On this day in 1838, William Francis Butler, author,aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria and ‘radical general’ in the British army, wasborn at Ballyslateen, Golden.
Butler was born into an impoverished family of gentry (they were a Catholic cadet branch of the Butlers of Ormond) with a tradition of service to the British crown. As a child, he observed the ravages of the Great Famine and seems to have been left with a permanent sympathy for the underdog.
Butler joined the 69th Foot as an ensign on 17 September 1858 and saw service in various parts of the British empire. The regiment was sent to Burma in 1860 and then to Madras, India. He returned to England as a newly promoted lieutenant in 1863. Three years later the 69th was stationed in the Channel Islands, where he made friends with Victor Hugo. The Fenian raids brought the regiment to Canada in 1867.
There the real foundations of Butler’s military and literary careers were established. His imagination had been fired by Canada's greatrivers, immense prairies, and vast forests, and after his father's death (March 1870) he returned to Canada and cabled Col. Garnet Wolseley, the most capable British soldier of the period, to ask for useful employment.
He later received a special commission to report on the state of law and order in Saskatchewan and embarked on an exploratory trek of2,700 miles (4,345 km) from Quebec to the Rockies and back (October 1870–March 1871). His most important recommendation was that a permanent mobile police force should be created and this led to the formation in May 1873 of the North-West Mounted Police (the Mounties). Following his return to London in April 1871, his Canadian travels secured his election as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in May 1871 and in April 1872 he was promoted to captain.
He then returned to Canada and undertook another journey across North America by foot, dog sled, horseback and canoe (February–June 1873), reaching the Pacific coast. Sceptical of the benefits of nineteenth-century progress, he loved these long solitary treks in the unspoilt wilderness in which he hunted, fished, and slept in the open. He published two accounts of his travels in Canada, the classic ‘The great lone land’ (1872) and‘The wild north land’ (1873).
In September 1873 he joined Wolseley in his expedition against the Ashanti in West Africa, becoming a member of the ‘Wolseley ring’ of ambitious and talented young officers. There he succumbed to a near fatal fever. He spent two months at Netley hospital, Hampshire (March–May 1874) and was visited by Queen Victoria and was promoted to the rank of major. After serving in the Zulu war in South Africa, he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel(April 1880) and made aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria in 1882. He distinguished himself in the victories over the Egyptian Mahdists at Kirbekan (10 February 1885) and Ginniss (30 December 1885), and on his return to England from Egyptian 1886, Butler’s promotion to brigadier-general was confirmed.
Returning to England he found that his frequent complaints about the conditions of his troops had made him unpopular at the war office and he was placed on half-pay. Many in the British government regarded him as a troublemaker (and an Irish catholic to boot), and he owed his advancement largely to Wolseley. Much to the annoyance of his military superiors, in 1886 he had written a letter to the Liberal government in support of home rule for Ireland. In December 1888 he completed an inquiry into the army ordnance department,but his report was so critical that all copies were destroyed.
In 1898 he was appointed commander of the British forces in South Africa. Sir Alfred Milner, Governor of Cape Colony, was determined to assert British supremacy over the independent Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. He wanted a military commander who would prepare for an offensive war under the guise of planning for defence. No British officer of the period could have been less suited to this situation than Butler. An Irish Catholic and an advocate of home rule for Ireland, he thought Milner’s policy outrageous in principle and dangerous in practice and he refused all cooperation with the governor that seemed likely to provoke conflict. When it became apparent that his position would not receive the backing of the War Office, he resigned. After the dispute became public knowledge, Butler was referred to as “the radical general” and was pilloried in the press. His military superiors regarded him as intelligent, but impulsive and outspoken,traits that were often attributed to his Irish blood: even Wolseley observed that ‘at heart he is an Irish rebel’.
He retired from the army 31 October 1905 having reached the rank of Lieutenant-General and moved to Bansha Castle with his wife, the war-painter, Lady Elizabeth Butler (nee Thompson). After a brief illness he died 7 June 1910 at Bansha Castle, he was buried with full military honours in Kiladriffecemetery, where his parents lay, at the foot of the Galtees. His admirers included such disparate individuals as Winston Churchill, John Ruskin, and Theodore Roosevelt.
Sources:
https://www.dib.ie/biography/butler-william-francis-a1305
https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/butler_william_francis_13E.html