Field Marshal John Denton Pinkstone French, 1st Earl of Ypres (28 September 1852 – 22 May 1925), known as Sir John French from 1901 to 1916, and as the Viscount French between 1916 and 1922, was a senior British Army officer.
Born in Kent, he saw brief service as a midshipman in the Royal Navy, before becoming a cavalry officer. He achieved rapid promotion and distinguished himself on the Gordon Relief Expedition. He became a national hero during the Second Boer War. He commanded I Corps at Aldershot, then served as Inspector-General of the Forces, before becoming Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS, the professional head of the British Army) in 1912. He helped to prepare the British Army for a possible European war, and was among those who insisted that cavalry still be trained to charge with sabre and lance. During the Curragh incident he had to resign as CIGS.
French's most important role was as Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) for the first year and a half of the First World War. After the British suffered heavy casualties at the battles of Mons and Le Cateau, French wanted to withdraw the BEF from the Allied line to refit and only agreed to take part in the First Battle of the Marne after a private meeting with the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, against whom he bore a grudge thereafter. In May 1915 he leaked information about shell shortages to the press in the hope of engineering Kitchener's removal. By summer 1915 French's command was being increasingly criticised in London by Kitchener and other members of the government, and by Douglas Haig, William Robertson and other senior generals in France. After the Battle of Loos, at which French's slow release of XI Corps from reserve was blamed for the failure to achieve a decisive breakthrough on the first day, Prime Minister H. H. Asquith demanded his resignation.
French was appointed Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces for 1916–1918. He then became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1918, a position he held through much of the Irish War of Independence (1919–1922). During this time he published 1914, an inaccurate and much criticised volume of memoirs.
Early life and career Family French's family was related to the French/De Freyne family which had gone to present-day County Wexford in the fourteenth century and had substantial estates at Frenchpark, County Roscommon. French always regarded himself as "Irish", although his branch of the family had lived in England since the eighteenth century.Heathcote, p. 130Holmes 2004, p. 15
His father was Royal Navy Commander John Tracey William French. His mother was Margaret Eccles, from Glasgow, who after suffering a breakdown following her husband's death was eventually institutionalised.Cassar 1985, p. 19 She died in 1867 leaving French to be brought up by his sisters.Bond & Cave 2009, p. 52 He was educated at a Harrow preparatory school and Eastman's Royal Naval Academy before joining the Royal Navy in 1866.
Royal Navy He joined the Royal Navy because it gave him a chance to leave home four or five years earlier than the Army. From August 1866 he trained on board the battleship HMS Britannia. He obtained only an "average" certificate which required him to do a further six months of training on board the frigate HMS Bristol from January 1868 before qualifying as a midshipman.Holmes 2004, pp. 17–19
In 1869 he served as a midshipman on HMS Warrior commanded by Captain Boys, an old friend of French's father. She patrolled in the English Channel and off Spain and Portugal. During his service he witnessed the accidental sinking of HMS Captain. He resigned from the Royal Navy in November 1870 as he was discovered to be acrophobicWells, p. 148 and to suffer from seasickness.Reid 2006, p. 61
Early army career French joined the Suffolk Artillery Militia in November 1870 where he was expected to put in about two months a year with the regiment. He initially failed his exams (mathematics and foreign languages) for a regular commission.Holmes 2004, pp. 20–22 He was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars on 28 February 1874, but there is no evidence that he ever served with them.
He transferred to the 19th Hussars on 11 March 1874 possibly as it was less expensive—following the sale of the family home at Ripple Valley French's private income of £1,000 per annum was enough to cover the £500–£600 required by his new regiment. He was posted to Aldershot Command.Holmes 2004, p. 21 He became an expert hunter and steeplechaser, permanently damaging the little finger of his right hand in a fall.Holmes 2004, p. 22 The 19th Hussars were posted to Ireland in June 1876. In September 1877 French was one of two lieutenants who persuaded 70 drunk and mutinous troopers, who had armed themselves with sticks and threatened "murder", to return to barracks.Holmes 2004, pp. 26–27 In 1880 the 19th were deployed to Ballinrobe and Lough Mask to protect labourers at the height of the Captain Boycott disturbances. An Irishman hamstrung French's horse with a sickle while he was sitting on it.Holmes 2004, p. 27 He became adjutant of his regiment on 1 June 1880. Turnover of officers brought French his promotion to captain on 16 October 1880.
