Download or read book The Story of a Soldier s Life written by Garnet Wolseley Wolseley (Viscount) and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Life of Field Marshal Lord Roberts written by Rodney Atwood and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography of Field Marshal Lord Roberts charts a remarkable life that spanned the apogee of the British Empire. During a diverse career, Roberts won the Victoria Cross, planned the strategic defence of India, turned the tide of war in South Africa, introduced army reform and campaigned for National Service before 1914. Rodney Atwood explores his military career, in particular his role as a tactician and strategist in Afghanistan, Burma, the North-West frontier, South Africa and Europe, but also looks at Roberts as a symbol of Empire and explores his celebration in British culture.

Download or read book The Life of Lord Wolseley written by Sir Frederick Maurice and published by Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday, Page 1924.. This book was released on 1924 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley ... (4 June 1833 – 25 March 1913) was an Anglo-Irish officer in the British Army. He served in Burma, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, China, Canada, and widely throughout Africa—including his Ashanti campaign (1873–1874) and the Nile Expedition against Mahdist Sudan in 1884–85. His reputation for efficiency led to the late 19th-century English phrase "everything's all Sir Garnet", meaning "all is in order ... In 1865, he became a brevet colonel, was actively employed the following year in connexion with the Fenian raids from the United States, and in 1867 was appointed deputy quartermaster-general in Canada ... In 1870, he successfully commanded the Red River Expedition to establish Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Territories and Manitoba. Manitoba had entered Canadian Confederation as the result of negotiations between Canada and a provisional Métis government headed by Louis Riel. The only route to Fort Garry (now Winnipeg), the capital of Manitoba (then an outpost in the Wilderness), which did not pass through the United States was through a network of rivers and lakes extending for six-hundred miles from Lake Superior, infrequently traversed by non-aboriginals, and where no supplies were obtainable..."--Wikipedia, Oct.13/2011.

Download or read book The British Field Marshals 1736 1997 written by T. A. Heathcote and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2012-10-24 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether any advantage or benefit will be drawn from the suspension or effective abolition of the rank of Field Marshal is debatable. What is certain, however, is that Dr. Tony Heathcotes idea of compiling a definitive biographical dictionary of holders of this illustrious rank since its introduction by George II in 1736, is opportune and inspired.Those readers who anticipate a dry recitation of bare facts and statistics are in for a disappointment. A reference work this may be but the author, by dint of his depth of knowledge, has created a shrewd and highly readable commentary as well.As General Sir Charles Guthrie (the first soldier to be denied promotion to Field Marshal on appointment to Chief of Defense Staff) observes in his Foreword, this book embraces the history of the British Army over the last 250-300 years. It covers not only the careers of key individuals but provides an understanding of their contribution to the successes and failures of our military past. The diversity of personalities, who have only the honor of wearing the coveted crossed batons in common, is fascinating. Alongside the household names of the great strategists and distinguished leaders lie little known and forgotten figures, who gained their exalted rank by either luck, accident of birth or diplomatic gesture.The British Field Marshals merits a place on the bookshelf of any military historian but is likely to be found on his or her bedside table. Whether or not the rank is ever resurrected, as it has been in the past and as many will hope it will be again, this delightful and useful book will remain the authoritative guide to all those who have held the highest military rank in the British Army.

Download or read book Sir Garnet Wolseley written by Halik Kochanski and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Before leaving England he placed his finger on a map of Egypt at the point now known to fame as Tel-El-Kebir, and said 'That is where I shall beat Arabi'". No Victorian was a greater hero for a longer period than Sir Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913). The leading British general of the second half of the nineteenth century, he personally took part in a significantly influenced every campaign between the Crimea and the Boer War. To Disraeli he was ‘Our Only General’, while to many soldiers and to the public at large he epitomised the virtues they most admired: exceptional personal bravery and an unshakeable belief in the virtues of the British Empire. The phrase ‘All Sir Garnet’ was a guarantee that everything was under control. Seen from another angle, Wolseley’s career reflects a number of weaknesses. To control a global empire Britain had a powerful navy but only a small army. Its ability to deploy a force of limited size throughout the world, almost always against untrained and underequipped native armies, gave the dangerous and ultimately disastrous illusion that Britain was as formidable by land as it was by sea.

Download or read book The British Field Marshals 1763 1997 written by T. A. Heathcote and published by Leo Cooper Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreword by General Sir Charles Guthrie GCB LVD OBE ADC Gen The author describes in the most readable fashion the lives, achievements, successes and failures of all the 138 Field Marshals appointed since the creation of the rank in 1736. He unearths rich seams of fact and controversy and his accounts will educate and amuse.

