[35] In early January Haig was picked by Evelyn Wood (by then Adjutant-General) as one of three recent staff college graduates requested by Kitchener for a campaign in the Mahdist War in the Sudan.

[44] Haig had recently lent £2,500 (in a formal contract with interest, worth £400,000 in 2024) to the brigade commander, John French, to cover his losses from South African mining speculations.

The Cavalry Division was disbanded (November 1900) and French, with Haig still his chief of staff, was put in charge of an all-arms force policing the Johannesburg area, later trying to capture the Boer leader de Wet around Bloemfontein.

French, probably not wanting to part with a valuable assistant, recommended Herbert Lawrence for the vacant command of the 17th Lancers, but Roberts, now Commander-in-Chief back in Britain, overruled him and gave it to Haig (May 1901).

[61] Haig's war service had earned him belated but rapid promotion: having been a captain until the relatively advanced age of thirty-seven, by 1904 he had become the youngest major-general in the British Army at that time.

[62] On leave from India, Haig married Dorothy Maud Vivian on 11 July 1905 after a whirlwind courtship (she had spotted him for the first time when he was playing polo at Hurlingham two years earlier).

At dinner afterwards Haig abandoned his prepared text, and although he wrote that his remarks were "well received", John Charteris recorded that they were "unintelligible and unbearably dull" and that the visiting dignitaries fell asleep.

Haig was irritated by Sir John French, who ignored intelligence reports of German forces streaming westwards from Brussels, threatening an encirclement from the British left.

However, a critical biographer writes that too much has been made of the "moment of panic" at Landrecies, and that the 200-mile (320 km) retreat, over a period of 13 days, is a tribute to the "steady and competent leadership" of Haig and Smith-Dorrien.

He wrote to his wife that he wished the British were operating independently from Antwerp, a proposal which he had rejected as "reckless" when Sir John French had made it at the War Council on 4 August.

The attack was less successful than Neuve Chapelle as the bombardment was over a wider front and against stronger defences; Haig was still focussed on winning a decisive victory by capturing key ground, rather than amassing firepower to inflict maximum damage.

[120] Haig wrote a detailed letter to Kitchener claiming "complete" success on the first day and complaining that the reserves had not been placed as close to the front as agreed and that French had not released control of them when requested.

Haig strengthened his case by reports that captured enemy officers had been astonished at the British failure to exploit the attack and by complaining about the government's foot-dragging at introducing conscription and the commitment of troops to sideshows like Salonika and Suvla Bay.

Haig and Robertson were aware that Britain would have to take on more of the offensive burden, as France was beginning to run out of men, but thought that the Germans might retreat in the west so they could concentrate on beating the Russians.

[135] This round of planning ended with a sharp exchange of letters with the Cabinet, Haig rebuked them for interfering in military matters and declared that "I am responsible for the efficiency of the Armies in France".

Haig hoped to liberate the North Sea coast of Belgium from which German U-boats were operating, provided that there was assistance from the French, support from Britain and that Russia stayed in the war.

At around 9 pm he decided to continue the attack on Bourlon Wood, a decision which has been much criticised but which made good military sense at the time and was supported by Byng, although the political need for a clear victory may have been a factor.

[159] Over lunch at 10 Downing Street with Derby and Lloyd George in January, Haig predicted that the war would end within a year because of the "internal state of Germany".

[181] Planning that winter had left open the question of whether the BEF would retreat southwest or form "an island" around the Channel Ports through which Haig's armies drew the other half of their supplies.

[186] During the second major German offensive, "Georgette" in Flanders (9 April), Haig issued his famous order that his men must carry on fighting "With Our Backs to the Wall and believing in the Justice of our Cause" to protect "the safety of our homes and the Freedom of mankind".

[209] Germany first requested an Armistice after the penetration of the Hindenburg Line at its strongest point, St Quentin/Cambrai, on 28 September, and the almost simultaneous capitulation of Bulgaria,[210] and discussions continued until the ceasefire on 11 November.

[238] The Earl Haig Memorial, an equestrian statue in Whitehall commissioned by Parliament and sculpted by Alfred Frank Hardiman, aroused some controversy and was not unveiled until just before Armistice Day in 1937.

However, after his death he was increasingly criticised for issuing orders which led to excessive casualties of British troops under his command on the Western Front, earning him the nickname "Butcher of the Somme".

[6] Winston Churchill, whose World Crisis was written during Haig's lifetime, suggested that greater use of tanks, as at Cambrai, could have been an alternative to blocking enemy machine-gun fire with "the breasts of brave men".

[256] Other historians, notably John Keegan, refused to accept that the British Army underwent a "learning curve"; despite this example, Bourne wrote that there "is little disagreement among scholars about the nature of the military transformation".

Tim Travers blamed the management of early campaigns on the ethos of the pre-war officer corps, which was based on privilege, with a hierarchy intent on self-preservation and maintaining individual reputations.

[267] Total British First World War deaths seemed especially severe as they fell among certain groups such as Pals Battalions (volunteers who enlisted together and were allowed to serve together) or the alleged "Lost Generation" of public school and university-educated junior officers.

Barring a few disputes over contentious meetings, such as the War Council of early August 1914 and the Doullens Conference of March 1918, "the overall authenticity of Haig's diary is, however, not in doubt", not least because of the frequency with which its contents have been used to criticise him.

[271]Donald Cameron Watt found Winter curiously ignorant of the by-no-means secret grounds on which the Cabinet Office, or rather its secretary, Lord Hankey, initiated a series of official histories of the first world war and the terms which were binding on the authors commissioned to write them.

[274] A critical biographer finds "no evidence of widespread contempt for Haig; the claim that ordinary soldiers universally thought him a butcher does not accord with their continued willingness to fight".