Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/333

 Henry Horatio Kitchener, of Cossington, Leicestershire, and Crotter House, Ballylongford, co. Kerry, by his first wife, Anne Frances, daughter of the Rev. John Chevallier, M.D. [q.v.], vicar of Aspall, Suffolk, was born at Crotter House 24 June 1850. Colonel Kitchener before settling in Ireland had served in the 13th Dragoons and 9th Foot. Owing to the illness of Mrs. Kitchener the family moved, when Herbert was thirteen years old, to Switzerland, where he was educated in a French school and acquired a knowledge of the French language which he never afterwards lost. In 1868 he passed into the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and passed out in December 1870, having qualified for a commission in the Royal Engineers. It was at this time, while he was waiting for the gazette, that the French, fired by Gambetta's eloquence, were attempting to create new armies to resist the Germans and to relieve Paris, their regular forces having been almost completely destroyed. Kitchener's parents were living at the time at Dinan, and his affection for France inspired him to offer his services to the army of the Loire. His time with it was short, for he fell ill, but it was remembered by the French Republic, which in 1913 conferred on him the medal commemorative of the campaign. On his return to England he was reprimanded by the commander-in-chief, the Duke of Cambridge, for a breach of discipline, but none the less he received his commission in the Royal Engineers (1871). After a few years of routine service at home, he was lent in 1874 to the Palestine Exploration Fund, and so began a connexion with the East which was to last almost for the remainder of his life. His work in Palestine enabled him to acquire a sound knowledge of the Arabs and of their language, and at the same time his exploration of the Holy Land developed the religious bent in a mind naturally devout. Kitchener's sympathies were then, and remained throughout his life, with the high church party of the Church of England; and though never either a zealot or a bigot he was always a convinced and professing Christian. In 1878, when Great Britain acquired Cyprus under the Treaty of Berlin, Kitchener was sent to survey the island. The work was broken off for lack of funds, to be resumed in 1880; he spent the interval as vice-consul at Kastamuni in Asia Minor.

In 1882, when the Egyptian army under Arabi Pasha rebelled, Kitchener was naturally eager to join the expedition under Sir Garnet (afterwards Viscount) Wolseley [q.v.]. The high commissioner of Cyprus said that he could not be spared; but, obtaining short leave of absence, he went to Alexandria and was able to take a small and entirely unofficial part in the campaign. He and another officer disguised themselves as Levantines and reconnoitred the route up the Nile valley from Alexandria towards Cairo, this being the first of a long series of such adventures which he was later to undertake. On his return to Cyprus after the enterprise he had some difficulty in placating the high commissioner. At the end of 1882 the survey of Cyprus was nearly completed, and Kitchener then accepted from Sir Henry Evelyn Wood [q.v.], who had been appointed first British sirdar of the Egyptian army, the offer of the post of second in command of the Egyptian cavalry. In 1883 he devoted two months' leave to a survey of the Sinai Peninsula, which he linked up with his survey of Palestine. In the following year the insurrection of the Sudanese under the Mahdi assumed serious proportions, and Kitchener was sent up the Nile to the frontier of Egypt proper, to endeavour to establish communication with Berber, which was besieged by the Mahdists. Berber surrendered 20 May 1884, and the men on the spot at once realized the gravity of the situation. Kitchener said that it would take 20,000 British troops to crush the Mahdi, but the home government shuddered at the thought of so serious an enterprise. Kitchener's task on the frontier then became that of endeavouring to establish communications with Khartoum, in which General Gordon was shut up, and to confirm the allegiance of wavering Mudirs. This work involved many adventurous rides into the desert, often in disguise. It was not until August that the British government took the step of sending an expedition up the Nile, too late as it proved, to relieve Gordon. Throughout this expedition Kitchener served in Wolseley's intelligence department, and in that capacity guided across the Bayuda desert the ill-fated column under Sir Herbert Stewart [q.v.]. It fell to him to receive the first refugees from Khartoum and to send up the first authoritative report of Gordon's death (26 January 1885). In July 1885 Kitchener resigned his commission in the Egyptian army and returned to England. He was now a brevet lieutenant-colonel with an established reputation as an authority on the habits and 307