Victoria's Generals

by Steven J Corvi

  Thus it was that Chelmsford spent the greater part of his active career in India, though it was one with a prosaic emphasis on the staff and administrative duties in which he excelled, rather than on practical experience in commanding forces in the field. From July 1861 to December 1862 he was DAG of the British troops in the Bombay Presidency. He was made brevet colonel in April 1863, as was the normal progression for those who had purchased the regimental rank of lieutenant colonel. In that year, on the amalgamation of the East India Company’s European regiments with the British Army, and the reduction and reorganisation of the Indian Army, he was offered the post of DAG, but preferred to retain command of the 95th. In recognition of his administrative talents his old commander during the Mutiny, Sir Robert Napier, who had been appointed commander of the Abyssinian Field Force in August 1867 and who had drawn his force mainly from the Bombay Army, selected him to be his DAG. Chelmsford held the post from the beginning of the advance in January 1868 until the British withdrawal in June. He was present at the capture of Magdala in April 1868 and was mentioned in dispatches. In recognition of his efficient service in a campaign that had presented many administrative and logistical challenges, Chelmsford was made CB in August 1868 and was further rewarded by serving as an ADC to the Queen from August 1868 to March 1877. On Lord Napier of Magdala and Caryngton (Sir Robert had been raised to the peerage in July 1868) being appointed C in C in India, he insisted that Chelmsford be made Adjutant General (AG) in India, a post he held from March 1869 to March 1874.

  It was also while in India that, in January 1867, the 40-year-old Chelmsford married Adria Fanny (1847–1926), the eldest daughter of Major General John Heath of the Bombay Army. She was twenty years his junior, but such discrepancy in ages was not at all unusual in a society where officers often postponed marriage until after 35 in order that family life should not interfere with their military duties.20 They had four surviving sons who carried on the professional and service traditions of the family by pursuing careers in the army, law and diplomatic service. The eldest, Frederic John Napier Thesiger, who would succeed his father as the third Baron Chelmsford, followed the family tradition by entering the law, and then enjoyed a successful career as a senior colonial administrator. He consummated the Indian connection when he became Viceroy between 1916 and 1921. He was created the first Viscount Chelmsford on his retirement, though he remained, like his father, a landless peer.21

  In 1874 Chelmsford returned to England as Colonel on the Staff, initially to command the camp at Shornecliffe between October 1874 and December 1876, and then as Brigadier General to command the 1st Infantry Brigade at Aldershot between January 1877 and February 1878 pending a suitable overseas posting. Through the operation of the seniority rule he was promoted to the rank of major general in March 1877. In terms of the Royal Warrant of 30 October 1871 Chelmsford might have chosen to be among the 888 officers who between November 1871 and November 1873 arranged that the Treasury reimburse them the purchase price of their commissions and then retired, but since he had decided to pursue his career and accept promotion, his substantial capital investment in purchase was lost.22 However, with the acceptance of the recommendations of the Royal Commission of 1875, Chelmsford, as a major general, could expect on compulsory retirement at age 62 in 1889 a pension of £700. If he served until 67, and was promoted lieutenant general or general, his pension would be £850 or £1,000 respectively.23

  On 1 February 1878 Chelmsford was selected as GOC in South Africa to replace Sir Arthur Cunynghame who (ironically considering Chelmsford’s own future difficulties with the colonial administration in Natal) was superseded because of his inability to achieve a good working relationship with the civil officials of Cape Colony. Chelmsford’s task was to terminate the Ninth Frontier War in Cape Colony against the Gceleka and Ngqika Xhosa, who for a century had been bitterly resisting the progressive seizure of their land by white colonists. When he took up his command in King William’s Town on 4 March 1878 with the local rank of Lieutenant General (which he held from 25 February 1878 to 16 July 1879) only the Ngqika Xhosa were still in the field.

