Chapter 8
Herbert Kitchener
Keith Surridge
Horatio Herbert Kitchener was the last of Queen Victoria’s most notable generals. By the time of her death on 22 January 1901 Kitchener, her Commander in Chief in South Africa since November 1900, in succession to Lord Roberts, faced the daunting task of ending the guerrilla war launched by the Boers months earlier. In her last letter to Kitchener she expressed her ‘entire confidence’ in him to finish the conflict, a view shared by many Britons at the time. Kitchener, of course, would conclude successfully the South African War and reap further acclaim. Indeed, his reputation would be such that, when war broke out in 1914, his presence in the government would be considered vital to the well-being of both nation and empire.1
The two wars that made Kitchener’s reputation were very different in character and required contrasting methods of leadership. Kitchener’s conquest of the Sudan between 1896 and 1898 was decided, ultimately, by an open battle, where British technological superiority proved decisive. In South Africa between 1900 and 1902, Kitchener spent two years formulating various schemes to defeat an elusive foe. This war was not only about fighting: it also meant making war on the Boer civilian population, most of whom supported the guerrillas with inspiration, food and intelligence. To some in Britain this amounted to using ‘methods of barbarism’ and constituted a stain on the character and nature of British imperialism. Nevertheless, with victory achieved Kitchener became the personification of the ruthlessness needed to sustain the empire at a time of growing international crisis and national decline. Kitchener’s determination, his supposed machine-like efficiency and ability to get the job done, would provide anxious Britons, wondering what the post-Victorian era would bring, with a degree of certainty that few others could supply.2
Kitchener was born in Ireland on 24 June 1850, his father an eccentric retired lieutenant colonel. In 1864, owing to his mother’s tuberculosis, the family moved to Switzerland for the air, but she died soon after arriving, a blow that shook the young Kitchener and saw him retreat into shyness and introspection. Although his education was mostly informal, his stay in Switzerland helped him acquire fluency in French and revealed an aptitude for languages. He later added Arabic to his repertoire. By the time Kitchener joined the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in February 1868, he was a tall (6ft 2in or 1.85m), taciturn individual, not given to making friends easily. He was commissioned as lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 4 January 1871, having already served in a French ambulance unit during the Franco-Prussian War. In 1874, after spells at Aldershot and Chatham, Kitchener was seconded to the Palestine Exploration Fund as a surveyor and in 1878 worked in Cyprus following its annexation by Britain.
Chronology
24 June 1850
Horatio Herbert Kitchener born at Gunsborough Villa, Co. Kerry Educated privately and at Chateau du Grand Clos, Renaz (Switzerland), and at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich
4 January 1871
Commissioned Lieutenant, Royal Engineers
Easter 1873
Appointed ADC to Brigadier General Greaves
2 November 1874
Seconded to Palestine Exploration Fund
3 September 1878
Seconded to Foreign Office and appointed to survey Cyprus
26 June 1879
Military Vice Consul in Kastamonu, Anatolia
15 March 1880
Returned to Cyprus
2 July 1882
Joined British fleet that bombarded Alexandria and went ashore to gather intelligence
4 January 1883
Promoted Captain
21 February 1883
Appointed to Egyptian cavalry
March 1884–April 1885
Provided intelligence for Gordon Relief Expedition
8 October 1884
Promoted Brevet Major
15 June 1885
Promoted Brevet Lieutenant Colonel
June 1885
Resigned from Egyptian service
6 November 1885
Seconded to Foreign Office and appointed to Zanzibar Boundary Commission
September 1886
Appointed Governor General of Eastern Sudan and the Red Sea Littoral
11 April 1888
Promoted Brevet Colonel and appointed ADC to Queen Victoria
September 1888
Appointed Adjutant General of the Egyptian army
Early 1890
Appointed Inspector General of the Egyptian police
13 April 1892
Appointed Sirdar of the Egyptian army
1896–98
Sudan campaign
25 September 1896
Promoted Brevet Major General
2 September 1898
Battle of Omdurman
November 1898
Created Baron Kitchener of Khartoum and Aspall in the County of Suffolk
19 January 1899
