Horatio Herbert Kitchener

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Kitchener, FM Horatio Herbert, Earl Kitchener of Khartoum and of Broome (1850-1916). With his luxuriant moustache and commanding presence Kitchener was an indefatigable organizer who understood the absolute necessity of consolidating resources before striking a decisive blow.

Born in Ireland, he was commissioned into the Royal Engineers and saw service in Palestine and Cyprus. However, he was destined to make his name in the Sudan where fundamentalist Islamic forces, known as Mahdists, had taken control of the country. Having been seconded to the Egyptian army in 1883 Kitchener's name became linked inextricably with the Egyptian and Sudanese campaign. In 1892 he was appointed sirdar (C-in-C) of the Egyptian army and developed a painstaking invasion plan which included the construction of a railway to ensure logistical support. Escorted by armed river steamers his army, consisting of 26, 000 British, Egyptian, and Sudanese troops, made steady progress down the river Nile and on 2 September 1898 the Mahdist forces were overwhelmed at the battle of Omdurman.

The victory established Kitchener's reputation as the empire's greatest soldier and paved the way for further honours. During the Second Boer War he was COS to Roberts and then C-in-C, but it was to be his last command in the field. Between 1902 and 1909 he commanded the army in India and in 1911, by then a field marshal, he returned to Egypt as British Agent.

With retirement beckoning he was unexpectedly made Secretary of State for War in August 1914. Although PM Herbert Asquith admitted that appointing a soldier to the cabinet was a dangerous experiment, Kitchener's prestige inspired the nation's confidence and he impressed his colleagues with his prediction that the war would last three years and would require a million volunteers. Under Kitchener's guidance a huge recruiting drive (in which Kitchener's portrait on the recruiting poster, proclaiming ‘Your country needs you’, remains an enduring image) achieved that figure by the end of the year. However, like most of his contemporaries Kitchener failed to understand the realities of modern industrialized warfare and in 1915 he was made a scapegoat for the shortage of artillery shells during the spring offensives on the western front. Later that year he also had to take some responsibility for the failure of the Gallipoli campaign.

With the cabinet eager to be rid of him, yet anxious to retain his great name, Kitchener was despatched to Russia on an ill-fated fact-finding mission: the cruiser taking him to Archangel struck a mine off Orkney on 5 June 1916, drowning him and most of the crew.

Bibliography

• Magnus, Philip, Kitchener: Portrait of an Imperialist (London, 1958).
• Royle, Trevor, The Kitchener Enigma (London, 1985)

— Trevor Royle

The British field marshal and statesman Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener of Khartoum and Broome (1850-1916), is best known for his service in British colonial wars and administration.

Horatio Herbert Kitchener was born on June 14, 1850, at Crotter House, Ballylongford, County Kerry, Ireland; his father, an English lieutenant colonel, had settled in Ireland. Educated in Switzerland, Kitchener entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1868, served briefly with the French against the Prussians in 1870, and took his commission in the Royal Engineers in 1871. He entered routine army service at home but in 1874 began his connection with the Near East on loan to the Palestine Exploration Fund. In 1878 he began a survey of Cyprus after its acquisition by Britain, serving briefly as a vice-consul in Asia Minor and visiting Egypt unofficially in 1882 to join the British campaign against the nationalists.

Years in Egypt

At the end of 1882 Kitchener was appointed second in command of the Egyptian cavalry and served with Gen. G. J. Wolseley in the 1884 attempts to rescue Gen. C. G. Gordon. He resigned the Egyptian army command in 1885, serving at the end of that year as British representative on the International Commission to delimit the sultan of Zanzibar's mainland territories.

In the summer of 1886 Kitchener was appointed governor general of the eastern Sudan with headquarters at Suakin; and in September 1888 he became adjustant general of the Egyptian army, directing the cavalry in the battle of Toski in August 1889, which removed the last threat of a Mahdist invasion of Egypt. Until 1892 he was involved in reorganizing the Egyptian police.

In April 1892 Kitchener took command of the Egyptian army as its "sirdar" and began preparing the plans for the Anglo-Egyptian invasion of the Mahdist-controlled Sudan, to take the form of a systematic advance up the Nile. The advance on Dongola began in 1896, and Abu Hamed fell in 1897. The advance continued steadily throughout 1897, and the end of the year saw the British government authorize the final advance on the Mahdi's capital at Omdurman. Here, on Sept. 2, 1898, the Caliph was defeated, and Khartoum was occupied a few days later. There followed the Fashoda crisis, in which Kitchener and the French colonel J. B. Marchand confronted each other with their flags on the Nile. Under British pressure, the French gave way and withdrew Marchand's force. Kitchener went in triumph to London, received a peerage, and returned to the Sudan as its first Anglo-Egyptian governor general.

South Africa and India

In October 1899 the Anglo-Boer War erupted in South Africa. In December 1899 Kitchener joined Lord Roberts as his chief of staff. By the end of 1900, the British had reversed their early defeats and occupied the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Lord Roberts returned to England, and Kitchener was made commander in chief in South Africa. The Boers now resorted to guerrilla warfare, and Kitchener responded with a ruthless policy designed to cut off the Boers from their supplies among the friendly Afrikaners. The countryside was divided up into closed areas with lines of blockhouses and barbed wire, farms were destroyed, and the women and children were herded into "concentration camps," where the death rates from disease were appalling. These policies did much to strengthen antiwar feeling in Britain, and Kitchener himself keenly felt the odium directed against him, to the extent that he allowed the Boers to win gains in the Peace of Vereeniging of May 31, 1902.

