Victoria's Generals

By Ian F. W. Beckett

The senior British generals of the Victorian era - men like Wolseley, Roberts, Gordon and Kitchener - were heroes of their time. As soldiers, administrators and battlefield commanders they represented the empire at the height of its power. But they were a disparate, sometimes fractious group of men. They exhibited many of the failings as well as the strengths of the British army of the late nineteenth-century. And now, when the Victorian period is being looked at more critically than before, the moment is right to reassess them as individuals and as soldiers. This balanced and perceptive study of these eminent military men gives a fascinating insight into their careers, into the British army of their day and into a now-remote period when Britain was a world power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 19, 2009
• ISBN: 9781844688364

Book preview

Introduction

The senior British generals of the Victorian era – men like Garnet Wolseley, Frederick Roberts, Charles Gordon and Herbert Kitchener – were heroes of their time. As soldiers, administrators and battlefield commanders they represented the empire at the height of its power. But they were a disparate, sometimes fractious group of men. They exhibited many of the failings as well as the strengths of the British army of the nineteenth century. Now, when the Victorian period is being looked at more critically than before, the moment is right to reassess them as individuals and as military leaders. For this study, a group of military historians has come together to explore the personalities and the careers of a number of leading commanders. The contributors consider how they met the challenges created by the low-intensity colonial conflicts they faced. They assess how they coped with the emerging industrial military technologies of their age, such as smokeless powder, magazine breech-loading rifles, breech-loading rifled artillery and the machine-gun that heralded a new age in the history of warfare and required considerations of new doctrinal application.

Throughout the emphasis is on the leadership skills these men exhibited, and on their style of command. Key campaigns in their careers are analysed in detail, to show clearly the personal qualities that brought them to prominence and to illustrate the range of colonial wars in which they took part. This balanced reconsideration of these eminent military men gives a fascinating insight into their careers, into the British army of their day and into a now-remote period when Britain was a world power and the army the effective spade that ploughed the fertile field of imperial expansion.

The goal of this study is to illustrate each personality within the broader spectrum of the social and political environment of the late Victorian period, utilising the chronological parameters of the reforms of Edward Cardwell as Secretary State for War between 1868 and 1874 and the Second South African (Anglo-Boer) War of 1899 to 1902. Apart from Wolseley, Roberts, Kitchener and Gordon, therefore, the other generals considered are three of Wolseley’s associates – Redvers Buller, George Colley and Evelyn Wood – and the unfortunate Lord Chelmsford. By continental standards, the British army was a small one, the largest number of men put into the field between the end of the Crimean War in 1856 and the opening of the South African War in 1899 being the 35,000 men directed by Wolseley in the occupation of Egypt in 1882. Even at the height of the South African War, Britain fielded only 450,000 men. This did not mean that considerable professional demands were not being made upon them. For one thing, as the military theorist of ‘small wars’, Charles Callwell, suggested, such campaigns required the conquest of nature as much as the conquest of indigenous opponents.¹ Having needed to cross 600 miles of Canadian wilderness before the lakes froze during his Red River expedition in 1870, it was understandable that, confronted with the need to complete operations in Asante in 1873–74 before the climate took its toll of his European troops, Wolseley wrote ‘I always seem to be condemned to command in expeditions which must be accomplished before a certain season of the year begins.’² These considerations of terrain and climate are clear in Steven Corvi’s account of Wolseley’s campaigns. In advancing over 400 miles from the Red Sea coast to Magdala in Abyssinia in 1867–68 Sir Robert Napier’s expeditionary force of 13,000 men required the logistic support of 14,500 followers and 36,000 draught animals. Even the small Duffla expedition on the heavily forested north-eastern frontier of India in 1874–75 needed 1,200 coolies while, in Zululand in 1879, it was painfully difficult for Lord Chelmsford to assemble the 977 wagons, 10,023 oxen, 803 horses and 398 mules he utilised to support his columns and all but impossible to make more than 10 miles a day. Indeed, Wolseley was to note that, when fully deployed on the march, Chelmsford’s baggage train was 3 or 4 miles longer than it could actually travel in a day.³

