Original Vanity Fair print of General John Denton Pinkstone French, July 12, 1900, Men of the Day No. 783 called "the Cavatry Division" by Godfrey Douglas Giles known as "G.D.G" with Text.

This near mint print is from the Evelyn Edison Newman Collection and has an appraisal value of $150.00.

Field Marshal John Denton Pinkstone French, 1st Earl of Ypres, KP, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCMG, ADC, PC (28 September 1852 – 22 May 1925), known as Sir John French from 1901 to 1916, and as The Viscount French between 1916 and 1922, was a senior British Army officer. Born in Kent to an Anglo-Irish family, he saw brief service as a midshipman in the Royal Navy, before becoming a cavalry officer. He achieved rapid promotion and distinguished himself on the Gordon Relief Expedition. French had a considerable reputation as a womaniser throughout his life, and his career nearly ended when he was cited in the divorce of a brother officer while in India in the early 1890s.

French became a national hero during the Second Boer War. He won the Battle of Elandslaagte near Ladysmith, escaping under fire on the last train as the siege began. He then commanded the Cavalry Division, winning the Battle of Klip Drift during a march to relieve Kimberley. He later conducted counter-insurgency operations in Cape Colony.

During the Edwardian period he commanded I Corps at Aldershot, then served as Inspector-General of the Army, before becoming Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS, the professional head of the British Army) in 1912. During this time he helped to prepare the British Army for a possible European war, and was also one of those who insisted, in the so-called "cavalry controversy", that cavalry still be trained to charge with sabre and lance rather than only fighting dismounted with firearms. During the Curragh incident he had to resign as CIGS after promising Hubert Gough in writing that the Army would not be used to coerce Ulster Protestants into a Home Rule Ireland.

French's most important role was as Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) for the first year and a half of the First World War. He had an immediate personality clash with the French General Charles Lanrezac. After the British suffered heavy casualties at the battles of Mons and Le Cateau (where Smith-Dorrien made a stand contrary to French's wishes), French wanted to withdraw the BEF from the Allied line to refit and only agreed to take part in the First Battle of the Marne after a private meeting with the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, against whom he bore a grudge thereafter. In May 1915 he leaked information about shell shortages to the press in the hope of engineering Kitchener's removal. By summer 1915 French's command was being increasingly criticised in London by Kitchener and other members of the government, and by Haig, Robertson and other senior generals in France. After the Battle of Loos, at which French's slow release of XI Corps from reserve was blamed for the failure to achieve a decisive breakthrough on the first day, H. H. Asquith, the British Prime Minister, demanded his resignation. Haig, who was formerly French's trusted subordinate and who had saved him from bankruptcy by lending him a large sum of money in 1899, replaced him.

French was then appointed Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces for 1916–1918. This period saw the country running increasingly short of manpower for the Army. While the Third Battle of Ypres was in progress, French, as part of Lloyd George's manoeuvres to reduce the power of Haig and Robertson, submitted a paper which was critical of Haig's command record and which recommended that there be no further major offensives until the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was present in strength. He then became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1918, a position he held throughout much of the Irish War of Independence (1919–1922), in which his own sister was involved on the republican side. During this time he published 1914, an inaccurate and much criticised volume of memoirs.

Peerage

viscountcy as Viscount French (1916)

earldom as Earl of Ypres (1922)

Military

Knight of the Order of St Patrick (1917)

Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (1909)

Civil

Member of the Order of Merit (1914)

Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (1907)

Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (1902)

Member of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council (1918)

Civic

Honorary Freedom of the City of Canterbury – 26 August 1902

Honorary Freedom of the borough of Bedford – 9 October 1902

Honorary Freedom of the City of Leeds – 6 November 1902

Honorary Freedom and livery of the Worshipful Company of Cutlers, with a sword of honour – 28 July 1902 – "in recognition of his distinguished services in the War in South Africa".

Honorary Freedom and livery of the Worshipful Company of Salters – 13 November 1902

Knight 1st class Order of the Red Eagle of Prussia – during his September 1902 visit to Germany to attend German Army manoeuvres.

Croix de guerre of France – 22 February 1916

Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold of Belgium – 24 February 1916

Order of St. George of Russia, 3rd Class – 16 May 1916

Grand Cross of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus of the Kingdom of Italy – 26 May 1917

First Class of the Order of the Star of Karađorđe with Swords of the Kingdom of Serbia – 10 September 1918

Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers of the Empire of Japan – 9 November 1918

Memorials

John French, 1st Earl of Ypres, is commemorated by memorials in Ypres Cathedral and Canterbury Cathedral.

French in popular culture

After the Colesberg Operations (early 1900) the following verse was published about him:

There's a general of 'orse which is French,

You've 'eard of 'im o' course, fightin' French,

'E's a daisy, e's a brick, and e's up to every trick,

And 'e moves amazin' quick, don't yer French?

'E's so tough and terse

'E don't want no bloomin' nurse

and 'E ain't had one reverse

Ave yer, French?

During the Boer War, the press lionised him as "Uncle French" and "the shirt-sleeved general", writing of how he smoked a briar pipe and enjoyed being mistaken for a private soldier.

At the beginning of the First World War a supporter of French, Arthur Campbell Ainger, tried, with little success, to popularise a marching song in honour of French. The words read:

Do you ken John French with his khaki suit

His belt and gaiters and stout brown boot

Along with his guns and his horse and his foot

On the road to Berlin in the morning.

Field Marshal French was played by Laurence Olivier in Richard Attenborough's World War I satire film Oh! What A Lovely War (1969). Ian Beckett writes that French and Wilson are portrayed almost as "a comic duo" in the film. By this time, although Terraine's Mons: Retreat to Victory (1960), Alan Clark's The Donkeys (1961), and A. J. Smithers' The Man Who Disobeyed (a 1970 biography of Smith-Dorrien) kept up some interest in French, he was already becoming a somewhat forgotten figure as popular interest from the 1960s onwards concentrated on the Battle of the Somme, inevitably focussing attention on Douglas Haig.

In Russian the word french (френч), a type of four-pocketed military tunic, is named after John French.