Appointed Governor General of Sudan
18 December 1899
Appointed Chief of Staff to Lord Roberts in South Africa
23 December 1899
Promoted Substantive Lieutenant General
29 November 1900
Appointed C in C, South Africa
31 May 1902
Treaty of Vereeniging
1 June 1902
Promoted Brevet General
12 July 1902
Created Viscount Kitchener of Khartoum, and of Vaal in the Colony of the Transvaal, and of Aspall in the County of Suffolk
28 November 1902
Appointed C in C, India
10 September 1909
Promoted Field Marshal
20 June 1911
Appointed British Agent and Consul General in Egypt
17 June 1914
Created Earl Kitchener of Khartoum, and of Broome
5 August 1914
Appointed Secretary of State for War
5 June 1916
Drowned at sea with loss of HMS Hampshire
Appointed CMG, 1886; CB, 1889; KCMG, 1894; KCB, 1896; GCMG, 1901; OM, 1902; GCIE, 1908; GCSI, 1909; KP, 1911; KG, 1915
When trouble broke out in Egypt in 1882, Kitchener flouted official regulations by leaving the island and joining the force sent to bombard Alexandria. After Egypt’s conquest by Sir Garnet Wolseley, Kitchener transferred to the new, British-reformed Egyptian army in 1883 as captain. However, his knowledge of Arabic and his desire for action saw him appointed as Wolseley’s chief intelligence officer during the abortive Gordon relief expedition in 1884–85, during which he led a band of Arab irregulars in the Sudanese desert. This gave Kitchener valuable knowledge of the peoples and area, and he would also learn from Wolseley’s mistakes. Kitchener quickly resigned from the Egyptian service, but was soon appointed to the Zanzibar Boundary Commission in December 1885. The Governor Generalship of the Red Sea Littoral, the territory around the port of Suakin that Britain retained in the Sudan, soon followed and here Kitchener exercised military command for the first time. This, alongside the wound he received, enhanced Kitchener’s reputation further, particularly as he came to the attention of the Queen.
Not long after, in September 1888, Kitchener was made Adjutant General of the Egyptian army, a force now fully reformed and commanded by British officers. In 1889, it fought and routed the Sudanese Dervishes, the followers of the Mahdi – whose forces had captured Khartoum and killed Gordon four years earlier – at the battle of Toski, with Kitchener successfully commanding the cavalry. After a spell reforming the Egyptian police he was made Sirdar, or Commander in Chief, of the Egyptian army in April 1892 and began to prepare the army for the reconquest of the Sudan. In a campaign lasting two years that culminated in the victory at Omdurman in September 1898, his finest battlefield achievement, Kitchener avenged Gordon. Afterwards, he proceeded south along the Nile to confront a small French expedition under Captain Marchand that had trespassed onto Sudanese territory at Fashoda. There the French-speaking Kit
chener avoided confrontation and revealed deft diplomatic skills by persuading Marchand to leave the matter to the politicians. His role in the subsequent diplomatic defeat of France added to the laurels won at Omdurman.3
Promoted to Governor General of the Sudan in early 1899 he began the process of reconstruction and development. He was not destined to see it completed because in December he was ordered to accompany Lord Roberts to South Africa, where war had broken out with the Boer republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State in October.
Once the Boer republics had apparently been conquered, Roberts left in November 1900 to be succeeded by Kitchener as Commander in Chief. He successfully brought the war to an end following the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902, and then took over the Indian army. During his tenure he reformed the army and its administration, clashing with the viceroy, Lord Curzon, who resigned when he failed to stop Kitchener. Once he left India in 1909, Kitchener was made a field marshal but was at a loose end. Eventually, in 1911, he gained the post of British Agent and Consul General of Egypt and was on leave in Britain when war broke out in August 1914. Considered to be a figure too important to leave in an imperial backwater, Kitchener was persuaded to accept the vacant job of Secretary of State for War. By the time of his death in 1916, when he drowned after his ship was sunk by a mine on his way to Russia, Kitchener had achieved mixed results. He had, nevertheless, embodied Britain’s determination to win and remained popular with the British public.
