Alison, 28 April 1879, cited in Clarke, Zululand at War, p. 129.
1. John H Waller, Gordon of Khartoum: The Saga of a Victorian Hero (New York: Atheneum, 1988), p. 17.
2. Western Powers, led by Britain, had become increasingly frustrated with Chinese delays in carrying out the terms of the Treaty of Nanking and subsequent agreements. When ambassadorial missions were refused entry to the Chinese capital, the British and French resolved to end Manchu resistance.
3. The Taiping movement began with the preaching of Hong Xiuquan, a south China Hakka minority member who had several times failed the entrance examinations for the Chinese bureaucracy, learned about Christianity from an American missionary and described himself as a brother of Jesus. In 1851, he proclaimed himself the Heavenly King of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace. Feeding on long-festering anti-Manchu and anti-foreigner resentments, demands for tax relief and social reform, and religious fervour, tens of thousands joined his ranks and they soon occupied much of the Yangsi valley and central China.
4. Roy MacGregor-Hastie, Never To Be Taken Alive: A Biography of General Gordon (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1985), pp. 67–68.
5. Memoirs of Li Hung-chang, quoted in Bernard Meredith Allen, Gordon in China, (London: Macmillan, 1933), p. 69.
6. Waller, Gordon of Khartoum, p. 104.
7. He did return early in 1865 to join remnants of the Taipings in Amoy. The Chinese government captured him in Changchow on 15 May, and his drowned body was found in Chekiang on 15 June.
8. Quoted in MacGregor-Hastie, Never To Be Taken Alive, pp. 76–77.
9. Octavia Freese, ‘One Who Knew Him Well’, in More About Gordon (London: Richard Bently & Sons, 1894), p. 44. These activities, combined with his awkward and, as far as is known, celibate relations with women, later led to allegations of latent homosexuality (or even paedophilia). The allegations were investigated by Frank M Richardson MD in a chapter of his Mars Without Venus (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1981). John Pollock’s biography Gordon: The Man Behind the Legend (Oxford: Lion, 1993) suggests Asperger’s Syndrome as an alternative explanation for Gordon’s demeanour, behaviour and proclivities.
10. M. Augusta Gordon, ed., Letters of General C G Gordon to his Sister (London: Macmillan & Co., 1888), p. 91.
11. The Khedive, desperate for money and deeply in debt, was plotting with Zubeir to conquer Darfur, which they did in November, 1874, defeating one of Zubeir’s major rivals, Sultan Ibrahim, and opening a whole new region to his slaving operations. Zubeir had massacred a 1,200-man Egyptian army sent to subdue him in 1869 and Ismail had made him Governor of the region to bring him to heal. From the growing slaving revenues, Zubeir paid an annual bribe to the Khedive, which he used to pay Sir Samuel Baker’s salary. In November 1874, after Gordon complained to the British Consul in Cairo, he was given control over Bahr al-Ghazal and in August 1875, the Governor General ordered Zubeir back to Bahr al-Ghazal. The next June, Zubeir, wishing to rule Darfur as a direct vassal of the Khedive, travelled to Cairo to appeal the decision, leaving his son, Suleiman Zubeir, in control of his slaving operations. The Khedive detained Zubeir in Cairo. When bribes failed to gain his release, Zubeir appealed to Gordon to secure his freedom. When Gordon refused, Zubeir, it was widely believed, ordered his chieftains to organise a rebellion against him.
12. Khartoum was an Egyptian city, which began to be built in the wake of Ismail Pasha’s expedition. The name ‘Khartoum’ means elephant trunk. Egyptians sent to the Sudan regarded service there as exile and it was quickly relegated to inferior or disgraced officers. As Egyptian control extended southward, the slave trade exploded. Romulo Gessi, in Seven Years in the Sudan: Being a Record of Explorations, Adventures, and Campaigns against the Arab Slave Hunters, ed. Felix Gessi (London: Sampson, Low, Marston & Co., 1892), p. 2, later reported that beginning in 1860, ‘in the brief space of fourteen years more than four hundred thousand women and children were taken from their native country and sold in Egypt and Turkey, while thousands and thousands were massacred in the defence of their families’.
13. The two men discussed a plan to convince the Khedive to send a force to East Africa to push Mutesa into the Egyptian orbit. The Khedive obliged, sending Long to Zanzibar and thence to Juba. Fearful that this be seen as an effort to restore the slave trade, and eager to keep the friendly Sultan of Zanzibar free of Egyptian influence, the British government forced an end to the adventure.
