Field Marshal Sir Henry Hughes Wilson, 1st Baronet (5 May 1864 – 22 June 1922) was one of the most senior British Army staff officers of the First World War and an Irish unionist politician. He served as commandant of the Staff College, Camberley, and then as Director of Military Operations at the War Office. Wilson played a vital role in drawing up plans to deploy an Expeditionary Force to France in the event of war. He acquired a reputation as a political intriguer for his role in agitating for the introduction of conscription and the Curragh incident of 1914.
As Sub Chief of Staff to the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), Wilson was Sir John French's most important advisor during the 1914 campaign, but his poor relations with Douglas Haig and William Robertson saw him sidelined from top decision-making in the middle years of the war. He played an important role in Anglo-French military relations in 1915 and – after his only experience of field command as a corps commander in 1916 – as an ally of the controversial French General Robert Nivelle in early 1917. Later in 1917 he was informal military advisor to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and then British Permanent Military Representative at the Supreme War Council at Versailles.
In 1918 Wilson served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (the professional head of the British Army). He continued to hold this position after the war, a time when the Army was being sharply reduced in size whilst attempting to contain industrial unrest in the UK and nationalist unrest in Iraq and Egypt. He also played an important role in the Irish War of Independence.
After retiring from the army Wilson served briefly as a member of parliament and as security advisor to the Northern Ireland government. He was assassinated by two IRA gunmen in 1922.
The Wilson family arrived in Carrickfergus with William of Orange in 1690. They prospered, as Ulster Protestants, in the Belfast shipping business in the late eighteenth and early 19th century and, following the Incumbered Estates (Ireland) Act 1849, became landowners. Wilson's father James, the youngest of four sons, inherited Currygrane in Ballinalee (1,200 acres, worth £835 in 1878). James Wilson served as a high sheriff, a justice of the peace and deputy lieutenant for Longford, and attended Trinity College Dublin. As late as the 1960s the IRA leader Seán Mac Eoin remembered the Wilsons as having been fair landlords and employers. The Wilsons also owned Frescati House, an eighteenth-century house at Blackrock, Dublin.
Born at Currygrane, Henry Wilson was the second of James and Constant Wilson's four sons (he also had three sisters). He attended Marlborough public school between September 1877 and Easter 1880, before leaving for a crammer to prepare for the Army. One of Wilson's younger brothers also became an army officer and the other a land agent.
Wilson spoke with an Irish accent and at times regarded himself as British, Irish or an Ulsterman. His biographer Keith Jeffery suggests that he may well, like many Anglo-Irish, have played up his "Irishness" in England and regarded himself as more "Anglo-" while in Ireland, and may well also have agreed with his brother Jemmy's view that Ireland was not "homogenous" enough to be "a Nation." Wilson was a devout member of the Church of Ireland, and on occasion attended Catholic services, but disliked "Romish" ritual.
Between 1881 and 1882 Wilson made several unsuccessful attempts to get into the British Army officer-training establishments: two to enter the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich and three for the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. The entrance examinations relied heavily on rote learning. John Fortescue later claimed that this was because as a tall boy he needed "time for his brain to develop".
Wilson acquired his commission "by the back door", as it was then known, by first becoming a militia officer. In December 1882 he joined the 6th (Royal Longford Militia) Battalion, Rifle Brigade. He also trained with the 5th Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers. After two periods of training he was eligible to apply for a regular commission, and after further cramming in the winter of 1883–84, and trips to Algiers and Darmstadt to learn French and German, he sat the Army exam in July 1884. He was commissioned into the Royal Irish Regiment, but soon transferred into the more prestigious Rifle Brigade.
Early in 1885 Wilson was posted with the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade to India, where he took up polo and big game hunting. In November 1886 he was posted to the Upper Irawaddy, just south of Mandalay, in recently annexed Burma to take part in the Third Burmese War, whose counter-insurgency operations in the Arakan Hills became known as "the subalterns' war". The British troops were organised into mounted infantry, accompanied by "Goorkha police". Wilson worked with Henry Rawlinson of the King's Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC), who described him in his diary as "a very good chap". On 5 May 1887 he was wounded above the left eye. The wound did not heal and after six months in Calcutta he spent almost the whole of 1888 recuperating in Ireland until he was passed fit for regimental duty. He was left disfigured. His wound earned him the nicknames "Ugly Wilson" and "the ugliest man in the British Army".
While in Ireland Wilson began courting Cecil Mary Wray, who was two years his senior. Her family, who had come over to Ireland late in Elizabeth I's reign, had owned an estate called Ardamona near Lough Eske, Donegal, the profitability of which had never recovered from the Great Famine of Ireland of the 1840s. On 26 December 1849 two kegs of explosive were set off outside the house, after which the family only ever spent one more winter there. From 1850 Cecil's father George Wray had worked as a land agent, latterly for the Earl of Drogheda's estates in Kildare, until his death in 1878. Cecil grew up in straitened circumstances, and her views on Irish politics appear to have been rather more hardline than her husband's. They were married on 3 October 1891.
The Wilsons were childless. Wilson lavished affection on their pets (including a dog "Paddles") and other people's children. They gave a home to the young 8th Earl of Guilford in 1895–1896 and Cecil's niece Leonora ("Little Trench") from December 1902.
While contemplating marriage, Wilson began to study for the Staff College, Camberley, in 1888, possibly as attendance at Staff College was not only cheaper than service with a smart regiment but also opened up the possibility of promotion. At this time Wilson had a private income of £200 a year from a £6,000 trust fund. At the end of 1888 Wilson was passed fit for home (but not overseas) service, and joined the 2nd battalion at Dover early in 1889. Wilson was elected to White's in 1889.
After a posting to Aldershot, Wilson was posted to Belfast in May 1890. In May 1891 he passed 15th (out of 25) into Staff College. French and German were amongst his worst subjects, and he began study there in January 1892. After his difficulty in entering the Army, passing the entrance exam proved that he did not lack brains.
Colonel Henry Hildyard became Staff College Commandant in August 1893, beginning a reform of the institution, placing more emphasis on continuous assessment (including outdoor exercises) rather than examinations. Wilson also studied under Colonel George Henderson. Whilst at the College he visited the battlefields of the Franco-Prussian War in March 1893. Rawlinson and Thomas D'Oyly Snow were often his study partners. Rawlinson and Wilson became close friends, often staying and socialising together, and Rawlinson introduced Wilson to Lord Roberts in May 1893, whilst both men were working on a scheme for the defence of India. Wilson became a protégé of Roberts.
Wilson graduated from Staff College in December 1893 and was immediately promoted captain. He was due to be posted with the 3rd Battalion to India early in 1894, but after extensive and unsuccessful lobbying he obtained a medical postponement. He then learned that he was to join the 1st Battalion in Hong Kong for two years, but swapped with another captain. There is no clear evidence as to why Wilson was so keen to avoid overseas service. Charles à Court Repington, then a staff captain in the Intelligence Section at the War Office, took Wilson on a tour of French military and naval installations in July. After a very brief service with his regiment in September, with Repington's help Wilson came to work at the War Office in November 1894, initially as an unpaid assistant, then succeeding to Repington's own job. Wilson worked there for three years from November 1894. From November 1895 Wilson found time to assist Rawlinson with his "Officer's Note Book" based on a previous book by Lord Wolseley, and which inspired the official "Field Service Pocket Book".