Download or read book The Soldier s Pocket book written by and published by . This book was released on 1861 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson written by Keith Jeffery and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-03-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, an Irishman who in June 1922 was assassinated on his doorstep in London by Irish republicans, was one of the most controversial British soldiers of the modern age. Before 1914 he did much to secure the Anglo-French alliance and was responsible for the planning which saw the British Expeditionary Force successfully despatched to France after the outbreak of war with Germany. A passionate Irish unionist, he gained a reputation as an intensely 'political' soldier, especially during the 'Curragh crisis' of 1914 when some officers resigned their commisssions rather than coerce Ulster unionists into a Home Rule Ireland. During the war he played a major role in Anglo-French liaison, and ended up as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, professional head of the army, a post he held until February 1922. After Wilson retired from the army, he became an MP and was chief security adviser to the new Northern Ireland government. As such, he became a target for nationalist Irish militants, being identified with the security policies of the Belfast regime, though wrongly with Protestant sectarian attacks on Catholics. He is remembered today in unionist Northern Ireland as a kind of founding martyr for the state. Wilson's reputation was ruined in 1927 with the publication of an official biography, which quoted extensively and injudiciously from his entertaining, indiscreet, and wildly opinionated diaries, giving the impression that he was some sort of Machiavellian monster. In this first modern biography, using a wide variety of official and private sources for the first time, Keith Jeffery reassesses Wilson's life and career and places him clearly in his social, national, and political context.

Download or read book Victoria s Generals written by Edited by Steven J Corvi and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2009-09-19 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book A British Profession of Arms written by Ian F. W. Beckett and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “You offer yourself to be slain,” General Sir John Hackett once observed, remarking on the military profession. “This is the essence of being a soldier.” For this reason as much as any other, the British army has invariably been seen as standing apart from other professions—and sometimes from society as a whole. A British Profession of Arms effectively counters this view. In this definitive study of the late Victorian army, distinguished scholar Ian F. W. Beckett finds that the British soldier, like any other professional, was motivated by considerations of material reward and career advancement. Within the context of debates about both the evolution of Victorian professions and the nature of military professionalism, Beckett considers the late Victorian officer corps as a case study for weighing distinctions between the British soldier and his civilian counterparts. Beckett examines the role of personality, politics, and patronage in the selection and promotion of officers. He looks, too, at the internal and external influences that extended from the press and public opinion to the rivalry of the so-called rings of adherents of major figures such as Garnet Wolseley and Frederick Roberts. In particular, he considers these processes at play in high command in the Second Afghan War (1878–81), the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), and the South African War (1899–1902). Based on more than thirty years of research into surviving official, semiofficial, and private correspondence, Beckett’s work offers an intimate and occasionally amusing picture of what might affect an officer’s career: wealth, wives, and family status; promotion boards and strategic preferences; performance in the field and diplomatic outcomes. It is a remarkable depiction of the British profession of arms, unparalleled in breadth, depth, and detail.

Download or read book Memories and Memorials of William Gordon McCabe written by Armistead Churchill Gordon and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The United Service written by and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 860 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The British Army Regular Mounted Infantry 1880 1913 written by Andrew Winrow and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The regular Mounted Infantry was one of the most important innovations of the late Victorian and Edwardian British Army. Rather than fight on horseback in the traditional manner of cavalry, they used horses primarily to move swiftly about the battlefield, where they would then dismount and fight on foot, thus anticipating the development of mechanised infantry tactics during the twentieth century. Yet despite this apparent foresight, the mounted infantry concept was abandoned by the British Army in 1913, just at the point when it may have made the transition from a colonial to a continental force as part of the British Expeditionary Force. Exploring the historical background to the Mounted Infantry, this book untangles the debates that raged in the army, Parliament and the press between its advocates and the supporters of the established cavalry. With its origins in the extemporised mounted detachments raised during times of crisis from infantry battalions on overseas imperial garrison duties, Dr Winrow reveals how the Mounted Infantry model, unique among European armies, evolved into a formalised and apparently highly successful organisation of non-cavalry mounted troops. He then analyses why the Mounted Infantry concept fell out of favour just eleven years after its apogee during the South African Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. As such the book will be of interest not only to historians of the nineteenth-century British army, but also those tracing the development of modern military doctrine and tactics, to which the Mounted Infantry provided successful - if short lived - inspiration.

Download or read book Britain s Empire Resistance Repression and Revolt written by Richard Gott and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2011-11-07 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Marketing Blurb

Download or read book Evelyn Wood VC written by Stephen Manning and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2008-03-27 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the increasing interest in the Victorian era an authoritative biography of Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood VC is long overdue. By any standards his career was remarkable and began with him in the Royal Navy in the Crimea before he transferred to the cavalry to see more action.

