VICTORIA’S HAMMER GARNET WOLSELEY
“DURING A CAREER SPANNING NEARLY 50 YEARS, HE BECAME ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED BRITISH GENERALS OF THE VICTORIAN PERIOD”
A bearded sergeant lugged Captain Garnet Wolseley back from the front line to the surgeon’s tent. The 21-year-old captain looked more dead than alive, having been severely wounded when a Russian shell exploded in the British trenches at Sevastopol. Wolseley looked hideous: the skin on his left cheek hung down to his neck, his right eye bulged from its socket, and his face and legs had gashes and cuts from rock fragments that had struck him like projectiles. The surgeon managed to patch the officer up and sewed his left cheek back into place.
When he heard the news that the final British assault would be launched on Sevastopol, Wolseley hobbled out from his hospital bed to a horse. He hoped to ride to the front line and share in the glory. Partially blind and crippled, the young captain burst into tears in frustration when he couldn’t mount the beast due to his ailments. But the young army officer would have future opportunities to distinguish himself in the queen’s service.
Dr Joseph H. Lehmann, in his superb biography on Wolseley, labelled the general as the “supreme master of irregular warfare”. His campaigns against the Métis in Canada, the Ashanti in West Africa, Colonel ‘Urabi’s rebels in Egypt and the Mahdi’s Ansar in Sudan were models for how to conduct a military campaign far from a base of operations and overcome logistical hindrances. His campaigns were conducted with speed, efficiency and a clearly defined objective. Those around him coined the phrase ‘Everything’s all Sir Garnet’ to signify that everything was accounted for with great care and thoroughness during a Wolseley campaign.