From 1902 to 1909 Kitchener was commander in chief in India, concerning himself with extensive reforms of the Indian army and quarreling with the viceroy, Lord Curzon, who resigned in 1905 as a result. Kitchener succeeded in carrying through a large measure of reform after 1905. In September 1909 Kitchener left India and was given the rank of field marshal. He now traveled widely in the Far East, the Antipodes, Turkey, and East Africa and began serving on the Committee of Imperial Defence after 1910. In September 1911 he returned to Egypt as head of the British administration, ruling for 4 years. In political matters Kitchener granted little of substance to the nationalists, and in economic policies he ruled as a benevolent despot, undertaking more in land reform and creating more security for poor peasants than any previous administrator.

In June 1914 Kitchener received his earldom. While still in England, he was appointed secretary of state for war on Aug. 3, 1914. It was his task to create the new armies for France, to mobilize industry for the war, and to control military strategy. In 1916 Kitchener set out in H.M.S. Hampshire for a visit to Russia, but the ship struck a mine on June 5 and was sunk. His body was never recovered.

Further Reading

Kitchener himself wrote little of significance. During his lifetime, especially in the early years of World War I, dozens of potboilers were written about his life, but they are of little value. More useful are Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener (3 vols., 1920), and Gerald French, The Kitchener-French Dispute: A Last Word (1960). The outstanding study, however, is that by Sir Philip Magnus, Kitchener: Portrait of an Imperialist (1958).

Additional Sources

Cassar, George H., Kitchener: architect of victory, London: W. Kimber, 1977.

Royle, Trevor, The Kitchener enigma, London: M. Joseph, 1985.

Warner, Philip, Kitchener: the man behind the legend, New York: Atheneum, 1986, 1985.

Kitchener, Horatio Herbert, 1st Earl (1850-1916). Soldier and imperial statesman. Kitchener saw extensive service as a soldier and imperial administrator in Egypt, South Africa, and India. Amongst his achievements were the reconquest of the Sudan (1898) and the imposition of British peace terms on the Boer republics (1902). But his greatest service to the British empire was between 1914 and 1916, when he served as secretary of state for war. Far from being merely a great poster, as Lloyd George claimed, he was a prescient strategist. To ensure that Britain emerged victorious he expanded the small regular army by raising a huge new army of volunteers. He was drowned when HMS Hampshire was sunk off Orkney by a German mine.

1850 - 1916

First earl of Khartoum, British field marshal, and colonial administrator in the Sudan, 1899 - 1900, and in Egypt, 1911 - 1914.

Horatio Herbert Kitchener was born in Ireland, the second son of Henry Horatio Kitchener, an eccentric Anglo - Irish landowner. Educated at home, then in Switzerland (where he became fluent in French), and at the Royal Military Academy, Wool-wich, England, Kitchener was commissioned in 1871 into the Royal Engineers. He devoted most of the rest of his life to sustaining the British Empire in Egypt, the Sudan, South Africa, and India. He never married.

While working on land surveys in Palestine, Cyprus, and the Sinai Peninsula between 1874 and 1883, he learned Arabic and acquired a passion for porcelain and old furniture. He joined the reconstituted Anglo - Egyptian army in 1883, after Britain had occupied the country in 1882 because of Suez Canal debts and the Urabi revolt. He participated in Lord Wolseley's tardy expedition of 1885 that failed to rescue the hapless British General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon at the siege of Khartoum in the Egyptian Sudan. He also helped delimit the territory of the sultan of Zanzibar and served as governor-general of the Eastern Sudan before returning to the Anglo - Egyptian army as adjutant general in 1888.

Kitchener's exploits in battle against the Mahdi and his followers and his reputation as a methodical and penurious military organizer captured the attention of the British public and ruling elite. He was promoted to sirdar (commander in chief) of the Anglo - Egyptian army in 1892. Under control of the Foreign Office and Lord Cromer, Kitchener brilliantly organized the River War campaigns of 1896 - 1898, which ousted the followers of the Mahdi from the Sudan. His desecration of the Mahdi's remains failed to harm his extraordinary popularity in England, and the mustachioed Kitchener of Khartoum became the symbol of Great Britain at her imperial zenith.

At Fashoda, in 1898, he repulsed France's efforts to control the Nile's headwaters. In South Africa, he organized the ruthless crushing of the Boers. Then, while commanding the Indian Army, he deviously wrecked the political career of India's viceroy, Lord Curzon. When Sir Eldon Gorst (the former British foreign office agent and consul-general in Egypt) died in 1911, the Liberal government sent Kitchener back to Egypt as agent and consul-general, with instructions to keep Egypt quiet while seeing to its economic health.

Kitchener was regal in style, where Gorst had been self-effacing. Egypt was relatively quiet politically during Kitchener's tenure, and he worked to improve the lot of the Egyptian fellah (peasant) and extended the irrigation system. He banned nationalist newspapers and excluded certain Egyptian leaders, including Saʿd Zaghlul, from office. At least two attempts by nationalists to assassinate him failed. He cut Khedive Abbas Hilmi II's finances, trying, unsuccessfully, to force him to abdicate. As the Ottoman Empire waned, he kept Egypt "neutral." Hoping to bring it and the Sudan under formal British control, he sought to end the Capitulations and opened anti-Ottoman discussions with various Arab leaders, especially the son of Sharif Husayn ibn Ali of Mecca.

When World War I began, British Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith insisted Kitchener join the British cabinet as war minister. He grasped the nature of modern war, but his popularity and prestige were not enough to compensate for his deficiencies as a politician, administrator, and organizer. He died midway through the war.

Bibliography

Magnus, Philip. Kitchener: Portrait of an Imperialist. New York: Dutton, 1959.

Royle, Trevor. The Kitchener Enigma. London: M. Joseph, 1985.

— PETER MELLINI