Download or read book Wars Of Imperial Conquest written by Bruce Vandervort and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-01-28 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Download or read book Journey through the Wilderness written by Paul McNicholls and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2019-12-19 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1870 an Anglo-Canadian military force embarked on a 1,200 mile journey, half of which would be through the wilderness, bound for the Red River Settlement, the site of present day Winnipeg. At the time the settlement was part of the vast Hudson's Bay Company controlled territories which Canada was in the process of purchasing. Today Canada is the second largest country in the world, but at the time it was a recent creation made up of three British North American colonies. The British government of the day, focussed on financial retrenchment and anchored on anti-imperialist values, would have happily severed its ties with its North American colonies. The dynamic American republic, resurgent after the cataclysm of the Civil War, aspired to take control of all of the British North American territories, including Canada and the Hudson's Bay Company lands. Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald knew that for his new country to survive and prosper it would have to expand across the continent and incorporate the Hudson's Bay Company's lands, and ultimately the colony of British Columbia on the Pacific Ocean as well. The HBC was in decline and wanted to give up the responsibility for its vast territories. Macdonald would have preferred Britain to take on this responsibility until Canada was ready, but Westminster was unwilling. Ready or not, Canada would have to act or risk the United States getting in ahead of them. In all of this, the interests of the indigenous people received scant consideration, and this included the residents of the Red River Settlement. The population here, about 14,000 strong, was mostly comprised of the descendants of the Kildonan Scots, farmers who had arrived under the auspices Lord Selkirk earlier in the century, the mixed race descendants of English speaking HBC workers and First Nations women, and the mixed race descendants of French speaking North West Company workers and First Nations women. The latter group, known as the Métis, had long before the time of Canada's pending takeover developed a distinct cultural identity, referring to themselves as "A New Nation". In 1869 the Métis were nervous of the pending Canadian takeover. They feared their property rights, the most tenuous in the community, would not be respected. They also worried that their culture would be overwhelmed by an influx of English speaking settlers. Their concerns were reinforced when Canadian surveyors and road builders arrived in the community. The Canadians behaved exactly as the Métis had feared prompting the beginning of an opposition with demands for guarantees. The man who rose to lead the Métis opposition was Louis Riel, and while his demands were just, during the winter of 1869/70, supported by the organized military power of the buffalo hunt, he rode roughshod over the views of the other communities in residence at Red River. These included not only the Kildonan Scots and English-speaking mixed race people, but also Métis opponents and the much smaller and troublesome Canadian Party. Prime Minister Macdonald had been lax in acting to accommodate the interests of the Red River residents, but there was in fact little interest in Canada for the events unfolding there. Matters were transformed when Riel approved the execution of a member of the Canadian Party in March of 1870. Much of English speaking Canada found its voice and demanded a vigorous response. Macdonald, under considerable pressure, wanted a military expedition dispatched and he was adamant that the British should lead it. Even after a deal was completed, resulting in the creation of the new province of Manitoba, he remained firm in his belief that a force should be sent to assume control. Despite having already announced the withdrawal of its Canadian garrison, the British government reluctantly agreed to commit imperial troops to the venture. The completion of the deal between Canada and the Red River settlement was in fact a precondition of British involvement in the affair. It was also critical that the British troops get to the settlement and back again before the winter set in. Colonel Garnet Wolseley was chosen to lead the expedition, and as such, though in many respects an obscure and minor operation, it is an important subject of study given that it was his first independent command and he would rise to become Commander in Chief of the British Army. It demonstrated an attention to detail that would be fundamental to his rise up through the army hierarchy and utilized a transportation technique that he would attempt to replicate in his more famous Gordon Relief Expedition of 1884/1885. It also introduced a number of the personalities who would later become firmly entrenched as members of the Wolseley Ring. There was no good route from Canada to the Red River Settlement. The expedition, comprised of British regulars and Canadian militia, travelled first by steamer to Thunder Bay on Lake Superior and then by an incomplete road to Shebandowan Lake. The state of the road would become one of the major talking points of the whole affair. From Shebandowan Lake they went by row boat utilizing the old North West Company's canoe highway, carrying all the supplies they would need for the journey. They suffered the challenges of having to cross 47 portages, run multiple river rapids, and weather significant storms on some of the larger lakes of the interior. It rained, frequently torrentially, for roughly half of the days between their arrival at Thunder Bay and their reaching of Fort Garry at the Red River Settlement. On the days it didn't rain, they were feasted upon by the billions of insects resident in the woods of the Canadian Shield. Many historians have written on the events of the troubles at Red River in 1869/70, but the expedition itself is usually treated as a footnote and given a few lines or at most a paragraph. The author has found only one relatively recent account (published in the 1980s) that dealt with the expedition in detail and he has frequently, though respectfully, disagreed with many of the assertions and conclusions found therein. Consequently, it has been found necessary to go to the expeditionary force documents and first hand accounts of the men who took part, to properly understand exactly what the Red River Expedition was about and what the men who made up the force actually went through. By doing this author believes he has come up with a lively and original recounting of this little known story in British Imperial and Canadian history.