Kitchener’s reputation as a commander was forged in the Sudan, but he was never a confident general, and being an engineer meant that he had not studied strategy and tactics fully. He owed his chance to Lord Cromer, who since 1883 had been the British Agent and Consul General, which meant, effectively, that he ruled Egypt. Cromer had followed Kitchener’s career with interest and when the Sirdar, Sir Francis Grenfell, was recalled by the British government Cromer immediately gave Kitchener his job. According to Cromer, Kitchener’s virtues were manifold but he particularly liked the fact ‘that he left as little as possible to chance’ and ‘did not think that extravagance was the necessary handmaid of efficiency’. Furthermore, Kitchener ‘suppressed with a firm hand any tendency towards waste and extravagance’.4 Indeed, when the campaign began Kitchener’s cheese-paring caused comment among his officers. Even so, the need for economies sometimes stretched Kitchener’s abilities and on one occasion, when he felt he was spreading his budget too thinly, he offered his resignation: ‘I must protest’, he wrote to Cromer, ‘against the manner in which I am being asked to make financial impossibilities possible and called for responsible estimates that cannot be more than approximate.’ The resignation was, of course, rescinded, but it revealed the sort of pressure Kitchener worked under in the Sudan.5
This was not the only anxiety that undermined Kitchener’s confidence. His appointment as Sirdar was not popular with the British army establishment in Egypt: their favourite was Colonel Josceline Wodehouse, with whom Kitchener had served at Toski in 1889. Kitchener was not liked because he shunned the mess and rarely mixed with wider British society, gaining him a reputation as aloof, gruff and boorish. Indeed, in 1890, Grenfell had reported that while Kitchener was ‘very capable’ and ‘clear-headed’, he was also ‘very ambitious’ and that ‘his rapid promotion had placed him in a somewhat difficult position. He is not popular, but has of late greatly improved in tact and manner and any defects in his character will in my opinion disappear as he gets on in the service.’6 Kitchener’s friendship with aristocratic patrons, particularly Lord Salisbury and his daughter-in-law Lady Cranborne, seemed to confirm that he was an officer on the make. Kitchener certainly needed high-ranking friends because he had few contacts within the British army’s hierarchy. The Egyptian army was not the responsibility of the War Office, but came within the remit of the Foreign Office, therefore within the purview of Salisbury, who was both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary.
Consequently, when the Sudan campaign was launched in 1896, Wolseley, then Commander in Chief of the British army, thought Kitchener too reckless, and wanted an officer from the British army to take command. Thankfully for Kitchener, Cromer and Salisbury vetoed this, but when Grenfell was appointed to command the British garrison in Egypt in 1897, Kitchener’s anxiety about being replaced grew immensely. His mood was not helped by his need for substantial British reinforcements in 1898 for the final leg of the advance. Already, Kitchener had been writing to Grenfell in obsequious tones in an attempt to soothe the latter’s apparent disappointment at not taking overall command of the expedition:
I should like to know if everything is going quite to your satisfaction and if there is anything I can do. Do we keep you sufficiently informed of the position and number of the troops? … I hope you will never imagine that I desire to work off my own bat and not loyally to serve under you, but in some things I do not see my way clearly. If you will place yourself in my position and tell me what you think I should do I will do my best to follow it. I feel the responsibility of my position to all officers and men under me [and] should be glad of advice from you.7
Following his victory at the battle of Atbara on 8 April 1898, the late arrival of congratulations from Wolseley and General Sir Evelyn Wood, the Adjutant General, only added to Kitchener’s gnawing fear about his place in the military hierarchy and his desire for acceptance.8
In certain respects he was right to be concerned. Some British officers had been told to report directly to the War Office. Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Charles à Court (later Repington) recalled that he had been ordered to keep Wolseley informed through his military secretary, Lord Erroll, or through his former colleagues at the Intelligence Department. Douglas Haig, who joined the Egyptian cavalry, was asked by Wood to keep him informed. Consequently, when British units arrived in the Sudan in early 1898, Kitchener’s suspicions grew exponentially: Brigadier General the Hon. Neville Lyttelton felt at first that Kitchener regarded him as ‘an emissary from the War Office sent to keep an eye on him’, although he was friendly enough later.9
Nevertheless, Kitchener need not have worried. In early 1898 Cromer made sure the War Office knew his views on the matter. In a letter sent to Salisbury that found its way into the papers of the Secretary of State for War, Lord Lansdowne, Cromer stated bluntly that ‘you will sooner or later hear some military mutterings due to jealousy of Kitchener … I have not a shadow of a doubt that the decision to keep Kitchener in command is wise’. And so he remained in command.10
Victoria's Generals Page 28