14. George Birbeck Hill, ed., Colonel Gordon in Central Africa, 1874–1879 from Original Letters and Documents (London: Thomas de La Rue, 1884, 4th edn, facsimile reprint by Kraus Reprints, 1969), p. 67.
15. Quoted in MacGregor-Hastie, Never to be Taken Alive, p. 107.
16. Charles Chevenix Trench, The Road to Khartoum: A Life of General Charles Gordon (New York: W W Norton, 1978), p. 118.
17. W H Wilkins, The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton (London: Hutchinson, 1897), II, p. 645.
18. In 1876, the British Paymaster General reported that the Khedive’s debt had surpassed £81 million.
19. Though most Egyptians had little interest in altering either the customs or the lucrative slaving economy of the Sudan, they were interested in maintaining administrative and tax-collection control over the country, which involved not permitting the slavers to seize control of swathes of its territory.
20. British Library (hereafter BL) Add. MS 54495, 5 July, 1879, quoted in Trench, The Road to Khartoum, p. 144.
21. What to do in these instances was complicated by the conflicting instructions that Gordon possessed.
22. Quoted in Waller, Gordon of Khartoum, p. 232.
23. Earlier in the year an Egyptian officer mutiny had taken place over demotions and pay cuts, which they blamed on European control. A short-term loan from the Rothschild Bank had saved the day, but as a result, the Egyptian Prime Minister, Nubar Pasha, had resigned on 18 February.
24. Quoted in Waller, Gordon of Khartoum, p. 235.
25. The Times, 22 January 1880.
26. Waller, Gordon of Khartoum, p. 245.
27. George Birkbeck Hill, ed., Colonel Gordon in Central Africa 1874-1879 from Original Letters and Documents (London: Thomas de La Rue, 1884, 4th edn, facsimile reprint by Kraus Reprints, 1969), p. 426.
28. The Times, 9 January 1883, p. 3.
29. Some claimed that the offer was encouraged by their mutual friend, Florence Nightingale, while others attributed it to Ripon’s hope that Gordon’s earlier Danubian experience would help resolve the vexatious border issues between Britain and Russia. Still others claimed that Gordon’s reputation for maintaining good relations with native populations would assist Ripon achieve his reform agenda.
30. Waller, Gordon of Khartoum, p. 261.
31. China eventually decided against war and China and Russia signed a treaty in 1881.
32. After numerous quarrels with Gordon’s successor in the Sudan, Gessi had resigned as Governor of Bahr al-Ghazil. In September, while travelling on the steam ship Saphia with some 600 other passengers, it ran aground. For two months they struggled against starvation and disease, and some engaged in cannibalism to survive. Emaciated and mentally tortured by what he had witnessed, Gessi was brought to Khartoum, where the government continued to make life difficult for him. Resolved to return home, he embarked from Berber, but died at Suez. Gordon paid to have his body returned to Ravenna.
33. H Shaked, The Life of the Sudanese Mahdi: A Historical Study of Kitáb sa’adat al-mustahdi bi-sírát al-imám al Mahdi by ismá-íl bin ‘Abd-al-Gádir (New Jersey: Transaction Press, 1978), pp. 75–76.
34. On 16 February 1882, Ra’úf Pasha had been replaced in that post by ‘Abd-al-Qádir Hilmi, but he had not yet arrived to take up his duties and Geigler, a German telegraph engineer, who had been Ra’úf’s deputy, took the post temporarily.
35. Ansár was the name connoting supporters of the Mahdi. It had been the name given to Muhammed’s followers at Medina. The British preferred to call them ‘dervishes’, an Arab word that literally means ‘the poor’ and was widely used to encompass a range of Muslim holy men.
36. Earlier in the century, the BaSotho had fought a thirty-year sporadic battle against the Boers, culminating in 1868 in the retention of their mountain territory and their capital at Thaba Bosiu. In 1869, caught between the Boer Orange Free State, Natal, the Zulus and the British, the BaSotho Paramount Chief, Mosheshwe, accepted a British offer to annex Basutoland. He welcomed the British administrators, but in 1871, for the sake of administrative convenience, the British turned it over to Cape Colony. When the king died in 1879, a rivalry emerged among his sons and the unrest caused the Cape government to impose direct rule through a system of Magistrates. The next year, the government passed the Peace Preservation Act, which included a formal demand for native disarmament. Of the four BaSotho chiefs, three (including the new Paramount Chief, Lestie) reluctantly accepted the demand, but the fourth, Masupha, rejected it. The Cape’s new Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson, proposed maintaining disarmament in principle, but permitting guns to be held through licensing agreements. In August 1881, Robinson sent an Agent for the Basutos, Joseph Orpen, to present this to the chiefs. Orpen returned reporting that Masupha was still not convinced. In 1882, the new Cape Prime Minister, Thomas Scanlen, ignoring, to his political peril, the ‘forward demands’ of the businessmen, asked Robinson to ask the Colonial Office to seek Gordon’s services.
