# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Brackenbury, Henry

​BRACKENBURY, Sir HENRY (1887-1914), general and writer on military subjects, was born at Bolingbroke, Lincolnshire, 1 September 1837. He was the youngest son of William Brackenbury, of Aswardby, Lincolnshire, formerly lieutenant in the 61st Regiment, by his wife, Maria, daughter of James Atkinson, of Newry, county Down, and widow of James Wallace. Their third son was Major-General Charles Booth Brackenbury [q.v.]. Henry Brackenbury’s schooling was interrupted by youthful vagaries. He was at Tonbridge School from 1846 to 1849, and afterwards went to Eton, where he was from 1850 to 1852 in the house of the Rev. Charles Wolley (afterwards Wolley-Dod). He was then sent to Canada, but a brief probation in a notary’s office in Quebec led to no satisfactory result, and it was not until he entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1854 that he settled down to work. The Crimean War caused a demand for officers, and Brackenbury had not served the full number of courses before he received a commission in the Royal Artillery in April 1856.
When the news of the Indian Mutiny arrived in England, Brackenbury was accepted for active service, and he sailed for India at the end of August 1857. After some campaigning with General Whitlock’s column he was invalided home in 1858, He soon obtained some minor positions at Woolwich, and was gazetted adjutant of the depôt brigade in 1860. Among his interests at ​this time was cricket, and his name is to be found in one or two regimental matches of the period. Early in his career as a soldier he began to devote himself to writing. He had a facile pen and a retentive memory, and narrow means gave him the necessary incentive to literary and journalistic work. Beginning with two papers on early ordnance for the Proceedings of the Royal Artillery Institution, he continued to contribute articles, chiefly upon technical subjects, to various periodicals. He made a special study of military history and administration; and when Mr. (afterwards Viscount) Cardwell went to the War Office in 1868, Brackenbury wrote in support of the minister’s proposals for army reform. In 1868 he was appointed professor of military history at Woolwich Academy, and visited some of the European battle-fields in order to add to his knowledge of the subject.
The Franco-German War afforded Brackenbury opportunities of a different kind. In the autumn of 1870 a British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded was established under the presidency of Colonel Robert James Loyd Lindsay (afterwards Baron Wantage), and Brackenbury was invited to superintend the distribution of relief at the seat of war. He carried out this work capably and impartially, and was decorated for his services by both belligerents. He returned to England at the end of January 1871 and resumed his duties at Woolwich.
When the Ashanti expedition was planned in the autumn of 1873, and the command given to Sir Garnet (afterwards Viscount) Wolseley, Brackenbury wrote offering to serve under him in any capacity. Wolseley took him to Ashanti as his assistant military secretary, and in his autobiography [The Story of a Soldier’s Life, vol. ii, 80] records his appreciation of Brackenbury’s services. Wolseley became Brackenbury’s consistent patron and supporter. In 1875 he was promoted brevet lieutenant-colonel, and in July 1878 accompanied Wolseley to Cyprus. His chief returned almost at once, but Brackenbury remained to organize a force of military police, as well as to remodel the prisons of the island. In the following year (1879) he acted as Wolseley’s military secretary in Zululand, with Sir George Pomeroy Colley as chief of the staff. The victory of Lord Chelmsford [q.v.] at Ulundi (4 July) ended the war before Wolseley could join the troops in the field; but Brackenbury was present at the capture of the Zulu king, Cetywayo, and on Colley’s recall to India succeeded that officer as head of Wolseley’s staff, and took part in the successful expedition against the chief, Sekukuni, in the north of the Transvaal.
From Africa Brackenbury sailed direct to India, having accepted the position of private secretary to the viceroy, the first Earl of Lytton. He held this appointment only a short time, for the viceroy resigned on the fall of the conservative government in the spring of 1880. Although their official association was so brief, Lytton and Brackenbury remained close friends. In 1881 Brackenbury was offered and accepted the post of military attaché to the British embassy in Paris. While on leave in England in May 1882, he was dispatched by the government to Ireland, where agrarian and political troubles had culminated in the Phoenix Park murders. His position was indefinite at first, but subsequently he was appointed under-secretary for police and crime. The arrangement was not a success, and his early resignation gave offence to the military authorities, who placed him on half-pay and refused him permission to serve with Wolseley in the expedition against Arabi Pasha (August 1882). His career suffered only a temporary interruption, for in 1884 Wolseley selected him for the Egyptian campaign for the relief of General Gordon, and in September he was appointed deputy assistant adjutant and quartermaster-general at Cairo. He joined Wolseley at Korti on 24 December and started up the Nile, with the rank of brigadier-general and second in command of the river column. On the death of General William Earle [q.v.] at Kirbekan on 10 February 1885, Brackenbury succeeded to the command of the column, which was recalled to Korti a few days later. After further service in Egypt he came home in August, and was promoted major-general.
Important appointments for Brackenbury followed. He was deputy assistant quartermaster-general and head of the intelligence branch at head-quarters for five years from 1 January 1886; from 1891 to 1896 he was military member of the council of the viceroy of India; and from 1896 to 1899 president of the ordnance committee. But his greatest opportunity came at the close of his military career. Soon after the outbreak of the South African War (October 1899) the provision of munitions on a large scale was found to require an effective organizer at the War Office. The post of director-general of ordnance was offered to Brackenbury, and was held by him during ​the continuance of the war. His efficiency in the position met with general acknowledgment.
Brackenbury was made C.B. in 1880, promoted K.C.B. in 1894, and received the K.C.S.I. in 1896. In 1900 he was promoted G.C.B., and he was made a privy councillor on his retirement in 1904. He died at Nice 20 April 1914. He was twice married: first, in 1861 to Emilia (died 1905), daughter of Edmund Storr Halswell, F.R.S., and widow of Reginald Morley; secondly, in 1905 to Edith, daughter of Louis Desanges, who survived him. There was no issue of either marriage.
Brackenbury was an able man, with considerable capacity for organization. He wrote well upon military subjects, and was a competent student of the art of war as it was known in the nineteenth century. His published books were The Last Campaign of Hanover (1870), The Tactics of the Three Arms (1878), Narrative of the Ashantee War (2 vols., 1874), The River Column (1885), and Some Memories of my Spare Time (1909).
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