RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, 1883. [All Rights Reserved. | PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. THIS Memoir of Lord Wolseley, so far as it deals with his career up to the time of his proceeding to Cyprus in the summer of 1878, was published in that year. His conduct of operations in Egypt appearing to call for a new edition, I have written a sketch of his services from that date up to the present time. This volume contains the first published account of Lord Wolseley's administration of Cyprus. It was his intention to write an official report of his doings during the first twelve months the island was under British rule, when he organized the administration and guided the tottering footsteps of this, the youngest of the Mother Country's Colonies. But his hurried departure to Natal, to supersede Lord Chelmsford, prevented the execution of this design. The account of Lord Wolseley's conduct of affairs in South Africa, including the operations in Zululand, his dealing with the Boers, and the Secocoeni Campaign, are also published in this volume for the first time, and, as with the Cyprus chapter, the details may be relied upon, his lordship having kindly revised the proof-sheets. As with the Cyprus and South African chapters, the last, giving an account of the Egyptian Campaign, has been written without any assistance from previously published works, for mine is the first in the field. This will, perhaps, be taken into consideration by critics and an indulgent public, whose pardon I crave for any shortcomings. These will be amply atoned for when Colonel Maurice, R.A., the accomplished writer and correspondent of the Times in Egypt, has published the official account of the campaign, in which I understand he is engaged. I take this opportunity of specially thanking him,* and also Colonel Herbert Stewart, C.B., A. D.C. to the Queen, Major R. C. Lawrence, who commanded the detachment of cavalry that occupied the citadel of Cairo-one of the most dashing feats of the war-and other officers who have afforded me information when writing this portion of the work. In the previously published chapters of this volume, we have seen Lord Wolseley as a Regimental officer in Burmah, leading a storming party and narrowly escaping with his life; as an Engineer in the trenches before Sebastopol, fighting and toiling, suffering and shedding his blood; as a Regimental and Staff officer, participating in some of the most stirring scenes of the Indian Mutiny; and on the Staff in the China Campaign of 1860; thus building up that thorough acquaintance with the art of war, which he has turned to such good account. We have followed him as leader in the Red River and Ashantee Expeditions, in both of which he displayed his remarkable aptitude for command, his energy, resource, and unflagging determination to succeed when everything was against him, and failure appeared imminent to the most hopeful. In the last five years of his eventful life we shall see him as an administrator and lawgiver in Cyprus, which afforded a virgin field for constructive statesmanship. We shall see * Colonel Maurice was kind enough to peruse the proof-sheets of the Egyptian chapter, and says, in a letter to me: 'I must congratulate you upon the accuracy with which the account of the Egyptian Campaign is written.' |