37. BL Add MS 51296. Sauer was convicted in the court of public opinion of placing Gordon’s life in danger.
38. Laurence Oliphant, Haifa (London: Blackwood, 1887), pp. 347–50.
39. Charles George Gordon, Reflections in Palestine 1883 (London: Macmillan, 1884).
40. Dominic Green, Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad, 1869–1899 (New York: Free Press, 2007), p. 142.
41. Colonel John Donald Hamill Stewart, ‘Report on the Soudan’, The Parliamentary Papers, Egypt, No. 11, 1883, C-3670, p. 25.
42. Trench, The Road to Khartoum, p. 193.
43. Ibid., p. 194.
44. Ibid., p. 195.
45. Granville to Baring, 13 December 1883 (Public Records Office, London 30/29/199).
46. Ibid.
47. Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt (London: Macmillan, 1908), vol. I, pp. 382, 429.
48. Lord Godfrey Elton, Gordon of Khartoum (New York: Knopf, 1955), p. 281.
49. John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (London: Macmillan, 1903), Vol. III, p. 149.
50. The National Archives (hereafter TNA), FO 78/3665, Baring to Granville, No. 44, 16 January 1884.
51. BL, Add Mss 51298, Gordon to Barnes, 22 January 1884, cited with a slightly different wording in R H Barnes and C E Brown, C G Gordon, A Sketch with Facsimile Letters (London: Macmillan, 1885), pp. 102–3.
52. Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt, vol. I, p. 429.
53. TNA, FO 78/3696, Granville to Baring, 18 January 1884.
54. Green, Three Empires on the Nile, p. 160.
55. Sudan Archive, University of Durham, Wingate Mss, 245/6; BL, Add Mss. 56451, Baring to Gordon, 22 January 1884.
56. Wingate found the file but not the incriminating letter. Some weeks later, a letter in Arabic, purporting to be the ‘smoking gun’ was provided to the Foreign Office by Gordon’s brother and his biographer Egmont Hake. Wingate thought it a forgery.
57. Cromer, Modern Egypt, vol. I, pp. 390, 444–46.
58. Trench, The Road to Khartoum, p. 213
59. Blue Book, London, Public Records Office, No. 2, p. 6; TNA, PRO 30/29/162, Baring to Granville, 28 January 1884.
60. Gordon to Baring, 18 February 1884, quoted in Trench, The Road to Khartoum, p. 230.
61. Granville to Baring, 23 February 1884, quoted in Trench, The Road to Khartoum, p. 230.
62. Gordon to Granville, 26 February 1884, quoted in Trench, The Road to Khartoum, p. 231.
63. Trench, The Road to Khartoum, p. 232.
64. Ibid., p. 234. After carefully considering all of the obstacles to evacuation, Trench, pp. 227–29, calculated that ‘purely as an administrative exercise, provided there were no shipwrecks, or engine failures, the operation [of evacuating the 15–20,000 people from the city] could just be completed in about eleven lifts between March and the end of September’.
65. Father Joseph Ohrwalder, Ten Years Captivity in the Mahdi’s Camp, from the Original Manuscript of Father Joseph Ohrwalder, Late Priest of the Austrian Mission Station at Delen in Kordofan, ed. and tr. Major R C Wingate (London: Sampson, Low, Marston & Co., 1892), p. 98.
66. Green, Three Empires on the Nile, p.176.
67. Ibid.
68. Waller, Gordon of Khartoum, p. 372.
69. Trench, The Road to Khartoum, p. 259.
70. Ibid., p. 257.
71. Rudolf C Slatin, With Fire and Sword in the Sudan, tr. Major F R Wingate (London: Edward Arnold, 1896), p. 17. The Mahdi used Slatin and Joseph Cuzzi, an Egyptian official captured at Berber, to communicate with Gordon. Appalled by their conversion to Islam (which saved their lives), Gordon refused to receive them.
72. A Egmont Hake, The Journals of Major-General C G Gordon, CB, at Khartoum (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1885), pp. 105–6.
73. Cromer, Modern Egypt, vol. I, p. 582.
74. Ohrwalder, Captivity, pp. 145–46.
75. Hake, Journals, p. 365.
76. Trench, The Road to Khartoum, p. 282.
77. Ibid., p. 288.
1. David James, Lord Roberts (London: Hollis & Carter, 1954), p. 176; Byron Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers: Seekers of Glory (New York and London: W W Norton, 1985), pp. 178–79.
