Garnet Joseph Wolseley 1st Viscount Wolseley

Garnet Joseph Wolseley Wolseley, 1st Viscount , 1833-1913, British field marshal. He fought in Burma (present-day Myanmar; 1852-53), the Crimea (1854-56), India (1857-58), and China (1860), and was an observer in the American Civil War. Later he went to Canada as commander of the Red River expedition (1870), and suppressed the rebellion led by Louis Riel at Fort Garry. After conducting the Ashanti campaign (1873-74), he served as high commissioner of Cyprus (1878) and as an administrator in South Africa (1879-80). His most famous achievements were the brilliant defeat of Arabi Pasha, leader of an Egyptian army revolt, at Tell el Kebir in 1882 and his attempt to relieve General Charles G. Gordon at Khartoum (1884-85), for which he was made a viscount. A tireless advocate of army reform, he became (1871) assistant adjutant general at the war office and worked with Viscount Cardwell to achieve shorter periods of enlistment, abolition of the purchase of commissions, and the creation of an army reserve. As quartermaster general (1880-82), adjutant general (1882-90), commander in chief for Ireland (1890-95), and commander in chief of the army (1895-1901), he continued to press for reform and was responsible for the modernization of training and equipment. He wrote The Story of a Soldier's Life (1903).

Bibliography: See his The American Civil War: An English View, ed. by J. A. Rawley (1964); his Khartoum journal, In Relief of Gordon (1967), his South African diaries (1971) and journals (1973), all three ed. by A. Preston; biography by J. H. Lehmann (1964); L. Maxwell, The Ashanti Ring (1985).

Wolseley, Garnet, 1st Viscount Wolseley (1833–1913). Soldier. The son of an Irish major, Wolseley joined the army in 1852 and served with distinction in the Burmese War and the Crimean War. He was in India at the time of the mutiny and took part in the second Opium War against China in 1860. From 1861 he was in Canada, where he crushed the Red River rebellion in 1870 and then won more fame in the Ashanti War of 1873–4. His victory at Tel‐el‐Kebir in Egypt over Arabi Pasha in 1882 made him a national hero. Though his expedition in 1885 failed to rescue Gordon, Wolseley was not held responsible and was promoted viscount. He finished in 1894 as field marshal, one of the busiest and most successful of Victorian soldiers.

Wolseley, Garnet, 1st Viscount Wolseley (1833–1913). Soldier. The son of an Irish major, Wolseley joined the army in 1852 and served with distinction in the Burmese War and the Crimean War, being seriously wounded on two occasions. He was in India at the time of the mutiny and took part in the second Opium War against China in 1860. From 1861 he was in Canada, where he crushed the Red River rebellion in 1870 and then won more fame in the Ashanti war of 1873–4. His victory at Tel-el-Kebir in Egypt over Arabi Pasha in 1882 made him a national hero. He was promoted general and given a barony. Though his expedition in 1885 failed to rescue Gordon, Wolseley was not held responsible and was promoted viscount. He finished in 1894 as field marshal, one of the busiest and most successful of Victorian soldiers. His appointment as commander-in-chief in 1895, in succession to the duke of Cambridge, gave him the chance to implement some of the army reforms he had long advocated, though ill-health forced him to resign in 1899. All his victories, it has been remarked, were gained in colonial conflicts, but he did what was asked of him. Queen Victoria in 1874 found him ‘thin and grey, but well, and a very smart, active, wiry-looking man, full of energy’.

J. A. Cannon