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The Military Career of General Sir Henry Brackenbury 1856-1904

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The Military Career of General Sir Henry Brackenbury 1856-1904 The Military Career of General Sir Henry Brackenbury 1856-1904: The Thinking Man’s Soldier. By Christopher Michael Brice PhD Thesis De Montfort University April 2009 Contents Page Abstract i-ii Acknowledgements iii-iv Introduction: General Sir Henry Brackenbury: 1-27 The Thinking Man’s Soldier The Late Victorian British Army 28-66 The Product of an Intellectual Soldier: 67-101 The literary work of Henry Brackenbury Henry Brackenbury and the Franco-Prussian War: 102-125 A unique perspective and account of the conflict Service in the Field 126-167 The Intelligence Branch Under Sir Henry Brackenbury 168-207 An ‘African’ in India: 208-239 Brackenbury as Military Member of the Council of the Viceroy The Director General of the Ordnance and The South African War 240-298 Conclusion 299-312 Appendix1 Timeline of the career of General Sir Henry Brackenbury 313-315 Appendix 2 List of books and articles by Sir Henry Brackenbury 316-319 Appendix 3 Pictures of Sir Henry Brackenbury 320-323 Bibliography 324-347 Abstract This thesis deals with a largely forgotten soldier, writer and administrator of the mid to late Victorian era. General Sir Henry Brackenbury’s career covered some forty- eight years. He was either directly involved in or was witness to all the major events of the British Army during this period, from the Crimean War to the South African War. His career encompassed an era of reform that saw the army move away from the military system of the Napoleonic Wars and the gradual establishment of the system with which the British Army would take the field in 1914. The aim of this thesis is to look at the military career of Sir Henry Brackenbury, rather than be a biography of the man. However his literary career, personal life and financial circumstances are intrinsically linked to his life as a soldier. What this shows is a highly intelligent soldier, perhaps the first of a new bread of so-called ‘Scientific Soldiers’, men who studied and thought about their profession. Apart from a considerable, and important, amount of active service overseas, Brackenbury held three key administrative positions, which were the highlight of his army service and allowed his talents to come to the fore. As Head of the Intelligence Branch at the War Office, Military Member of the Council of the Governor General of India, and Director General of the Ordnance, he ended his long career with powerful and important positions that brought much praise. Indeed his contemporaries considered him to be the most effective holder of these posts. i Brackenbury’s career has not received the attention from historians which it deserves, largely due to the fact that he left no collection of private papers. What follows is the most detailed exploration of his contribution to the development of the British Army based on official government sources and documents for the production of which he was responsible, his published works and what remains of his correspondence with contemporaries. ii Acknowledgements Dr Anthony Clayton, formerly of the War Studies Department of The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, deserves foremost thanks for his help, support and advice throughout my studies. Originally serving as First Supervisor, he has continued to support me throughout the period of study despite no longer having an official interest. His advice and contacts have been invaluable, and I am extremely grateful to him. Professor Tony Mason, Professor Mike Cronin and Professor Richard Holt have at various times, and for various periods, been supervisors for this thesis. Professor Mason deserves particular thanks for helping to add new impetus to the study, and for guiding my progress, during his time as First Supervisor. Being part-time I have also had to work and thanks must also go to my employers during this period, namely Mrs Diane Nicholson, Majors Chris and Mandy Sands of The Salvation Army, and Captains Mike and Sheila Smith, also of The Salvation Army, who have supported me and been understanding when it came to taking time off in connection with my studies. I am also grateful to Professor Hew Strachan, Dr Stephen Badsey, Dr T.A. Heathcote, Brigadier B.A.H. Parritt and Mr Matthew Buck all of whom have offered their expert advice during my study. It has been much appreciated and very helpful. Thanks must also go to the various archives that I have visited and had contact with. Firstly the staff of The National Archives at Kew, The British Library, The National Library of Scotland and the National Army Museum at Chelsea. Also Mr Andrew Orgil and the staff of The Central Library at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst provided much