2. Unless otherwise indicated, the biographical sketch on this and the following pages is based, inter alia, on James, Roberts; the article on Roberts by Brian Robson in H C G Matthews and Brian Harrison, eds, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, vol. 47 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) (hereafter DNB), pp. 156–61; George Forrest, The Life of Lord Roberts, KG, VC (London: Cassell, 1914), as well as the other biographies mentioned in the bibliography.
3. The brief review of the war, and Roberts’s role, is based on, inter alia, L S Amery, ed., The Times History of the War in South Africa 1899–1902, vols 3–4 (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1905–6); Frederick Maurice, compiler, History of the War in South Africa 1899–1902, vols 1–3 (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1906–8); J H Breytenbach, Die Geskiedenis van die Tweede Vryheidsoorlog in Suid-Afrika, 1899–1902, vols 1–6 (Pretoria: Die Staatsdrukker, 1969–96); The War in South Africa (also known as the German Official Account of the War in South Africa (vol. 1 translated by W H H Waters, vol. 2 translated by Herbert du Cane; London: John Murray, 1904 and 1906); Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979); Bill Nasson, The South African War 1899–1902 (London: Arnold, 1999) and Denis Judd and Keith Surridge, The Boer War (London: John Murray, 2002).
4. British Library (hereafter BL), Lansdowne Mss, L(5)48, Roberts to Lansdowne, 7 June 1900 – published in André Wessels, ed., Lord Roberts and the War in South Africa 1899–1902 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing for Army Records Society, 2000), pp. 97–100.
5. For more on the Curragh incident and Roberts’s role see, for example, Ian F W Beckett, ed., The Army and the Curragh Incident, 1914 (London: The Bodley Head for Army Records Society, 1986).
6. Imperial War Museum, L A E Rice-Davies Mss, 77/78/3, programme of Lord Roberts’s funeral.
7. James, Roberts, pp. 6, 53, 163–64; Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers, pp. 148–49; Lord Roberts, Forty-one Years in India: From Subaltern to Commander-in-Chief, 2 vols (London: Richard Bentley, 1897), I, p. 411 and II, p. 373.
8. Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers, pp. 156–57, 179.
9. Ibid., pp. 159, 182.
10. DNB, 47, p. 157; Ian F W Beckett, ‘Women and Patronage in the Late Victorian Army’, History 85, 279 (2000), 478–79.
11. BL, Lansdowne Mss, L(5)44, Bigge to Roberts, 18 August 1900 – published in Wessels, ed., Roberts, pp. 123–24.
12. Royal Archives, VIC/P12/58, Roberts to the Queen, 21 August 1900 – published in Wessels, ed., Roberts, pp. 124–26.
13. Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers, p. 182.
14. DNB, 47, p. 158.
15. BL, Lansdowne Mss, L(5)47, Roberts to Lansdowne, 22 October 1899 – published in Wessels, ed., Roberts, pp. 13–14.
16. BL, Lansdowne Mss, L(5)47, Roberts to Lansdowne, 8 December 1899 – published in Wessels, ed., Roberts, pp. 14–16.
17. Brian Robson, The Road to Kabul: The Second Afghan War 1878–1881 (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1986), pp. 169–72.
18. Roberts, Forty-one Years in India, II, p. 377.
19. André Wessels, ‘The British View of a War in South Africa (1899)’ and ‘The British Army in 1899: Problems that Hampered Preparations for War in South Africa’, (South African) Journal for Contemporary History, 28, 2 (2003), 153–67 and 168–89.
20. Leopold Scholtz, Waarom die Boere die Oorlog Verloor het (Pretoria: Protea Boekhuis, 1999), pp. 58, 62.
21. Breytenbach, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, IV, pp. 89–100, 127–42; V, pp. 319–26, 337–49.
22. Ibid., IV, pp. 232–39; Amery, ed., Times History, III, pp. 397–400.
23. C R de Wet, Three Years War (October 1899 – June 1902) (London: Archibald Constable, 1902), pp. 101–9.
24. Jay Stone and Erwin A Schmidl, The Boer War and Military Reforms (Lanham and London: University Press of America, 1988), p. 56.
25. BL, Lansdowne Mss, L(5)47, Roberts to Lansdowne, 27 December 1899 – published in Wessels, ed., Roberts, pp. 21–24.
26. Scholtz, Waarom die Boere die Oorlog Verloor het, pp. 87–90.
27. Ibid., p. 120.
28. According to Pakenham, Boer War, p. 428, it was the most serious strategic mistake of the war.
29. A E Breytenbach, ‘Die slag by Donkerhoek, 11–12 Junie 1900’, unpub. MA dissertation (University of South Africa, 1980), passim; History of the War in South Africa 1899–1902 (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1908), III, pp. 204–25.