Railways could help in certain circumstances, as at Suakin in 1885 and in the reconquest of the Sudan in 1896–98. Indeed, as Keith Surridge reminds us, G W Steevens, the military correspondent of the Daily Mail aptly described the Sudan Military Railway as ‘the deadliest weapon … ever used against Mahdism’,⁴ the 230 miles of single track across the desert from Wadi Halfa to Abu Hamed shortening the journey time from 24 hours by camel and steamer to but 18 hours. On the other hand, as in the South African War, dependence upon the relatively few railways could limit strategic options and, in advancing upon the capital of the Orange Free State at Bloemfontein, Lord Roberts was forced to leave the highly vulnerable line of the railway to fall back upon oxen, horses and mules, only for the Boers to almost wreck his efforts by stampeding over 3,000 of his oxen at Waterval Drift in February 1900.

In terms of the indigenous opponents, however, the sheer variety encountered was itself extraordinary, ranging from European-trained opponents such as the Egyptian army in 1882 to disciplined native armies such as the Zulu, fanatics like the Dervishes of the Sudan, or, almost in a category of their own, mounted Boers armed with modern weapons. Of course, even primitive native opponents could defeat a trained modern army, as the Zulu proved at Isandlwana in 1879, but in many respects, of course, it must be acknowledged that none of the leading Victorian commanders faced a truly modern opponent with the exception of the Boers and it was against the Boers that Buller and Colley failed, and Roberts and Kitchener faced their greatest challenge. As Major General the Hon Neville Lyttelton observed of commanding the 4th (Light) Brigade at Colenso in December 1899, following his experience as a brigade commander in the Sudan a year earlier: ‘In the first [Omdurman] 50,000 fanatics streamed across the open regardless of cover to certain death, while at Colenso I never saw a Boer all day till the battle was over, and it was our men who were the victims.’⁵ Indeed, whereas the army had lost over 100 men killed or died of wounds in a single action only twice between 1857 and 1899 – at Isandlwana in January 1879 and at Maiwand in Afghanistan in July 1880 – those killed or died of wounds between 28 November 1899 and 24 January 1900 totalled 102 at the Modder River, 205 at Magersfontein, 171 at Colenso, 348 (over two days) at Paardeburg and 383 at Spion Kop. As John Laband indicates, Chelmsford was resistant to changing orthodox military methods in Zululand, when they had appeared to work satisfactorily in the Ninth Kaffir (Cape Frontier) War of 1877–78 but, as both André Wessels and Keith Surridge show, Roberts and Kitchener were prepared to adapt new methods to defeat the Boers, albeit what became known as ‘methods of barbarism’. In a sense, however, these were not so different from the ‘total war’ that both Stephen Manning and Stephen Miller suggest Wood and Buller waged against the Zulu while neither Roberts nor Kitchener had displayed any squeamishness in Afghanistan or the Sudan. As Ian Beckett indicates, Colley, too, had little regard for his opponents, be they Afghans or Boers, and Wolseley was as prejudiced as any of his contemporaries when it came to native opponents. Indeed, as Gerald Herman suggests, perhaps only Gordon truly had any real feeling for indigenous peoples.

