Garnet Joseph Wolseley
(Garnet Joseph Wolseley, 1st Viscount of Wolseley; Golden Bridge, County Dublin, 1833-Mentone, France, 1913) Field Marshal and Commander-in-Chief of the British Army (1895-1901).During the short period of time that he was in absolute command of the British Army, he carried out a profound reorganization and modernization of it.
Garnet Wolseley
Son of a British officer, in 1852 he joined the army as second lieutenant of an infantry regiment, with which he distinguished himself in the Second Burmese War (1852-1853), which earned him promotion to the rank of lieutenant..The following year he campaigned in the Crimean War (1854-1856), serving in the corps of engineers.During the siege of Sevastopol he behaved with unparalleled courage and was seriously wounded, after which he was promoted to the rank of captain in December 1854.
Once again in active duty, Wolseley participated in the campaign directed to suppress the sepoy rebellion in India (1857-1859), in whose war he again demonstrated his bravery in the fierce fighting around the city of Lakhnam.Once the campaign was over, with only 26 years of age, Wolseley was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, an honor that he had to pay with the total loss of vision in one eye.
Appointed officer of the staff of General Sir James Hope Grant, in 1860 he took part in the Chinese War, assisting in the assault on Peking.Two years later, Wolseley published his book Narrative of the War with China , in which he narrated in great detail the British campaigns.
The capture, in 1861 , by the Government of the United States of America of two Confederate agents aboard the British ship Trent unleashed a deep crisis between Great Britain and this country that was about to be resolved with the war between both powers.That same year Wolseley was sent to Canada to take charge of the defense of the colonies in the event of an Anglo-American war, a position in which he remained until 1871.In 1870, he put down the dangerous indigenous revolt in the territory of Red River, led by Louis Rial, who had proclaimed the Republic of Canada in Manitoba.
For such a feat, Wolseley was appointed, in 1871, assistant general in the Ministry of War.Occupied between 1871 and 1873 in various technical positions of the ministry, in 1873 he was sent to Southwest Africa in command of a punitive military expedition against the Axantis kingdom, whose capital, Kumasi, literally devastated on February 5 of the year 1874, forcing this kingdom to submit to the British Empire.As a reward for his good work, he was promoted to the rank of Major General and received an extra bonus of £ 25,000.
Two years later, in 1875, Wolseley was sent to South Africa with the position of governor of the Natal province, with the mission of making the colonists accept the new colonialist policy dictated by London and promoting a South African federation of all territories under British rule.Member of the Council of India (1876) and Governor of Cyprus (1878), in May 1879 he was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed civil and military governor of Natal after the disastrous defeat of the British troops at the hands of the Zulu armies.
Wolseley took over the military operations replacing the inoperative General Lord Chelmsford.Under his command, he captured the city of Cetewago and defeated the Zulu chieftain Sekokuni, reorganizing the Zulu territories into British provinces and ending, in 1880, a bloody war that had cost the almighty British Imperial Army thousands of casualties.
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