Edmund Musgrave Barttelot

Edmund Musgrave Barttelot (28 March 1859 – 19 July 1888) was a British Army officer, born in Sussex, England.

He joined the army (7th Royal Fusiliers) in 1879 and served in India. 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 his absence, the Rear Column descended into confusion. Barttelot was unable to maintain discipline and was eventually killed by an African. Stanley blamed Barttelot and his fellow-officers for the failure of the Rear Column.

Walter George Barttelot edited the diaries of his brother, defending his reputation and adding some biting comments on Stanley's behaviour. However, historian Adam Hochschild portrays Major Barttelot in a much different light. After being left in charge of the Rear Column,

Major Barttelot promptly lost his mind. He sent Stanley's personal baggage down the river. He dispatched another officer on a bizarre three-thousand-mile three-month round trip to the nearest telegraph station to send a senseless telegram to England. He next decided that he was being poisoned, and saw traitors on all sides. He had one of his porters lashed three-hundred times (which proved fatal). He jabbed at Africans with a steel-tipped cane, ordered several dozen people put in chains, and bit a village woman. After trying to interfere with a native festival, an African shot and killed Barttelot before he could do more.

Barttelot appears as a character in Simon Gray's 1978 play The Rear Column, which tells the story of the men of the rear column left by Stanley to wait for Tippu Tib.

See also

• Barttelot baronets

References

• Barttelot, Walter George: The Life of Edmund Musgrave Barttelot, Captain and Brevet-Major Royal Fuseliers, Commander of the Rear Column of the Emin Psha Relief Expedition. London, Richard Bentley and Son, 1890 (2nd edn).
• Hochschild, Adam: King Leopold's Ghost. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.
• Jeal, Tim: "Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer" 2007