Horatio Herbert Kitchener [Lord Kitchener]
Life
1850-1916 [Lord Kitchener; Earl of Khartoum and of Broome]; first Earl Field-marshal; b. Crotter House, Ballylongford, Co. Kerry, 24 June 1850; ed. Switzerland and Royal Military Academy, Woolwich; Royal Engineers, 1871; serve in Sudan; Sirdar of Egyptian Army, 1892; routed Khafir Abdullah, Omdurman, 1898, winning Sudan for Egypt; peerage, 1898; commander in chief, Boer War, 1900-02; Viscount and Order of Merit; commander in chief, India,
1902-09; field-marshal, 1909; agent and consul-gen. Egypt, 1911; created earl, 1914; Sec. of State for War, 1914; organised ‘Kitchener’s Army’, raising 14 Territorial divisions; opposed Churchill’s Dardenelle’s Expedition after his visit there in 1915; lost on HMS Hampshire, which struck a mine off the Orkneys, June 1916; there is a portrait by C. M. Horsfall. ODNB DIB
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Dictionary of National Biography: Earl of Khartoum and of Broome; add. biog. information incl. lent to Palestine Exploration Fund, 1874; sent to survey Cyprus, 18978; second in command Egyptian cavalry, 1882; served Wolseley in relief of Gordon, 1884-5; contrib. to defeat of Dervishes, Toski, 1889; prepared army for conquest of Sudan, 1892-96; KCMB, 1874, for services in River war, 1896; reoccupation of Khartoum following annihilation of Dervishes, 1898; interview with Major Marchand, at Fashoda, 1898; Gov. Gen. of Sudan, 1899; chief of staff under Roberts in S. Africa, 1899; directed attack at Paardeberg, Feb. 1900; suppressed Boer rebellion and cleared southern part of Orange Free State; organised tactics against guerrilla Boers, Nov. 1900-May 1902; viscount and OM, 1902; commander in India, 1902-09, initiating reforms including abolition of military control; Egypt agent and consul gen., 1911; kept Egypt quite during unrest in Near East; earl, 1914; envisaged long war; little knowledge of organisation of army at home or War Office work; increased army from six regular and fourteen territorial divisions to seventy divisions, with 3,000,000 volunteers (‘Kitchener’s Army’); advised abandoning of Dardenelles enterprise on visiting it, 1915; went down in HMS Hampshire, on the way to Russia.
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Notes
Portrait of Horatio Herbert Kitchener by C. M. Horsfall (see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition, Ulster Mus. 1965).
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