30. History of the War in South Africa 1899–1902, III, p. 519.
31. Scholtz, Waarom die Boere die Oorlog Verloor het, p. 85; Jay Luvaas, The Education of an Army: British Military Thought, 1815–1940 (London: Cassell, 1965), p. 237.
32. Amery, ed., Times History, III, p. 342; James, Roberts, p. 279; G F R Henderson, Stonewell Jackson and the American Civil War (London: Longmans, Green, 1905), I, pp. 306–7.
33. BL, Lansdowne Mss, L(5)4, Roberts to Lansdowne, 17 May 1900 – published in Wessels, ed., Roberts, pp. 80–83. See also Roberts’s foreword in G F R Henderson, The Science of War: A Collection of Essays and Lectures 1891–1903, ed. Neill Malcolm (London: Longmans, Green, 1908), pp. xxxiv–xxxv.
34. The Times, 21 September 1900, p. 4.
35. See Proclamation 17 of 1900, 14 September 1900, as published in Army. Proclamations issued by Field-Marshal Lord Roberts in South Africa (London: HMSO, 1900) (hereafter Cd. 426), p. 17.
36. National Army Museum (hereafter NAM), Roberts Mss, 1971-01-23-126-3, Speech by Roberts, Cape Town, 10 December 1900 – published in Wessels, ed., Roberts, pp. 144–48.
37. Cd. 426, pp. 1–2, 7; Scholtz, Waarom die Boere die Oorlog Verloor het, p. 110.
38. Albert Grundlingh, The Dynamics of Treason: Boer Collaboration in the South African War of 1899–1902 (Pretoria: Protea Book House, 2006), pp. 38–40; Idem, ‘Collaboration in Boer Society’, in Peter Warwick, ed., The South African War: The Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902 (Harlow: Longman, 1980), p. 58.
39. Cd. 426, p. 8.
40. Cd. 426, pp. 10–11. As early as the second week of January 1900, when a British force briefly invaded the OFS, a number of Boer farms were burnt and cattle looted. See Breytenbach, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, IV, p. 85.
41. Instructions to Major General R A P Clements, as quoted in S B Spies, Methods of Barbarism? Roberts and Kitchener and Civilians in the Boer Republics January 1900–May 1902 (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1977), p. 122.
42. Amery, ed., Times History, V, p. 8.
43. Fransjohan Pretorius, ed., Scorched Earth (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2001), pp. 36–59, 242–63.
44. Scholtz, Waarom die Boere die Oorlog Verloor het, p. 114; Breytenbach, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, VI, pp. 168–69.
45. Roberts to Milner, 18 August 1900, as quoted by Scholtz, Waarom die Boere die Oorlog Verloor het, p. 131.
46. NAM, Roberts Mss, 1971-01-23-101-1, Afghanistan Series. Correspondence with India and England while Commanding Troops in Afghanistan, by General Sir Frederick Roberts, vol. 13, 1878–80 (Simla: Government Central Printing Office, 1891), pp. 523–24, Document CCCCXXII, Roberts to A C Lyall, 6 August 1880 – also published in Brian Robson, ed., Roberts in India: The Military Papers of Field Marshal Lord Roberts 1876–1893 (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing for Army Records Society, 1993), p. 208.
47. Keith Surridge, ‘Lansdowne at the War Office’, in John Gooch, ed., The Boer War: Direction, Experience and Image (London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 32, 34–39. See also NAM, Roberts Mss, 1971-01-23-34-373, Lansdowne to Roberts, 19 May 1900.
48. Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers, p. 166.
49. Stephen Badsey, ‘War Correspondents in the Boer War’, in Gooch, ed., The Boer War, p. 196; Robson, Road to Kabul, pp. 93–94, 273.
50. NAM, Roberts Mss, 1971-01-23-126-3, Speech by Roberts, Bloemfontein, 28 March 1900 – published in Wessels, ed., Roberts, pp. 65–67.
51. Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Inclusive Edition 1885–1918 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1920), vol. 2, pp. 200–2.
52. For general histories of the war see, for example, Roberts, Forty-one Years in India, vol. 2 and Robson, Road to Kabul, as well as the other Anglo-Afghan War books referred to in the bibliography. For Roberts’s diaries, 1878–79 (the 1880 diary could not be traced), see NAM, Roberts Mss, 1971-01-23-92-18 and -19. Unless otherwise indicated, these sources were, inter alia, used in writing this case study of the war.
