Wolseley, Garnet Joseph (1833–1913), Viscount Wolseley , British army field-marshal, was born 4 June 1833 at Golden Bridge House, Co. Dublin, eldest son of Maj. Garnet Joseph Wolseley (d. 1840), late of the 25th Borderers, and his wife Frances Anne (d. 1883), daughter of William Smith of Golden Bridge House. The Wolseleys were originally a Staffordshire family and the Irish branch was established by Capt. Richard Wolseley, who served in Ireland with William III (qv) and was awarded a grant of land in Co. Carlow. Garnet Wolseley's father died when he was just 7, leaving his mother and six siblings in reduced circumstances. He was educated at a Dublin day-school and later worked in a surveyor's office, where he gained a knowledge of surveying and drawing. He was determined on a career in the army but his family could not afford to buy him a commission. A series of pleading letters was sent to the duke of Wellington (qv), then commander-in-chief, and he was commissioned as an ensign in the 12th Foot in March 1852, transferring to the 80th Foot soon afterwards.
His first active service was in the second Burma war (1851–3), where he was soon known for his reckless courage. He led an assault on the fortress of the bandit chief Myattoon, was badly wounded in the leg, and mentioned in dispatches. A period of convalescent leave followed and he was promoted to lieutenant (February 1853). On the outbreak of the Crimean war he transferred into the 90th Light Infantry and served in the trenches outside Sevastopol. He was promoted to captain (February 1855) and was appointed acting engineer, playing a prominent role in the various assaults on Sevastopol. During his service in the Crimea he met Lt. Charles Gordon, later famous as ‘Gordon of Khartoum’. The two young officers soon struck up a firm friendship, which would endure until Gordon's death (1885). In August 1855 Wolseley was severely wounded during a Russian artillery bombardment. After surgery he made a slow recovery; he had lost one eye, while the sight in his good eye remained impaired. For his service in the Crimea he was mentioned in dispatches several times and awarded the Crimean Medal, the Turkish Order of the Medjidie, and the French Légion d'honneur.
By the time he was fit for service again, his regiment was engaged in the suppression of the Indian rebellion (1857–8) and he took part in Sir Colin Campbell's operations to relieve Lucknow. He served with Sir Hope Grant in the campaign in the Oudh and was promoted to brevet major (March 1858) and lieutenant-colonel (April 1859). This series of rapid promotions was quite remarkable: he had reached field-officer rank while still in his twenties. It was also during his service in India that he met Lt. Frederick Roberts (qv). He served with Grant in the China war of 1860, taking part in the assault on the Taku forts, and published a Narrative of the war with China in 1860 (1860). In 1861 he was posted to Canada, where, appointed to serve on the staff, he was promoted to full colonel. While in Canada, he closely followed developments in the American civil war and wrote a series of articles on developments in military tactics. He later published The soldier's pocket-book for field service (1869), which became an indispensable manual on organisation and tactics for the common soldier. In 1870 he led the Red River expedition against French-Canadian rebels, during which he proved himself a master of logistical organisation. He was made a KCMG and CB for his services in Canada.
He returned to England in 1871, was appointed assistant adjutant-general and posted to the war office, where he cooperated with Edward Cardwell (qv) in instituting a series of army reforms, focused on matters of supply, equipment, and administration. He soon established a reputation, both in the army and in civilian circles, as a progressive staff officer. At the war office he continually clashed with the duke of Cambridge, then commander-in-chief, whom he found totally reactionary in his military thinking. In 1873 he was appointed to command the Ashanti expedition with the local rank of major-general, successfully defeating the Ashanti King Kofi and seizing and burning his capital, Coomassie. At the conclusion of the campaign (1874) he was confirmed in his rank of major-general and made a GCMG and KCB, while parliament awarded him £25,000.
He was by this time a highly popular public figure. The combination of his glass eye and a limp caused by previous leg wounds made his slightly built form easily recognisable, and greatly endeared him to the public. In the press he was often referred to as ‘our only general’, and his reputation for thorough planning and organisation led to the phrase ‘all Sir Garnet’ becoming a synonym for efficiency. He would later be the inspiration for Gilbert and Sullivan's ‘model major-general’ in ‘The pirates of Penzance’. Yet in many ways he was an unusual reformer, and he still held very traditional views on the idea of personal command and the duties of staff officers. While he had studied continental models, he opposed the establishment of a general staff. During the Ashanti expedition he had assembled a group of staff officers which became known as the ‘Ashanti ring’ and included Irish officers such as Maj. George Colley (qv) and William Butler (qv). Despite the opposition of other general officers (including Roberts, who had established his own ring), Wolseley continued to use these men on his personal staff for the rest of his career. In 1874 he was appointed governor of Natal and became the first British high commissioner for Cyprus in 1878. But his term of office was cut short when he was ordered to Natal in 1879 after the army had suffered reverses in the Zulu war. By the time he arrived, however, the war was effectively over. In 1880 he was made a GCB, returned to the war office, and was appointed quartermaster-general, being made adjutant-general in 1882.
