NAM.2009-02-110-337

Letter from Gen Lord Wolseley to Sir John Cowell, Camp Korti, 27 Feb 1885. Failure of the Gordon relief expedition. Blames Gladstone, with a side swipe at the Duke of Cambridge. From the archive of Maj Gen Sir John Cowell, 1854-1893. Cowell served with the Royal Engineers in the Baltic in 1854 and in the Crimea in 1855. As Master of the Queen’s Household from 1866 until his death in 1894, Cowell acted as military gatekeeper to Queen Victoria and was the man to whom Victorian generals wrote if they wished their views to be communicated to the monarch. Associated with the Crimean War (1854-1856), 1st Sudan War (1884-1885), the Egyptian War (1882), the Sekukuni Campaign (1878-1879) and the 2nd Afghan War (1878-1881).