Ernest Marsh Lloyd

“ To mark the change, the duke was required in Sept. 1871 to remove from the Horse Guards to Pall Mall. He regarded this as a blow not only to his own dignity but to the rights of the crown, and the Queen intervened on his behalf; but he had to give way.
The reconstruction of the war office was followed by the adoption of short service, the formation of an army reserve, the linking of battalions, and their localisation. The purchase of commissions was abolished, and seniority tempered by selection became the principle of promotion. The duke was opposed to all these innovations. ”

“ But his desire of personal distinction caused him many mortifications. 'If I call myself a strategist, I ought to behave as such,' he had remarked some years before; and in that spirit, as soon as Wolseley arrived at Alexandria, Hamley submitted a plan of operations based on a landing in Aboukir Bay. In spite of objections made to it at the time, he was led to believe that it was going to be acted upon when Wolseley put to sea with the first division on the 19th. ”

“ The centre column had encamped under the hill so named, and Chelmsford, learning that his scouting troops, ten miles ahead, were in need of support, joined them on that morning with more than half his force, leaving six companies of the 24th with two guns and some native troops to guard the camp. The cavalry vedettes were to be far advanced, but the infantry outposts to be drawn in closer, and the force was to act on the defensive if attacked. At mid-day this camp-guard was suddenly attacked, enveloped and annihilated by a body of 10,000 Zulus. Of the six companies only three men escaped ”

“ Advancing through the woods the French turned his left, captured his principal battery, and forced him to retreat. But meanwhile three Hanoverian battalions, which had been sent round the woods to guard the left, struck unexpectedly upon the right flank of the French columns, and caused so much confusion that at one time Estrées also gave orders for retreat. Hence there was no pursuit, and the duke's army retired in good order. He had lost only twelve hundred men, but he made no further attempt to check the French progress. ”

“ Having placed the heavy brigade on the slope of the heights in question, which were crowned by the captured redoubts, and having drawn up the light brigade across the valley to the north of them, Lucan was waiting for the approach of the infantry when a fresh order was brought to him: 'Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop of horse artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. ”

“ On other points the duke and Pitt were opposed. Hanover was threatened with invasion owing to its connection with England, and the king wished the duke to command the army of observation formed to cover it. Pitt was anti-Hanoverian, and from his connection with Leicester House he was indisposed to swell the duke's army. No British troops and not much money could be obtained for the defence of Hanover. The king disliked Pitt and Temple, and was determined to get rid of them, and the duke unwisely persuaded his father to take this step before he himself left England. ”

“ A more serious business claimed attention. The Zulu king, Cetywayo, had an army of 40,000 men, well trained, well armed, and eager to 'wash their spears.' He was a standing menace to Natal and the Transvaal, as Sir Garnet (now Lord) Wolseley had pointed out three years before. It was difficult to guard a frontier of 200 miles against so mobile an enemy, and the high commissioner. ”

“ Few men had seen so much of modern warfare on a large scale as Charles Brackenbury, and no one did more to spread sound ideas in England about the tactical changes demanded by the changes in weapons. He was a frequent contributor to the ‘Times,’ and often lectured at the United Service Institution. ”

“ A week later news came that the French army under Marshal Saxe had invested Tournay, and on the 30th the allied army advanced to raise the siege. Its nominal strength was over fifty thousand men, its effective strength about forty-three thousand. On 9 May, having taken ten days to march less than fifty miles, it found the French army drawn up in its front at Fontenoy, four miles east of Tournay. On the day before the duke had written: ‘I cannot bring myself to believe the enemy will wait for us. ”

“ But the whole of the British force could not reach South Africa before December, so that the Boers had the advantage of the initiative.
They declared war on 11 Oct., and invaded Natal with 23,000 men. When Buller arrived at Cape Town at the end of the month, he learnt that Sir George White not only had been unable to drive them back but was shut up in Ladysmith. The situation was of the gravest, and Buller decided to sacrifice the organisation of his army corps, to send most of the regiments on to Natal as the transports came in, and to go there himself. ”

