Victoria's Generals

by Steven J Corvi

  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.

  Chapter 5 Lord Chelmsford

  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 1
264 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 Head
men. 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.