His term as adjutant-general was interrupted by two field commands. In July 1882 he took command of 25,000 men in Egypt and, following a textbook campaign, totally defeated the rebellious forces of Arabi Pasha at Tel-el-Kebir on 13 September. It was to be his greatest victory in the field and established him as the foremost general of the age. He was raised to a barony, taking the title ‘Wolseley of Cairo’, was promoted to full general, and was awarded £30,000 by parliament. In 1884 he was given command of the Khartoum relief column and set out from Wadi Halfa in October in an effort to reach his friend Gordon before the town was overwhelmed by Mahdist forces. He had supported Gordon's mission to Khartoum and had openly criticised Gladstone for not sending a relief column earlier. His own march to Khartoum was cautious and he allowed himself to be further delayed by the incorrect reports of a Mahdist spy. When paddle steamers arrived in the Nile off Khartoum on 28 January 1885, they found that the town had fallen two days earlier and that Gordon was dead. In his own journals and letters he heaped blame on himself while also labelling Gladstone as the ‘murderer of Gordon’.
He was created a viscount and made a Knight of St Patrick after the campaign and returned to the war office, where he instituted further reforms. The intelligence department was reconstituted; he reformed the staff college and now supported the concept of a general staff. In 1890 he was raised to the privy council and appointed commander-in-chief in Ireland; despite the political turmoil following the Parnellite split, he enjoyed a peaceful term in his lodgings in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham. He devoted his time to reading and writing a series of articles for the Pall Mall Magazine, which were later published in a collection as The decline and fall of Napoleon (1895). He also published the first two volumes of his Life of Marlborough (1894), but never managed to complete it.
In 1894 he was promoted to field-marshal, and became commander-in-chief of the British army in 1895. He was the second last field-marshal to hold this appointment before it was discontinued in the staff reforms of 1904. In 1898 he secured parliamentary approval to increase the size of the army, and instituted the special reserve. He also succeeded in securing over 41,000 acres (16,592 ha) on Salisbury Plain to be used for army manoeuvres. From around 1897, however, his health began to fail. He found it increasingly hard to remember facts and often could not recognise the faces of friends and former officers of his staff. When the second Boer war broke out in 1899, he expressed a desire to go to South Africa but was increasingly sidelined by the general staff. Due to the army’s poor showing in the opening phase of the war, he was severely criticised; but in reality his reforms were only partially completed at this stage, and many of his recommendations were not carried out until the eve of the first world war. He resigned as C-in-C in November 1899 and was succeeded by Roberts.
In 1901 he served as special envoy to various royal courts in Europe to announce the accession of Edward VII and also acted as Third Sword at his coronation. During the last years of his life he devoted himself to writing his memoirs, published (1903) as The story of a soldier's life, which quickly became a best-seller. He was awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Cambridge (1874), Oxford (1874), Dublin (1883), and Edinburgh (1898). He also held the honorary colonelcies of several regiments, including the Royal Irish Regiment, the Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians), and the Royal Horse Guards, and was awarded numerous civic and foreign honours. He died in Mentone, France, on 15 March 1913. His remains were returned to St Paul's cathedral, London, for burial.
He married (June 1867) Louisa (d. 1920), daughter of Alexander Erskine Holmes. They had one daughter, Frances Garnet Wolseley (1872–1936), who was awarded special remainder on the death of her father and succeeded to his viscountcy. An author and secretary to the board of agriculture for east Sussex, she founded the Glynde College for Lady Gardeners in 1901. On her death the viscountcy became extinct.
Lady Wolseley presented both a bust and a full-length portrait of her husband to the National Portrait Gallery in London. In 1918 she presented a portrait by William A. Menzies to TCD, where it hangs in the dining hall; another portrait, by F. Holl, is in the NGI. There are collections of his papers in the National Archives in Kew and the royal archives in Windsor, but the main Wolseley collection is in the library at Hove.
It was later said that ‘Wolseley was undoubtedly the most brilliant general of the Victorian era, perhaps the most brilliant general in British history, but it was his misfortune never to have commanded in a major war’ (Farwell, 347). During his lifetime he found himself increasingly overshadowed by Roberts, while his memory was further eroded by the rise to prominence of later field-marshals such as Kitchener (qv) and Haig. At the height of his career, however, he was nothing short of a Victorian icon. Streets were named in his honour all over the empire and an equestrian statute, designed by Sir W. Goscombe John, was placed in Horse Guards Parade in London in 1918. There are two monuments to Lord Wolseley in the north transept of St Patrick's cathedral, Dublin. As a curious reminder of his Irish connections, the Tel-el-Kebir Dairy was named in memory of his greatest victory and continued to operate in Dublin until the 1960s.