title: Rani of Jhansi

text: Four days after the massacre the sepoys left Jhansi, having obtained a large sum of money from the Rani, and having threatened to blow up the palace where she lived. Following this, as the only source of authority in the city the Rani felt obliged to assume the administration and wrote to Major Erskine, commissioner of the Saugor division explaining the events which had led her to do so. On 2 July, Erskine wrote in reply, requesting her to "manage the District for the British Government" until the arrival of a British Superintendent. The Rani's forces defeated an attempt by the mutineers to assert the claim to the throne of a rival prince Sadashiv Rao (nephew of Maharaja Gangadhar Rao) who was captured and imprisoned.


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: There was then an invasion of Jhansi by the forces of Company allies Orchha and Datia; their intention however was to divide Jhansi between themselves. The Rani appealed to the British for aid but it was now believed by the governor-general that she was responsible for the massacre and no reply was received. She set up a foundry to cast cannon to be used on the walls of the fort and assembled forces including some from former feudatories of Jhansi and elements of the mutineers which were able to defeat the invaders in August 1857. Her intention at this time was still to hold Jhansi on behalf of the British.


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: From August 1857 to January 1858, Jhansi under the Rani's rule was at peace. The British had announced that troops would be sent there to maintain control but the fact that none arrived strengthened the position of a party of her advisers who wanted independence from British rule. When the British forces finally arrived in March they found it well-defended and the fort had heavy guns which could fire over the town and nearby countryside. According to one source Hugh Rose, commanding the British forces, demanded the surrender of the city; if this was refused it would be destroyed. The same source claims that after due deliberation the Rani issued a proclamation: "We fight for independence. In the words of Lord Krishna, we will if we are victorious, enjoy the fruits of victory, if defeated and killed on the field of battle, we shall surely earn eternal glory and salvation." Other sources, for example, have no mention of a demand for surrender. She defended Jhansi against British troops when Sir Hugh Rose besieged Jhansi on 23 March 1858.


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: The bombardment of Jhansi began on 24 March but was met by heavy return fire and the damaged defences were repaired. The defenders sent appeals for help to Tatya Tope; an army of more than 20,000, headed by Tatya Tope, was sent to relieve Jhansi but they failed to do so when they fought the British on 31 March. During the battle with Tatya Tope's forces part of the British forces continued the siege and by 2 April it was decided to launch an assault by a breach in the walls. Four columns assaulted the defences at different points and those attempting to scale the walls came under heavy fire. Two other columns had already entered the city and were approaching the palace together. Determined resistance was encountered in every street and in every room of the palace. Street fighting continued into the following day and no quarter was given, even to women and children. "No maudlin clemency was to mark the fall of the city" wrote Thomas Lowe. The Rani withdrew from the palace to the fort and after taking counsel decided that since resistance in the city was useless she must leave and join either Tatya Tope or Rao Sahib (Nana Sahib's nephew).


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: The leaders (the Rani of Jhansi, Tatya Tope, the Nawab of Banda, and Rao Sahib) fled once more. They came to Gwalior and joined the Indian forces who now held the city (Maharaja Scindia having fled to Agra from the battlefield at Morar). They moved on to Gwalior intending to occupy the strategic Gwalior Fort and the rebel forces occupied the city without opposition. The rebels proclaimed Nana Sahib as Peshwa of a revived Maratha dominion with Rao Sahib as his governor (subedar) in Gwalior. The Rani was unsuccessful in trying to persuade the other rebel leaders to prepare to defend Gwalior against a British attack which she expected would come soon. General Rose's forces took Morar on 16 June and then made a successful attack on the city.


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: On 17 June in Kotah-ki-Serai near the Phool Bagh of Gwalior, a squadron of the 8th (King's Royal Irish) Hussars, under Captain Heneage, fought the large Indian force commanded by Rani Lakshmibai, who was trying to leave the area. The 8th Hussars charged into the Indian force, slaughtering 5,000 Indian soldiers, including any Indian "over the age of 16". They took two guns and continued the charge right through the Phool Bagh encampment. In this engagement, according to an eyewitness account, Rani Lakshmibai put on a sowar's uniform and attacked one of the hussars; she was unhorsed and also wounded, probably by his sabre. Shortly afterwards, as she sat bleeding by the roadside, she recognised the soldier and fired at him with a pistol, whereupon he "dispatched the young lady with his carbine". According to another tradition Rani Lakshmibai, the Queen of Jhansi, dressed as a cavalry leader, was badly wounded; not wishing the British to capture her body, she told a hermit to burn it. After her death a few local people cremated her body.


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: The British captured the city of Gwalior after three days. In the British report of this battle, Hugh Rose commented that Rani Lakshmibai is "personable, clever and beautiful" and she is "the most dangerous of all Indian leaders". Rose reported that she had been buried "with great ceremony under a tamarind tree under the Rock of Gwalior, where I saw her bones and ashes".


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: Her tomb is in the Phool Bagh area of Gwalior ("illustrated below"). Twenty years after her death Colonel Malleson wrote in the "History of the Indian Mutiny"; vol. 3; London, 1878-


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: According to a memoir purporting to be by 'Damodar Rao', the young prince was among his mother's troops and household at the battle of Gwalior. Together with others who had survived the battle (about 60 retainers with 60 camels and 22 horses) he fled from the camp of Rao Sahib of Bithur and as the village people of Bundelkhand dared not aid them for fear of reprisals from the British, they were forced to live in the forest and suffer many privations. After two years there were about 12 survivors and these, together with another group of 24 they encountered, sought the city of Jhalrapatan where there were yet more refugees from Jhansi. Damodar Rao of Jhansi surrendered himself to a British official and his memoir ends in May 1860. He was then allowed a pension of Rs. 10,000, seven retainers, and was in the guardianship of Munshi Dharmanarayan. The whole memoir was published in Marathi in Kelkar, Y. N. (1959) "Itihasachyaaa Sahali" ("Voyages in History"). It is likely that this text is a written version based on tales of the prince's life in oral circulation and that what actually happened to him remains unknown.


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: Statues of Lakshmibai are seen in many places of India, which show her and her son tied to her back. Lakshmibai National University of Physical Education in Gwalior, Laksmibai National College of Physical Education


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: in Thiruvananthapuram, Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College in Jhansi are named after her. Rani Lakshmi Bai Central Agricultural University in Jhansi was founded in 2013. The Rani Jhansi Marine National Park is located in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. A women's unit of the Indian National Army was named the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. In 1957 two postage stamps were issued to commemorate the centenary of the rebellion. Indian representations in novels, poetry, and film tend towards an uncomplicated valorization of Rani Lakshmibai as an individual solely devoted to the cause of Indian independence.


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: A number of patriotic songs have been written about the Rani. The most famous composition about Rani Lakshmi Bai is the Hindi poem "Jhansi ki Rani" written by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan. An emotionally charged description of the life of Rani Lakshmibai, it is often taught in schools in India. A popular stanza from it reads:


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: Translation: "From the bards of Bundela we have heard this story / She fought valiantly like a warrior woman, she was the queen of Jhansi."


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: For Marathi people there is an equally well-known ballad about the brave queen penned at the spot near Gwalior where she died in battle, by B. R. Tambe, who was a poet laureate of Maharashtra and of her clan. A couple of stanzas run like this:


title: Rani of Jhansi

text: Translation: "You, denizen of this land, pause here and shed a tear or two / For this is where the flame of the valorous lady of Jhansi was extinguished / … / Astride a stalwart stallion / With a naked sword in hand / She burst open the British siege / And came to rest here, the brave lady of Jhansi!"


title: Darren Criss

text: Darren Everett Criss (born February 5, 1987) is an American actor, singer, and songwriter. He rose to fame starring on the television series "Glee" (2010–2015) and received Emmy and Golden Globe acting awards for his leading role as spree killer Andrew Cunanan in "" (2018). He has also appeared on Broadway and in film and has released several musical albums.


title: Darren Criss

text: A founding member and co-owner of StarKid Productions, a musical theater company based in Chicago, Criss first garnered attention playing the lead role of Harry Potter in, and writing most of the music and lyrics for, StarKid's musical production of "A Very Potter Musical". Criss has also starred on Broadway as a replacement in both "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch". In 2015, Criss co-founded Elsie Fest which is touted as "New York City's first outdoor music festival celebrating tunes from the stage and screen".


title: Darren Criss

text: In March 2017, Criss debuted his indie pop band Computer Games along with his brother Chuck Criss. In addition to his music endeavors, Criss starred in the second installment of Ryan Murphy's "American Crime Story". Subtitled "The Assassination of Gianni Versace" (2018), Criss's portrayal of spree killer Andrew Cunanan received acclaim from critics, and earned him an Emmy win for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries, or Television Film.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss was born in San Francisco, California, the youngest child of Cerina and Charles William Criss, an investment banker and a patron of the arts. He had an older brother, Charles "Chuck" Criss, who was a member of the band Freelance Whales. Criss is Eurasian – his mother, a native of Cebu, Philippines, is of Chinese, Filipino and Spanish descent while his father, a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was of English, German, and Irish descent. Criss was raised primarily in San Francisco, apart from 1988 to 1992, when the family resided in Honolulu, Hawaii, where his father started EastWest Bank, serving as chairman and CEO.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss attended Roman Catholic schools. He completed his elementary education at Stuart Hall for Boys, and later graduated from St. Ignatius College Preparatory in 2005. In 2009, Criss obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, majoring in Theater Performance and minoring in Musicology and Italian.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss' interest in music started in early childhood; at age five, he began taking violin lessons and was classically trained for the next fifteen years. Criss taught himself how to play other instruments, including guitar, piano, mandolin, harmonica, and drums. In high school, Criss immersed himself in music – he held the position of concertmaster in the school orchestra, he fronted his own band, and was voted "most likely to win a Grammy" by his peers. When he was fifteen, Criss began learning music composition and wrote his first song, which he later used as the title track of his first EP "Human", released in 2009.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss also showed an interest for the performing arts. At age ten, he was accepted into the American Conservatory Theater (Young Conservatory program) where he studied theater performance throughout his formative years. At St Ignatius, he was a member of the performing arts program and acted in work, including, "The Music Man", "The Diary of Anne Frank", and "Fiddler on the Roof". He was active as both an actor and director in the University of Michigan's student-run theater organization Basement Arts . In 2008, he spent a semester abroad studying Italian theater at the Accademia dell'Arte in Arezzo, Italy.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss made his professional stage debut at the age of ten as Cesario in 42nd Street Moon's production of "Fanny" (1997), then played Mauro in the Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim musical "Do I Hear a Waltz?" (1998), and Beauregard Calhoun in "Babes in Arms" (1999).


