Background

William Butler was born on October 31, 1838, at Golden, County Tipperary, Ireland. He was the son of Richard and Ellen Butler.

Education

Butler attended Jesuit school in Tullabeg County, and Dr. James Quinn’s school in Dublin.

Career

Butler entered the military and was commissioned as an ensign in the Sixty-ninth Foot Regiment on September 17, 1858. He made his first trip abroad when he was stationed at Tonghoo in Burma and Madras, where he was promoted to lieutenant in the fall of 1863.

While stationed in southern England in 1865, Butler began his first book, A Narrative of the Historical Events Connected with the Sixty-Ninth Regiment (1879). He dedicated the book to “the officers, non-commissioned officers, and private soldiers of the 69th, past present and to come,” an inscription which reveals his fierce allegiance to his regiment, and his belief in military’s international dominance. The Regiment’s next mission was to Canada.

Through 1868 Butler traveled an average of fifteen hundred miles a month as the lookout officer on the Canadian frontier. He returned to England disillusioned with war and frustrated that he had not risen further in the army. In 1870, he heard that frontier soldier Colonel Wolseley was organizing an expedition to the Red River. He met the troops on the shores of Lake Superior. The mission was to explore Saskatchewan, and assess the military strength of the Native Americans, and the condition of trade routes. Butler traveled twenty-seven hundred miles through winter snow for this mission and recounted this experience in his book, Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America (1872). His only fiction work, Red Cloud, the Solitary Sioux: A Story of the Great Prairie (1882), was also inspired by his experiences in Saskatchewan.

Butler received a long-awaited unattached company in 1872. He returned to Canada where he wrote The Wild North Land: Being the Story of a Winter Journey, with Dogs, Across Northern North America (1873). On duty in Ottawa in August of 1873, he learned that Sir Garnet Wolseley was leading an expedition to Ashanti, in Ghana. Butler wired Wolseley immediately and then departed for Africa. From this period on, Butler began concentrating almost entirely on militaristic and political enterprises in his writings. His assignment was to fortify the loyal Akim fighting men, and prepare then to ambush the Ashanti army in its retreat across the Prah River. Though the Akims later deserted, Butler was successful in this mission and was promoted to major and decorated. When his life was threatened by a fever in 1874, he returned to England to recover. There he completed his next book, Akim-Foo: The History of a Failure (1875), which explained his military maneuvers and vigorously criticized British policy in Africa.

Butler was given another opportunity to work with Wolseley through a special service commission in Natal, South Africa. Wolseley was an inside governor of the province, and Butler’s responsibility was to protect the Indian immigrants. He remained in South Africa until the autumn of 1875, when he returned to England and became deputy assistant quartermaster general.

In 1879, he returned to South Africa to prepare for the Zulu War. He was promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel in 1880, and that summer served as chief staff officer at Devonport. Butler’s book, Far Out: Roves Retold, a collection of magazine articles he had published on his travels through Canada, South Africa, and Cyprus, was published in 1880. Butler followed Wolseley to Egypt in 1882. At his return to Devonport, he was promoted to colonel and served as an aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria.

In 1884, Butler was made a brigadier general and volunteered to join General Charles George Gordon down the Nile by boat. He wrote of the battles fought on this mission in The Campaign of the Cataracts: Being a Personal Narrative of the Great Nile Expedition of 1884-5 (1887). He was decorated with two clasps upon his return to England in 1886.

Still frustrated by the perceived neglected by the British military, he chastised the military and government for its ineffectual administration and protection of its colonial possessions. His agitations led to his unemployment for two years, though he had been appointed Knight Commander of the Order of Bath in 1885.

For the duration of his “sabbatical,” Butler resided in Brittany and Ireland where he wrote The Campaign of the Cataracts (1887). In Ireland, he met an outspoken advocate for Irish home rule, Charles Stewart Parnell, who was very influential to Butler. Upon his return to Egypt in 1890, Butler was made commander of Alexandria’s garrison, a mainly administrative position that was virtually an exile. During this assignment, he traveled extensively with Elizabeth. He was made a major general in 1892 and received a reward for distinguished service in 1894. In 1898, he was put in command of the troops in South Africa.

His strident opposition to colonization and his agitation in Natal, generated by his concern for black and Dutch South African farmers, caused his dismissal from the civil administration of South Africa in 1899. He resigned his commission in July 1899 and returned to England where he was assigned to the command of the western district. He held this post until 1905. He also held the Aldershot Command for a brief period from 1900 to 1901. Sir William Butler was promoted to lieutenant-general in 1900 and continued to serve, finally leaving the King's service in 1905.

In October 1905, having reached the age limit of sixty-seven, he was placed on the retired list. The few years of life which remained to him he spent at Bansha Castle in Ireland, devoted chiefly to the cause of education. He was a frequent lecturer both in Dublin and the provinces on historical, social, and economic questions.

Achievements

• Butler had long been known as a descriptive writer, since his publication of The Great Lone Land (1872) and other works and he was the biographer (1899) of Sir George Colley.
  
  For his services he was named Companion of the Bath (1874), Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (1887), and Knight of the Grand Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (1906); he was also appointed to the Irish Privy Council (1909).

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Wild Northland 1873
  • The light of the west
  • The Great Lone Land A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America 1872
  • The Campaign of the Cataracts
  • Far out: rovings retold 1923
  • Sir William Butler, an Autobiography

Views

Butler wrote under a curious combination of faith in the British imperialist mission and disgust with the execution of that mission. He was thoroughly acquainted with the workings of British imperialism, and hated its policies; yet his ire never pushed him to abandon his zeal for military might and imperialist power. It is most likely Butler’s childhood as Irish Catholic and his experiences with Native Americans in North America and with Dutch colonials and Africans in South Africa that aroused his sensitivity to the injustices incurred by imperialist expansion through the late nineteenth century.

His life experiences as an Irish Catholic disciple of Parnell and as a witness to the atrocities committed against Native Americans by the English, culminated in his growing sympathy for the rebellious factions struggling under English rule. He vocally opposed what he believed to be a purposive embittering of the relations between the races in the Transvaal region, and expressed these sentiments in a series of letters sent to the London Tribune, later collected in the book From Naboth’s Vineyard: Being Impressions Formed during a Fourth Visit to South Africa Undertaken at the Request of the Tribune Newspaper (1907).

Quotations: "Give me but six foot three (one inch to spare) of Irish ground and dig it anywhere and for for my poor soul say an Irish prayer above the spot."

Membership

Butler was a member of the Gaelic League.

Personality

Unlike many other British travel writers of his time, William Francis Butler did not write as a tourist; he wrote as a career military man on duty during the zenith of British colonial power. He was known as an overbearing but resourceful and perceptive man.

Interests

• Politicians

  Charles Stewart Parnell

Connections

Butler married Elizabeth Thompson, in 1877. They had five children.

Father:

Richard Butler

Mother:

Ellen Butler

Wife:

Elizabeth Southerden Thompson Butler

1846–1933

References

• William Francis Butler: A Life, 1838-1910
  2003