Apart from nature and indigenous opponents, British commanders certainly had to contend with politicians with the increasing extension of the submarine telegraph cable through the 1870s and 1880s rendering them liable to the vagaries of political indecision in London, one general officer noting of Wolseley’s failure to save Gordon in 1884–85 that ‘it is ungenerous to forget that nowadays military methods are too often the slaves of political expediency’.⁶ In any case, commanders increasingly needed to exercise both military and political judgement, Wolseley playing the game astutely while, as Wessels notes, Frederick Roberts learned the hard way, erring in issuing a proclamation in December 1878 suggesting the annexation of the Kurram valley and then mishandling the summary executions in Kabul in January 1880 of those suspected of complicity in the massacre of the British mission of Louis Cavagnari. By the time of the South African War, however, Roberts was a practised exponent of political skills to the extent that he and Kitchener, as Surridge shows, seized effective control of policy, the debt the government owed them in securing its political survival after the exigencies of ‘Black Week’ also enabling them to dictate the eventual political settlement. As Beckett and Manning demonstrate, Colley and Wood were both bedevilled by the contradictory and uncertain policy of the Gladstone administration during the Anglo-Transvaal War of 1880–81. Equally, the culpability of Gladstone’s government in the failure to reach Khartoum in time to save Gordon is clear from Corvi’s account of Wolseley, albeit that, as Herman shows, throughout his career, Gordon was a dangerously loose cannon so far as politicians and even his fellow soldiers were concerned. Furthermore, Laband shows the poor civil-military relationship to which Chelmsford contributed in the conduct of policy in Zululand and Miller the difficulties under which Buller laboured as the Conservative Secretary of State for War, Lord Lansdowne, undermined his command in the South African War.

Political considerations intruded largely due to the growing recognition that there was a need to take account of public opinion in an age of popular journalism. Thus, when Lieutenant General Sir Edward Selby Smyth, who had previously served at the Cape, offered his services in the Zulu War, the Secretary of State for War immediately rejected the appointment of a soldier who was ‘hardly well enough known’ to take on the job of reversing Isandlwana.⁷ Similarly, the feeble Lieutenant General the Hon Sir Leicester Smyth, sent to command at the Cape after the Zulu War was safely over and no new crises were anticipated, was pointedly instructed not to interfere with George Colley in Natal in 1880; ignored when Evelyn Wood was sent out to be Colley’s deputy in February 1881; passed over when Colley was killed at Majuba later that month, at which time the public’s new hero, Roberts, was sent out to take command; and again overlooked when Sir Charles Warren was appointed to command the expedition to Bechuanaland in October 1884.

Most commanders were hostile to the press, Kitchener famously having supposed to have swept out of his tent past the assembled correspondents on one occasion in the Sudan exclaiming, ‘Get out of my way, you drunken swabs!’⁸ As Surridge points out, Kitchener’s relations with the ubiquitous ‘specials’ remained poor and it was only the intervention of the government that compelled him to allow correspondents south of Assouan during the campaign. Again, as Wessels reminds us, during the Second Afghan War, Roberts had Maurice Macpherson of the Standard removed from the Kurram Field Force for eluding press controls and, in South Africa, he and Kitchener imposed tight regulations in comparison to the somewhat lazy approach of Redvers Buller.

If commanders faced a range of external pressures, there were also internally generated difficulties in terms of the generally casual attitude towards the emergence of a general staff. In part, the persistence of this tendency derived from the older conflict between the relative importance accorded ‘character’ and intellect in the army. It can be noted that one of Wolseley’s leading adherents, Frederick Maurice, maintained in 1872 that the British officer ‘hates … literary work even in the form of writing letters’, while another partial associate of Wolseley, Sir John Ardagh, was contemptuous of what he perceived to be the idea that ‘the athletic duffer, who is useful in a football team, must necessarily be a better soldier than the man who comes first in any examination’.⁹ Certainly, courage was routinely expected of a Victorian commander. Buller, Roberts and Wood had all won the VC. Wolseley lost the sight of his right eye in the Crimea – as Wessels notes, Roberts also had no sight in his right eye following an attack of brain fever in his youth – and, as Manning tells us, Wood was frequently wounded as well as plagued by an extraordinary range of illnesses and freak accidents.

