Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (; 24 June 1850 – 5 June 1916) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator. Kitchener came to prominence for his imperial campaigns, his involvement in the Second Boer War, and his central role in the early part of the First World War.
Kitchener was credited in 1898 for having won the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan, for which he was made Baron Kitchener of Khartoum. As Chief of Staff (1900–1902) in the Second Boer WarAnon., "Kitchener of Khartoum, Viscount", in Debrett's peerage, baronetage, knightage, and companionage, London: Dean & Son, 1903, p. 483-484. he played a key role in Lord Roberts' conquest of the Boer Republics, then succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief – by which time Boer forces had taken to guerrilla fighting and British forces imprisoned Boer and African civilians in concentration camps. His term as commander-in-chief (1902–1909) of the Army in India saw him quarrel with another eminent proconsul, the viceroy Lord Curzon, who eventually resigned. Kitchener then returned to Egypt as British agent and consul-general (de facto administrator).
In 1914, at the start of the First World War, Kitchener became secretary of state for war, a cabinet minister. One of the few to foresee a long war, lasting for at least three years, and having the authority to act effectively on that perception, he organised the largest volunteer army that Britain had seen, and oversaw a significant expansion of material production to fight on the Western Front. Despite having warned of the difficulty of provisioning for a long war, he was blamed for the shortage of shells in the spring of 1915 – one of the events leading to the formation of a coalition government – and stripped of his control over munitions and strategy.
On 5 June 1916, Kitchener was making his way to Russia on to attend negotiations with Tsar Nicholas II when in bad weather the ship struck a German mine west of Orkney, Scotland, and sank. Kitchener was among 737 who died.
Early life
Kitchener was born at Gunsborough Villa, north of Listowel, County Kerry, in Ireland, son of army officer Henry Horatio Kitchener (1805–1894) and Frances Anne Chevallier (1826–1864); daughter of John Chevallier, a clergyman, of Aspall Hall, and his third wife, Elizabeth (née Cole).
Both sides of Kitchener's family were from Suffolk, and could trace their descent to the reign of William III; his mother's family was of French Huguenot descent. His father had only recently sold his commission and bought land in Ireland, under the Incumbered Estates (Ireland) Act 1849 designed to encourage investment into Ireland after the Irish Famine. In later life Kitchener only once revisited his childhood home, in the summer of 1910 at the invitation of Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne; he astonished the estate's owners by recalling the Irish names of many of the fields. Although sometimes labeled by military historians as Irish or Anglo-Irish (a group which provided a disproportionate number of senior British officers – see Irish military diaspora), Kitchener did not regard himself as such and was known to quote the saying misattributed to the Duke of Wellington that "a man may be born in a stable, but that does not make him a horse".
In 1864 the family moved to Switzerland, where the young Kitchener was educated at Montreux, then at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Pro-French and eager to see action, he joined a French field ambulance unit in the Franco-Prussian War. His father took him back to Britain after he caught pneumonia while ascending in a balloon to see the French Army of the Loire in action.
Commissioned into the Royal Engineers on 4 January 1871, Kitchener was reprimanded by the Duke of Cambridge, the commander-in-chief, as his service in France had violated British neutrality. He served in Palestine, Egypt and Cyprus as a surveyor, learned Arabic, and prepared detailed topographical maps of the areas. His brother, Lt. Gen. Sir Walter Kitchener, had also entered the army and was Governor of Bermuda from 1908 to 1912.
Survey of western Palestine In 1874, aged 24, Kitchener was assigned by the Palestine Exploration Fund to a mapping-survey of the Holy Land, replacing Charles Tyrwhitt-Drake, who had died of malaria. By then an officer in the Royal Engineers, Kitchener joined fellow officer Claude R. Conder; between 1874 and 1877 they surveyed Palestine, returning to England only briefly in 1875 after an attack by locals at Safed, in Galilee.
Conder and Kitchener's expedition became known as the Survey of Western Palestine because it was largely confined to the area west of the Jordan River. The survey collected data on the topography and toponymy of the area, as well as local flora and fauna.
The results of the survey were published in an eight-volume series, with Kitchener's contribution in the first three tomes (Conder and Kitchener 1881–1885). This survey has had a lasting effect on the Middle East for several reasons: It serves as the basis for the grid system used in the modern maps of Israel and Palestine; The data compiled by Conder and Kitchener are still consulted by archaeologists and geographers working in the southern Levant; The survey itself effectively delineated and defined the political borders of the southern Levant. For example, the modern border between Israel and Lebanon is established at the point in upper Galilee where Conder and Kitchener's survey stopped.
In 1878, having completed the survey of western Palestine, Kitchener was sent to Cyprus to undertake a survey of that newly acquired British protectorate. He became vice-consul in Anatolia in 1879.
