Victoria's Generals

by Steven J Corvi

  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.

  Chapter 8 Herbert Kitchener

  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.

  4
2. 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.