help in the early days of my study. Thanks must also go to Mr Paul Evans at the Royal Artillery Museum, Woolwich for his help and assistance regarding iii the letter books of Sir Henry Brackenbury from his time in India. Also Zoë Lubowiecka at the Central Library, Hove for her assistance when going through the Wolseley Papers, and the staff of the Centre for Kentish Studies in Maidstone. Thanks must also go to Major Alan Edwards and the staff at the Military Intelligence Museum at Chicksands. Also Eliza Newton at the Devon Record Office in Exeter for help with the Buller Papers. Finally I would like to thank my parents for their help and support during my studies, in particular my Father who at times has acted as ‘chauffeur’ and has also read through the large majority of the thesis for me. Christopher Brice April 2009 iv General Sir Henry Brackenbury: The Thinking Man’s Soldier Introduction Major-General Lord Edward Gleichen told the following story about a meeting with the Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Cambridge, when Gleichen was a young officer. He (the Duke of Cambridge) very kindly asked me what I was doing, but when I had broken to him that I was working in the Intelligence Department he looked grave: and, leaning over and putting his hand on my knee, he said, “So you are under Brackenbury? A dangerous man, my dear Gleichen, a very dangerous man!1 As Gleichen went on to say, this was a curious thing for the Commander-in-Chief to say to a young subaltern about his chief. More than that, why did the Duke feel it his duty to warn a young officer serving under this „dangerous‟ man? This has become an often-quoted remark about Brackenbury. It is interesting to compare this with Sir Garnet, later Lord, Wolseley‟s comment that Brackenbury was “not one of the cleverest, but the cleverest man in the British Army”.2 It could be argued that this was part of the reason why the Commander-in-Chief considered him dangerous.3 Yet there must have been far more to it than that. Gleichen himself could be called a man of „brains‟, yet he seemed acceptable to the Commander-in Chief. The difference was that Brackenbury was not only a thinker but also a reformer, and a radical one at that. Some of the reforms that Brackenbury supported would have destroyed the „order‟ that the Duke of Cambridge championed. There was also a more personal point in that one of Brackenbury‟s key reforms was to abolish the office of Commander-in-Chief and replace him with a Chief of Staff. Brackenbury saw this as a key move in „professionalising‟ the army. Many of his other reforms to this end would also have been unacceptable to the Commander-in-Chief. Indeed in some respects he could be called the most radical of Britain‟s military reformers in the late Victorian era.4 The problem was that to a large extent many of his reforms remained in the realm of 1 theory as he was never in a position to put them into practice. As a consequence the merit and effectiveness of these proposed reforms, which will be discussed in more detail later, is largely supposition. The intention of this thesis is to examine the military career of a largely forgotten Victorian soldier who in many ways was unique amongst the British officer corps.5 Whereas the majority of his contemporaries made their reputations on the battlefields of the empire, Brackenbury made his in military administration and his literary career. The work that he did in the organisation of the various campaigns in the field and at the War Office has never truly been recognised, and rarely recorded. A brief synopsis of his career makes this hard to understand. He served in many of the key colonial wars of that period: the Indian Mutiny, the Ashanti Campaign, the Zulu War and the Gordon Relief expedition. He had two key War Office appointments, as Head of the Intelligence Branch and Director General of the Ordnance, and was generally accepted to have left both in a far better state than when first appointed. Indeed in both instances he entered departments in a state of some disarray. He also had two major semi-military appointments as Under Secretary for Police and Crime in Ireland and as the Military Member of the Council of the Viceroy of India. Added to this he also witnessed the Franco-Prussian War at close quarters when working for the National Aid Society providing medicine and stores to the sick and wounded of both sides. As a consequence he had probably the best view of the Franco-Prussian War of any Englishman. He saw both armies in operation, and because of the capacity in which he was serving was treated in a friendly and cordial manner and given full access to the military hierarchies of both combatant nations.6 In addition to this he had also developed a considerable reputation as a writer, largely, but interestingly not 2 exclusively, on military matters.
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