title: Darren Criss

text: Throughout his adolescence, Criss appeared in a number of the American Conservatory Theater's plays, notably "A Christmas Carol", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and "The Voysey Inheritance". At the University of Michigan, he performed in stage productions such as "Pride and Prejudice", "A Few Good Men", and "The Cripple of Inishmaan".


title: Darren Criss

text: Upon receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2009, Criss, along with some friends and classmates from the University of Michigan, co-founded StarKid Productions, a musical theater company. His most prominent acting role with StarKid has been that of Harry Potter in the musical comedies "A Very Potter Musical", "A Very Potter Sequel", and "A Very Potter Senior Year" (based on the "Harry Potter" series of novels by J.K. Rowling). He also co-wrote the music and lyrics for "A Very Potter Musical" with A.J. Holmes and "Me and My Dick" with A.J Holmes and Carlos Valdes. He solely wrote the music and lyrics for "A Very Potter Sequel" and "Starship".


title: Darren Criss

text: In January 2012, Criss made his Broadway debut, replacing Daniel Radcliffe in the role of J. Pierrepont Finch in the revival of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" for a three-week engagement at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. His stint there proved to be a success: apart from Daniel Radcliffe's final week, the musical had the three most lucrative weeks of its 11-month run with Criss in the lead role, grossing more than four million dollars.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss took on the role of Hedwig in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" from April 29, 2015, to July 19, 2015, at the Belasco Theater. He headlined the national tour in San Francisco and Los Angeles, from October 2 to November 27, 2016. From April 14th to July 10th, 2022, he performed in the Broadway revival of David Mamet's "American Buffalo" alongside Sam Rockwell and Laurence Fishburne.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss started his television career with a five-episode arc playing the character of Josh Burton on "Eastwick" in 2009. The following year, he appeared in an episode of the series "Cold Case".


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss portrayed Blaine Anderson, on the Fox television series "Glee". He made his first appearance in season two in the episode "Never Been Kissed", which aired on November 9, 2010. Initially appearing as the lead vocalist of "Glee"s Dalton Academy Warblers, Criss' first number, a cover version of "Teenage Dream", became the fastest-selling "Glee" single, reached number eight on the "Billboard" Hot 100, and was certified gold in the US. The Warblers have sold over 1.3 million tracks, and the soundtrack album, "" (2011), peaked at number two on the US "Billboard" 200. He was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2015 for writing the song "This Time" for the "Glee" finale.


title: Darren Criss

text: Blaine attended Dalton Academy and was lead singer of its glee club, The Dalton Academy Warblers. Blaine initially served as a friend and mentor for Kurt, the bullied gay member of the Warblers' rival glee club, New Directions. Chemistry between the two characters, combined with fan support for the potential couple, led series co-creator Ryan Murphy to pair them romantically onscreen. At the beginning of the third season, Blaine transfers to McKinley High and joins New Directions; concurrently, Criss was promoted from recurring guest star to the show's main cast.


title: Darren Criss

text: In the subsequent seasons, Blaine goes off to college and later returns to Dalton to become the vocal director of the Warblers. In the final season, he marries his long-time love, Kurt. Discussing public response to his character, Criss stated that he particularly enjoyed comments from "people from parts of the world who are maybe not as exposed to certain ideologies", but had reconsidered their stance on relationships and human rights as a result of the Blaine and Kurt storyline. He called this response "phenomenal" and said, "I was a straight kid growing up in a very gay community and it's something that I've had to watch so many friends have to struggle with and have no place to go to identify in kind of a grander media culture. To be a small piece of that machine is incredibly wonderful."


title: Darren Criss

text: He was nominated for an Emmy Award for writing the song "This Time", one in a handful of the show's original songs over its six-season run, for the "Glee" finale, "Dreams Come True".


title: Darren Criss

text: In 2017, Criss reunited with "Glee" creator Ryan Murphy to portray serial killer Andrew Cunanan in the of Murphy's anthology series "American Crime Story". His performance received acclaim from critics, and earned Criss a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He also earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television.


title: Darren Criss

text: On July 10, 2019, it was announced that Criss would be an actor, executive producer, and creator for "Royalties", a new show on the streaming service Quibi. Criss is working with previous collaborators Matt and Nick Lang of Team StarKid, who are to co-write the series as well as executive produce. The show is scheduled to be released on June 1, 2020.


title: Darren Criss

text: On September 6, 2019, it was announced that Criss would be an actor and executive producer for "Hollywood", released on Netflix on May 1, 2020.


title: Darren Criss

text: On September 7, 2012, Criss made his feature film debut in the comedy "Girl Most Likely". It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and was released nationwide on July 19, 2013. Previously titled "Imogene", the film starred Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening, and Matt Dillon.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss began his solo music career while attending the University of Michigan. Playing in small venues, he developed his own musical repertoire which today consists of standards from the Great American Songbook, contemporary songs, Disney songs, and his own compositions.


title: Darren Criss

text: On July 20, 2010, Criss released an independently produced EP called "Human". Describing his album as "soul-folk" to "Entertainment Weekly", it peaked at No. 17 on the "Billboard" Top Heatseekers Albums chart. On December 10, 2010, Criss became the 400,000th member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). In April 2011, he signed with Sony Music Entertainment. He is in the process of recording a full-length studio album, with a release date yet to be determined.


title: Darren Criss

text: In January 2013, Criss performed for US President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden at the inaugural balls of the 57th Presidential Inauguration.


title: Darren Criss

text: During a benefit concert for public school arts on April 14, 2013, Criss was made an honorary member of Yale University's a cappella singing group The Whiffenpoofs. Criss' first solo music tour visited 17 cities in the United States, Canada, and France from May 29–June 30, 2013, and included songs from "Glee", StarKid, his "Human" EP, and new material from his upcoming solo album. Their first album, "Lost Boys Life" EP features four songs written by the duo. The lead single "Every Single Night" debuted at number two on "Billboard"s Hot Singles Sales chart. In December 2017, Criss released a five-track solo EP titled "Homework". The EP debuted atop the "Billboard" Heatseekers Chart and at number seven on "Billboard"s Independent Albums chart.


title: Darren Criss

text: On October 8th, 2021, Criss released his first Christmas-themed album through Decca Records. In December of 2022, Criss went on a Christmas-themed tour across the U.S. with songs from the album.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss is credited as one of the primary songwriters and composers for StarKid Productions. He has contributed songs to "A Very Potter Musical", "Me and My Dick" (which became the first-ever student-produced college musical to reach "Billboard", debuting at No. 11 on the Top Cast Albums chart), "Little White Lie", and "A Very Potter Senior Year". Subsequently, Criss solely composed all the songs and music for "A Very Potter Sequel", its companion album "A Very StarKid Album", and "Starship", which landed at No. 1 on the "Billboard" Top Cast Albums chart, and at No. 134 on the "Billboard" 200 chart.


title: Darren Criss

text: In November 2011, Criss participated in StarKid's first national concert tour, The SPACE Tour, for the New York and Boston shows, and, in the summer of 2012, he joined them again for their second national tour, Apocalyptour, for the Los Angeles and New York shows.


title: Darren Criss

text: As Blaine, Criss features in many musical performances on "Glee", which have been released as singles, available for download. His first performance, "Teenage Dream" by Katy Perry, was featured on the soundtrack album "". It reached number eight on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the week ending November 27, 2010, and number one on the Billboard Digital Songs chart.


title: Darren Criss

text: It was the best-selling song in the US that week, selling 214,000 copies, the largest figure for a "Glee" title. It was only the second US-certified gold single in the show's history. Both "Billboard" Jillian Mapes and Erica Futterman of "Rolling Stone" deemed "Teenage Dream" the best song of "Never Been Kissed", the episode in which it featured.


title: Darren Criss

text: The "New York Daily News" Anthony Benigno gave the song an "A", and noted that it was "flawless" and improved on Perry's original. The performance was nominated for the Best Gay Moment of the Year and Favorite Music Video awards at the 2010 "AfterElton.com" Visibility Awards. A "Billboard" cover-feature on Criss noted that the performance "arguably ushered in the trend of more current pop hits being reworked by the ["Glee"] cast."


title: Darren Criss

text: Later songs performed by Blaine and the Warblers became popular enough to warrant a Warbler soundtrack album, "". It debuted at No. 2 on the US "Billboard" 200 and No. 1 on "Billboard" Soundtracks chart, selling 86,000 copies in its first week. The Warbler tracks had sold over 1.3 million copies as singles by the time the album was released.


title: Darren Criss

text: From May 21–July 3, 2011, Criss and the cast of "Glee" performed in Glee Live! In Concert!, touring the US, Canada, England, and Ireland. According to "Billboard", it was the 16th most successful concert tour of 2011, grossing more than $40 million, with total attendance topping 485,000. All 40 dates sold out, including shows at Staples Center, Nassau Coliseum, and The O Arenas in London and Dublin.


title: Darren Criss

text: For Season 6 of "Glee", Criss composed "Rise" for the episode "The Rise and Fall of Sue Sylvester" and "This Time" for the series finale. Criss was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for writing "This Time".


