Queen Victoria S Little Wars

QUEEN VICTORIAS PALADINS The unique feature of this book is that it is a dual biography. Garnet Wolseley (18331913) and Frederick Roberts (18321914) were the most important British soldiers during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. They both became field marshals and were both raised to the peerage and entered the House of Lords. Wolseley and Roberts were Queen Victorias paladins. Their reputations were built on the expeditions they led. Wolseley commanded forces in North America and Africa; Roberts commanded in Afghanistan and, at the end of his career, in South Africa. Both men were army reformers, and Roberts dedicated his retirement to a campaign to introduce a brief period of compulsory army service for all physically fit young men, with the objective of building a large reserve of partially trained soldiers. However, this proposal was not acceptable to any British government. Both Wolseley and Roberts left extensive well-written personal memoirs, and their campaigns also generated a substantial literature. They both attracted followers. The officers who surrounded themsome of them highly talentedbecame known as the Wolseley Ring and the Roberts Ring. Queen Victorias paladins devoted their lives to the British Empire. They demonstrated formidable strategic and tactical skills and won a succession of wars against brave but militarily backward opponents. This book compares Wolseley and Roberts as commanders. It also touches on whether Wolseley and Roberts can be compared with generals like Wellington and Montgomery, who won their battles against large, well-organized, and well-armed enemy armies. It is by no means certain that Wolseley and Roberts would have done well in such different circumstances.

Paula Bartley’s Queen Victoria examines Victorian Britain from the perspective of the Queen. Victoria’s personal and political actions are discussed in relation to contemporary shifts in Britain’s society, politics and culture, examining to what extent they did – or did not – influence events throughout her reign. Drawing from contemporary sources, including Queen Victoria’s own diaries, as well as the most recent scholarship, the book contextualises Victoria historically by placing her in the centre of an unparalleled period of innovation and reform, in which the social and political landscape of Britain, and its growing empire, was transformed. Balancing Victoria’s private and public roles, it will examine the cultural paradox of the Queen’s rule in relation to the changing role of women: she was a devoted wife, prolific mother and obsessive widow, who was also Queen of a large Empire and Empress of India. Marrying cultural history, gender history and other histories ‘from below’ with high politics, war and diplomacy, this is a concise and accessible introduction to Queen Victoria’s life for students of Victorian Britain and the British Empire.

This resource covers the life, times, and relationships of Queen Victoria, providing information about her children, her personal interests, the historic times in which she ruled, and the leaders she influenced. In this fascinating guide to every aspect of Queen Victoria's life, author Helen Rappaport analyzes the queen's personality, celebrates her achievements, and details the shortcomings of her empire, both in Britain, with its continuing divide between rich and poor, and overseas, where Britain's great empire was won by repression and exploitation. A–Z entries—including topics barely touched in standard biographies—cover things like the various assassination attempts on her life, her interest in dancing and Jack the Ripper's murders, and how her husband Prince Albert introduced the celebration of Christmas to England. Queen Victoria also describes individuals such as her companion Lady Jane Churchill, her physician Sir James Clark, and politicians such as William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli; events like the Irish potato famine; inventions like steam power; and issues such as missionary activity and prostitution. It also includes bibliographies both for each entry and overall, and a chronology.

The Zulu War grabs attention in a way that no other of Queen Victoria's "Little Wars" does. It is a story rich in the extremes of human experience: gallantry, cowardice, savagery, hubris, and sheer, stark terror amongst others. The way the campaign unfolded was a consequence of the actions of Britain's commander in the field, Lord Chelmsford, who thought that the outcome would be a foregone conclusion, but then found himself faced with one of the most shocking disasters in British military history. This book looks at events through Chelmsford's eyes, examining contemporary correspondence to tell the tale. Forced to cope with the catastrophe of Isandlwana, only slightly offset by the heroic defense of Rorke's Drift, he then had to win the war as quickly as possible, before the man who had been chosen to replace him arrived in South Africa. Full of drama, this is the story of Lord Chelmsford's war, one of the most turbulent campaigns ever fought in Africa.

Offers a revised and updated history of thirteen of the most significant British conflicts during the Victorian period.

This is the first book-length study of Tennyson's record of publication in Victorian periodicals. Despite Tennyson's supposed hostility to periodicals, Ledbetter shows that he made a career-long habit of contributing to them and in the process revealed not only his willingness to promote his career but also his status as a highly valued commodity. Tennyson published more than sixty poems in serial publications, from his debut as a Cambridge prize-winning poet with "Timbuctoo" in the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal to his last public composition as Poet Laureate with "The Death of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale" in The Nineteenth Century. In addition, poems such as "The Charge of the Light Brigade" were shaped by his reading of newspapers. Ledbetter explores the ironies and tensions created by Tennyson's attitudes toward publishing in Victorian periodicals and the undeniable benefits to his career. She situates the poet in an interdependent commodity relationship with periodicals, viewing his individual poems as textual modules embedded in a page of meaning inscribed by the periodical's history, the poet's relationship with the periodical's readers, an image sharing the page whether or not related to the poem, and cultural contexts that create new meanings for Tennyson's work. Her book enriches not only our understanding of Tennyson's relationship to periodical culture but the textual implications of a poem's relationship with other texts on a periodical page and the meanings available to specific groups of readers targeted by individual periodicals.