In reality, matters were changing for as Brian Bond has noted, while the army ‘succeeded to a remarkable degree in preserving an essentially eighteenth-century mode of life and in excluding all but a handful of officers from the lower-middle and working classes’, it also ‘reduced the influence of wealth and social position and substituted objective educational tests for entry and a regularised system for professional advancement’.¹⁰ As Corvi, Wessels and Manning all demonstrate, Wolseley, Roberts and Wood were all highly professional and reform-minded, though Roberts in a somewhat conservative fashion. Certainly, the Staff College gradually came to be sufficiently accepted to begin to provide real intellectual foundation for tactical and logistical reform. Wolseley, for example, favoured Staff College graduates in all his campaigns. A total of 34 PSCs (Passed Staff College) served in Egypt in 1882, including 14 in the headquarters and 5 out of 7 in the intelligence section; 20 on the Gordon Relief Expedition in 1884–85, including 6 in the headquarters and 7 on lines of communication; and no less than 80 PSCs were appointed to the staff or dispatched on special service to South Africa in 1899, 33 being named to the staff of the army corps and the first three divisions. Wolseley, however, did tend to employ larger staffs than many of his contemporaries.¹¹ In Zululand, for example, though actually dedicated to his profession, as Laband indicates, Chelmsford had just 14 individuals on his headquarters staff for a force of almost 18,000 men, although each of the 5 columns employed also had about 7 staff officers. Nor did Chelmsford employ any intelligence staff, utilising only one civilian in an intelligence capacity. Wolseley by contrast immediately allocated Major General the Hon Henry Clifford nine assistants on the lines of communication and placed Frederick Maurice in charge of intelligence. There were a further seventeen officers on Wolseley’s personal and headquarters staffs for a substantially reduced establishment of troops.¹² Compared to continental standards, of course, all British staffs remained small and it must be recognised that much of the army’s operational leadership derived from individual skill and bravado rather than a clear-cut application of doctrine on the battlefield. In one sense, however, this might have actually been preferable to too theoretical a military knowledge since arguably, as recounted by Laband and Beckett, some of the greatest failures of leadership were those of able administrators such as Chelmsford at Isandlwana and Colley at Majuba. Inevitably perhaps, luck also had something to do with it. In the end Wolseley’s luck ran out in the Sudan in 1884–85, while, as Manning shows, Wood’s reputation as a successful field commander owed much to the memory of his near catastrophic defeat by the Zulu at Hlobane in March 1879 being conveniently erased by the great victory at Khambula the following day. As Wessels makes clear, Roberts was also an exceedingly lucky general.

The personalised approach to command and leadership also fuelled the rivalry of the so-called ‘rings’ around commanders. The struggle ranged widely over issues of imperial strategy and military reform, though neither particular issues nor the positions assumed by individuals with respect to them were necessarily constant as the factions attempted to manoeuvre adherents into particular commands. As Corvi demonstrates, Wolseley’s ‘Ashanti Ring’, known to some as the ‘Mutual Admiration Society’, was the best known, and the essays by Beckett, Manning and Miller all illustrate the centrality of the ‘ring’ to the careers of Colley, Wood and Buller. Roberts, too, however, had his adherents as, subsequently, did Kitchener, Wessels and Surridge both illustrating the operation of their groups in India and the Sudan respectively. Moreover, the Duke of Cambridge as the army’s Commander in Chief from 1856 to 1895 was equally determined to have his own way with regard to appointments, favouring seniority over ‘selection’ even after the establishment of a selection board in 1891 to enforce promotion by selection. To some extent, Chelmsford as one of the ‘old school’ typified those favoured by Cambridge, although, as Laband shows, Chelmsford’s manifold failures ultimately cost him the Duke’s support. Gordon, of course, was too much of a maverick to belong to any particular group. There was often an element of vindictiveness in the working of the rings but in the criticism of them there was equally a large measure of resentment on the part of those excluded from campaigns and the glory and honour that might derive from them.

