Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Maude, Frederick Stanley
MAUDE, Sir FREDERICK STANLEY (1864–1917), lieutenant-general, the younger son of General Sir Frederick Francis Maude, V.C., G.C.B., by his wife, Catherine Mary, daughter of the Very Rev. Sir George Bisshopp, eighth baronet, dean of Lismore, was born at Gibraltar 24 June 1864. He was educated at Eton, where he boarded at the house of Francis Warre Cornish, and at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. At Eton he won the mile and the steeplechase, was reserve for the eight and a member of ‘Pop’. He joined the second Coldstream Guards in 1884, and in the Sudan campaign of 1885 accompanied them to Suakin, being present at the actions of Hashin and Tamai and the occupation of Handub, and receiving the medal with clasp and khedive's star. From 1888 to 1892 he was adjutant of his battalion. In 1895 he joined the Staff College at Camberley, and on completing the staff course became brigade-major of the Guards brigade. During the 1897 jubilee much of the military organization devolved on Maude—congenial work, as he had a liking for parade work and ceremonial. After the outbreak of the South African War, he resigned his appointment and joined his battalion on the Modder river at the close of 1899. For a month he was second in command, but was then appointed brigade-major. Lord Roberts's offensive was just beginning, and the Guards moved to Klip Drift, having been called to the front after Paardeberg (27 February 1900). They took part in the actions of Poplar Grove and Driefontein, where Maude was seriously injured by his horse falling. He was unable to receive proper attention at the time and suffered from his shoulder for the rest of his life. He accompanied the brigade to Johannesburg and Pretoria and took part in the action at Diamond Hill and in the operations north of Belfast, and in the western Transvaal. The brigade was then sent south to oppose the attack of the Boers on Cape Colony. It being generally supposed that the campaign was as good as finished, Maude accepted an offer from the Earl of Minto [q.v.], then governor-general of Canada, to be his military secretary. In February 1901 he left South Africa for England.
Maude's record in South Africa was good, but he was unlucky in not reaching the Guards brigade until after the severest fighting in which it was engaged. General Sir Reginald Pole Carew, commanding the eleventh division, applied for his services as assistant adjutant-general, but unfortunately for Maude, this was not possible. Thus he did not obtain full scope for his qualities in the campaign. He received the D.S.O., a mention, and the medal and six clasps. The next four years were spent with Lord Minto in Canada, where he visited practically the whole of the Dominion and for his services received the C.M.G. In 1905 he rejoined his regiment. Financial reasons, however, made him anxious to obtain outside employment. He was private secretary to the secretary of state for war in 1905, and after the fall of Mr. Balfour's government became deputy assistant adjutant and quartermaster-general of coast defences at Plymouth (1906–1908). From this time forward Maude continued to hold staff appointments. He served on the staff of the second London territorial division (1908–1909) and as assistant director of the territorial forces at the War Office (1909–1912). Here he had much to do with the inauguration of the territorial force, which he foresaw from the first must be used overseas in the event of war. In 1912 he went as general staff officer to the fifth division at the Curragh and in 1914 he joined the training directorate at the War Office.
On the outbreak of the European War in 1914 Maude joined the staff of the Third Army Corps under General (Sir) William Pulteney, reaching France during the retreat from Mons; after that, he took part in the battles of the Marne, the Aisne, and Armentières, and in the fighting on the Lys. In October he became brigadier-general of the fourteenth brigade then engaged in the battle of La Bassée. He took part in the counter-attack at Neuve Chapelle, but during the rest of his tenure of command the brigade was engaged in trench warfare. From La Bassée it went north to Wulverghem and thence to Neuve Eglise, Kemmel, and St. Eloi. At the last place Maude was wounded, and obliged to return to England in November. He was given the C.B. in April 1915, and rejoined the brigade in May, but only remained in France another six weeks. In July he was promoted major-general and appointed to command the thirty-first division then forming in Nottinghamshire; in August, however, he was sent to assume command of the thirteenth division at the Dardanelles.
Maude found the thirteenth division, at Anzac Cove, shattered by losses sustained in the battles for the possession of the Sari Bair heights; its total strength scarcely amounted to that of a single brigade, and none of the artillery was with the division. From Anzac it went to Suvla Bay, and after three weeks in reserve took over the front at Salajik. When the tenth division left Suvla for Salonika in October, the important Chocolate Hill position came under Maude's control. In December definite instructions arrived for the evacuation of Suvla and Anzac. After the withdrawal from Suvla the thirteenth division was sent to Helles, which was abandoned in January 1916, Maude being almost the last to leave the shore. Thus he took a prominent part in two operations which were described by the enemy as masterpieces for which there had been no precedent.