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss has appeared on the magazine covers of "Billboard", "Entertainment Weekly", "Out", "Playbill", "TV Guide", "Da Man", "GT", "Prestige", and "Essential Homme". Criss is featured in the fall ad campaign (2011) for Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing line. Criss was named one of "People"s Sexiest Men Alive (2011), and was ranked No. 1 on AfterElton's "Hot 100" list (2011 & 2012), and No. 1 on "GQ" "30 Under 30: The Most Stylish Young Men In Hollywood" list (2012).


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss is a co-founder of Elsie Fest, a music festival which features Broadway and pop music acts. The first annual show was held on September 27, 2015, in New York City.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss is an advocate for LGBT rights, and is an active supporter of The Trevor Project, the leading national organization focused on suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. Criss is the recipient of "Variety" Power of Youth Philanthropy award for his contributions to The Trevor Project.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss has been a spokesperson for various organizations, including Rock the Vote and the Foundation for New American Musicals.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss recorded the Bob Dylan song "New Morning", featuring his brother, Chuck Criss, for Amnesty International. It was part of the compilation album "", released on January 24, 2012.


title: Darren Criss

text: Criss has performed at various charity benefits including American Conservatory Theater, AIDS Project Los Angeles, New Conservatory Theatre Center, Toys for Tots, City of Hope National Medical Center, Motion Picture & Television Fund, Public School Arts, MusiCares Foundation, The Old Vic, UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Young Storytellers Foundation, and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.


title: Darren Criss

text: In January 2018, Criss announced he was engaged to Mia Swier, his girlfriend of seven and a half years. They married on February 16, 2019. In October 2021, they announced they were expecting their first child, a daughter born in April 2022.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, (; 24 June 1850 – 5 June 1916) was a senior British Army officer and colonial administrator. Kitchener came to prominence for his imperial campaigns, his scorched earth policy against the Boers, his expansion of Lord Roberts' concentration camps during the Second Boer War and his central role in the early part of the First World War.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener was credited in 1898 for having won the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan for which he was made Baron Kitchener of Khartoum. As Chief of Staff (1900–1902) in the Second Boer War he played a key role in Roberts' conquest of the Boer Republics, then succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief – by which time Boer forces had taken to guerrilla fighting and British forces imprisoned Boer civilians in concentration camps. His term as Commander-in-Chief (1902–1909) of the Army in India saw him quarrel with another eminent proconsul, the Viceroy Lord Curzon, who eventually resigned. Kitchener then returned to Egypt as British Agent and Consul-General ("de facto" administrator).


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: In 1914, at the start of the First World War, Kitchener became Secretary of State for War, a Cabinet Minister. One of the few to foresee a long war, lasting for at least three years, and also having the authority to act effectively on that perception, he organised the largest volunteer army that Britain had seen, and oversaw a significant expansion of materiel production to fight on the Western Front. Despite having warned of the difficulty of provisioning for a long war, he was blamed for the shortage of shells in the spring of 1915 – one of the events leading to the formation of a coalition government – and stripped of his control over munitions and strategy.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: On 5 June 1916, Kitchener was making his way to Russia on to attend negotiations with Tsar Nicholas II when in bad weather the ship struck a German mine west of Orkney, Scotland, and sank. Kitchener was among 737 who died.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener was born in Ballylongford near Listowel, County Kerry, in Ireland, son of army officer Henry Horatio Kitchener (1805–1894) and Frances Anne Chevallier (died 1864; daughter of John Chevallier, a clergyman, of Aspall Hall, and his third wife, Elizabeth, "née" Cole).


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Both sides of Kitchener's family were from Suffolk, and could trace their descent to the reign of William III; his mother's family was of French Huguenot descent. His father had only recently sold his commission and bought land in Ireland, under the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849 designed to encourage investment into Ireland after the Irish Famine. They then moved to Switzerland, where the young Kitchener was educated at Montreux, then at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Pro-French and eager to see action, he joined a French field ambulance unit in the Franco-Prussian War. His father took him back to Britain after he caught pneumonia while ascending in a balloon to see the French Army of the Loire in action.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Commissioned into the Royal Engineers on 4 January 1871, his service in France had violated British neutrality, and he was reprimanded by the Duke of Cambridge, the commander-in-chief. He served in Palestine, Egypt and Cyprus as a surveyor, learned Arabic, and prepared detailed topographical maps of the areas. His brother, Lt. Gen. Sir Walter Kitchener, had also entered the army, and was Governor of Bermuda from 1908 to 1912.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: In 1874, aged 24, Kitchener was assigned by the Palestine Exploration Fund to a mapping-survey of the Holy Land, replacing Charles Tyrwhitt-Drake, who had died of malaria. By then an officer in the Royal Engineers, Kitchener joined fellow officer Claude R. Conder; between 1874 and 1877 they surveyed Palestine, returning to England only briefly in 1875 after an attack by locals at Safed, in Galilee.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Conder and Kitchener's expedition became known as the Survey of Western Palestine because it was largely confined to the area west of the Jordan River. The survey collected data on the topography and toponymy of the area, as well as local flora and fauna.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: The results of the survey were published in an eight-volume series, with Kitchener's contribution in the first three tomes (Conder and Kitchener 1881–1885). This survey has had a lasting effect on the Middle East for several reasons:


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: In 1878, having completed the survey of western Palestine, Kitchener was sent to Cyprus to undertake a survey of that newly acquired British protectorate. He became vice-consul in Anatolia in 1879.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: On 4 January 1883 Kitchener was promoted to captain, given the Turkish rank binbasi (major), and dispatched to Egypt, where he took part in the reconstruction of the Egyptian Army.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Egypt had recently become a British puppet state, its army led by British officers, although still nominally under the sovereignty of the Khedive (Egyptian viceroy) and his nominal overlord the (Ottoman) Sultan of Turkey. Kitchener became second-in-command of an Egyptian cavalry regiment in February 1883, and then took part in the failed expedition to relieve Charles George Gordon in the Sudan in late 1884.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Fluent in Arabic, Kitchener preferred the company of the Egyptians over the British, and the company of no-one over the Egyptians, writing in 1884 that: "I have become such a solitary bird that I often think I were happier alone". Kitchener spoke Arabic so well that he was able to effortlessly adopt the dialects of the different Bedouin tribes of Egypt and the Sudan.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Promoted to brevet major on 8 October 1884 and to brevet lieutenant-colonel on 15 June 1885, he became the British member of the Zanzibar boundary commission in July 1885. He became Governor of the Egyptian Provinces of Eastern Sudan and Red Sea Littoral (which in practice consisted of little more than the Port of Suakin) in September 1886, also Pasha the same year, and led his forces in action against the followers of the Mahdi at Handub in January 1888, when he was injured in the jaw.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener was promoted to brevet colonel on 11 April 1888 and to the substantive rank of major on 20 July 1889 and led the Egyptian cavalry at the Battle of Toski in August 1889. At the beginning of 1890 he was appointed Inspector General of the Egyptian police 1888–92 before moving to the position of Adjutant-General of the Egyptian Army in December of the same year and Sirdar (Commander-in-Chief) of the Egyptian Army with the local rank of brigadier in April 1892.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener was worried that, although his moustache was bleached white by the sun, his blond hair refused to turn grey, making it harder for Egyptians to take him seriously. His appearance added to his mystique: his long legs made him appear taller, whilst a cast in his eye made people feel he was looking right through them. Kitchener, at , towered over most of his contemporaries.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Sir Evelyn Baring, the "de facto" British ruler of Egypt, thought Kitchener "the most able (soldier) I have come across in my time". In 1890, a War Office evaluation of Kitchener concluded: "A good brigadier, very ambitious, not popular, but has of late greatly improved in tact and manner...a fine gallant soldier and good linguist and very successful in dealing with Orientals" [in the 19th century, Europeans called the Middle East the Orient].


