Background
Frederick Roberts was born in Cawnpore, India, on Septembe 30, 1832, the son of Gen. Sir Abraham Roberts, a British soldier in Indian service. His family was Anglo-Irish, long settled in Waterford.
(Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts,...)
Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, (30 September 1832 14 November 1914) was a British soldier who was one of the most successful commanders of the 19th century. He served in the Indian rebellion, the Expedition to Abyssinia and the Second Anglo-Afghan War before leading British Forces to success in the Second Boer War. He also became the last Commander-in-Chief of the Forces before the post was abolished in 1904. In 1907 a selection of his speeches was published under the title A Nation in Arms.
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Illustrated with over one hundred maps, photos and portraits, of the battles, individuals and places involved in the Indian Mutiny Following the publication of 1st Earl Roberts account of the Mutiny of the Indian Army, Forty-One Years in India in 1902, and his subsequent death in 1914, a packet of letters came to light, telling the story of his personal experiences and adventures during the stirring days of 1857-58 as told to his father, mother, and sister.
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Excerpt from The Rise of Wellington When the proposal for a series of republications in book form of some of the more important articles and short stories appearing in the pages of the Pall Mall Magazine was first made to us by Mr. R. B. Marston, we accepted it without hesitation, perceiving at once that an admirable medium would thus be provided by which much valuable literary matter might be made known to an even wider circle of the public than the readers of the periodical of which we have the conduct. Field-marshal Viscount Wolseley's graphic and analytical papers on the Decline and Fall of Napoleon, which constitute the first volume of the pall mall magazine library, achieved, as we are able to say from personal knowledge, a very remarkable success not only in England and America, but on the Continent; especially in Paris, where they were translated and published in book form. Much the same may be said with regard to General Lord Roberts' valuable and instructive articles on the Rise of Wellington, which found. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Frederick Roberts was born in Cawnpore, India, on Septembe 30, 1832, the son of Gen. Sir Abraham Roberts, a British soldier in Indian service. His family was Anglo-Irish, long settled in Waterford.
Roberts was sent to Eton in 1845, entered Sandhurst in 1847, and then attended the East India Company's college at Addiscombe.
In 1851 Roberts joined the Bengal Artillery.
Roberts began by serving with his father, who was experienced in the affairs of the North-West Frontier. During the Indian mutiny, Roberts was at the siege of Delhi and at the second relief of Lucknow and won the Victoria Cross at Khudaganj in January 1858. During the years that followed, he rose steadily in rank, and he was involved in the 1860s and 1870s with the affairs of the North-West Frontier, although in 1868 he accompanied Sir Robert Napier on the British expedition to Ethiopia. During this time Roberts became an advocate of a "forward policy" toward Afghanistan, arguing for control of that country in order to check a supposed Russian threat to India.
In 1876 Lord Lytton became viceroy of India, and Roberts's influence increased. In 1878 he took command of the Punjab Frontier Force and in autumn headed one of the columns that invaded Afghanistan following the Emir's rejection of a British envoy while welcoming a Russian one. The Emir was deposed in 1878, and his successor signed a treaty with the British in 1879. In the previous year Roberts had been promoted to major general and knighted. In September 1879 Sir Louis Cavagnari was murdered while on a mission to Kabul, and this led to the dispatch of Roberts and another British invasion of Afghanistan. Kabul was taken, and another Emir was installed on the throne. But the Afghans continued to resist, and in July 1880 they wiped out half a British brigade at Maiwand. Roberts force-marched his troops from Kabul and defeated the Afghans definitively at Kandahar in September, a victory that made him a popular hero in England, where he was feted after being given a baronetcy and made commander in chief of the Madras army (1881). Roberts tried unsuccessfully to persuade the government of William Gladstone to annex Kandahar.
In 1885 Roberts was named commander in chief in India. For the next 8 years he occupied himself with reorganizing military transport, increasing the training of troops, and developing obsessions about the Russian peril in the North-West Frontier. In 1892 he was created baron. From 1893 to 1895 Roberts held no official post, and he spent his time writing. In May 1895 he was given the rank of field marshal and appointed commander in chief in Ireland, where he served for the next 4 years.
In October 1899 the Boer War began, and the British soon suffered a series of disastrous defeats. Moreover, Roberts's son was killed at Colenso. In December, Roberts was appointed to command the British armies in the Boer War. He arrived in South Africa in January 1900 and immediately began reorganizing the poor transport, increasing the mounted troops, and planning a full-scale invasion of both Boer republics once reinforcements arrived. Roberts resisted pressures to scatter his troops in the relief of beleaguered garrisons, and the British advance began in February. Almost everywhere that the Boers stood to fight they were defeated, and by mid-March Bloemfontein had fallen. On May 31 Roberts's forces entered Johannesburg, and Pretoria fell on June 5. By September the British had occupied most of the towns in the northern Transvaal, and in October President Paul Kruger fled to Europe. The war seemed won, and Roberts returned to a hero's welcome as the man who had quickly reversed the tide and won the war. His reputation was enormous. Queen Victoria gave him an earldom in one of her last acts, and he was made commander in chief of the British army.
In this post, which he held until 1904, Roberts's reputation began to dim. It soon appeared that the Boer War was far from won, and Gen. Kitchener had to face 2 years of guerrilla warfare led by Christian De Wet and Louis Botha. Roberts was then criticized for having concentrated on capturing Boer towns rather than on destroying the Boer armies in the field. At the War Office, Roberts—with his experience drawn entirely from India and his brief stay in South Africa—was put in charge of the organization of the British army. The Esher Commission on the organization of the War Office recommended the abolition of the post of commander in chief in 1903, and Roberts left the post in 1904.
Roberts then devoted his activity to the championing of conscription for home defense, becoming president of the National Service League in 1905. When World War I broke out in 1914, Roberts, then 82 years old, was appointed to command the Indian troops fighting in France. He did not live to reach the Western front, dying of a chill at Saint-Omer on November 14, 1914.
In 1914, Lady Roberts unveiled a memorial statue to her late husband in Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow.
There is an equestrian statue of Roberts on Horse Guards Parade in London.
The main street of Ladysmith, BC, Canada is named after Lord Roberts.
Roberts Barracks at Larkhill Garrison and the town of Robertsganj in Uttar Pradesh are named after him.
Lord Roberts French Immersion Public School in London, Ontario, Lord Roberts Junior Public School in Scarborough, Ontario, and Lord Roberts Elementary Schools in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Winnipeg, Manitoba are named after him. Roberts is also a Senior Boys house at the Duke of York's Royal Military School.
The Lord Roberts Centre – a facility at the National Shooting Centre built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and HQ of the National Smallbore Rifle Association (which Roberts was fundamental in founding) is named in his honour.
(Illustrated with over one hundred maps, photos and portra...)
(Excerpt from The Rise of Wellington When the proposal fo...)
(Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts,...)
(Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this clas...)
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
Roberts married Nora Henrietta Bews on 17 May 1859; they had six children of whom three, a son and two daughters, survived infancy.
He was a British East India Company Army general who served nearly 50 years in India.
He was killed in action on 17 December 1899 at the Battle of Colenso during the Boer War.
