Redvers Buller

Sir Redvers H. Buller

Sir Redvers Henry Buller VC GCB GCMG (born December 7, 1839 in Crediton ; † June 2, 1908 ibid) was a British general and commander in chief of British troops in the first phase of the Boer War .

Life

First missions

After schooling in Eton , Buller, son of a Member of Parliament , joined the British Army in 1858 . It was used in various British colonial wars in China, Canada and Africa . In 1870 he took part in the Red River Expedition in Canada under Garnet Joseph Wolseley as company commander of the C Company of the King's Royal Rifle Corps . Again under Wolseley, he took part in the Ashanti War on the Gold Coast from 1873 to 1874 . Buller was one of the 35 officers that Wolseley had selected for this mission and who later formed the so-called Ashanti ring . The group gained significant influence on the Victorian British Army through mutual support and assumed leadership positions by the end of the century. After the Ashanti mission he was promoted to major .

Zulu War

In 1879 he fought in the Zulu War . At the beginning of the campaign he was Chief of Staff to Evelyn Wood , who led the left of the three British divisions advancing from Utrecht towards Kambula . While the middle and right departments of the British were pushed back after the battle of Isandhlwana , Wood's department stood alone in Zululand. On March 28th there was the battle of Hlobane between Woods cavalry , under Buller, and the main army of the Zulu, under Ntshingwayo Khoza near Hlobane. In this battle the Zulu were victorious and the British lost almost a third of their deployed troops. For his work in rescuing wounded soldiers in this battle, Buller was awarded the Victoria Cross , the highest award in Great Britain for outstanding bravery in the face of the enemy . The very next day there was the successful battle of Kambula , in which Buller led the pursuit of the fleeing Zulu. Buller was also involved in the decisive Battle of Ulundi on July 4, 1879, which ended the war in favor of the British.

Upon his return to England in August that year, Queen Victoria appointed him her personal aide-de-camp , having previously been promoted to colonel .

Egypt and Sudan

In 1882 Buller served as chief of staff, again under Wolseley, in the expedition to put down the Urabi uprising in Egypt . Osman Digna , a Mahdist general, carried the Mahdi uprising to eastern Sudan in 1883 . In February 1884 5,000 men landed here under Gerald Graham to drive Osman Digna away. Redvers Buller led one of Graham's two brigades. They were able to defeat Osman Digna in the Second Battle of El Teb on February 29, 1884 and in the Battle of Tamanieh on March 13, 1884. 1885 took Buller on the Nile Expedition to rescue Gordon Pasha and to the relief of Khartoum as head of military intelligence part. Buller was then promoted to major general and commanded to Ireland .

In top positions in the army

From 1887 Buller held the office of Quartermaster General and from 1890, as successor to Lord Wolseley, that of Adjutant General of the Army. In 1891 he was promoted to lieutenant general. In 1895 he was chosen by the Liberal Rosebery government to succeed the Duke of Cambridge as Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Due to the change of government in the same year, however, Wolseley finally received the office. In 1898, Buller took over the Aldershot Command as commander .

Second Boer War

In 1899, Buller became the Commander-in-Chief of the British Armed Forces in the Second Boer War because of his excellent reputation as an officer . In the battles of Colenso and Spion Kop he suffered devastating defeats against the Boers . The real reason for this was the underestimation of the Boers and their morale by the British. The defeats were also due to the incompetence of his subordinates, but the British public often blamed Buller for these defeats and he was nicknamed the Reverse Buller (withdrawal buller). In March 1900 he had to hand over the high command to Lord Roberts and only kept the supreme command of the weaker of the two British armies in Natal . Before that he had succeeded in overcoming the Boer lines on the Tugela by changing his tactics and releasing the Ladysmith garrison commanded by George Stuart White . After his troops had united with Roberts' in August and the Boers seemed finally defeated after the battle of Bergendal , Buller returned to England, where he initially held his old post in Aldershot.

His recall quickly got caught up in the party political dispute between Whigs and Tories , so that he was partly enthusiastically celebrated, partly vehemently criticized. Buller was supported by the Whigs and eventually suspended as a scapegoat for the protracted Boer War by Secretary of War William Brodrick , a Tory, while his salary was cut in half. Buller made several attempts to challenge this decision, but to no avail.

His Victoria Cross is in the Royal Green Jackets Museum in Winchester .

literature

• Ian FW Beckett: Buller, Sir Redvers Henry (1839-1908). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, 2004.

Web links

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