Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/400

 Maude's pursuing cavalry pressed them so closely that on 27 February it entered Aziziyeh, half-way between Kut and Bagdad. After a pause, to allow his supplies to come up, Maude pushed on. Ctesiphon was occupied after a stiff fight between the cavalry and the Turkish fifty-first division at Lajj. At Bawi the first corps crossed the Tigris and pressed forward to Bagdad, while the third corps forced the passage of the Diala and pursued the Turks up that river. On 11 March Bagdad was occupied. Its capture by no means concluded active operations. In spite of growing resistance on the part of the Turks, Mushaidieh was occupied on the 14th, Bakuba on the Diala on the 18th, and Feluza on the Euphrates on the 19th. The offensive was continued to the north and east of Bagdad, and proceeded throughout the summer notwithstanding attempts of the enemy to retrieve the position. Early in November Cobbe occupied Tekrit, and this was the last victory achieved during Maude's lifetime, but by that time the conquest had been consolidated and there were no longer grounds for any fear that a reverse of fortune was possible in Mesopotamia. He had been promoted lieutenant-general on 1 March.

Simultaneously with operations in the field Maude devoted himself to consolidating and administrating the conquered territory. A railway was laid down between Kut and Bagdad, agriculture encouraged, and sanitary measures undertaken. Bagdad was not a healthy city and cholera was endemic. At a party at a Jewish school on 14 November the army commander drank some milk from which it is thought he must have caught the disease, and four days later (18 November 1917) he died of virulent cholera.

Maude was a great soldier and a born fighter, but though he had the strongest faith in the offensive he had a clear understanding when a fight must be broken off, and he never undertook an offensive without the most careful and thorough preparation. Over and above great natural gifts and knowledge acquired by years of study, he had a peculiar understanding of the requirements of troops, whose devotion he commanded in a marked degree. Punctual, methodical, and hardworking, his chief fault was perhaps a desire to over-centralize and to concentrate direction in his own hands, but he was not only generous in giving credit to his subordinates, but also open and willing to hear their advice. He was a thinker, a student, a sportsman, and a man of strong religious convictions. He will be remembered chiefly for his Mesopotamian campaign, but every task of his life was pursued in the same spirit of thoroughness and care as his last great achievement.

Maude married in 1893 Cecil, daughter of Colonel the Rt. Hon. Thomas Edward Taylor, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, of Ardgillan Castle, co. Dublin, and had one son and two daughters.

A portrait of Maude is included in J. S. Sargent's picture ‘Some General Officers of the Great War’, painted in 1922, in the National Portrait Gallery. 

MAURICE, JOHN FREDERICK (1841–1912), major-general, the eldest son of  [q. v.], was born in London 24 May 1841. He was educated privately, mainly at home, and was thus greatly influenced by the ideals and principles of his father and of the band of men with whom his father was associated. To this influence may be largely ascribed the intense hatred of any kind of injustice or unfairness, and the readiness to sacrifice his personal interests to a cause in which he believed, which always characterized him. It was entirely his own idea that instead of going to Cambridge he should become a soldier. He passed second into Addiscombe, where the artillery cadets for the East India Company's service were trained, just before the amalgamation of the company's forces with the Crown's led to the transfer of the Addiscombe cadets to Woolwich. From Woolwich he passed out into the Royal Artillery in 1862.

His service falls into three periods. Till 1873 he was at home, passing through the Staff College and becoming instructor in tactics at Sandhurst in 1872; between 1873 and 1885 his time was divided mainly between the War Office, where he did notable work in the intelligence department, and active service, in Ashanti (1873–1874), South Africa (1879–1880), Egypt (1882), and the Sudan (1884–1885); from 1885 till his retirement in 1903 he was in succession professor of military art and history at the Staff College, in command of an artillery brigade at Aldershot, of the artillery of the Eastern 374