53. For the background to the war see, for example, Causes of the Afghan War being a Selection of Papers laid before Parliament with a Connecting Narrative and Comment (London: Chatto & Windus, 1879), passim, and Michael Edwardes, Playing the Great Game: A Victorian Cold War (London: Harmish Hamilton, 1975), pp. 1–99.
54. Robson, ed., Roberts, p. 111.
55. NAM, Roberts Papers, 1971-01-23-37-21, Lytton to Roberts, 9 September 1879 – published in Robson, Road to Kabul, p. 140 and in Robson, ed., Roberts, pp. 119–22. The letter is marked ‘Very Confidential’.
56. James, Roberts, pp. 151–59; Roberts, Forty-one Years in India, II, pp. 341–61; E F Chapman. ‘The March from Kabul to Kandahar and the Battle of the 1st September, 1880’, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution 25 (1882), 282–302, 307–15.
57. Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers, p. 174.
58. For general reviews of the battle see, for example, Breytenbach, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, IV, pp. 232–430; Amery, ed., Times History, III, pp. 401–58, 473–87; Maurice, compiler, History of the War, II, pp. 73–179; J L Basson, ‘Die Slag van Paardeberg’, unpub. MA thesis, Pretoria University, 1972, passim; The German Official Account of the War in South Africa, I, pp. 154–230. The case study that follows is primarily based on these sources.
59. BL, Lansdowne Mss, L(5)48, Roberts to Lansdowne, 22 February 1900 – published in Wessels, ed., Roberts, pp. 54–57.
60. Charles Sydney Goldmann, With General French and the Cavalry in South Africa (London: MacMillan, 1902), pp. 74–86; J G Maydon, French’s Cavalry Campaign (London: C Arthur Pearson, 1902), pp. 140–49.
61. The view is generally held that Kitchener was only a major general and thus junior to Kelly-Kenny, but according to the Army List of 1901 and onwards, Kitchener was promoted to lieutenant general on 23 December 1899; i.e. on the day when he was officially appointed as Roberts’s Chief of Staff. If, for whatever reason, Kitchener was secretly (?) promoted, it explains why he was convinced that he was indeed the senior officer at Paardeberg. See André Wessels, ed., Lord Kitchener and the War in South Africa 1899–1902 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing for Army Records Society, 2006), p. 13 and note 6 on p. 254.
62. Amery, ed., Times History, III, p. 419; Farwell, Eminent Victorian Soldiers, p. 332.
63. The Transvaal State Artillery had twenty-five 37-mm Maxim-Nordenfeld quick-firing guns; nicknamed ‘pom-poms’ due to the sound they made when in action. In the light of the success of these guns, and especially the demoralising effect they had on an enemy, Roberts acquired at least fifty-seven such new-technology guns for use in South Africa, where they were first used at Paardeberg (26 February 1900). See Breytenbach, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, I, p. 87; Amery, ed., Times History, III, p. 482; IV, p. 17; V, p. 248.
64. For an evaluation of Kitchener’s conduct of the battle see, for example, George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener (London: Macmillan, 1920), I, pp. 822–91; Amery, ed., Times History, III, pp. 446–53; James, Roberts, pp. 291–92; Philip Magnus, Kitchener: Portrait of an Imperialist (London: John Murray, 1958), pp. 164–69; C R Ballard, Kitchener (London: Faber & Faber, n.d.), pp. 124–31; E S Grew et al., Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener: His Life and Work for the Empire (London: The Gresham Publishing Company, n.d.), II, pp. 91–95.
1. Queen Victoria to Kitchener, 11 January 1901 in André Wessels, ed., Lord Kitchener and the War in South Africa 1899–1902 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing for Army Records Society, 2006), p. 65; Keith Surridge, ‘More than a great poster: Lord Kitchener and the image of the military hero’, Historical Research, 74, 185 (2001), 298–313.
2. For more on Kitchener’s early reputation see Surridge, ‘More than a great poster’, especially 307–10.
3. Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma (London: Michael Joseph, 1985), pp. 138–41.
4. Lord Cromer, Modern Egypt (London: Macmillan, 1908), vol. II, pp. 87–88; Ian F W Beckett, ‘Kitchener and the Politics of Command’, in Edward Spiers, ed., Sudan: the Reconquest Reappraised (London: Frank Cass, 1998), p. 48.