Egypt On 4 January 1883 Kitchener was promoted to captain, given the Turkish rank binbasi (major), and dispatched to Egypt, where he took part in the reconstruction of the Egyptian Army.
Egypt had recently become a British puppet state, its army led by British officers, although still nominally under the sovereignty of the Khedive (Egyptian viceroy) and his nominal overlord the Ottoman sultan. Kitchener became second-in-command of an Egyptian cavalry regiment in February 1883, and then took part in the failed Nile Expedition to relieve Charles George Gordon in the Sudan in late 1884.
Fluent in Arabic, Kitchener preferred the company of the Egyptians over the British, and the company of no-one over the Egyptians, writing in 1884 that: "I have become such a solitary bird that I often think I were happier alone". Kitchener spoke Arabic so well that he was able to effortlessly adopt the dialects of the different Bedouin tribes of Egypt and the Sudan.
Promoted to brevet major on 8 October 1884 and to brevet lieutenant-colonel on 15 June 1885, he became the British member of the Zanzibar boundary commission in July 1885. He became Governor of the Egyptian Provinces of Eastern Sudan and Red Sea Littoral (which in practice consisted of little more than the Port of Suakin) in September 1886, also Pasha the same year, and led his forces in action against the followers of the Mahdi at Handub in January 1888, when he was injured in the jaw.
Kitchener was promoted to brevet colonel on 11 April 1888 and to the substantive rank of major on 20 July 1889 and led the Egyptian cavalry at the Battle of Toski in August 1889. At the beginning of 1890 he was appointed inspector general of the Egyptian police 1888–92 before moving to the position of Adjutant-General of the Egyptian Army in December of the same year and Sirdar (commander-in-chief) of the Egyptian Army with the local rank of brigadier in April 1892.
Kitchener was worried that, although his moustache was bleached white by the sun, his blond hair refused to turn grey, making it harder for Egyptians to take him seriously. His appearance added to his mystique: his long legs made him appear taller, whilst a cast in his eye made people feel he was looking right through them. Kitchener, at , towered over most of his contemporaries.
Sir Evelyn Baring, the de facto British ruler of Egypt, thought Kitchener "the most able (soldier) I have come across in my time". In 1890, a War Office evaluation of Kitchener concluded: "A good brigadier, very ambitious, not popular, but has of late greatly improved in tact and manner ... a fine gallant soldier and good linguist and very successful in dealing with Orientals" [in the 19th century, Europeans called the Middle East the Orient].
While in Egypt, Kitchener was initiated into Freemasonry in 1883 in the Italian-speaking La Concordia Lodge No. 1226, which met in Cairo. In November 1899 he was appointed the first District Grand Master of the District Grand Lodge of Egypt and the Sudan, under the United Grand Lodge of England.Dorothe Sommer, Freemasonry in the Ottoman Empire, I. B. Tauris, Londra-New-York, 2015, p. 80.
Sudan and Khartoum
In 1896, the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, was concerned with keeping France out of the Horn of Africa. A French expedition under the command of Jean-Baptiste Marchand had left Dakar in March 1896 with the aim of conquering the Sudan, seizing control of the Nile as it flowed into Egypt, and forcing the British out of Egypt; thus restoring Egypt to the place within the French sphere of influence that it had had prior to 1882. Salisbury feared that if the British did not conquer the Sudan, the French would. He had supported Italy's ambitions to conquer Ethiopia in the hope that the Italians would keep the French out of Ethiopia. The Italian attempt to conquer Ethiopia, however, was going very badly by early 1896, and ended with the Italians being annihilated at the Battle of Adowa in March 1896. In March 1896, with the Italians visibly failing and the Mahdist State threatening to conquer Italian Eritrea, Salisbury ordered Kitchener to invade northern Sudan, ostensibly for the purpose of distracting the Ansar (whom the British called "Dervishes") from attacking the Italians.
Kitchener won victories at the Battle of Ferkeh in June 1896 and the Battle of Hafir in September 1896, earning him national fame in the United Kingdom and promotion to major general on 25 September 1896, "for distinguished service in the field, in recognition of his services during the recent operations on the Nile". Kitchener's cold personality and his tendency to drive his men hard made him widely disliked by his fellow officers. One officer wrote about Kitchener in September 1896: "He was always inclined to bully his own entourage, as some men are rude to their wives. He was inclined to let off his spleen on those around him. He was often morose and silent for hours together ... he was even morbidly afraid of showing any feeling or enthusiasm, and he preferred to be misunderstood rather than be suspected of human feeling." Kitchener had served on the Wolseley expedition to rescue General Charles George Gordon at Khartoum, and was convinced that the expedition failed because Wolseley had used boats coming up the Nile to bring his supplies. Kitchener wanted to build a railway to supply the Anglo-Egyptian army, and assigned the task of constructing the Sudan Military Railway to a Canadian railway builder, Percy Girouard, for whom he had specifically asked.