“ The guns of Meyer's force opened fire on the camp at daybreak from Talana hill, three miles to the east of it. Symons led out his troops and assailed this hill with three battalions. By 1.30 P.M. it was most gallantly stormed, but Symons was mortally wounded by a bullet in the stomach in the course of the advance. Two days afterwards the British force retired on Ladysmith, but Symons, with other wounded men, had to be left at Dundee, and he died there on the 23rd. He was buried on the 24th in the church of England burial-ground, with marks of respect from the Boers. ”

“ But Whitelocke had shown himself incompetent throughout; infirm of purpose and wanting in resource, prone to lean on others, yet jealous of his own authority. He left a rearguard of sixteen hundred men idle, on the east of the Chuello, during the assault, and he himself remained passive all day, and went back to his headquarters to dine and sleep, without making any serious attempt to learn what had happened to his columns on the right. ”

“ He became responsible to parliament for the whole military administration; but the general commanding in chief, as representing the crown, enjoyed some independence in matters of discipline and command, appointments and promotions. The abolition of the board of ordnance brought the artillery and engineers under his authority, and the duke was made colonel of these two corps on 10 May 1861. The amalgamation (of which he was a strong advocate) of the European troops of the East India Company with the army of the crown in 1862 gave him general control of troops serving in India. ”

“ Raglan said to him, when they met, 'You have lost the light brigade!' and stated in his despatch of the 28th that 'from some misconception of the instruction to advance the lieutenant-general considered that he was bound to attack at all hazards.' Lucan remonstrated against this censure in a letter of 30 Nov., which he declined to withdraw, and in forwarding that letter to the secretary of state, Raglan found fault also with the execution of the orders which Lucan supposed himself to have received. ”

“ In January 1898 lie went to Egypt, with the local rank of major-general, to command the British brigade in the advance up the Nile for the recovery of Khartoum. He brought it into such condition that it was able to march 140 miles in a week. On 8 April the Anglo-Egyptian army under Sir Herbert Kitchener attacked the Mahdist forces under Mahmoud in their intrenched camp on the Atbara. The British brigade was on the left. Gatacre was one of the first men to reach the zariba, and would have been speared if his orderly had not bayoneted his aissailant. ”

“ On 8 April, ‘Colonel Peddie, leaving the camp at midnight with four companies of the regiment and the first provisional battalion, ascended the Izolo Berg; and having early on the morning of the 9th divided his forces into two columns, and penetrated the fastnesses of the Isidengi, the Kaffirs, seeing they were attacked on every point, fled in the utmost dismay, and several thousand head of cattle were the reward of this movement’ (Records of the 72nd Regiment, privately printed in 1886, p. 39) . ”

“ In October 1898 he was offered and accepted the command of the troops in South Africa, vacant by the death of General Goodenough. It was not a happy choice at such a time, for he was predisposed to sympathise with people who came in collision with England. He landed at Cape Town on 30 Nov., and in the absence of Sir Alfred Milner he was sworn in as high commissioner. He found himself in 'the central stormspot of the world,' having received no directions to guide him on leaving England. ”

“ Pitt acted with them, and in the debate on the regency bill he had gone so far as to suggest that, if the duke were to become sole regent, his ambition ‘might excite him to think less of protecting than of wearing the crown’ (Stanhope, iv. 13) . But the duke took Pitt's measure sufficiently to advise Fox, at the end of 1754, not to place himself in opposition to him by accepting a seat in the cabinet. ‘I don't know him, but by what you tell me Pitt is, what is scarce, he is a man’ (Walpole, George II, i. 363) . ”

“ During the next few years much was done to fit the army for war: supply and transport were organised and barracks improved; but the secretary of state found that the military hierarchy hindered his personal consultation of experts.
In June 1888 a very strong commission was appointed, with Lord Hartington (afterwards duke of Devonshire) [q. v. Suppl. II] as chairman, to inquire into naval and military administration; and in May 1890 they recommended that the office of commander-in-chief should be abolished when the duke ceased to hold it, and that there should be a chief of the staff. ”

