Alfred Gaselee

Alfred Gaselee commanded the British contingent of the force that relieved the legations at Peking in August 1900, and by seniority and temperament ended up setting the pace for the whole column. He was a professional Indian Army officer of the generation that spent its career on the north-west frontier, with service in the Bhutan campaign, both Afghan wars, the Egyptian expedition of 1882 and the Tirah campaign, and he spoke the languages of the troops he led. In 1900 the Boxer rising had besieged the foreign legations in Peking for fifty-five days and an earlier relief attempt under Admiral Seymour had been driven back. The second attempt was not an allied army under one commander but eight national contingents moving in the same direction and mistrusting one another - Japanese, Russian, British, American, French, German, Austrian and Italian. Gaselee pushed on when others halted, and his Indian regiments were first into the legation quarter on 14 August, entering through a water gate under the wall. He is generally credited with insisting that the relief move at the speed of the emergency rather than of the slowest ally. What followed is the part the celebrations left out: the allied armies looted Peking systematically for weeks, and the punitive expeditions sent into the countryside afterwards killed on a scale nobody counted. Gaselee tried to restrain the British share of it and had limited success. He was made a Knight Commander of the Bath, finished his career as commander-in-chief in Bombay, and retired in 1907. He died in 1918.

• Lived: 1844 CE – 1918 CE
• Nationality: British
• Roles: military_leader