Blackwell Reference Online

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(1861–1928) Haig remains one of the most controversial figures in British military historiography, for ever linked with the attritional battles of the Somme and Third Ypres, popularly known as Passchendaele. Entering Sandhurst from Oxford, where illness had prevented him from fulfilling the residential qualification required for a degree, Haig was commissioned into the 7th Hussars in 1885. Dour and inarticulate, he was more professional than most Victorian army officers but much of the professionalism and progressivism was expended in the cause of a branch of the service rendered anachronistic by the development of firepower and technology. His own particular narrowness of vision was epitomized by his Cavalry Studies published in 1907. Haig's concept of the immutability of warfare and the true function of a commander, which he absorbed as a Staff College student in 1896–7, was to have a stultifying effect on the military system over which he was eventually to preside. Chief of staff to the cavalry division in South Africa, Haig was then Inspector of Cavalry in India in 1903, Director of Military Training and then Director of Staff Duties at the War Office from 1906 to 1909 and Chief of the General Staff in India from 1909 until returning to command the First Corps at Aldershot in 1912. After the initial campaigns on the Western Front, First Corps became First Army in December ... log in or subscribe to read full text