5. The National Archives (hereafter TNA), Kitchener Mss, PRO 30/57/11/I13, Kitchener to Cromer, 18 October 1897.
6. Quoted in John Pollock, Kitchener (London: Constable & Robinson, 2002), p. 84; also ibid., pp. 82–84.
7. TNA, PRO 30/57/10/I4, Kitchener to Grenfell, 14 October 1897.
8. National Army Museum (hereafter NAM), Rawlinson Mss, 5201/33/5, Rawlinson letterbook, Rawlinson to Grenfell, 12 May 1898.
9. Lieutenant Colonel Charles à Court Repington, Vestigia (London: Constable, 1919), p. 101; Douglas Scott, ed., Douglas Haig: The Preparatory Prologue 1861–1914. Diaries and Letters (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2006), p. 71; General Sir Neville Lyttelton, Eighty Years: Soldiering, Politics and Games (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1927), p. 186.
10. British Library (hereafter BL), Lansdowne Mss, Lan (5) 21, Cromer to Salisbury, 8 January 1898.
11. Lord Edward Cecil, The Leisure of an Egyptian Official (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1921), pp. 184–87; Beckett, ‘Kitchener and the Politics of Command’, p. 48.
12. Archie Hunter, Kitchener’s Sword-arm: The Life and Campaigns of General Sir Archibald Hunter (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 1996), p. 53.
13. Winston S Churchill, The River War (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1900), II, p. 378; Randolph S Churchill, Winston S Churchill, Vol. 1, Youth 1874–1900 (London: Heinemann, 1966), p. 424.
14. Ernest Bennett, ‘After Omdurman’, Contemporary Review 75 (1899), 20–21; NAM, 7404/36/3, Meiklejohn Mss, ‘The Nile Campaign’, pp. 19, 58; Surridge, ‘More than a great poster’, pp. 303–4.
15. NAM, Rawlinson Mss, 5201/33, Rawlinson diary, 14 January 1898; Repington, Vestigia, p. 157; Sir George Arthur, General Sir John Maxwell (London: John Murray, 1932), p. 59; NAM, Churcher Mss, 7804/53, Omdurman Diary, 14 August 1898, p. 5; Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, Memories of Forty-eight Years’ Service (London: John Murray, 1925), p. 101.
16. Major General Sir Frederick Maurice, The Life of General Lord Rawlinson of Trent. From His Journals and Letters (London: Cassell, 1928), pp. 31–32; Field Marshal Lord Grenfell, Memoirs (London: Hodder & Stoughton, n.d.), p. 154; P Harrington and F Sharf, eds, Omdurman 1898: The Eyewitnesses Speak (London: Greenhill Books, 1998), p. 72; H Alford and W Dennistoun Sword, The Egyptian Soudan: Its Loss and Recovery (London: Macmillan, 1898, reprinted by the Naval & Military Press, 1992), pp. 241, 289; G W Steevens, With Kitchener to Khartum (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1898), pp. 22, 46.
17. Lieutenant Colonel E W C Sandes, The Royal Engineers in Egypt and the Sudan (Chatham: The Institution of Royal Engineers, 1937), pp. 222–36; Steevens, With Kitchener, p. 26; Royle, Kitchener Enigma, p. 116; Pollock, Kitchener, pp. 107–8.
18. Cromer, Modern Egypt, vol. II, pp. 98–102; See also TNA, PRO 30/57/10/I5, Wolseley to Kitchener, 14 April 1898, for his subsequent advice on the matter.
19. Wolseley to Kitchener, ibid.
20. P Ziegler, Omdurman (London: Collins, 1973), p. 28.
21. Beatrix Gatacre, General Gatacre: The Story of the Life and Services of Sir William Forbes Gatacre 1843–1906 (London: John Murray, 1910), pp. 190–91. Edward Spiers, ‘Campaigning with Kitchener’, in Spiers, ed., Sudan, pp. 58, 62.
22. ‘Ismat Hasan Zulfo, Karari (London: Frederick Warne, 1980), pp. 112–14; Hunter, Kitchener’s Sword-arm, p. 93; Bennet Burleigh, Khartoum Campaign 1898 (London: Chapman & Hall, 1899, reprinted by Ken Trotman Ltd, 1989), p. 150; Smith-Dorrien, Memories, p. 106; Repington, Vestigia, p. 154; Maurice, Rawlinson, p. 38; TNA, PRO 30/57/14/M11, Wingate, 3 March 1899, Note on the Dervish Wounded at Omdurman.
23. Zulfo, Karari, pp. 101–2.
24. Ibid., pp. 114–20.
25. John Meredith, ed., Omdurman Diaries (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 1998), p. 183.
26. Zulfo, Karari, chapter 16, especially notes p. 189 for who was where, particularly Ali Wad Hilu.
27. NAM, Lewis Ms, 7503/9, Lewis Journal, 2 September 1898, p. 11; NAM, Rawlinson Mss, 5201/33/4; Rawlinson Diary, 2 September 1898.