“ On 9 April 1757 the duke set out for Germany, and joined his army at Bielefeld. It numbered about forty thousand men—mainly Hanoverians, Hessians, and Brunswickers—and held the line of the Lippe hills, west of the Weser. Frederick the Great, now England's ally, had strongly urged that the army should advance towards the Rhine to support his fortress of Wesel; but the Hanoverian ministers, by whose advice the duke was to be guided, insisted that it should confine itself to the defence of the electorate. ”

“ On his return from Chitral Gatacre went to England for three months in the winter of 1895-6. During the summer of 1896 he was in temporary command at Quetta, and during the first half of 1897 he was fighting the plague at Bombay. The deaths there in January from this cause rose to more than 300 a day. Gatacre not only took care of his own troops but served as chairman of a committee to deal with the problem generally. Thanks to his energy and tact, the outbreak was well under control by July, when he left India to take command of a brigade at Aldershot. ”

“ He was born in June 1806, educated at Eton, and entered the army as a cornet in the 11th light dragoons on 14 March 1825. In November of that year he served at the siege of Bhurtpore under Lord Combermere; and when, owing to the scarcity of European infantry, volunteers were called for from the cavalry to take part in the assault, he was one of those who offered themselves. The arrival of an additional infantry regiment made it needless to use them, but the cavalry did good service in preventing the escape of the usurping rajah and his followers. ”

“ Early in April 1748 Saxe invested Maestricht with more than a hundred thousand men. The allied army assembled at Roermond under Cumberland amounted at that time only to thirty-five thousand men, and could do nothing to save the place, which was still holding out, however, when preliminaries of peace were signed at Aix-la-Chapelle at the end of the month. The duke went to Hanover in August, and to England in September, to arrange about the reductions in the British forces; otherwise he remained with the army in Holland until it was broken up, after the final signature of peace on 18 Oct. ”

“ Death was certain, if the Sikhs were still there ; but Chamberlain swam across with a few men of the 9th lancers, found that the Sikhs had gone, and was greated by Gough on his return as 'the bravest of the bravo.' At Chillian-walla his brigade was left to protect the baggage, but at Gujarat it was actively engaged. Chamberlain distinguished himself in the pursuit, and Gough promised him the command of the first regiment of irregular cavalry that might be in his gift. He received the Punjab medal with two clasps, and when he became captain in his regiment on 1 Nov. ”

“ The 24th carried the Sikh guns with a rush; but that regiment had outstripped the two native regiments, and the men found themselves exposed, with their own arms unloaded, to a very heavy fire from the jungle round them. Pennycuick and Brooks, the other lieutenant-colonel of the 24th—‘two officers not surpassed for sound judgment and military daring in this or any other army,’ as Lord Gough wrote—were killed, and the brigade was driven back. The 24th lost twenty-two officers and 497 men. ”

“ As soon as the railway was repaired Buller advanced to Standerton, and by 4 July the Natal army came in touch with the main army. A combined movement on Belfast was arranged, and on 7 Aug. Buller marched north with 11,000 men. On the 21st he came into collision with the left flank of the Boer forces under Louis Botha, which were opposing the advance of Roberts eastward, along the Delagoa Bay railway. On the 27th the Boers were defeated in the battle of Bergendal, so called from an intrenched kopje on the Boer left which was stormed by Buller's troops. ”

“ The troops withdrew from Buenos Ayres on the 12th, and from Montevideo on 9 Sept. The indignation of soldiers and traders alike was unbounded. ‘General Whitelocke is either a coward or a traitor, perhaps both!’ was written up at the corners of the streets of Montevideo (Whittingham, p. 22) . ‘Success to grey hairs, but bad luck to white locks,’ became a favourite toast among the men. ”