  On 7 February 1878 Cunynghame had knocked the Gceleka out of the war at Centane. This was a time in the British army when tactical ideas were being transformed, relearning older lessons that fighting a mobile enemy over broken terrain required open deployment. Breech-loading rifles had a further revolutionary effect on the battlefield as it was now possible to fire more rapidly and to do so kneeling or lying down. The official War Office manual of 1877, Field Exercise and Evolutions of Infantry, stipulated that, when extending for the attack, an interval of three paces should be allowed for each file, and that, when skirmishing, the interval could be increased ‘according to circumstances’.24 Critically for Chelmsford’s future tactics in South Africa, Centane seemed to validate the effectiveness of the extended infantry line in defeating an African mass attack in the open. At Centane Cunynghame had deployed units in advance of the main British position to draw the enemy into range of the infantry armed with the newly issued Martini-Henry rifles supported by light 7-pounder guns. The weight of disciplined firepower was such that, even in extended order, it was sufficient to halt and break up the enemy’s charge. At that critical moment the mounted troops, supported by black auxiliaries, sallied out and turned the enemy’s withdrawal into a rout.25 This, it seemed certain, was the formula for winning battles against African armies.

  Chelmsford had commanded a camp of exercise in India in 1874, but the Ninth Frontier War was his first independent command in the field. He at once found himself engaged in what would now be termed counter-insurgency. After Centane the Ngqika Xhosa (who as early as the 1830s had replaced spears with firearms) reverted to guerrilla warfare, skirmishing and ambushing British and colonial troops in the broken and forested country of their traditional stronghold in the Pirie bush. Before leaving for the Cape, Chelmsford had been advised by Sir John Mitchell, a veteran of two frontier wars, to anticipate irregular warfare.26 But, as Jeff Mathews has shown, Chelmsford had already revealed in public lectures while in India that he favoured the conservative and stereotyped application of the military theory he had apparently begun studying with professional relish while still a junior officer.27 So in the Cape, Chelmsford initiated the conventional strategy of sending in several strong columns with the intention of surrounding the Ngqika in a pincer movement and bringing them to the sort of pitched battle in which modern tactics had proved so successful at Centane. However, five offensives between March and May 1878 failed to trap the Ngqika, and by that stage Chelmsford’s ineffective, but stubbornly pursued strategy was making him the ‘laughing stock of the colony’.28 At last persuaded to take the advice of colonials better versed in irregular warfare,29 in late May he divided the area of operations up into eleven zones, each patrolled by a mobile mounted force. The Ngqika were thus broken up into small groups, harried and denied supplies. By August 1878 the war was over and Chelmsford received the formal thanks of both houses of the Cape legislature and was made KCB.30

  Chelmsford had shown himself to be instinctively conservative strategically, although prepared from the outset to adopt more modern battle tactics. Nevertheless, as the later, irregular warfare stage of the campaign demonstrated, he was not entirely resistant to strategic innovation either. Furthermore, not only did he introduce flag-signalling the better to coordinate attacks and build paths to facilitate the movement of supplies, but he also recruited auxiliaries from the Mfengu (the traditional enemy of the Xhosa) to operate over the difficult terrain.31 Chelmsford was also more solicitous of the colonial troops’ welfare than Cunynghame, even if they were not much impressed by his performance as a commander.32

  But then, whatever his shortcomings as a general – and they did not as yet seem critical – Chelmsford was always appreciated by his men for his unfailingly gentlemanly, courteous and modest behaviour, which he combined with a considerate yet firm manner to his subordinates. Although by nature somewhat with
drawn, he was able to adopt a genial manner in company and was an effective public speaker. He was a keen participant in amateur theatricals (so intrinsic to social life in India); nor did he hide his musical talent as a clarinet player. To balance these unmilitary accomplishments, and as befitted his class and upbringing, he remained fond of field sports and outdoor activities and always displayed considerable physical energy. Like many with his upbringing, he was compassionate towards animals, and soon after invading Zululand he ‘even licked with his own hand a white-bullock-driver … for brutality to oxen’.33 In conformity with the changing attitudes of the late Victorian army, that required a greater acceptance by officers of their paternalistic concern about their men’s well-being, Chelmsford set an example of moderation and frugality. As a teetotaller, he attempted to stamp out drunkenness under his command and, to combat idleness among his young officers, encouraged them (as he had himself done) to study further. However, his inherent conservatism came out in his support for flogging as the most suitable punishment on active service since this did not take men out of the field as imprisonment would have.34 For all that, his men recognised his essential decency and he earned their loyalty for his willingness to share their hardships on campaign and to set an example by his calm resolve under fire and readiness to expose himself fearlessly in battle. On the other hand, many also noted his reluctance to delegate successfully, which caused him to lose sight of the wider picture while he spent time and energy on routine duties more appropriately performed by his subordinates. As Major Cornelius Clery,35 the Principal Staff Officer to No. 3 Column, wrote of him in the days preceding Isandlwana: ‘his energetic, restless, anxious temperament led him into very minor matters for he used even to detail the patrols and constantly gave orders direct to commanders’.36 This failing would have fatal consequences in Zululand. Furthermore, Chelmsford’s diffident manner discouraged discussion with his staff, although he too easily allowed his habitually snap decisions to be swayed by contrary advice.37