28. Quoted in Spiers, ‘Campaigning’, in Spiers, ed., Sudan, p. 70.
29. TNA, WO 32/6143, Kitchener to Grenfell, 5 September 1898, p. 2A.
30. Ibid., p. 4A; Trevor Royle, Fighting Mac (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1982), p. 97; Zulfo, Karari, p. 218.
31. NAM, Cameron Mss, 8305/55, Cameron to his father, 4 September 1898.
32. TNA, PRO 30/57/14/M11, Wingate, Note, 3 March 1899; Ziegler, Omdurman, pp. 215–16.
33. For a recent account of the fighting in 1884–85 see Michael Asher, Khartoum (London: Penguin, 2006), especially, pp. 28–33, 147–56.
34. Repington, Vestigia, p. 150.
35. Ibid., p. 169; Hunter, Kitchener’s Sword-arm, p. 100; Ziegler, Omdurman, p. 164.
36. Repington, Vestigia, p. 111; Beckett, ‘Kitchener and the Politics of Command’, p. 49.
37. Keith Surridge, ‘Lord Kitchener and the War in South Africa 1899–1902’, Soldiers of the Queen: the Journal of the Victorian Military Society 101 (June 2000), 22; Wessels, ed., Lord Kitchener, pp. 13–14.
38. NAM, Marker Mss, 6803/4/4/7, Marker to his sister, 5 October 1900; H C B Cook, ed., ‘Letters from South Africa 1899–1902’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research LXIX, 278 (1991), 80.
39. TNA, PRO 30/57/22/Y4 & Y9, Brodrick to Kitchener and Kitchener to Brodrick, 24 November 1900 and 20 December 1900.
40. Quoted in Denis Judd and Keith Surridge, The Boer War (London: John Murray, 2002), p. 255; also, p. 217; Royle, Kitchener Enigma, p. 111.
41. TNA, PRO 30/57/22/Y95, Kitchener to Brodrick, 18 October 1901.
42. Brian Gardner, Allenby (London: Cassell, 1965), p. 48; Scott, Haig, p. 195.
43. TNA, PRO 30/57/22/Y101, Kitchener to Brodrick, 8 November 1901; TNA, CAB 37/59/124, Hamilton to Roberts, 3 December 1901; Royle, Kitchener Enigma, p. 181.
44. TNA, WO 108/405, Kitchener to De Wet, 14 February 1902; William Nasson, ‘Africans at War’, in John Gooch, ed., The Boer War (London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 126–40.
45. TNA, CO 417/307/40042/ff. 581-582, Brodrick to Kitchener and Kitchener to Brodrick, 4 and 5 December 1900; NAM, Roberts Mss, 7101/23/33/4, Kitchener to Roberts, 4 December 1900; TNA, PRO 30/57/22/Y30, Kitchener to Brodrick, 7 March 1901; Helen Bradford, ‘Gentlemen and Boers: Afrikaner Nationalism, Gender, and Colonial Warfare in the South African War’, in G Cuthbertson, A Grundlingh and M-L Suttie, eds, Writing a Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899–1902 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002), pp. 37–66.
46. S B Spies, Methods of Barbarism? (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1977), p. 183.
47. Bill Nasson, The South African War 1899–1902 (London: Arnold, 1999), pp. 217–24; Royle, Kitchener Enigma, p. 179; Pollock, Kitchener, pp. 194–95; Spies, Methods of Barbarism?, pp. 143–260; Surridge, ‘Lord Kitchener’, pp. 23–25.
48. Nasson, South African War, pp. 215–18.
49. Keith Surridge, ‘Rebellion, Martial Law and British Civil-Military Relations: The War in Cape Colony 1899–1902’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 8, 2 (1997), 44–54; Richard Holmes, The Little Field Marshal. Sir John French (London: Jonathan Cape, 1981), pp. 112–16.
50. Quoted in Iain R. Smith, The Origins of the South African War 1899–1902 (London: Longman, 1996), p. 148.
51. Keith Surridge, Managing the South African War 1899–1902 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), pp. 124–48.
52. Ibid., pp. 155–74; Judd and Surridge, Boer War, pp. 269–97; Keith Surridge, ‘The Politics of War: Lord Kitchener and the Settlement of the South African War, 1901–1902’, in Cuthbertson, Grundlingh and Suttie, eds, Writing a Wider War, pp. 213–32.