Of course, the constant employment of a relatively small number of officers did restrict the development of others, Wolseley in particular becoming something of a prisoner of the initial success of his ring in feeling it desirable to employ the same men lest his rejection of them might reflect adversely on his earlier choice. Indeed, Wolseley continued to employ the same men despite his own increasing criticism of their failings. Wood, for example, was never forgiven for signing the peace treaty with the Boers after Colley’s death at Majuba in February 1881, while Henry Brackenbury’s advocacy of the creation of a general staff was regarded by Wolseley as evidence of Brackenbury’s own ambition. Certainly, as the prominent members of Wolseley’s ring became more senior, their willingness to work together was subordinated to their own ambitions, even Buller, as Miller shows, being regarded with suspicion by Wolseley for his apparent willingness to accept the office of Commander in Chief from the Liberal government ahead of Wolseley in 1895, the subsequent change of government granting Wolseley his long-sought prize. Individuals manoeuvring for preferment was hardly unusual, however, Buller noting after visiting Roberts in Pretoria in July 1900: ‘I found Roberts sitting in one building with his Hindu staff, Kitchener in another with his Egyptian staff, and [Lieutenant General Sir Thomas] Kelly-Kenny in a third with an English staff, all pulling against each other.’¹³

Yet, while Wolseley’s command system, was highly personalised, he did plan carefully in advance, in contrast to Roberts who was an indifferent organiser. Wolseley relied fairly heavily on his chiefs of staff for routine administration but they were not intended to share in decision-making. Buller, for example, who acted in this capacity on the Gordon Relief Expedition, saw Wolseley for only eight hours in two months once Wolseley went forward to Wadi Halfa in December 1884, leaving Buller 360 miles behind at Korti.¹⁴ Miller illustrates the problems that resulted. Generally, Wolseley allowed little latitude to his subordinates in field command, the problem in the Sudan being that of scale. Wolseley was not allowed as far forward as he would have liked by the government, being instructed to go no further than Korti, and the sheer distances involved – it was 1,600 miles from Cairo to Khartoum – proved too great for personal control to be exercised. Moreover, the very way Wolseley operated had militated against the development of initiative in his subordinates and, without him, they often floundered. The problem was that improvisation was no substitute for a proper general staff and Wolseley’s capacity to manage affairs decreased in proportion to the growth in the scale of operations.

Of course, in such a personalised system, personality itself also counted. Wolseley was admired rather than liked. He certainly never had the same rapport with the rank and file as Buller, Roberts or even Chelmsford, which is clearly evident in the essays by Miller, Wessels and Laband. Kitchener was very much a loner and, as Surridge suggests, a man of great insecurities, while, as Beckett shows, Colley also tended towards somewhat empty rhetoric in his dealings with those under his command. Despite his personal vanity, Wood, as Manning illustrates, was always prepared in his later training role to allow his subordinates the opportunity to think seriously about their profession but, as Herman suggests, Gordon was the most charismatic as well as arguably the most enigmatic. Though so very different one from another, however, all these men shared a devotion to their chosen profession and a determination to succeed in it. In the process they contributed immeasurably to the story of the late Victorian army.

Chapter 1

Garnet Wolseley

Steven J Corvi

‘I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General’ was the line from the famous Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, The Pirates of Penzance (1879). Some can draw the similarities between the Gilbert and Sullivan’s character Major General Stanley and Garnet Wolseley, who also permeated Victorian popular culture and slang with the then contemporary term ‘All Sir Garnet’, meaning everything is in good order. The Victorian Imperial period was dominated by two major military figures, Wolseley and Roberts. Where Roberts was the hero in the field, Wolseley was more of the reforming intellectual general. This of course does not discount Wolseley’s vast experience in Victorian campaigns: Crimea, China, Canada, Asante, Egypt and the Sudan. His productive association with Edward Cardwell (Secretary of State for War, 1868–74) proved to be an important step in producing a more professional and highly trained British army. Wolseley said of Cardwell, ‘no British war minister ever responded more readily to demands made upon him by his military advisers’.¹ Wolseley was considered the most influential reforming soldier of the Victorian age, with his firm support of Cardwell’s reforms and his practical battlefield experiences, which left an indelible mark on the British army.

