Lions led by donkeys

"Lions led by donkeys" is a phrase popularly used to describe the British infantry of World War I and to blame the generals who led them. The contention is that the brave soldiers (lions) were sent to their deaths by incompetent and indifferent leaders (donkeys). The phrase was the source of the title of one of the most scathing examinations of British First World War generals, The Donkeys—a study of Western Front offensives—by politician and writer of military histories Alan Clark. The book was representative of much of the First World War history produced in the 1960s and was not outside the mainstream—Basil Liddell Hart vetted Clark's drafts—and helped to form a popular view of the First World War (in the English-speaking world) in the decades that followed. However, the work's viewpoint of incompetent military leaders was never accepted by some mainstream historians, and both the book and its viewpoint have been subject to attempts at revisionism.

The origin of the phrase pre-dates the First World War. Plutarch attributed to Chabrias the saying that "an army of deer commanded by a lion is more to be feared than an army of lions commanded by a deer". An ancient Arabian proverb says "An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep". During the Crimean War a letter was reportedly sent home by a British soldier quoting a Russian officer who had said that British soldiers were "lions commanded by donkeys". This was immediately after the failure to storm the fortress of Sevastopol which, if true, would take the saying back to 1854–5. The phrase is quoted in Anna Stoddart's 1906 book 'The Life of Isabella Bird' in the scene where Isabella, en route for America in 1854, passes a troopship taking the Scot's Greys out to Balaclava.

These and other Crimean War references were included in British Channel 4 television's The Crimean War series (1997) and the accompanying book (Michael Hargreave Mawson, expert reader).^{[better reference needed]}Karl Marx and Frederick Engels used the phrase on September 27, 1855, in an article published in Neue Oder-Zeitung, No. 457 (October 1, 1855), on the British military's strategic mistakes and failings during the fall of Sevastopol, and particularly General James Simpson's military leadership of the assault on the Great Redan.

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