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: While in Egypt, Kitchener was initiated into Freemasonry in 1883 in the Italian-speaking La Concordia Lodge No. 1226, which met in Cairo. In November 1899 he was appointed the first District Grand Master of the District Grand Lodge of Egypt and the Sudan, under the United Grand Lodge of England.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: In 1896, the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, was concerned with keeping France out of the Horn of Africa. A French expedition under the command of Jean-Baptiste Marchand had left Dakar in March 1896 with the aim of conquering the Sudan, seizing control of the Nile as it flowed into Egypt, and forcing the British out of Egypt; thus restoring Egypt to the place within the French sphere of influence that it had had prior to 1882. Salisbury feared that if the British did not conquer the Sudan, the French would. He had supported Italy's ambitions to conquer Ethiopia in the hope that the Italians would keep the French out of Ethiopia. The Italian attempt to conquer Ethiopia, however, was going very badly by early 1896, and ended with the Italians being annihilated at the Battle of Adowa in March 1896. In March 1896, with the Italians visibly failing and the "Mahdiyah" state threatening to conquer Eritrea, Salisbury ordered Kitchener to invade northern Sudan, ostensibly for the purpose of distracting the "Ansar" (whom the British called "Dervishes") from attacking the Italians.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener won victories at the Battle of Ferkeh in June 1896 and the Battle of Hafir in September 1896, earning him national fame in the United Kingdom and promotion to major-general on 25 September 1896. Kitchener's cold personality and his tendency to drive his men hard made him widely disliked by his fellow officers. One officer wrote about Kitchener in September 1896: "He was always inclined to bully his own entourage, as some men are rude to their wives. He was inclined to let off his spleen on those around him. He was often morose and silent for hours together...he was even morbidly afraid of showing any feeling or enthusiasm, and he preferred to be misunderstood rather than be suspected of human feeling." Kitchener had served on the Wolseley expedition to rescue General Gordon at Khartoum, and was convinced that the expedition failed because Wolseley had used boats coming up the Nile to bring his supplies. Kitchener wanted to build a railroad to supply the Anglo-Egyptian army, and assigned the task of constructing the Sudan Military Railroad to a Canadian railroad builder, Percy Girouard, for whom he had specifically asked.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener achieved further successes at the Battle of Atbara in April 1898, and then the Battle of Omdurman in September 1898. After marching to the walls of Khartoum, he placed his army into a crescent shape with the Nile to the rear, together with the gunboats in support. This enabled him to bring overwhelming firepower against any attack of the "Ansar" from any direction, though with the disadvantage of having his men spread out thinly, with hardly any forces in reserve. Such an arrangement could have proven disastrous if the "Ansar" had broken through the thin khaki line. At about 5 a.m. on 2 September 1898, a huge force of "Ansar", under the command of the Khalifa himself, came out of the fort at Omdurman, marching under their black banners inscribed with Koranic quotations in Arabic; this led Bennet Burleigh, the Sudan correspondent of "The Daily Telegraph", to write: "It was not alone the reverberation of the tread of horses and men's feet I heard and seemed to feel as well as hear, but a voiced continuous shouting and chanting-the Dervish invocation and battle challenge "Allah e Allah Rasool Allah el Mahdi!" they reiterated in vociferous rising measure, as they swept over the intervening ground". Kitchener had the ground carefully studied so that his officers would know the best angle of fire, and had his army open fire on the "Ansar" first with artillery, then machine guns and finally rifles as the enemy advanced. A young Winston Churchill, serving as an army officer, wrote of what he saw: "A ragged line of men were coming on desperately, struggling forward in the face of the pitiless fireblack banners tossing and collapsing; white figures subsiding in dozens to the ground...valiant men were struggling on through a hell of whistling metal, exploding shells, and spurting dustsuffering, despairing, dying". By about 8:30 am, much of the Dervish army was dead; Kitchener ordered his men to advance, fearing that the Khalifa might escape with what was left of his army to the fort of Omdurman, forcing Kitchener to lay siege to it.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Viewing the battlefield from horseback on the hill at Jebel Surgham, Kitchener commented: "Well, we have given them a damn good dusting". As the British and Egyptians advanced in columns, the Khalifa attempted to outflank and encircle the columns; this led to desperate hand-to-hand fighting. Churchill wrote of his own experience as the 21st Lancers cut their way through the "Ansar": "The collision was prodigious and for perhaps ten wonderful seconds, no man heeded his enemy. Terrified horses wedged in the crowd, bruised and shaken men, sprawling in heaps, struggle dazed and stupid, to their feet, panted and looked about them". The Lancers' onslaught carried them through the 12-men-deep "Ansar" line with the Lancers losing 71 dead and wounded while killing hundreds of the enemy. Following the annihilation of his army, the Khalifa ordered a retreat and early in the afternoon, Kitchener rode in triumph into Omdurman and immediately ordered that the thousands of Christians enslaved by the "Ansar" were now all free people. Kitchener lost fewer than 500 men while killing about 11,000 and wounding 17,000 of the "Ansar". Burleigh summed the general mood of the British troops: "At Last! Gordon has been avenged and justified. The dervishes have been overwhelming routed, Mahdism has been "smashed", while the Khalifa's capital of Omdurman has been stripped of its barbaric halo of sanctity and invulnerability. Kitchener promptly had the Mahdi's tomb blown up to prevent it from becoming a rallying point for his supporters, and had his bones scattered. Queen Victoria, who had wept when she heard of General Gordon's death, now wept for the man who had vanquished Gordon, asking whether it had been really necessary for Kitchener to desecrate the Mahdi's tomb.The body of the Mahdi was disinterred and beheaded. This symbolic decapitation echoed General Gordon's death at the hands of the Mahdist forces in 1885. The headless body of the Mahdi was thrown into the Nile. Kitchener kept the Mahdī's skull and it was rumoured that he intended to use it as a drinking cup or ink well. In a letter to his mother, Churchill wrote that the victory at Omdurman had been "disgraced by the inhuman slaughter of the wounded and...Kitchener is responsible for this". There is no evidence that Kitchener ordered his men to shoot the wounded "Ansar" on the field of Omdurman, but he did give before the battle what the British journalist Mark Urban called a "mixed message", saying that mercy should be given, while at the same time saying "Remember Gordon" and that the enemy were all "murderers" of Gordon. The victory at Omdurman made Kitchener into a popular war hero, and gave him a reputation for efficiency and as a man who got things done. The journalist G. W. Steevens wrote in the "Daily Mail" that "He [Kitchener] is more like a machine than a man. You feel that he ought to be patented and shown with pride at the Paris International Exhibition. British Empire: Exhibit No. 1 "hors concours", the Sudan Machine". The shooting of the wounded at Omdurman, along with the desecration of the Mahdi's tomb, gave Kitchener a reputation for brutality that was to dog him for the rest of his life, and posthumously.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: After Omdurman, Kitchener opened a special sealed letter from Salisbury that told him that Salisbury's real reason for ordering the conquest of the Sudan was to prevent France from moving into the Sudan, and that the talk of "avenging Gordon" had been just a pretext. Salisbury's letter ordered Kitchener to head south as soon as possible to evict Marchand before he got a chance to become well-established on the Nile. On 18 September 1898, Kitchener arrived at the French fort at Fashoda (present day Kodok, on the west bank of the Nile north of Malakal) and informed Marchand that he and his men had to leave the Sudan at once, a request Merchand refused, leading to a tense stand-off as French and British soldiers aimed their weapons at each other. During what became known as the Fashoda Incident, Britain and France almost went to war with each other. The Fashoda incident caused much jingoism and chauvinism on both sides of the English Channel; however, at Fashoda itself, despite the stand-off with the French, Kitchener established cordial relations with Marchand. They agreed that the tricolor would fly equally with the Union Jack and the Egyptian flag over the disputed fort at Fashoda. Kitchener was a Francophile who spoke fluent French, and despite his reputation for brusque rudeness was very diplomatic and tactful in his talks with Marchand; for example, congratulating him on his achievement in crossing the Sahara in an epic trek from Dakar to the Nile. In November 1898, the crisis ended when the French agreed to withdraw from the Sudan. Several factors persuaded the French to back down. These included British naval superiority; the prospect of an Anglo-French war leading to the British gobbling up the entire French colonial empire after the defeat of the French Navy; the pointed statement from the Russian Emperor Nicholas II that the Franco-Russian alliance applied only to Europe, and that Russia would not go to war against Britain for the sake of an obscure fort in the Sudan in which no Russian interests were involved; and the possibility that Germany might take advantage of an Anglo-French war to strike France.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener became Governor-General of the Sudan in September 1898, and began a programme of restoring good governance. The programme had a strong foundation, based on education at Gordon Memorial College as its centrepieceand not simply for the children of the local elites, for children from anywhere could apply to study. He ordered the mosques of Khartoum rebuilt, instituted reforms which recognised Fridaythe Muslim holy dayas the official day of rest, and guaranteed freedom of religion to all citizens of the Sudan. He attempted to prevent evangelical Christian missionaries from trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: At this stage of his career Kitchener was keen to exploit the press, cultivating G. W. Steevens of the "Daily Mail" who wrote a book "With Kitchener to Khartum". Later, as his legend had grown, he was able to be rude to the press, on one occasion in the Second Boer War bellowing: "Get out of my way, you drunken swabs". He was created Baron Kitchener, of Khartoum and of Aspall in the County of Suffolk, on 31 October 1898.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: During the Second Boer War, Kitchener arrived in South Africa with Field Marshal Lord Roberts on the RMS "Dunottar Castle" along with massive British reinforcements in December 1899. Officially holding the title of chief of staff, he was in practice a second-in-command and was present at the relief of Kimberley before leading an unsuccessful frontal assault at the Battle of Paardeberg in February 1900. Kitchener was mentioned in despatches from Roberts several times during the early part of the war; in a despatch from March 1900 Roberts wrote how he was "greatly indebted to him for his counsel and cordial support on all occasions".