Garnet Wolseley was born on 4 June 1833 in Dublin. He was one of seven children, which included three brothers (Richard, Frederick and George) and three sisters (Matilda, Frances and Caroline). Garnet’s father died when he was only 7 years old and this profoundly affected his life. The family was forced to struggle on a meagre army pension. This poverty had an obvious immediate impact on Garnet’s life and it was also to cause hardship in his then future army career. Garnet Wolseley was forced by circumstances to excel by sheer ability and competency. Since he was not afforded a public-school education, his mother and then, later, tutors educated him. He was forced at 14 to leave school and become a land surveyor in a Dublin office. Garnet considered a life in the Protestant clergy, but could not afford the education to pursue such a career. He then turned to the army and sought commission via a nomination from the Commander in Chief, the Duke of Wellington. He was at first ignored, but finally was gazetted an ensign in the 12th Foot in 1852.

Chronology

Appointed CB, 1870; KCMG, 1870; KCB, 1874; GCMG, 1874; GCB, 1880; KP, 1885

The army that Wolseley was commissioned into was one that had seemingly declined since the Napoleonic Wars, though some reforms were underway by the late 1840s and early 1850s. The conditions of enlisted service remained substandard, however, and the ‘army life’ only attracted the man without means. Wellington referred to his army as the ‘scum of the earth’. This scum was what Wolseley would inherit and later greatly improve. Caught at a moment of transition, the army would be severely tested in the Crimea and forced to reform further under more modern lines. This was a fortuitous time for Wolseley to enter the army and be a formative edifice for reform.²

Garnet’s career began with active duty in the Second Burma War and he was badly wounded at Kyault Azein, leading an attack on a stronghold. This valorous act earned him a mention in dispatches and a promotion. Wolseley commented in his published biography, ‘I have never experienced the same unalloyed and elevating satisfaction, or known again the joy I then felt as I ran for the enemy’s stockade …’.³ He received, however, a fierce leg wound, which would take him out of action in Burma. He luckily recovered quickly, for he could have just have easily died from this wound or at least have lost his leg, which would have effectively ended his active military career. Wolseley was shipped home to convalesce, and this was just in time for the Crimean War.⁴

Garnet had transferred to the 90th Perthshire Light Infantry (later the Cameronians) in February 1854. Wolseley arrived after the major battles of the war, Alma, Balaclava and Inkerman, had been bungled by Lord Raglan: ‘The first object that greeted Wolseley’s eyes as he stepped out of the boat on to the inhospitable shores of the Crimea, was a firelock which lay half in and half out of the water.’⁵ This was an eerie precursor to the later siege of Sebastopol, the incompetent handling of troops and the use of archaic weapon technology by Wolseley’s regiment. Lieutenant Wolseley volunteered for dangerous duty with the Royal Engineers, which was the best opportunity for action and promotion. During his service with them in the trenches, he started a friendship with young Charles Gordon, whom he would later lead an expedition to save during Gordon’s ill-fated defence of Khartoum (1884–85). He served in ‘Gordon’s Battery’ on 4 January 1855, which inculcated a lasting relationship and earned him a promotion to Captain for his front-line duty.⁶ Wolseley was badly wounded while working on a sap trench with two other Sergeant Sappers, who were killed by the artillery fire. He slowly convalesced at a hospital near Balaclava. He stayed in the Crimea until the Peace of Paris was signed in April 1856.

The origins of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 had deep roots, but it stemmed from the basic principle that the British were trying to convert the Muslim and Hindu soldiers to Christianity. Rumours were circulated that cartridges were greased with beef and pork fat and that the powdered bones of pigs and cows were added to the ration flour, which of course offended both Muslim and Hindus alike serving in native Sepoy regiments. The Mutiny began in Meerut and spread rapidly across British military installations from Agra, Lucknow and the infamous Cawnpore. Wolseley participated in the relief of Lucknow and garnered admiration for his composure under fire in a few engagements. This was to mark Wolseley’s last service as a regimental officer, for he was to serve as a staff officer or commander on future campaigns. He was also promoted to Brevet Major in 1858 and served as Quartermaster General to Major General Sir Hope Grant. At the conclusion of the Indian mutiny campaign, Wolseley was promoted to Brevet Lieutenant Colonel, which made him the youngest colonel in the British army, and the most rapidly promoted officer of this time period.⁷

