Garnet Wolseley

Full title:

Field Marshal Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley

Dates:

1833-1913

Claim to fame:

An influential commander with victories in the Ashanti War and against the Mahdists in the Sudan. Because of his attention to detail the phrase ‘All Sir Garnet’ came to mean everything’s in order.

Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913) was commissioned in 1852, and by 1861 had seen active service in Burma, the Crimea, India and China at the cost of a severe leg wound and the loss of his left eye. In 1870 he commanded the Red River expedition, leading his men through hundreds of miles of Canadian wilderness in a successful campaign that owed much to his logistical skills.

In 1873-74 Wolseley commanded the expedition to Ashanti, the campaign that made him a household name in England. After capturing Kumasi he was promoted major-general, made GCMG and KCB, thanked by both houses of Parliament and awarded a grant of £25,000. Administrator and Commander of the Forces in Natal in 1875, he was High Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief in Cyprus from 1878.

In favour of Army reforms, Wolseley gathered together a coterie of able officers known as the 'Wolseley ring' that included Redvers Buller, Evelyn Wood, Henry Brackenbury and George Colley among others. They accompanied Wolseley on his campaigns and supported his reforms. Although members of the ring were the rising stars of the Army, Wolseley’s reliance on them bred resentment among those excluded. He also wrote a number of books including ‘The Soldier's Pocket Book’ in 1869, the forerunner of field service regulations.

Following the Zulu victory at Isandhlwana (1879), Wolseley was appointed Governor and High Commissioner, Natal. However, by the time he arrived, Cetshwayo had been defeated and Wolseley's role was limited to the capture of the king. After granting the Transvaal the constitution of a crown colony, Wolseley returned home to the more congenial appointment of Quartermaster-General at the War Office. For his services in South Africa he was made a GCB.

His struggles to continue the Cardwell reforms of the Army brought him into conflict with the Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Cambridge, whom he privately called 'that great German bumble-bee'. He was parodied for these views by Gilbert and Sullivan as being the ‘very model of a modern major-general'. In 1882 Wolseley became Adjutant-General, but his tenure was cut short to command the British forces in Egypt that suppressed the Urabi Revolt in a quick and brilliant campaign. Raised to the peerage as Baron Wolseley and thanked by Parliament again, he then led the unsuccessful expedition to rescue the besieged Major-General Charles Gordon at Khartoum.

In 1890, Wolseley was appointed Commander-in-Chief in Ireland and promoted to field-marshal in 1894. The following year he was made Commander-in-Chief at Horse Guards where he continued to fight for reform, including a new system of reserves that did much to support the campaign in South Africa (1899-1902). During this time he faced opposition from the Secretary of War Lord Lansdowne and the group around Lord Roberts. Nevertheless, Wolseley’s reputation for efficiency led to the phrase ‘everything's all Sir Garnet’, meaning all is in order.

Field Marshal the Right Honourable Garnet Joseph, Viscount Wolseley KP, GCB, OM, GCMG, 1910. Oil on canvas, artist unknown, 1910.

NAM 2006-10-4

"The very model of a modern major-general."

Gilbert and Sullivan, ‘The Pirates of Penzance’, (1879).