  Thus, although in one sense the pattern of the ideal officer of the time – brave, conscientious and industrious – Chelmsford exhibited important weaknesses as a commander. Though not closed to military innovation, he was (as operations in 1878 had demonstrated) a prosaic product of the system and remained inherently reluctant to adapt orthodox military practices to colonial conditions unless absolutely pressed. His relative lack of military flair and acumen would be ruthlessly exposed in the Zululand campaign of 1879.

  The Anglo-Zulu War, 1879

  On 9 August 1878 Chelmsford set up his headquarters in Pietermaritzburg, the capital of the Colony of Natal, to prepare for the invasion of the neighbouring kingdom of Zululand. The mission in South Africa of the High Commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, with whom Chelmsford had earlier formed a bond of friendship while the former was Governor of Bombay from 1862 to 1867, was to create a confederation (along the lines of Canada) of the British colonies in the sub-continent. Abutting independent African polities were perceived as potential obstacles to this objective that had to be neutralised. The Ninth Frontier War had been fought to remove one such hindrance. Chelmsford’s dash down the east coast to annex Port St John’s on 31 August 1878, which overawed the Mpondo people between Natal and the Cape, overcame another.38 The militarily powerful Zulu kingdom, able to field some 29,000 warriors, continued the greatest challenge, but Frere, misled by Chelmsford’s recent operations where the Ngqika Xhosa had never constituted any substantial threat, fondly imagined that the Zulu could similarly be subdued at the price of a minor campaign.39

  In planning and executing the Zululand campaign, Chelmsford faced many handicaps, not all of his own making. Colonial campaigns against irregulars, generally inferior in armaments, organisation and discipline to the British, though employing varied and unpredictable military styles, were in fact a highly specialised form of combat, requiring considerable adaptability in both strategy and tactics,40 but Chelmsford had already shown that he lacked the requisite innovative flair. British regulars were the main striking force in any of Britain’s nineteenth-century imperial expeditions, but the professional Victorian army was small, and its manpower and capabilities overstretched by a multiplicity of commitments across the globe.41 The recent army reforms carried out by Cardwell, particularly the introduction of short service in 1870, and linked battalions in 1872, meant that the battalions serving abroad were often imperfectly trained and consisted of physically immature, untried soldiers and inexperienced NCOs. The army’s C in C, the Duke of Cambridge, greatly resented civilian interference in military affairs and openly deprecated Cardwell’s reforms. Chelmsford, as an Indian officer and therefore a believer in the merits of long-term recruitment that led to stable and experienced garrisons, aligned himself with the Duke and his conservative coterie. Nevertheless, he had no choice but to work in Zululand, as he had in the Ninth Frontier War, with young and inexperienced troops he increasingly found militarily unsatisfactory as the campaign developed.42

