Lions led by donkeys facts for kids
"Lions led by donkeys" is a phrase popularly used to describe the British infantry of the First World War 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 typified the mainstream First World War history of the 1960s, was vetted by Basil Liddell Hart and helped to form a popular view of the First World War (in the English-speaking world) in the decades that followed. The work's viewpoint of incompetent military leaders was never accepted by some mainstream historians like John Terraine and both the book and its viewpoint have been criticised.
The phrase has been applied more broadly to the leaders on both sides, implying that the War was a pointless waste of life, regardless of the technical competence or otherwise of generals on either side. Conversely, critics of the phrase have argued that, from the British viewpoint, the war was "necessary and successful".
Origin
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 1854–55. 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 Scots 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).
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels used the phrase on 27 September 1855, in an article published in Neue Oder-Zeitung, No. 457 (1 October 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.
The joke making the rounds of the Russian army, that "L'armée anglaise est une armée de lions, commandée par des ânes" ["The English army is an army of lions led by asses"] has been thoroughly vindicated by the assault on Redan.
The Times reportedly recycled the phrase as "lions led by donkeys" with reference to French soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War:
Unceasingly they [the French forces] had had drummed into them the utterances of The Times: "You are lions led by jackasses." Alas! The very lions had lost their manes. (On leur avait répété tout le long de la campagne le mot du Times: – "Vous êtes des lions conduits par des ânes! – Hélas! les lions mêmes avaient perdus leurs crinières") Francisque Darcey (sometimes Sarcey).
There were numerous examples of its use during the First World War, referring to both the British and the Germans. In Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: Russia's War with Japan (2003), Richard Connaughton attributed a later quotation to Colonel J. M. Grierson (later Sir James Grierson) in 1901, when reporting on the Russian contingent to the Boxer Rebellion, describing them as 'lions led by asses'.
More recent usage
In the Second World War, German general Erwin Rommel said it about the British after he captured Tobruk.
In early 2019, the hashtag #LedByDonkeys was coined by an anti-Brexit campaign group that highlights perceived hypocritical statements by British politicians.
Popular culture
The musical Oh, What a Lovely War! (1963) and the comedy television series Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) are two well-known works of popular culture, depicting the war as a matter of incompetent donkeys sending noble (or sometimes ignoble, in the case of Blackadder) lions to their doom. Such works are in the literary tradition of the war poets like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Erich Maria Remarque's novel (and subsequent film) All Quiet on the Western Front, which have been criticised by some historians, such as Brian Bond, for having given rise to what Bond considered the myth and conventional wisdom of the "necessary and successful" Great War as futile. Bond objected to the way that, in the 1960s, the works of Remarque and the "Trench Poets" slipped into a "nasty caricature" and perpetuated the "myth" of lions led by donkeys, while "the more complicated true history of the war receded ... into the background".
Producers of television documentaries about the war have had to grapple with the "lions led by donkeys" interpretive frame since the 1960s. The 1964 seminal and award-winning BBC Television The Great War has been described as taking a moderate approach, with co-scriptwriter John Terraine fighting against what he viewed as an oversimplification, while Liddell Hart resigned as an advising historian to the series, in an open letter to The Times, in part over a dispute with Terraine, claiming that he minimised the faults of the High Command on The Somme and other concerns regarding the treatment of Third Ypres. The Great War was viewed by about a fifth of the adult population in Britain and the production of documentaries on the war has continued ever since. While recent documentaries such as Channel 4's 2003 The First World War have confronted the popular image of lions led by donkeys, by reflecting current scholarship presenting more nuanced portrayals of British leaders and more balanced appraisals of the difficulties faced by the High Commands of all the combatants, they have been viewed by far fewer members of the public than either 1964's The Great War or comedies such as Blackadder.
The name of British anti-Brexit political campaign group Led By Donkeys was inspired by the saying. The activists thought it aptly described the relationship between the British people and their Brexit leaders.