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Following the defeat of the conventional Boer forces, Kitchener succeeded Roberts as overall commander in November 1900. He was also promoted to lieutenant-general on 29 November 1900 and to local general on 12 December 1900. He subsequently inherited and expanded the successful strategies devised by Roberts to force the Boer commandos to submit, including concentration camps and the burning of farms. Conditions in the concentration camps, which had been conceived by Roberts as a form of control of the families whose farms he had destroyed, began to degenerate rapidly as the large influx of Boers outstripped the ability of the minuscule British force to cope. The camps lacked space, food, sanitation, medicine, and medical care, leading to rampant disease and a very high death rate for those Boers who entered. Eventually 26,370 women and children (81% were children) died in the concentration camps. The biggest critic of the camps was the English humanitarian and welfare worker Emily Hobhouse. She published a prominent report that highlighted atrocities committed by Kitchener's soldiers and administration, creating considerable debate in London about the war. Kitchener blocked Hobhouse from returning to South Africa by invoking martial law provisions.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Historian Caroline Elkins characterized Kitchener's conduct of the war as a "scorched earth policy", as his forces razed homesteads, poisoned wells and implemented concentration camps, as well as turned women and children into targets in the war.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: The Treaty of Vereeniging, ending the War, was signed in May 1902 following a tense six months. During this period Kitchener struggled against Sir Alfred Milner, the Governor of the Cape Colony, and the British government. Milner was a hard-line conservative and wanted forcibly to Anglicise the Afrikaans people (the Boers), and Milner and the British government wanted to assert victory by forcing the Boers to sign a humiliating peace treaty; Kitchener wanted a more generous compromise peace treaty that would recognize certain rights for the Afrikaners and promise future self-government. He even entertained a peace treaty proposed by Louis Botha and the other Boer leaders, although he knew the British government would reject the offer; this would have maintained the sovereignty of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State while requiring them to sign a perpetual treaty of alliance with the UK and grant major concessions to the British, such as equal rights for English with Dutch in their countries, voting rights for Uitlanders, and a customs and railway union with the Cape Colony and Natal. During Kitchener's posting in South Africa, Kitchener became acting High Commissioner of South Africa, and administrator of Transvaal and Orange River Colony in 1901.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener, who had been promoted to the substantive rank of general on 1 June 1902, was hosted to a farewell reception at Cape Town on 23 June, and left for the United Kingdom in the SS "Orotava" on the same day. He received an enthusiastic welcome on his arrival the following month. Landing in Southampton on 12 July, he was greeted by the corporation, who presented him with the Freedom of the borough. In London, he was met at the train station by The Prince of Wales, drove in a procession through streets lined by military personnel from 70 different units and watched by thousands of people, and received a formal welcome at St James's Palace. He also visited King Edward VII, who was confined to his room recovering from his recent operation for appendicitis, but wanted to meet the general on his arrival and to personally bestow on him the insignia of the Order of Merit (OM). Kitchener was created Viscount Kitchener, of Khartoum and of the Vaal in the Colony of Transvaal and of Aspall in the County of Suffolk, on 28 July 1902.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: In the Breaker Morant case, five Australian officers and one English officer of an irregular unit, the Bushveldt Carbineers, were court-martialed for summarily executing twelve Boer prisoners, and also for the murder of a German missionary believed to be a Boer sympathiser, all allegedly under unwritten orders approved by Kitchener. The celebrated horseman and bush poet Lt. Harry "Breaker" Morant and Lt. Peter Handcock were found guilty, sentenced to death, and shot by firing squad at Pietersburg on 27 February 1902. Their death warrants were personally signed by Kitchener. He reprieved a third soldier, Lt. George Witton, who served 28 months before being released.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: In late 1902 Kitchener was appointed Commander-in-Chief, India, and arrived there to take up the position in November, in time to be in charge during the January 1903 Delhi Durbar. He immediately began the task of reorganising the Indian Army. Kitchener's plan "The Reorganisation and Redistribution of the Army in India" recommended preparing the Indian Army for any potential war by reducing the size of fixed garrisons and reorganising it into two armies, to be commanded by Generals Sir Bindon Blood and George Luck.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: While many of the Kitchener Reforms were supported by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who had originally lobbied for Kitchener's appointment, the two men eventually came into conflict. Curzon wrote to Kitchener advising him that signing himself "Kitchener of Khartoum" took up too much time and space – Kitchener commented on the pettiness of this (Curzon simply signed himself "Curzon" as an hereditary peer, although he later took to signing himself "Curzon of Kedleston"). They also clashed over the question of military administration, as Kitchener objected to the system whereby transport and logistics were controlled by a "Military Member" of the Viceroy's Council. The Commander-in-Chief won the crucial support of the government in London, and the Viceroy chose to resign.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Later events proved Curzon was right in opposing Kitchener's attempts to concentrate all military decision-making power in his own office. Although the offices of Commander-in-Chief and Military Member were now held by a single individual, senior officers could approach only the Commander-in-Chief directly. In order to deal with the Military Member, a request had to be made through the Army Secretary, who reported to the Indian Government and had right of access to the Viceroy. There were even instances when the two separate bureaucracies produced different answers to a problem, with the Commander-in-Chief disagreeing with himself as Military Member. This became known as "the canonisation of duality". Kitchener's successor, General Sir O'Moore Creagh, was nicknamed "no More K", and concentrated on establishing good relations with the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener presided over the Rawalpindi Parade in 1905 to honour the Prince and Princess of Wales's visit to India. That same year Kitchener founded the Indian Staff College at Quetta (now the Pakistan Command and Staff College), where his portrait still hangs. His term of office as Commander-in-Chief, India, was extended by two years in 1907.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener was promoted to the highest Army rank, Field Marshal, on 10 September 1909 and went on a tour of Australia and New Zealand. He aspired to be Viceroy of India, but the Secretary of State for India, John Morley, was not keen and hoped to send him instead to Malta as Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Mediterranean, even to the point of announcing the appointment in the newspapers. Kitchener pushed hard for the Viceroyalty, returning to London to lobby Cabinet ministers and the dying King Edward VII, from whom, whilst collecting his field marshal's baton, Kitchener obtained permission to refuse the Malta job. However, Morley could not be moved. This was perhaps in part because Kitchener was thought to be a Tory (the Liberals were in office at the time); perhaps due to a Curzon-inspired whispering campaign; but most importantly because Morley, who was a Gladstonian and thus suspicious of imperialism, felt it inappropriate, after the recent grant of limited self-government under the 1909 Indian Councils Act, for a serving soldier to be Viceroy (in the event, no serving soldier was appointed Viceroy until Lord Wavell in 1943, during the Second World War). The prime minister, H. H. Asquith, was sympathetic to Kitchener but was unwilling to overrule Morley, who threatened resignation, so Kitchener was finally turned down for the post of Viceroy of India in 1911.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: From 22 to 24 June 1911, Kitchener took part in the Coronation of King George V and Mary. Kitchener assumed the role of Captain of the Escort, responsible for the personal protection of the royals during the coronation. In this capacity, Kitchener was also the Field Marshal, In Command of the Troops, and assumed command of the 55,000 British and imperial soldiers present in London. During the Coronation ceremony itself, Kitchener acted as Third Sword, one of the four swords tasked with guarding the monarch. Later, in November 1911, Kitchener hosted the King and Queen in Port Said, Egypt while they were on their way to India for the Delhi Durbar to assume the titles of Emperor and Empress of India.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: In June 1911 Kitchener then returned to Egypt as British Agent and Consul-General in Egypt during the formal reign of Abbas Hilmi II as Khedive.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: At the time of the Agadir Crisis (summer 1911), Kitchener told the Committee of Imperial Defence that he expected the Germans to walk through the French "like partridges" and he informed Lord Esher "that if they imagined that he was going to command the Army in France he would see them damned first".


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: During this period he became a proponent of Scouting and coined the phrase "once a Scout, always a Scout."


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: At the outset of the First World War, the prime minister, Asquith, quickly had Kitchener appointed Secretary of State for War; Asquith had been filling the job himself as a stopgap following the resignation of Colonel Seely over the Curragh Incident earlier in 1914. Kitchener was in Britain on his annual summer leave, between 23 June and 3 August 1914, and had boarded a cross-Channel steamer to commence his return trip to Cairo when he was recalled to London to meet with Asquith. War was declared at 11pm the next day.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Against cabinet opinion, Kitchener correctly predicted a long war that would last at least three years, require huge new armies to defeat Germany, and cause huge casualties before the end would come. Kitchener stated that the conflict would plumb the depths of manpower "to the last million". A massive recruitment campaign began, which soon featured a distinctive poster of Kitchener, taken from a magazine front cover. It may have encouraged large numbers of volunteers, and has proven to be one of the most enduring images of the war, having been copied and parodied many times since. Kitchener built up the "New Armies" as separate units because he distrusted the Territorials from what he had seen with the French Army in 1870. This may have been a mistaken judgement, as the British reservists of 1914 tended to be much younger and fitter than their French equivalents a generation earlier.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: However, Ian Hamilton later wrote of Kitchener "he hated organisations; he smashed organisations ... he was a Master of Expedients".


