Biography of Baron of Baden-Powell:- Baden-Powell was particularly noted for his heroic defense of Mafeking for 217 days in the course of the Boers War (1899-1902), as well as for being the founder of the Boy Scouts (1908), an organization in which Baden -Powell was often appointed with his initials, BP or BP.
He also helped his sister, Agnes Baden-Powell, in the gestation of the female branch of the organization, the Girl Guides.
Educated in the elitist Chaterhouse School of London, in the year 1876 entered the British army, in which it comprised of the 13th Regiment of Husares in India. Between 1884 and 1885, Baden-Powell participated in the wars of Bechuanaland and Sudan, where he pleasantly surprised the General Staff for its magnificent use of hot air balloons to observe enemy movements.
Biography of Baron of Baden-Powell
- Born:- 22 February 1857, Paddington, London, United Kingdom
- Died:- 8 January 1941, Nyeri, Kenya
- Spouse:- Olave Baden-Powell (m. 1912–1941)
- Awards:- Ashanti Star, British South Africa Company Medal
From 1888 to 1895 it was destined successively in India, Afghanistan, Zululand and Axanti (current Gold Coast). In this last war was to the control of a battalion of natives that stood out by his ferocity in the hand-to-hand fight with the enemy.
See Also: Biography of Wilhelm Koppers
Shortly before the outbreak of the Boers War (1899-1902), Baden-Powell was sent to South Africa, where he held several positions of prominence that served him up the military ranks.
He served as Staff Officer in the Matabeleland Campaign (now Zimbabwe), and held the rank of Non-Regular Cavalry Colonel in South Africa and Lieutenant Colonel of the Fifth Dragon Guard.
In the War of the Boers he bravely defended with only 1,200 men, from 12 October 1899 to 17 May 1900, Mafeking Square against a large Boer army, until English forces came to raise the site.
As a reward for such behavior, Baden-Powell was promoted to the rank of general. Between 1900 and 1903, he led the organization and direction of the police forces in the Transvaal region.
On his return to England, he was appointed Inspector General of Cavalry and founded, in 1904, the Cavalry School Metheravon, in Wiltshire. By merits of war, was promoted to the degree of general of division and, later, in 1907, to the one of lieutenant-general.
In 1910, Baden-Powell decided to withdraw from the active army to devote himself entirely to the Boy Scouts, a youth organization he had created two years earlier and which soon spread in an extraordinary way throughout the world.
Baden-Powell’s organization was structured on the basis of the boundless trust that all its members had to demonstrate about themselves and a code of moral conduct very close to the military.
Baden-Powell put into practice all his knowledge in the field of obtaining information on a hostile territory obtained during his hard expeditions by Africa and India.
Before the clamorous success that had the organization, in year 1910 its sister Agnes was in charge of creating the feminine branch, the Girl Guides.
In 1920 he hosted the first Boy Scout Jamboree in London, where he was unanimously acclaimed by the organization’s worldwide president. During the 92 years of existence of the movement, about 250 million people have once belonged to the Boy Scouts.
As a reward for his merits and services to the Crown (the last of them served in the British Intelligence department during World War I), in 1929 he obtained the barony for his surname, in addition to the recognition and multiple decorations with which he was Awarded in different countries, including the Great Cross of Alfonso XII (Spain) and the Great Cross Orange-Nassau (Holland).
Named President of the Royal Geographic Society, the last years of his life were spent in Kenya, because for health reasons had to move away from the wet and cold London climate.
His autobiography, Lessons of a Lifetime, written in 1933 and unfinished, was completed in 1957 by the writer Ernest Edwin Reynolds, who published it under the definitive title of Baden-Powell.
A prolific writer, Baden-Powell left an impressive literary legacy of which Sketches in Mafeking and East Africa , 1907 (Sketches of Mafeking and East Africa) deserves special mention.
Scouting for Boys , 1908 (Exploring for the Young), Girl Guides , 1917 (The Girl Scouts); What Scout can do? , 1921 (What can a Scout do?); Adventures and Accidents , 1934 (Adventures and Accidents); and, finally, More Sketches of Kenya.