Wolseley was called upon for an expedition to China, which was initiated to ratify the Treaty of Tientsin that had been agreed after the siege of Canton in June of 1858. Sir Hope Grant commanded the expedition and Wolseley again served on his staff as Quartermaster General. The campaign was a joint venture between British and French forces, focussing on the Taku forts, which fell after a brief engagement. Wolseley was engrossed in logistical planning of the campaign and especially the aftermath.⁸ The peace treaty was finally signed in 1861, but there was another threat that was rising, the Taiping Rebellion, later crushed by Wolseley’s friend Charles Gordon.⁹

After China, Garnet took eighteen months’ leave, and took care of family affairs. He was then ordered to Canada by the War Office and given the duty of Assistant Quartermaster General. Wolseley reached Halifax on 5 January 1862. The American Civil War was raging in the United States and this interested Wolseley very much, especially in the prosecution of a modern industrialised war on such a large scale. Wolseley used his time wisely and took two months’ leave to observe the Confederate armies close up. He had a letter of introduction and travelled with The Times correspondent Frank Lawley, meeting up with the Confederate army at Fredericksburg. Wolseley visited Robert E Lee’s headquarters at Winchester, where he met Lee himself, and his two Corps commanders, ‘Stonewall’ Jackson and Longstreet. This made quite the impression on the young Colonel. He wrote an article for Blackwood’s Magazine about his visit to Lee’s army. This led to later biographical works on Union General William Sherman and Confederate General Nathan Forest. He learned many valuable lessons during his visit of American Civil War battles, which was the only major industrialised war that he witnessed in person. However, Garnet mistakenly still held his belief in the use of cavalry in large-scale operations on Civil War battlefields, a stalwart concept in the arme blanche school that prevailed in many quarters until the First World War.¹⁰ Wolseley himself later switched his ideas on cavalry and derived an immensely more practical idea on the use of horses on the modern battlefield, which was more in line with Havelock and Denison’s theories¹¹ on mounted infantry.¹² There was a scare that the Union forces would invade Canada after they defeated the Confederate forces. This was quickly dispelled when it was realised this was not the intention of the North.

Wolseley wrote the first edition of his The Soldiers Pocket Book for Field Service during his time in Canada, a work that was greatly improved by his new wife’s grammatical input, Wolseley having married Louisa Erskine in 1867. Wolseley was able to put his theories to practical work when he was given command of the Red River expedition on 5 April 1870. In November 1869 French-Canadian residents rose up in rebellion to British rule and the Hudson Bay Company in Fort Garry, Manitoba under the leadership of Louis Riel. This afforded Wolseley his first independent command. He commanded the British regular force of the 1st Battalion, 60th Rifles and a battery of Royal Field Artillery and the Canadian Militia, which consisted of the 1st Ontario Rifles and 2nd Quebec Rifles. The expedition was meticulously planned and it succeeded with the bloodless capitulation of Riel. This expedition was the origin of the first ‘Wolseley Ring’,¹³ which was to be a powerful clique in the late Victorian army. Initially, it included Colonel John McNeill, Captain Redvers Buller, Lieutenant William Butler and Lieutenant Hugh McCalmont. Wolseley would widen his circle to other officers such as Henry Brackenbury, George Colley, Frederick Maurice and Evelyn Wood in the Asante campaign, which more properly marked the real beginning of the ‘Wolseley Ring’ and its arguably undue influence on the late Victorian army.

Returning to England to become Assistant Adjutant General at Horse Guards under the Crimean veteran Adjutant General Sir Richard Airey, Wolseley’s arrival coincided with the reform-oriented administration of the Liberal Secretary of State for War, Edward Cardwell. Cardwell faced the monumental task of improving the efficiency, organisation and social strata of the army, while simultaneously reducing the overall budget. Wolseley’s position was potentially influential