He became adjutant of the Northumberland Hussars on 1 April 1881. While in Northumberland he missed out on active service: the 19th Hussars took part in the occupation of Egypt and Battle of Tel el-Kebir but French's applications to rejoin his regiment were rejected by the War Office.Holmes 2004, p. 29 An increase in the number of majors in the 19th Hussars brought French promotion to that rank on 3 April 1883.Holmes 2004, p. 30 These promotions (captain at the age of 28, major at 30) were relatively rapid.Bond & Cave 2009, p. 53
Sudan French was initially expected to rejoin his regiment when they returned to Ireland, but the emergence of the Mahdi in the Sudan required them to fight Mahdist forces near Suakin. French rejoined the regiment when they returned to Cairo in October 1884.Holmes 2004, p. 32
French took part in the Sudan expedition to relieve Major-General Charles Gordon in 1884. He was second-in-command to his friend Lieutenant Colonel Percy Barrow, with the cavalry which accompanied Brigadier-General Sir Herbert Stewart as he took the short route across 176 miles of desert. Most of the cavalry work was in reconnaissance and warding off Dervish raids, although they did—at a walk—pursue the retreating enemy after the Battle of Abu Klea in January 1885. By the time they reached the Nile the horses had not been watered for between 56 and 72 hours.Holmes 2004, pp. 35–39 During the retreat back across the desert via Jakdul (the expedition had reached Khartoum too late to save Gordon) French led a rearguard of thirteen men, warding off Dervish attacks and impressing Redvers Buller and Sir Garnet Wolseley.Holmes 2004, p. 41
He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on 7 February 1885.Holmes (2004, p. 42) gives the date of this promotion as August. Once again, this was an unusually early promotion, and he was appointed second-in-command of the 19th Hussars. His experience of handling cavalry with scarce water would stand him in good stead in South Africa. In January 1886 he briefly acted as Commanding Officer when Colonel Barrow died,Barrow had been severely wounded at El Teb in February 1884, and a wound opened up again while he was tent-pegging in preparation for the regimental sports day. He died within thirty hours but French was considered too young for the position, and Colonel Boyce Combe was transferred in.Holmes 2004, p. 42
From June 1886 to April 1888 French was stationed at Norwich with the regiment.Holmes 2004, pp. 42–43 He became Commanding Officer of the 19th Hussars on 27 September 1888.Holmes (2004, pp. 43–44) again does not quite tally with the London Gazette here, stating that he took command of his regiment in spring 1888. He impressed Evelyn Wood by his initiative in organising his regiment into squadrons.Previously the largest permanent unit was the troop; some of these were too small for effective training, while the captains commanding them varied widely in age and experience. Wood had been lobbying the War Office for some time to introduce permanent peacetime squadrons, and they finally ordered all cavalry regiments to make the change in the 1890s.Holmes 2004, pp. 43–44
India and divorce scandal
He was promoted brevet colonel (7 February 1889), and was posted to India in September 1891.Heathcote, p. 131 There, at cavalry camp during an exercise in November 1891, he first met Captain Douglas Haig, with whose career his own was to be entwined for the next 25 years. French became Assistant Adjutant-General of Cavalry in 1893.
In India serving initially at Secunderabad and Bangalore, French worked as a staff officer under Sir George Luck, a noted trainer of cavalry, albeit with perhaps an excessive emphasis on parade-ground drill.Holmes 2004, p. 45 French commanded a brigade of Indian Cavalry on manoeuvres near Lahore in January 1893. He seems not to have acquired the deep affection for India common in officers who served there.
French's wife did not accompany him to India (they seem to have lived apart for a while after his return from Egypt).Holmes 2004, pp. 42–44 When commanding the 19th Hussars in India, French was cited for adultery with the wife of a brother officer during his leave in the Indian hills; he was lucky this did not terminate his career.Reid 2006, p. 53 There were also unsubstantiated rumours that French had had affairs with the daughter of an Anglo-Indian railway official and also, earlier in his career, with his commanding officer's wife.Holmes 2004, p. 372 A later tale, that he had once been the lover of the Irish nationalist Maud Gonne, appeared in Mary Colum's Life and the Dream (1947), although his biographer comments that it "lacks firm evidence".Holmes 2004, p. 17
He was on half-pay in 1893–1895, possibly as a result of the Indian divorce scandal, and reduced to bicycling with his sons as he could not afford to keep horses. According to his son Gerald he would hop alongside the bicycle as he never mastered the art of mounting it.Holmes 2004, p. 48
Career saved twice Two years on half pay would normally have meant compulsory retirement but in autumn 1894 he temporarily commanded a cavalry brigade on the manoeuvres in the Vale of the White Horse in Berkshire. French commented that the role of modern cavalry was not to "cut and hack and thrust" but rather to herd the enemy within range of friendly artillery. His handling of the brigade was seen as one of the few successful parts of the manoeuvres.Holmes 2004, pp. 48–49 He was appointed Assistant Adjutant-General at Army Headquarters on 24 August 1895, writing a new cavalry training manual (in practice extensively assisted by Captain Douglas Haig).
French went on to be Commander of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade at Canterbury on 1 May 1897 and Commander of the 1st Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot Command on 12 January 1899. Haig, recently returned from the Sudan War, was French's brigade major at Aldershot. French was promoted to temporary major-general early in 1899. There were some accusations that these promotions, for a man whose career had so recently nearly ended, relied too much on powerful patrons.Holmes 2004, p. 50 Early in 1899, at his own request, French borrowed £2,500, in a formal contract with interest, from Haig. He was within 24 hours of bankruptcy—which would have required him to resign his commission—after unwise investments in South African mining shares (Transvaal Golds), which crashed in value as war loomed. Richard Holmes believed the loan was never repaid,Holmes 2004, pp. 50–52 but Haig's biographer Walter Reid believes that the loan was probably repaid in 1909.Reid 2006, p. 91
Boer War Early war Arrival