John Maxwell (British Army officer)

General Sir John Grenfell Maxwell KCB, KCMG, CVO, DSO (1859 - 1929) was a British Army officer and colonial governor.

Maxwell received a commission into the British Army in 1879 after he graduated from Sandhurst. He served in the Battle of Omdurman leading the 2nd Brigade. He personally led the march on the Khalifa's palace. In 1897 he was appointed Governor of Nubia and in 1898 was appointed Governor of Omdurman

Boer and Great War

He also served during the Boer War where he commanded the 14th Brigade on Lord Roberts' march to Pretoria. He was appointed Military Governor of Pretoria and the Western Transvaal in 1900 and received the K.C.B. and the C.M.G. for his services.

He served on the Western Front in the First World War until he was given command of the Army in Egypt where he successfully held the Suez Canal against Turkish attack.

Easter Rising

He is best known for his role in suppressing and the controversial handling of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. After it broke out on 24 April 1916, Martial law was declared for the city and county of Dublin by the Lord Lieutenant Lord Wimborne, to allow court trial of persons breaching the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), passed 8 August 1914 and to deal with such occurrences as the Rising. "Shot in cold blood": Military law and Irish perceptions in the suppression of the 1916 Rebellion", in "1916, The Long Revolution", Adrian Hardiman, pp. 225-249, Mercier Press (2007), ISBN 978-1-85635-545-2]

Maxwell arrived in Ireland on Friday 28 April as "military governor" with "plenary powers" under Martial law. He set about dealing with the rebellion under his understanding of Martial law, namely the will of the commander, which means absence of law. During the week 2-9 May, Maxwell was in sole charge of trials and sentences by "field general court martial", which was trial without defence or jury and in camera. He had 3,400 people arrested, 183 civilians tried, 90 of whom were sentenced to death. Fifteen were shot between 3 and 12 May.

Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and the government were all at once terribly alarmed at the speed and secrecy of events before intervening to stop more executions. In particular great embarrassment ensued due to the failure of applying DORA regulations of general court martial with a full court of thirteen members, a professional judge, legal advocate and held in public, which could have prevented some executions.

Maxwell admitted in a report to Asquith in June that the impression that the leaders were murdered in cold blood without trial had resulted in a ‘revulsion of feeling‘ that had set in, in favour of the rebels, and was the result of the confusion between applying DORA as opposed to Martial law (which Maxwell actually pressed for himself from the beginning).

Although Asquith promised on two occasions to publish the court martial proceedings, they were held suppressed by the British government until the 1990s.

Maxwell was later assigned to be Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Command at York. He was promoted in June 1919 to full general and retired in 1922.

References

* [http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/maxwell_john.htm Profile]

External links

* [http://libweb.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/maxwell.html Overview of career]