Edmund Musgrave Barttelot

Edmund Musgrave Barttelot (28 March 1859 – 19 July 1888) was a British Army officer, who became notorious after his allegedly brutal and deranged behaviour during his disastrous command of the rear column left in the Congo during H. M. Stanley's Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He has often been identified as one of the sources for the character of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness.

Born in Sussex, England, he joined the army (7th Royal Fusiliers) in 1879 and served in India. In 1886, he volunteered for Henry Morton Stanley's Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. As Stanley's second in command he was leader of the Rear Column which was left in the jungle by the Aruwimi River to wait for more porters to be brought by the Arab slave trader Tippu Tib while Stanley marched on to reach Emin as soon as possible. During Stanley's absence, the Rear Column descended into confusion. Barttelot was unable to maintain discipline, and resorted to repeated floggings of Africans, a least two of whom died from the beatings. Large numbers of bearers from the Manyema tribe died from malnutrition and untreated illness or deserted. When he threatened a woman with his revolver after she was beating a drum during a ceremony in the early hours of the morning, he was shot dead by the woman's husband, a man named Samba.

Stanley received reports about Barttelot's behaviour from other officers. One, William Bonny, said that "the least thing caused the Major to behave like a fiend" and that he would repeatedly stab African workers with a steel-pointed cane. Another said that the Major "had an intense hatred of anything in the shape of a black man". A 13-year-old boy named Sudi had been beaten and kicked by him. Stanley nursed the injured Sudi, who died six weeks after Stanley returned. Furious, Stanley mainly blamed Barttelot for the failure of the Rear Column, though he also criticised the other officers for allowing him to "kick, strike and slay human beings".

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