Kitchener, Horatio (Herbert) (1850–1916)

Irish soldier and administrator. He defeated the Sudanese at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898 and reoccupied Khartoum. In South Africa, he was commander‐in‐chief 1900–02 during the Boer War, and he commanded the forces in India 1902–09. Appointed war minister on the outbreak of World War I, he was successful in his campaign calling for voluntary recruitment.

Kitchener was born in County Kerry, Ireland. He was commissioned in 1871, and transferred to the Egyptian army in 1882. Promoted to commander‐in‐chief in 1892, he forced a French expedition to withdraw from the Sudan in the Fashoda Incident. During the Boer War he acted first as Lord Roberts's chief of staff and then as commander‐in‐chief. He conducted war by a scorched‐earth policy and created the earliest concentration camps for civilians. Subsequently he commanded the forces in India and acted as British agent in Egypt, and in 1914 received an earldom. As British secretary of state for war from 1914, he modernized the British forces. He was one of the first to realize that the war would not be ‘over by Christmas’, and planned for an entrenched three‐year war, for which he began raising new armies. He bears some responsibility for the failure of the Gallipoli campaign, having initially refused any troops for the venture, and from then on his influence declined. He drowned when his ship struck a German mine on the way to Russia.