  British regulars serving in South Africa might not have been up to standard, but they were still too valuable and scarce to dissipate on garrison and convoy duties, which were better undertaken by African auxiliaries. Moreover, as Chelmsford had found with his Mfengu levies in the Cape, they were also useful for scouting and pursuit. So Chelmsford raised African levies from the Natal native reserves and formed them under white officers and NCOs into the five battalions of the Natal Native Contingent (NNC). However, as with the Mfengu levies, they were poorly armed and trained and ultimately proved of doubtful morale and effectiveness.43 Much more essential to the success of colonial campaigning than auxiliaries were mounted troops. They had proved pivotal in the latter stages of the Ninth Frontier War, and would be crucial in Zululand for reconnaissance and raiding purposes and vital in the pursuit of a broken enemy. Yet as Chelmsford was uncomfortably aware, he had not nearly enough for his purposes.44 Regular cavalry would not be made available until the closing stages of the campaign, and he had to rely on small colonial units of irregular horse and some mounted infantry.

  The dearth of horsemen for intelligence gathering was of particular concern, and would cost Chelmsford dear. The lack of accurate maps45 meant that as field commander Chelmsford had no option but to rely as best he could upon mounted patrols, supplemented by the NNC, to relay him information about the terrain to be traversed, and to locate the enemy.46 To make matters worse, Chelmsford was one with Cambridge in his gentlemanly amateurish disregard of the professional accumulation and analysis of intelligence, and in his positive hostility towards a Prussian-style General Staff and officers graduating from the Staff College established at Camberley in 1858. In this he differed sharply from that thrusting and very professional soldier, Sir Garnet Wolseley, with his advanced military ideas.47

  Consequently, when he sailed for South Africa in 1878, Chelmsford was accompanied by a small staff selected not for outstanding talent (as would have been the case with Wolseley) but for easy compatibility. His ADCs, Brevet Major Matthew Gosset and Captain William Molyneux, had served with him at Aldershot. His Assistant Military Secretary, John North Crealock, had indeed passed the Staff College in 1868 and had held a series of staff appointments, but he possessed the additional recommendation of being an officer in Chelmsford’s regiment, the 95th, and of having served in India with him. Made brevet lieutenant colonel in November 1878, Crealock continued on Chelmsford’s personal staff in Zululand and was promoted to Military Secretary in May 1879, even though he was noted neither for his efficiency nor for the legibility of his dispatches.48 Crealock was Chelmsford’s constant companion in South Africa and was suspected of wielding undue influence over him. Privately he was critical of the general’s military capabilities, but always staunchly defended him in public. His haughty and abrasive personality and facetious manner alienated many of his fellow officers and would play its part in exacerbating the ever more strained relations between the military and the government of Natal.49 As Clery would later write
of Chelmsford with Crealock obviously in mind: ‘he wanted what he certainly had not – a man of solidity and ability at his elbow’, and wondered that Chelmsford was not ‘sharp enough to see through him’.50

  Chelmsford did not appoint a chief of staff, being apparently confident in his own organisational abilities and reluctant to delegate. Not surprisingly, as the Zululand campaign unfolded, the deficiencies of Chelmsford’s poorly trained and structured staff became increasingly apparent. As Crealock reported on 11 April 1879, ‘We know Lord Chelmsford does not appreciate the importance of staff, and I can see in half an eye in 2 days, how chaotic all that part is.’51 Chelmsford did not initially even appoint an intelligence officer to his staff, only doing so in May 1879 once the Isandlwana disaster (for which lack of proper intelligence was largely responsible) had made the need blindingly apparent. Even then, regular staff officers had to do their untrained best to help process intelligence as a normal part of their many other duties.

  If Chelmsford seemed content to muddle along with an inefficient staff and inadequately processed intelligence, he did fully comprehend that it was essential for a commander to study and understand beforehand the military system of his prospective foe. To that end he had booklets prepared for his officers describing in detail the Zulu military system and way of war, and providing instructions on how British troops should be managed in the field.52 Unfortunately, neither Chelmsford nor his officers seem to have believed what they read about the fighting qualities of the Zulu. In fact, it is clear that they wholly underrated them. The Zulu could be expected to be tougher adversaries than the Xhosa, but they were assumed nevertheless to be essentially in the same league. As Major Clery later put it, ‘the easy promenade’ in the Cape made ‘all go into this business with light hearts’.53 The consequence, he explained, was that,