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: At the War Council (5 August) Kitchener and Lieutenant General Sir Douglas Haig argued that the BEF should be deployed at Amiens, where it could deliver a vigorous counterattack once the route of German advance was known. Kitchener argued that the deployment of the BEF in Belgium would result in having to retreat and abandon much of its supplies almost immediately, as the Belgian Army would be unable to hold its ground against the Germans; Kitchener was proved right, but given the belief in fortresses common at the time, it is not surprising that the War Council disagreed with him.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener, believing Britain should husband her resources for a long war, decided at Cabinet (6 August) that the initial BEF would consist of only 4 infantry divisions (and 1 cavalry), not the 5 or 6 promised. His decision to hold back two of the six divisions of the BEF, although based on exaggerated concerns about German invasion of Britain, arguably saved the BEF from disaster as Sir John French (on the advice of Sir Henry Wilson who was much influenced by the French), might have been tempted to advance further into the teeth of the advancing German forces, had his own force been stronger.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener's wish to concentrate further back at Amiens may also have been influenced by a largely accurate map of German dispositions which was published by Repington in "The Times" on the morning of 12 August. Kitchener had a three-hour meeting (12 August) with Sir John French, Murray, Wilson and the French liaison officer Victor Huguet, before being overruled by the Prime Minister, who eventually agreed that the BEF should assemble at Maubeuge.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Sir John French's orders from Kitchener were to cooperate with the French but not to take orders from them. Given that the tiny BEF (about 100,000 men, half of them serving regulars and half reservists) was Britain's only field army, Kitchener also instructed French to avoid undue losses and exposure to "forward movements where large numbers of French troops are not engaged" until Kitchener himself had had a chance to discuss the matter with the Cabinet.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: The BEF commander in France, Sir John French, concerned at heavy British losses at the Battle of Le Cateau, was considering withdrawing his forces from the Allied line. By 31 August, French commander-in-chief Joffre, President Poincaré (relayed via Bertie, the British Ambassador) and Kitchener had sent him messages urging him not to do so. Kitchener, authorised by a midnight meeting of whichever Cabinet Ministers could be found, left for France for a meeting with Sir John on 1 September.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: They met, together with Viviani (French Prime Minister) and Millerand (now French War Minister). Huguet recorded that Kitchener was "calm, balanced, reflective" whilst Sir John was "sour, impetuous, with congested face, sullen and ill-tempered". On Bertie’s advice Kitchener dropped his intention of inspecting the BEF. French and Kitchener moved to a separate room, and no independent account of the meeting exists. After the meeting Kitchener telegraphed the Cabinet that the BEF would remain in the line, although taking care not to be outflanked, and told French to consider this "an instruction". French had a friendly exchange of letters with Joffre.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: French had been particularly angry that Kitchener had arrived wearing his field marshal's uniform. This was how Kitchener normally dressed at the time (Hankey thought Kitchener's uniform tactless, but it had probably not occurred to him to change), but French felt that Kitchener was implying that he was his military superior and not simply a cabinet member. By the end of the year French thought that Kitchener had "gone mad" and his hostility had become common knowledge at GHQ and GQG.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: In January 1915, Field Marshal Sir John French, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, with the concurrence of other senior commanders (e.g. General Sir Douglas Haig), wanted the New Armies incorporated into existing divisions as battalions rather than sent out as entire divisions. French felt (wrongly) that the war would be over by the summer before the New Army divisions were deployed, as Germany had recently redeployed some divisions to the east, and took the step of appealing to the Prime Minister, Asquith, over Kitchener's head, but Asquith refused to overrule Kitchener. This further damaged relations between French and Kitchener, who had travelled to France in September 1914 during the First Battle of the Marne to order French to resume his place in the Allied line.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener warned French in January 1915 that the Western Front was a siege line that could not be breached, in the context of Cabinet discussions about amphibious landings on the Baltic or North Sea Coast, or against Turkey. In an effort to find a way to relieve pressure on the Western front, Kitchener proposed an invasion of Alexandretta with Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), New Army, and Indian troops. Alexandretta was an area with a large Christian population and was the strategic centre of the Ottoman Empire's railway network – its capture would have cut the empire in two. Yet he was instead eventually persuaded to support Winston Churchill's disastrous Gallipoli Campaign in 1915–1916. (Churchill's responsibility for the failure of this campaign is debated; for more information see David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace".) That failure, combined with the Shell Crisis of 1915 – amidst press publicity engineered by Sir John French – dealt Kitchener's political reputation a heavy blow; Kitchener was popular with the public, so Asquith retained him in office in the new coalition government, but responsibility for munitions was moved to a new ministry headed by David Lloyd George. He was a sceptic about the tank, which is why it was developed under the auspices of Churchill's Admiralty.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: With the Russians being pushed back from Poland, Kitchener thought the transfer of German troops west and a possible invasion of Britain increasingly likely, and told the War Council (14 May) that he was not willing to send the New Armies overseas. He wired French (16 May 1915) that he would send no more reinforcements to France until he was clear the German line could be broken, but sent two divisions at the end of May to please Joffre, not because he thought a breakthrough possible. He had wanted to conserve his New Armies to strike a knockout blow in 1916–17, but by the summer of 1915 realised that high casualties and a major commitment to France were inescapable. "Unfortunately we have to make war as we must, and not as we should like" as he told the Dardanelles Committee on 20 August 1915.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: At an Anglo-French conference at Calais (6 July) Joffre and Kitchener, who was opposed to "too vigorous" offensives, reached a compromise on "local offensives on a vigorous scale", and Kitchener agreed to deploy New Army divisions to France. An inter-Allied conference at Chantilly (7 July, including Russian, Belgian, Serb and Italian delegates) agreed on coordinated offensives. However, Kitchener now came to support the upcoming Loos offensive. He travelled to France for talks with Joffre and Millerand (16 August). The French leaders believed Russia might sue for peace (Warsaw had fallen on 4 August). Kitchener (19 August) ordered the Loos offensive to proceed, despite the attack being on ground not favoured by French or Haig (then commanding First Army). The Official History later admitted that Kitchener hoped to be appointed Supreme Allied Commander. Liddell Hart speculated that this was why he allowed himself to be persuaded by Joffre. New Army divisions first saw action at Loos in September 1915.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener continued to lose favour with politicians and professional soldiers. He found it "repugnant and unnatural to have to discuss military secrets with a large number of gentlemen with whom he was but barely acquainted". Esher complained that he would either lapse into "obstinacy and silence" or else mull aloud over various difficulties. Milner told Gwynne (18 August 1915) that he thought Kitchener a "slippery fish". By autumn 1915, with Asquith's Coalition close to breaking up over conscription, he was blamed for his opposition to that measure (which would eventually be introduced for single men in January 1916) and for the excessive influence which civilians like Churchill and Haldane had come to exert over strategy, allowing "ad hoc" campaigns to develop in Sinai, Mesopotamia and Salonika. Generals such as Sir William Robertson were critical of Kitchener's failure to ask the General Staff (whose chief James Wolfe-Murray was intimidated by Kitchener) to study the feasibility of any of these campaigns. These operations were certainly feasible, but assumed a level of competence that the British armed forces proved unable to achieve at that time. Tactical incompetence in the Gallipoli campaign meant that even a fairly straightforward task ended in disaster.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener advised the Dardanelles Committee (21 October) that Baghdad be seized for the sake of prestige then abandoned as logistically untenable. His advice was no longer accepted without question, but the British forces were eventually besieged and captured at Kut.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Archibald Murray (Chief of the Imperial General Staff) later recorded that Kitchener was "quite unfit for the position of secretary of state" and "impossible", claiming that he never assembled the Army Council as a body, but instead gave them orders separately, and was usually exhausted by Friday. Kitchener was also keen to break up Territorial units whenever possible whilst ensuring that "No 'K' Division left the country incomplete". Murray wrote that "He seldom told the absolute truth and the whole truth" and claimed that it was not until he left on a tour of inspection of Gallipoli and the Near East that Murray was able to inform the Cabinet that volunteering had fallen far below the level needed to maintain a BEF of 70 divisions, requiring the introduction of conscription. The Cabinet insisted on proper General Staff papers being presented in Kitchener's absence.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Asquith, who told Robertson that Kitchener was "an impossible colleague" and "his veracity left much to be desired", hoped that he could be persuaded to remain in the region as Commander-in-Chief and acted in charge of the War Office, but Kitchener took his seals of office with him so he could not be sacked in his absence. Douglas Haig – at that time involved in intrigues to have Robertson appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff – recommended that Kitchener be appointed Viceroy of India ("where trouble was brewing") but not to the Middle East, where his strong personality would have led to that sideshow receiving too much attention and resources. Kitchener visited Rome and Athens, but Murray warned that he would likely demand the diversion of British troops to fight the Turks in the Sinai.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener and Asquith were agreed that Robertson should become CIGS, but Robertson refused to do this if Kitchener "continued to be his own CIGS", although given Kitchener's great prestige he did not want him to resign; he wanted the Secretary of State to be sidelined to an advisory role like the Prussian War Minister. Asquith asked them to negotiate an agreement, which they did over the exchange of several draft documents at the Hotel de Crillon in Paris. Kitchener agreed that Robertson alone should present strategic advice to the Cabinet, with Kitchener responsible for recruiting and supplying the Army, although he refused to agree that military orders should go out over Robertson's signature alone – it was agreed that the Secretary of State should continue to sign orders jointly with the CIGS. The agreement was formalised in a Royal Order in Council in January 1916. Robertson was suspicious of efforts in the Balkans and Near East, and was instead committed to major British offensives against Germany on the Western Front – the first of these was to be the Somme in 1916.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Early in 1916 Kitchener visited Douglas Haig, newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the BEF in France. Kitchener had been a key figure in the removal of Haig's predecessor Sir John French, with whom he had a poor relationship. Haig differed with Kitchener over the importance of Mediterranean efforts and wanted to see a strong General Staff in London, but nonetheless valued Kitchener as a military voice against the "folly" of civilians such as Churchill. However, he thought Kitchener "pinched, tired, and much aged", and thought it sad that his mind was "losing its comprehension" as the time for decisive victory on the Western Front (as Haig and Robertson saw it) approached. Kitchener was somewhat doubtful of Haig's plan to win decisive victory in 1916, and would have preferred smaller and purely attritional attacks, but sided with Robertson in telling the Cabinet that the planned Anglo-French offensive on the Somme should go ahead.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener was under pressure from French Prime Minister Aristide Briand (29 March 1916) for the British to attack on the Western Front to help relieve the pressure of the German attack at Verdun. The French refused to bring troops home from Salonika, which Kitchener thought a play for the increase of French power in the Mediterranean.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: On 2 June 1916, Kitchener personally answered questions asked by politicians about his running of the war effort; at the start of hostilities Kitchener had ordered two million rifles from various US arms manufacturers. Only 480 of these rifles had arrived in the UK by 4 June 1916. The number of shells supplied was no less paltry. Kitchener explained the efforts he had made to secure alternative supplies. He received a resounding vote of thanks from the 200 Members of Parliament (MPs) who had arrived to question him, both for his candour and for his efforts to keep the troops armed; Sir Ivor Herbert, who, a week before, had introduced the failed vote of censure in the House of Commons against Kitchener's running of the War Department, personally seconded the motion.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: In the midst of his other political and military concerns, Kitchener had devoted personal attention to the deteriorating situation on the Eastern Front. This included the provision of extensive stocks of war material for the Russian armies, which had been under increasing pressure since mid-1915. In May 1916, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald McKenna suggested that Kitchener head a special and confidential mission to Russia to discuss munition shortages, military strategy and financial difficulties with the Imperial Russian Government and the "Stavka" (military high command), which was now under the personal command of Tsar Nicholas II. Both Kitchener and the Russians were in favor of face to face talks, and a formal invitation from the Tsar was received on 14 May. Kitchener left London by train for Scotland on the evening of 4 June with a party of officials, military aides and personal servants.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener sailed from Scrabster to Scapa Flow on 5 June 1916 aboard HMS "Oak" before transferring to the armoured cruiser HMS "Hampshire" for his diplomatic mission to Russia. At the last minute, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe changed "Hampshire"s route on the basis of a mis-reading of the weather forecast and ignoring (or not being aware of) recent intelligence and sightings of German U-boat activity in the vicinity of the amended route. Shortly before 7:30 pm that same day, while steaming for the Russian port of Arkhangelsk during a force 9 gale, "Hampshire" struck a mine laid by the newly launched German U-boat "U-75" (commanded by Kurt Beitzen) and sank west of the Orkney Islands. Recent research has set the death toll of those aboard "Hampshire" at 737. Only twelve men survived. Amongst the dead were all ten members of Kitchener's entourage. Kitchener himself was seen standing on the quarterdeck during the approximately twenty minutes that it took the ship to sink. His body was never recovered.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: The news of Kitchener's death was received with shock all over the British Empire. A man in Yorkshire committed suicide at the news; a sergeant on the Western Front was heard to exclaim "Now we’ve lost the war. Now we’ve lost the war"; and a nurse wrote home to her family that she knew Britain would win as long as Kitchener lived, and now that he was gone: "How awful it is – a far worse blow than many German victories. So long as he was with us we knew even if things were gloomy that his guiding hand was at the helm."