From the Dardanelles Maude's division went to Egypt, whence it was ordered to Mesopotamia and sailed in February 1916 for Basra. In March Maude proceeded to assemble his division at Sheikh Sa‘ad, where he fortunately found excellent training ground to exercise his troops before their departure for the front. The division was intended to reinforce the Tigris Corps under Major-General Gorringe, with which Sir Percy Lake, the commander-in-chief, planned to attempt the relief of Major-General Townshend, besieged at Kut el Amara. On 5 April an attack launched by the thirteenth division captured the Turkish trenches at Hannah and Felahieh, but the seventh division was unsuccessful at Sanna-i-yat. Three days later Maude attempted to take Sanna-i-yat, but was equally unsuccessful. The third division captured the Turkish trenches at Beit Aiessa, but was heavily counter-attacked at night. Maude came to its aid, but failed to improve its position. A last attempt to take Sanna-i-yat was made by the seventh division, aided by Maude's artillery and machine guns, but this also failed, and after an unsuccessful attempt to reprovision Townshend by running a steamer through to Kut, it was adjudged that no more could be done. Kut surrendered on 29 April.
For the next few months little occurred on the Tigris. In July Maude, though nearly the junior major-general in Mesopotamia, was appointed to command the Tigris Corps, and in August, on the departure of Lake, assumed command of the army in Mesopotamia. For his services as a divisional commander he received the K.C.B. For the next three and a half months he devoted himself to preparations for the advance on Bagdad. His force was divided into two corps under Major-Generals (Sir) Alexander Cobbe and (Sir) William Marshall. On 13 December the first corps bombarded the Sanna-i-yat position and the third corps obtained a footing on the Hai river. This was consolidated and followed by the capture of the Hai bridgehead by the third and the clearance of the Khaidri bend by the first corps. No pause took place in the offensive, and on 15 February 1917 the Turks were cleared out of the Dahra bend. On 22 February the final attack was launched on Sanna-i-yat, the passage of the Tigris was forced at Shumran, and on 24 February the first corps occupied the whole Turkish position, and Kut was recovered. The Turks were now retreating rapidly, and Maude's pursuing cavalry pressed them so closely that on 27 February it entered Aziziyeh, half-way between Kut and Bagdad. After a pause, to allow his supplies to come up, Maude pushed on. Ctesiphon was occupied after a stiff fight between the cavalry and the Turkish fifty-first division at Lajj. At Bawi the first corps crossed the Tigris and pressed forward to Bagdad, while the third corps forced the passage of the Diala and pursued the Turks up that river. On 11 March Bagdad was occupied. Its capture by no means concluded active operations. In spite of growing resistance on the part of the Turks, Mushaidieh was occupied on the 14th, Bakuba on the Diala on the 18th, and Feluza on the Euphrates on the 19th. The offensive was continued to the north and east of Bagdad, and proceeded throughout the summer notwithstanding attempts of the enemy to retrieve the position. Early in November Cobbe occupied Tekrit, and this was the last victory achieved during Maude's lifetime, but by that time the conquest had been consolidated and there were no longer grounds for any fear that a reverse of fortune was possible in Mesopotamia. He had been promoted lieutenant-general on 1 March.
Simultaneously with operations in the field Maude devoted himself to consolidating and administrating the conquered territory. A railway was laid down between Kut and Bagdad, agriculture encouraged, and sanitary measures undertaken. Bagdad was not a healthy city and cholera was endemic. At a party at a Jewish school on 14 November the army commander drank some milk from which it is thought he must have caught the disease, and four days later (18 November 1917) he died of virulent cholera.
Maude was a great soldier and a born fighter, but though he had the strongest faith in the offensive he had a clear understanding when a fight must be broken off, and he never undertook an offensive without the most careful and thorough preparation. Over and above great natural gifts and knowledge acquired by years of study, he had a peculiar understanding of the requirements of troops, whose devotion he commanded in a marked degree. Punctual, methodical, and hardworking, his chief fault was perhaps a desire to over-centralize and to concentrate direction in his own hands, but he was not only generous in giving credit to his subordinates, but also open and willing to hear their advice. He was a thinker, a student, a sportsman, and a man of strong religious convictions. He will be remembered chiefly for his Mesopotamian campaign, but every task of his life was pursued in the same spirit of thoroughness and care as his last great achievement.
Maude married in 1893 Cecil, daughter of Colonel the Rt. Hon. Thomas Edward Taylor, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, of Ardgillan Castle, co. Dublin, and had one son and two daughters.
A portrait of Maude is included in J. S. Sargent's picture ‘Some General Officers of the Great War’, painted in 1922, in the National Portrait Gallery.
[The Times, 20 November 1917; Sir C. E. Callwell, The Life of Sir Stanley Maude, 1920; ‘The Times’ History of the War in South Africa, 1900–1909; Sir Ian Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, 1920; Edmund Candler, The Long Road to Baghdad, 1919; E. F. Egan, The War in the Cradle of the World, 1918; Annual Register; Hansard, Parliamentary Debates; Eton School Register; Army Lists; private information.]