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: General Douglas Haig commanding the British Armies on the Western Front remarked on first receiving the news of Kitchener's death via a German radio signal intercepted by the British Army, "How shall we get on without him". King George V wrote in his diary: "It is indeed a heavy blow to me and a great loss to the nation and the allies." He ordered army officers to wear black armbands for a week.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: C. P. Scott, editor of "The Manchester Guardian", is said to have remarked that "as for the old man, he could not have done better than to have gone down, as he was a great impediment lately".


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener's great fame, the suddenness of his death, and its apparently convenient timing for a number of parties gave almost immediate rise to a number of conspiracy theories about his death. One in particular was posited by Lord Alfred Douglas (of Oscar Wilde fame), positing a connection between Kitchener's death, the recent naval Battle of Jutland, Winston Churchill, and a Jewish conspiracy. Churchill successfully sued Douglas in what proved to be the last successful case of criminal libel in British legal history, and the latter spent six months in prison. Another claimed that "Hampshire" did not strike a mine at all, but was sunk by explosives secreted in the vessel by Irish Republicans.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: General Erich Ludendorff, Generalquartiermeister and joint head (with Paul von Hindenburg) of Germany's war effort stated in the 1920s that Russian communists working against the Tsar had betrayed the plan to visit the Russians to the German command. His account was that Kitchener was "[killed] because of his ability" as it was feared he would help the tsarist Russian Army to recover.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: In 1926, a hoaxer named Frank Power claimed in the "Sunday Referee" newspaper that Kitchener's body had been found by a Norwegian fisherman. Power brought a coffin back from Norway and prepared it for burial in St Paul's Cathedral. At this point, however, the authorities intervened and the coffin was opened in the presence of police and a distinguished pathologist. The box was found to contain only tar for weight. There was widespread public outrage at Power, but he was never prosecuted.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Frederick Joubert Duquesne, a Boer soldier and spy, claimed that he had assassinated Kitchener after an earlier attempt to kill him in Cape Town failed. He was arrested and court-martialled in Cape Town and sent to the penal colony of Bermuda, but managed to escape to the U.S. MI5 confirmed that Duquesne was "a German intelligence officer ... involved in a series of acts of sabotage against British shipping in South American waters during the [First World] war"; he was wanted for: "murder on the high seas, the sinking and burning of British ships, the burning of military stores, warehouses, coaling stations, conspiracy, and the falsification of Admiralty documents."


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Duquesne's unverified story was that he returned to Europe, posed as the Russian Duke Boris Zakrevsky in 1916, and joined Kitchener in Scotland. While on board HMS "Hampshire" with Kitchener, Duquesne claimed to have signalled a German submarine that then sank the cruiser, and was rescued by the submarine, later being awarded the Iron Cross for his efforts. Duquesne was later apprehended and tried by the authorities in the U.S. for insurance fraud, but managed to escape again.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: During the Second World War, Duquesne ran a German spy ring in the United States until he was caught by the FBI in what became the biggest roundup of spies in U.S. history: the "Duquesne Spy Ring". Coincidentally, Kitchener's brother was to die in office in Bermuda in 1912, and his nephew, Major H.H. "Hap" Kitchener, who had married a Bermudian, purchased (with a legacy left to him by his uncle) Hinson's Islandpart of the former Prisoner of War camp from which Duquesne had escapedafter the First World War as the location of his home and business.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener is officially remembered in a chapel on the northwest corner of St Paul's Cathedral in London, near the main entrance, where a memorial service was held in his honour.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: In Canada, the city of Berlin, Ontario, named in respect to a large German immigrant settler population, was renamed Kitchener following a 1916 referendum.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Since 1970, the opening of new records has led historians to rehabilitate Kitchener's reputation to some extent. Robin Neillands, for instance, notes that Kitchener consistently rose in ability as he was promoted. Some historians now praise his strategic vision in the First World War, especially his laying the groundwork for the expansion of munitions production and his central role in the raising of the British army in 1914 and 1915, providing a force capable of meeting Britain's continental commitment.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: His commanding image, appearing on recruiting posters demanding "Your country needs you!", remains recognised and parodied in popular culture.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Kitchener was a lifelong bachelor. From his time in Egypt in 1892, he gathered around him a cadre of eager young and unmarried officers nicknamed "Kitchener's band of boys", who included his friend Captain Oswald Fitzgerald, his "constant and inseparable companion", whom he appointed his aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria (1888–96). They remained close until they met a common death on their voyage to Russia. Rumour occasionally circulated that Kitchener was homosexual, and after his death a number of biographers suggested or hinted that he might have been a latent or active homosexual.


title: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

text: Professor C. Brad Faught, Chair of the Department of History at Tyndale University College, discusses Kitchener's sexuality in a 2016 biography. While acknowledging Kitchener's "vestigal femininity" in collecting porcelain and organising dinner parties, plus emotional repression typical of his class and time, Faught concludes that the absolute absence of evidence either way leaves "an issue about which historians can say almost nothing useful". Biographer George H. Cassar argues that Kitchener's letters to his sister include evidence of heterosexual attraction and that if there were any credible evidence that Kitchener was homosexual, it would have been used by his many opponents during his lifetime.


title: One of Us Is Lying (TV series)

text: One of Us Is Lying is an American teen drama mystery television series developed by Erica Saleh. The series is based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Karen M. McManus and follows five high school students who enter detention, where one of them dies under suspicious circumstances and an investigation ensues. It stars Mark McKenna as Simon, the deceased student, and Annalisa Cochrane, Chibuikem Uche, Marianly Tejada, and Cooper van Grootel as the main suspects, with Barrett Carnahan, Jessica McLeod, and Melissa Collazo, Sara Thompson and Alimi Ballard in supporting roles. The series premiered on Peacock on October 7, 2021, and was met with generally positive reviews from critics. In January 2022, the series was renewed for a second season which premiered on October 20, 2022.


title: One of Us Is Lying (TV series)

text: At Bayview High, five studentsSimon, Addy, Cooper, Bronwyn, and Nateare given detention. Simon, known for starting an online gossip group with his friend Janae to snitch on his classmates, suffers a sudden and fatal allergic reaction. Each of the four students had a motive to kill Simon, and after it is determined his death was not an accident, an investigation ensues.


title: One of Us Is Lying (TV series)

text: "One of Us Is Lying" is the 2017 debut novel of Karen M. McManus. In September 2017, Universal Content Productions announced it had acquired the rights to the novel and would produce a television series adaptation to be released on E!. In August 2019, the project was moved to NBCUniversal, who gave the then-unreleased streaming service Peacock its first pilot order with the series.


title: One of Us Is Lying (TV series)

text: In September 2019, it was reported that Jennifer Morrison would direct the pilot episode. Auditions began that same month, and in October, Marianly Tejada, Cooper van Grootel, Annalisa Cochrane, Chibuikem Uche, Jessica McLeod, Barrett Carnahan, and Melissa Collazo were announced as part of the cast. In joining the series, van Grootel, Cochrane, and Uche all said they had not heard about the novel before they auditioned. Filming for the first episode took place in Vancouver, starting on November 2, 2019, and concluded on November 20.


title: One of Us Is Lying (TV series)

text: On August 12, 2020, the project became the first from Peacock to receive a series order. The remaining seven episodes started shooting in New Zealand on May 10, 2021, with filming scheduled to conclude on September 24, 2021. That same year, Mark McKenna was confirmed as a series regular in July; Martin Bobb-Semple, Karim Diane, George Ferrier, Miles J. Harvey, Zenia Marshall, and Sara Thompson were announced as part of the recurring cast in August; and Alimi Ballard was confirmed in October. In an interview, series showrunner Darío Madrona was asked if the series would stay faithful to its source material; he responded by saying, "We've been faithful to the spirit of the story and the themes and the characters, but also trying to add some little twists and turns here and there so we can surprise readers of the book."


title: One of Us Is Lying (TV series)

text: On January 14, 2022, Peacock renewed the series for a second season, with Saleh replacing Madrona as showrunner. In May 2022, Joe Witkowski and Doralynn Mui joined the cast in recurring roles. The second season premiered on October 20, 2022. Sara Thompson and Alimi Ballard were promoted to series regulars for the second season.


title: One of Us Is Lying (TV series)

text: The first three episodes premiered on Peacock on October 7, 2021, followed by three episodes on October 14, and the final two episodes of the first season on October 21.


title: One of Us Is Lying (TV series)

text: Before its premiere, critics were given the first three episodes to review. From "The Wall Street Journal", John Anderson said the series was difficult to categorize and wrote, "what distinguishes the series as storytelling, is the way it careens its way through its various plot points, unencumbered by the need for explanations or narrative development. We don't need all that. The conclusion will be a surprise, one assumes. But the getting there is, as they might say in French class, déjà vu." Brad Newsome, writing for "The Sydney Morning Herald", said the story "deftly tweaks its balance of suspicions to keep things interesting, but it's McKenna and Van Grootel who really pull focus." "The Hollywood Reporter"s Angie Han said the series was missing a spark to set it apart from similar programming, with characters that feel like "archetypes," a "sour, dour mood, with few moments of either levity or raw pain," and dull colors that "keep the show's emotions at arm's length. The story moves forward at a painless pace, and the characters are easy enough to like, if not really interesting enough to love. But without any notable quirks or deep insights, it's also a show that seems likely to disappear from memory as soon as that binge is over."


title: Great Replacement

text: The Great Replacement (), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory, is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory disseminated by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced with non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. Since then, similar claims have been advanced in other national contexts, notably in the United States. Mainstream scholars have dismissed these claims as rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview. According to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", the Great Replacement "has been widely ridiculed for its blatant absurdity."


title: Great Replacement

text: While similar themes have characterized various far-right theories since the late 19th century, the particular term was popularized by Camus in his 2011 book "Le Grand Remplacement". The book associates the presence of Muslims in France with danger and destruction of French culture and civilization. Camus and other conspiracy theorists attribute recent demographic changes in Europe to intentional policies advanced by global and liberal elites (the "replacists") from within the Government of France, the European Union, or the United Nations; they describe it as a "genocide by substitution".


title: Great Replacement

text: The conspiracy theory found support in Europe, and has also grown popular among anti-migrant and white nationalist movements from other parts of the West; many of their adherents maintain that "immigrants [are] flocking to predominantly white countries for the precise purpose of rendering the white population a minority within their own land or even causing the extinction of the native population". It aligns with (and is a part of) the larger white genocide conspiracy theory except in the strategic replacement of antisemitic canards with Islamophobia. This replacement, along with a use of simple catch-all slogans, have been cited as reasons for its broader appeal in a pan-European context, although the concept remains rooted in antisemitism in many white nationalist movements, especially (but not exclusively) in the United States.


title: Great Replacement

text: Although Camus has publicly condemned white nationalist violence, scholars have argued that calls to violence are implicit in his depiction of non-white migrants as an existential threat to white populations. Several far-right terrorists, including the perpetrators of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, the 2019 El Paso shooting and the 2022 Buffalo shooting, have made reference to the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. American conservative media personalities, including Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, have espoused ideas of a replacement. Some Republican politicians have endorsed the theory in order to appeal to far-right members of the Republican Party and as a way of signalling their loyalty to Donald Trump.


title: Great Replacement

text: Renaud Camus developed his conspiracy theory in two books published in 2010 and 2011, in the context of an increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric in public discourse during the previous decade. Europe also experienced an escalation in Islamic terrorist attacks during the 2000s–2010s, and a migrant crisis that began in 2015, which exacerbated tensions and prepared public opinion for the reception of Camus's conspiracy theory. As the latter depicts a population replacement said to occur in a short time lapse of one or two generations, the migrant crisis was particularly conducive to the spread of Camus's ideas while the terrorist attacks accelerated the construction of immigrants as an existential threat among those who shared such a worldview.


title: Great Replacement

text: Camus's theme of a future demise of European culture and civilization also parallels a "cultural pessimistic" and anti-Islam trend among European intellectuals of the period, illustrated in several best-selling and straightforwardly titled books released during the 2010s: Thilo Sarrazin's "Germany Abolishes Itself" (2010), Éric Zemmour's "The French Suicide" (2014) or Michel Houellebecq's "Submission" (2015).


title: Great Replacement

text: The "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory was developed by French author Renaud Camus, initially in a 2010 book titled "L'Abécédaire de l'in-nocence" ("Abecedarium of no-harm"), and the following year in an eponymous book, "Le Grand Remplacement (introduction au remplacisme global)". Camus has claimed that the name "came to [him], almost by chance, perhaps in a more or less unconscious reference to the "Grand Dérangement" of the Acadians in the 18th century." Commenting on the name, he has also declared that his theory was the "implementation in real life" of Bertolt Brecht's quip from the satirical poem "Die Lösung" that the easiest thing to do for a government was to change the people had the people forfeited its confidence.


title: Great Replacement

text: According to Camus, the "Great Replacement" has been nourished by "industrialisation", "despiritualisation" and "deculturation"; the materialistic society and globalism having created a "replaceable human, without any national, ethnic or cultural specificity", what he labels "global replacism". Camus claims that "the great replacement does not need a definition," as the term is not, in his views, a "concept" but rather a "phenomenon".


title: Great Replacement

text: In Camus's theory, the indigenous French people ("the replaced") is described as being demographically replaced by non-white populations ("the replacing [peoples]")—mainly coming from Africa or the Middle East—in a process of "peopling immigration" encouraged by a "replacist power".


title: Great Replacement

text: Camus frequently uses terms and concepts related to the period of Nazi-occupied France (1940–1945). He for instance labels "colonizers" or "Occupiers" people of non-European descent who reside in Europe, and dismisses what he calls the "replacist elites" as "collaborationist". Camus founded in 2017 an organization named the National Council of European Resistance, in a self-evident reference to the World War II National Council of the Resistance (1943–1945). This analogy to the French Resistance against Nazism has been described as an implicit call to hatred, direct action or even violence against what Camus labels the "Occupiers; i.e. the immigrants". Camus has also compared the Great Replacement and the so-called "genocide by substitution" of the European peoples to the Holocaust.


title: Great Replacement

text: Camus cites two influential figures in the epilogue of his 2011 book "The Great Replacement": British politician Enoch Powell's apocalyptic vision of future race relations—expressed in his 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech—and French author Jean Raspail's depiction of the collapse of the West from an overwhelming "tidal wave" of Third World immigration, featured in his 1973 novel "The Camp of the Saints".


title: Great Replacement

text: Camus also declared to "The Spectator" magazine in 2016 that a key to understanding the "Great Replacement" can be found in his 2002 book "Du Sens". In the latter he wrote that the words "France" and "French" equal a natural and physical reality rather than a legal one, in a cratylism similar to Charles Maurras's distinction between the "legal" and the "real country". During the same interview, Camus mentioned that he began to imagine his conspiracy theory back in 1996, during the redaction of a guidebook on the department of Hérault, in the South of France: "I suddenly realized that in very old villages [...] the population had totally changed too [...] this is when I began to write like that."


title: Great Replacement

text: Despite its own singularities and concepts, the "Great Replacement" is encompassed in a larger and older "white genocide" conspiracy theory, popularized in the US by neo-Nazi David Lane in his 1995 "White Genocide Manifesto", where he asserted that governments in Western countries were intending to turn white people into "extinct species".


title: Great Replacement

text: The idea of "replacement" under the guidance of a hostile elite can be further traced back to pre-WWII antisemitic conspiracy theories which posited the existence of a Jewish plot to destroy Europe through miscegenation, especially in Édouard Drumont's antisemitic bestseller "La France juive" (1886). Commenting on this resemblance, historian Nicolas Lebourg and political scientist Jean-Yves Camus suggest that Camus's contribution was to replace the antisemitic elements with a clash of civilizations between Muslims and Europeans. Also in the late 19th century, imperialist politicians invoked the "Péril jaune" (Yellow Peril) in their negative comparisons of France's low birth-rate and the high birth-rates of Asian countries. From that claim arose an artificial, cultural fear that immigrant-worker Asians soon would "flood" France. This danger supposedly could be successfully countered only by increased fecundity of French women. Then, France would possess enough soldiers to thwart the eventual flood of immigrants from Asia. Maurice Barrès's nationalist writings of that period have also been noted in the ideological genealogy of the "Great Replacement", Barrès contending both in 1889 and in 1900 that a replacement of the native population under the combined effect of immigration and a decline in the birth rate was happening in France.


title: Great Replacement

text: Scholars also highlight a modern similarity to European neo-fascist and neo-Nazi thinkers from the immediate post-war, especially Maurice Bardèche, René Binet and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, and to concepts advanced from the 1960s onward by the French Nouvelle Droite.


title: Great Replacement

text: The associated and more recent conspiracy theory of "Eurabia", published by British author Bat Ye'or in her 2005 eponymous book, is often cited as a probable inspiration for Camus's "Great Replacement". Eurabia theory likewise involves globalist entities, that time led by both French and Arab powers, conspiring to Islamize Europe, with Muslims submerging the continent through immigration and higher birth rates. The conspiracy theory also depicts immigrants as invaders or as a fifth column, invited to the continent by a corrupt political elite. Scholars generally agree that, although he did not father the theme, Camus indeed coined the term "Great Replacement" as a slogan and concept, and eventually led it to its fame in the 2010s.